Being the Wife of a Fluffy Creature [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The First World (5)

The sudden turn of events was so abrupt that the system immediately suspected a mission bug: “With 3 health points as a baseline, there’s no reason for the target to die. Something is definitely wrong; I’m going to file a report.”

Time was too tight for Wu Yao to debate with the system. It wasn’t impossible for a mission system to have bugs—he’d exploited such glitches plenty of times while working under his previous black-hearted system. But only a few dozen minutes ago, Wu Yao had watched with his own eyes as two “witness-dogs” expired in a highly suspicious manner.

The backend data didn’t match the mission timer; the black dog shouldn’t have been dying. Something invisible to the naked eye was killing it right in front of him. Was it a remote attack or something nearby?

Earlier, Wu Yao had seen the big dog’s ear twitch. He hadn’t moved at the time, and there was no one else in the room. Something had truly entered the apartment. It would take about a minute to finish off the black dog. The entity wasn’t fast, and its volume couldn’t be very large. Wu Yao was confident he could handle it, even if it were a monster, if only he could see it.

How had he seen the corpses earlier? Was it because of the unique environment of the basement? Did he have to bring the black dog there? No, that didn’t fit—when he and the police raided the basement, he hadn’t seen the hellish slaughterhouse.

Based on the information, another world or space existed on Heaven Island. A world filled with monsters and corpses that could make contact with the peaceful world. People living in this idyllic town could only see that world if certain conditions were met.

Countless thoughts flashed through his mind; Wu Yao’s brain was racing, though only seconds had passed. He had smelled a strange, fishy, rotting stench the moment he transmigrated—the same scent as in the hotpot restaurant’s basement. It stood to reason that he had been in “light contact” with the other world from the start; the hotpot restaurant wasn’t a mandatory prerequisite for “contact.”

Having worked under all kinds of villains, Wu Yao was well-traveled and rarely felt fear; triggering “contact” had nothing to do with losing his sanity. From catching the faint scent to seeing the basement filled with corpses… he had progressed from light to deep contact in under an hour.

To maintain his cover, the system had arranged a blank-slate identity for him with almost no social life. He only went to the market at fixed times to buy ingredients. The “stand-in puppet” had a very small range of movement; he must have encountered something near his apartment to trigger the contact conditions.

There were two possibilities: either he met someone outside who did something to make him a “contactee,” or he brought something home during his grocery run that he wouldn’t usually have brought.

Wu Yao looked around. On the surface, there were no new items in the house. The new groceries were untouched, and the kitchen trash bin was empty; the problem wasn’t the food. Whatever the puppet brought home must have been a special consumable that he used up and threw away.

He didn’t know what that thing was or if any remained. Wu Yao searched the living room trash bin while thinking. Oily napkins, chocolate wrappers, supermarket discount flyers, “Truth Society” flyers, a half-eaten apple…

Wait, something strange was mixed in.

There were 13 seconds left.

Wu Yao picked up the remaining apple, grabbed the bone-cleaver the building manager had bought for him, and began eating while walking toward the black dog on the floor.

The hotpot boss knew the “fighting dog” was aggressive and hard to handle, yet he still gave his employees time to hang around before processing it. A group of men in their twenties and thirties gathered in an alley, neither smoking nor drinking, collectively gnawing on apples. Even when the boss was cursed at by the dog, they insisted on finishing their apples before going inside.

Apples were the medium through which the hotpot employees contacted the other world. They needed to bathe and dress the fighting dog, which required significant preparation. They had to eat the entire apple to extend the contact time as much as possible.

In the target’s personal file, the gambler had initially lived by scavenging trash before being introduced to fighting dog matches. Wu Yao had a hypothesis: one day, while scavenging near the hotpot restaurant for leftovers, the gambler had seen those employees eating something he’d never seen before, and they looked like they were enjoying it immensely.

After they left, he picked up the discarded apple core and curiously popped it into his mouth. As his tongue tasted the sweet, fresh juice, the gambler made contact with the other world—a bloody, cruel world.

In different cultures, apples have different metaphors. The most widely known is that of Adam and Eve stealing the forbidden fruit. People generally identify the forbidden fruit as an apple—it represents temptation and original sin, evoking the desires in a person’s heart. At the same time, it leads one to explore the world and discover good and evil. It is a symbol of wisdom, wealth, and victory.

Apples are everywhere. In Wu Yao’s mind, they were too ordinary, and he had subconsciously ignored their existence. It wasn’t until the “blade of poverty” was at his throat that Wu Yao realized: if monsters didn’t exist elsewhere, why couldn’t they be absent from Heaven Island? The island had a unique environment, isolated by the sea on all sides. As long as the administrators of Heaven Island didn’t want apples to appear, they had countless ways to ensure no one on the island ever saw one.

Every transmigration takes him into a brand-new novel world. If he only viewed the world through his own cognitive biases, he would lose his job sooner or later.

The countdown continued.

“4”

“3”

Wu Yao walked toward the black dog step by step, and the scene before him shifted. The bright, cozy little room turned dark and cold; the floor and walls were covered in cracks. Charred human figures were imprinted on the walls, twisting and convulsing, emitting harsh wails. Outside the window, it was raining black rain; the sunlight was no longer bright, and the entire city was shrouded in thick smoke, as if burning in a raging fire.

On the blood-stained carpet lay a man in a black trench coat. His wheat-colored skin was covered in scars, his eyes tightly shut, his brows knitted in a struggle to wake up without the strength to do so. Standing quietly beside him were two humanoid monsters wearing dust-covered hazmat suits, holding long, pale swords high in the air.

“1”

The countdown ended, and the long swords stabbed down fiercely toward the man.

Wu Yao lunged forward, kicking the monster closest to him to the ground. He raised the bone-cleaver, severed the other monster’s arm, and took advantage of the monster’s loosened grip to snatch the long sword from its hand.

Slash—

The monster’s sword-wielding palm seemed glued to the hilt. As Wu Yao yanked the sword away, its hand ripped off with it. The flesh and muscle were abnormally viscous, stretching into filaments—connected to the monster on one side and the sword hilt on the other. Wu Yao threw the sword away in disgust, the monster’s hand finally detaching with a bizarre, tearing sound.

Compared to the wire-monsters in the basement, these two weren’t very strong. Wu Yao severed their limbs with a few swings, kicked them to the ground, and reached out to remove one of their masks.

Beneath the mask wasn’t a ferocious monster face, but a festering, ugly visage. One could barely tell it had once been a man; he was already dead, but his face looked like boiling water, with blisters rising and bursting in rapid succession. Even as calm as Wu Yao was, his mind went blank for a moment.

“Here they come again! Watch out!”

The system’s shout snapped him out of his daze. Wu Yao turned around; a monster behind him was attempting to sneak up on the man in the trench coat. A charred shadow leapt from the wall onto the floor, trying to drag the man away. More shadows fell from the ceiling, piling up like layers as they pressed down on him.

Wu Yao clutched the bone-cleaver in one hand and lifted the man in the trench coat with the other. He retreated quickly, stabbing a shadow with the cleaver. A gust of wind came from behind; Wu Yao raised the blade backhand, blocking a long sword swung from the rear. The monster pushed forward, the long sword grinding against his blade until it reached the hilt. Wu Yao pivoted, dodging a monster beside him, and used his arm strength to shove the sword away.

A blade swung from his side-rear; just as Wu Yao was about to dodge, the monster suddenly changed direction and went straight for the man.

Wu Yao paused. This scene was so similar to the situation in the basement—the monsters wouldn’t hurt him; their target, from beginning to end, was only the fighting dog.

Time ticked by. Wu Yao’s sword-wielding arm was numb and aching, yet the number of monsters before him showed no signs of decreasing.

‘System, switch to rear-view. See how many monsters there are.’

“About… about a hundred or so.”

Wu Yao felt a chill in his heart. Even if he could withstand the endless assault, the man’s physical condition was not optimistic. Wu Yao gripped the man’s waist tightly, his brain racing.

What kind of mission world forces someone into a dead end just hours into the start? There had to be a way to break the deadlock; he just hadn’t noticed it yet.

As thoughts flashed by, Wu Yao gritted his teeth and retreated into the kitchen. He whispered: “Let us go, I guarantee he doesn’t know anything!”

The system was baffled: “Who are you talking to?”

Wu Yao didn’t have time to explain. “He’s just a big black dog, a stray saved from a hotpot shop by an animal lover! He won’t leak any secrets, nor will he affect the normal lives of the town’s other residents!”

Looking at the monsters before him, Wu Yao’s voice grew cold. “I know that preparing to blow up this floor with the gas line takes dozens of minutes of preparation. There are too many monsters, I can’t protect him.”

“If he dies and I make it out alive, I will blow up this apartment building! I’ll set fires on buses and kill people indiscriminately on the streets! I have countless extreme means to destroy the beautiful facade you’ve cultivated, turning your painstakingly managed Heaven Island into another hell on earth! I mean what I say, you’re welcome to try me!”

Wu Yao looked calm, but his palms were sweating. He wasn’t a maniac; he couldn’t actually harm passersby. He was gambling. Gambling that the entity manipulating the monsters had the same goal as the police. Gambling that as long as the fighting dog had a master, it had a chance to live.

The monsters didn’t stop; they slowly closed in, forcing Wu Yao back to the kitchen window. It was the seventh floor; he might have a chance of surviving if he jumped, but the fighting dog would definitely die.

Wu Yao gritted his teeth and pulled the man into his arms. “Enough, stop! He was an ownerless fighting dog abandoned by a gambler; I’m adopting him, he has a master! I won’t allow you to hurt my dog!!!”