Resentment soars to the heavens.

No joke. Shi Shaoning’s resentment was genuinely soaring to the heavens right now.

He couldn’t get off work again. And on top of that, a whole mountain of new tasks landed on his plate.

First, he had to take engineers to repair the bronze circuit and restore the Remorse imprint as quickly as possible, so that the Aberrants they finally recaptured wouldn’t escape again. Especially those S-classes.

Second, there was the registry. They needed to determine which Aberrants were confirmed to be back in containment, which Aberrants the Evil Domain ate (those were registered as consumables and S-class employee benefits), and which Aberrants truly escaped. The last possibility was less likely, but they couldn’t rule out that some of them might be hiding in a corner of the Bureau.

Of course, most of the work could be delegated to his subordinates. The problem was that several of the more dangerous Aberrants required Shi Shaoning to be physically present before their records could be confirmed and archived.

That was the bullsh*t part about having a senior title. Everything had to drag some senior-ranked employee over for on-site verification.

Once those two most urgent piles of work were dealt with, there was still a mountain of follow-up work. Shi Shaoning wasn’t the person primarily responsible for most of it, but as a senior-ranked employee, he still had to participate in discussions and give his input.

For example, further improving the electrical system and the bronze circuit to prevent anything similar from happening again.

Another example was strengthening training across all departments, especially for the new hires who just joined Containment and Field Operations.

And further examples include improving every Bureau employee’s ability to respond to unexpected incidents…

Oh, in this case, “unexpected incidents” also included how to deal with a sudden, collective SAN drop caused by personally witnessing a human and an Aberrant engage in interactions beyond the limits of imagination.

This was completely unprecedented.

Not even Shi Shaoning had seen anything like that. He also nearly went insane from watching it.

Every time he remembered that scene, he wanted to soak his entire body in a swimming pool filled with floral water.

It was horrifying!

He actually kissed it!

That was an entirely independent digestive system! No skin! No muscles! It didn’t even have a fucking face!

And he still managed to kiss it?!

Lin Jianyuan... You’re definitely something else! (Thumbs up)

…Besides all that, there was one more matter that wasn’t quite as urgent, but couldn’t be delayed too long either.

Interrogation.

After Shi Shaoning finished dealing with the immediate emergencies, he quickly headed to the Internal Affairs Department to sit in on the interrogation.

He wasn’t the lead interrogator.

That role belonged to a colleague who transferred into Field Operations from the criminal police department.

And naturally, the person being interrogated was the rookie who caused this astronomical disaster.

The rookie’s name was Xie Li, male, and 22 years old.

He had just graduated from university, and he accidentally came into contact with an Aberrant once. As it happened, he was studying correctional science at university, so after asking whether he was willing, the Bureau naturally recruited him into the Containment Department.

By the time Shi Shaoning arrived, the atmosphere in the interrogation room was extremely heavy.

The former detective conducting the interrogation actually wasn’t particularly intimidating, but Xie Li fully understood how much trouble he caused. His face was deathly pale, cold sweat covered his body, and he trembled nonstop.

The interrogator: “Have some water and calm down.”

So Xie Li swallowed several mouthfuls of saliva.

Interrogator: “…”

That happened to be the ridiculous scene Shi Shaoning saw when he walked in.

His first thought was: F**k. So this was the idiot who made several thousand people across the Bureau work overtime. Sure enough, he's a f**king idiot!

Suppressing his anger, Shi Shaoning asked, “How’s the interrogation going?”

The lead interrogator sighed helplessly. “See for yourself.”

Shi Shaoning quickly skimmed through the interrogation record.

It was extremely detailed. The lead interrogator really did live up to his background as a professional detective. He used plenty of psychological techniques throughout the questioning, guiding Xie Li patiently and methodically.

The main purpose was to determine whether Xie Li made an innocent mistake, did it deliberately, or was even instructed by someone behind the scenes.

The preliminary conclusion was: He didn’t appear to be lying. The rookie really did seem to do it by accident.

“Seriously?” Shi Shaoning said in disbelief. “He really didn’t do it on purpose? Was nobody directing him from behind the scenes? I’m not trying to be a conspiracy theorist here, but a brand-new employee walks in and casually severs the Containment Department’s main artery on day one. You’re telling me that’s genuinely just a coincidence?”

The interrogator was silent for two seconds. “To tell you the truth, I started out as a conspiracy theorist too.”

Shi Shaoning said, “And?”

The interrogator spread both hands. “And then I genuinely got nothing out of him. We’ll have to wait until the bronze circuit and surveillance data are restored before we can see more evidence.”

Shi Shaoning: “…”

Shi Shaoning was still full of doubts, but this wasn’t his area of expertise.

The man in front of him was a highly experienced criminal investigator who solved several major cases even before joining the Bureau. Even spies who were masters of disguise couldn’t escape his sharp eye.

If even this man couldn’t get anything out of Xie Li, then nobody probably could.

Shi Shaoning could only say, “Fine.”

At the same time, Xie Li sat anxiously in his chair inside the interrogation room.

He was scared half to death, but he really remembered that he didn’t press the wrong button.

…Maybe he remembered wrong?

Under the pressure of the solemn interrogation, after repeatedly going over the event in his head, Xie Li was beginning to lose confidence in his own memory.

Could it be that he really pressed the wrong one?

Xie Li never imagined that something as ridiculous as “causing a catastrophic disaster on your very first day working for the government” could actually happen to him.

He was finished. This time, he was genuinely finished.

He actually poked a hole in the fucking sky! AAAAAAAAAH!

…

Resentment soars to the heavens...

No joke. Lin Jianyuan’s resentment was genuinely soaring to the heavens right now.

He finally finished work, only to discover that he had to work overtime again when he got home! And the most disgusting part was that this overtime was caused by trouble in his own backyard!

How on earth did the punching bag manage to run away?!

“I genuinely cannot f**king believe this. That bastard better pray I don’t find it, because if I do, I’m actually going to f**king kill it!” Lin Jianyuan cursed furiously as he tracked the signal on his mobile terminal, looking left and right while waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green.

His roommate was draped across his back as one enormous mass of innards, enthusiastically aligning each of his organs with Lin Jianyuan’s corresponding organs.

It looked like some kind of summer-cooling, human-organ version of a posture-correction harness.

There was no helping it. The weather was just too hot.

And Lin Jianyuan was already full of rage.

Lin Jianyuan thought that the stupid giant meat tumor was finally beaten into submission. Back when he worked at that sh*tty company, whenever he ran into an idiot, he went down to the basement and beat the stupid meat tumor senseless to relieve stress.

The stupid meat tumor swallowed too much human life force. No matter how much Lin Jianyuan beat it, it couldn’t spit all of it back out.

So he could only beat it every day. Beat it and beat it and beat it. Make it cough up everything it swallowed before and return that life force to its original owners.

Later, after joining the Bureau, Lin Jianyuan did physical training during the day and punched actual sandbags. Then at night, if he wanted to review his training after coming home, he beat the stupid meat-tumor punching bag in his house.

After getting beaten every single day for so long, the stupid tumor’s flesh actually became springy and firm. Lin Jianyuan thought that the idiot finally surrendered.

And yet it ran away!

RAN AWAY!!!

Lin Jianyuan was starting to suspect that the stupid meat tumor secretly colluded with some equally stupid mastermind, who went to extraordinary lengths to plant some fucking mole inside the Bureau purely so that this stupid tumor could escape while the Bureau was in total chaos.

The more he thought about it, the more stupid it sounded!

F**K!!!

His roommate lay across his back and poked his head out from behind Lin Jianyuan’s ear. “Why don’t you let someone else go catch it?”

The instant his roommate spoke, it was like someone flipped a switch on Lin Jianyuan’s emotions.

His tone immediately softened, and every swear word automatically vanished from his vocabulary.

Lin Jianyuan sighed. “Because everyone’s busy, baby. And this really is my fault.”

Lin Jianyuan genuinely didn’t have the face to call for reinforcements.

He was the one who put this thing on the whitelist. Technically speaking, it even counted as one of his little toys, and it really escaped because he failed to keep proper watch over [Bloodline].

Escaped from his own house, no less.

There was no way Lin Jianyuan would call people from the Bureau that was already drowning in chaos just to come wipe his ass for him.

So he could only come out and catch [Bloodline] himself, while cursing the whole way.

His roommate thought about it. “Mm. It’s partly my fault too.”

Lin Jianyuan: “Baby, you already did everything you could. If it weren’t for you, the Bureau would actually be finished right now.”

Xie Yu ate so many Aberrants while recapturing them that he gave himself pyloric spasms.

“Nobody has the right to blame you for anything,” Lin Jianyuan said. “If anyone tries to dump the responsibility on you, I’ll be the first one to charge over there and f**k them up.”

When Lin Jianyuan said “f**k them up,” he looked like some vicious demonic beagle king.

His roommate’s lips curved upward again and leaned over to kiss the tip of Lin Jianyuan’s ear.

Then he said, “My stomach feels warm.”

Lin Jianyuan immediately got nervous. He hurriedly reached back, intending to scoop his wife off his back and examine him. “What kind of warm? Does it hurt? Do you feel bloated? Nauseous? Like you’re going to throw up?”

“No. It’s not an uncomfortable kind of warmth.” His roommate smiled and held him in place, rubbing affectionately against him. “It’s warm like drinking hot water. Warm like when we soak together in the bathtub at home.”

Lin Jianyuan paused.

His roommate extended a section of intestine and rubbed his own stomach. “It’s a really comfortable kind of warmth. The kind that makes me want to smile.”

“…” Lin Jianyuan turned his head away. “Well, the stomach is an emotional organ.”

And now, Lin Jianyuan’s stomach felt warm too.

He had to admit, working at the same workplace as his wife was really pretty great.

Even when they had to work overtime, they could do overtime together.

All his wife had to do was gently say a few words to him, and just like that, his wage-slave resentment vanished.

Who could look at that and not call it energy-efficient and environmentally friendly?

Lin Jianyuan smiled, then checked the display on his mobile terminal again.

Fortunately, Lin Jianyuan held a senior rank now. Even though the stupid tumor was on the whitelist, he had enough authority to pull its file up instantly.

The display showed that the target was on the snack street ahead.

Coincidentally, that snack street was near the sh*tty company where he used to work, so he used to eat there all the time.

It wasn’t even a snack street originally. There were simply lots of office buildings nearby, so various mobile food vendors gradually gathered in the area. Over time, it naturally turned into an entire street of food stalls.

Technically, all of them were illegally occupying public road space. They were not particularly regulated and not especially hygienic either. It was the kind of place where the entire street had to scatter the second municipal enforcement officers showed up.

Right now, it was peak after-work rush hour.

Office drones poured out of the surrounding buildings as if someone opened a floodgate.

Some headed straight for the subway entrance to begin their absurd long-distance special-forces commute.

Some dragged their exhausted bodies slowly between the food stalls, wondering what to eat for dinner.

Some even stood outside their office buildings smoking cigarettes, staring blankly and silently at the lively street.

Those people obviously weren’t done with work. After they finished their cigarettes, they would have to go back upstairs and work overtime.

Once upon a time, Lin Jianyuan was one of them too.

Xie Yu suddenly said, “Found it.”

Almost at the same moment, Lin Jianyuan noticed an inconspicuous red thread among the crowd.

It was coming from a barbecue stall. The vendor was a greasy, overweight middle-aged man who was frantically grilling food for customers without pause.

A young woman who just got off work took a tray of skewers from him and turned to leave.

A blood-red thread swayed out from the cardboard takeout box containing the skewers, then it plunged directly into her throat.

Lin Jianyuan strode forward. Xie Yu said, “Its main body is underground. I’ll go first.”

As he spoke, a dark red shadow flashed.

Lin Jianyuan said, “Wait, wife. Hold on.”

The dark red shadow stopped.

Lin Jianyuan narrowed his eyes and looked around.

He realized that his eyesight somehow became extraordinarily sharp at some point. Looking across the street now, he could actually see countless tiny and faint red threads at a glance.

Blood-red threads emerged from the woks, seasonings, and refrigerators of various roadside stalls. They slipped out of takeout containers vendors handed to customers and rose from the greasy smoke billowing off the woks.

Silently draining away people’s life force.

Lin Jianyuan: “?”

Fine. Losing life force while working at a shitty company was one thing. But why the f**k did eating from a roadside stall also drain this much life force?!

When he narrowed his eyes and looked more carefully… his vision zoomed in like a close-up shot.

It locked precisely onto every slowed-down detail.

A filthy rag being used to wipe down a wok. Strong-flavored seasonings that, on closer inspection, actually had tiny bugs wriggling inside them. Stiff and pale “fresh meat” sitting inside a refrigerated display.

A woven plastic sack full of bean sprouts was half-open with black liquid leaking from the bottom and pooling on the ground. Flies circled overhead in formation, buzzing as if greeting the customers with "Welcome home".

A plastic basin that held raw meat wasn’t washed before being used to hold freshly fried meatballs. Blood residue on the bottom mixed with grease and clung to the meatballs. A second later, the meatballs were dumped into a takeout box and handed to a customer. The customer took one bite and said, “Damn, that’s good.”

The longer Lin Jianyuan looked, the more he wanted to vomit. And the more he wanted to vomit, the harder he got.

His fists. His fist got hard!!!

F**K!!!

Why are all these vendors so fucking disgusting?! Could they eat this shit themselves?!

And the worst part was...

Lin Jianyuan used to eat on this snack street all the time! Barbecue. Fried rice. Cold noodles. Malatang. Crayfish. Stinky tofu. Hand-grabbed flatbreads. Grilled cold noodles. Clam vermicelli. Roujiamo…

He ate all of it!

How did he never realize that these stalls were this stale and unhygienic back then?! No wonder he used to get diarrhea all the time! He always assumed it was from going to work!

Well, f**k! Turns out he couldn’t blame work for this one?!

Surviving on roadside food for dinner every day was miserable enough already! What was the difference between the crap these black-hearted vendors sold and dog shit?!

Oh. There was one difference.

At least dog shit could be picked up for free off the side of the road.

But these roadside stalls actually charged money. Sometimes there were even food-stall scammers charging you dozens or hundreds of yuan for barely any food!

Hard. So hard.

His fists were so hard!

Lin Jianyuan closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to calm down.

He took one step forward, and filthy black runoff water splashed all over his pant leg.

Lin Jianyuan: “…” F**k being calm!

He's going to smash this entire world with a single punch!!!

“Hello, Director. I know you’re busy, but there’s something you need to arrange.”

Lin Jianyuan raised his mobile terminal and issued instructions while suppressing his rage.

“Give me two people. As long as they can see Aberrants, that’s enough.”

“Yeah. Fine. No work experience necessary. Fresh university graduates are fine. Actually, university graduates would be better. They are likely to be less tolerant of this situation.”

Director on the other end: “?”

University graduates? Why university graduate?

Weren’t you on vacation, Lin Jianyuan? Why are you suddenly asking for more people again?

Whatever. Forget it. Lin Jianyuan was a specially recruited A-class combat operative. He almost never asked the Bureau for anything. And now, on the rare occasion he made a request, all he wanted was two inexperienced university graduates!

That was such a tiny request!

Give, give, give! Absolutely give! Not only two. Give him four!

No, give him eight!

With a grand stroke of his pen, the Director immediately approved the request.

On the spot, he assigned Lin Jianyuan sixteen energetic and bright-eyed university graduates.