Chapter 449: Chapter 449: Chaotic World

The towering shopping mall blocked the sunlight coming from the right side of the alley, shrouding the narrow path, no more than two to three meters wide, in shadows.

Blinking, we all stared at the wall of the massive shopping mall, a feeling stemming from an unknown source spreading through us–it wasn’t fear. There technically wasn’t anything left in this world that could scare us, but facing something completely abnormal, even bizarrely unknown, nervousness was inevitable.

“Hey, Sandora, you remember how it was when we entered, right…”

I said, somewhat unsure, and Sandora immediately followed up, “Ah, yes, I remember. The shopping mall was on the left side of the alley when we came in.”

“This situation can’t be explained with common sense,” Big Sister said with an inscrutable smile, then backed up a few steps.

She had been following us in last into the alley, and now by merely stepping back a bit, she broke away from the entrance. Standing there, she glanced inside, and then used spiritual connection to inform us, “To the left, that’s right, from where I’m standing the shopping mall is on the left side of the alley.”

Big Sister’s words finally convinced me that I had once again been drawn into some eerie incident–why did I say ‘once again’? Had I tragically reached a point where, even without the troublesome aggregation called Lin Xue, I could still find myself entangled with all sorts of vexing incidents?

“A small-scale space distortion?”

I uttered a technical term I had only recently learned, which seemed to fit the current phenomenon, but Little Baobao immediately started babbling and gesturing to me, looking quite skeptical of my guess.

“She says you’re wrong, but the little girl’s description is too abstract; probably only the Xyrin Host could understand it,” Sandora shook her head, “I’ll get in touch with Bubbles to have her come over.”

“Let’s not rush,” Big Sister walked back and forth at the entrance of the alley several times, seeming to have discovered something, “If we, a group of Imperial Leaders, get stumped by an inconspicuous supernatural alley, that would be truly embarrassing.”

Regrettably, as the saying goes, combat power is utterly useless against such strange and mystic phenomena. Just look at Pandora over there–she’s already pulling out miniature space internal explosion bombs.

Seriously, that’s a peculiar way to solve a mystery, kiddo!

Well, anyway, stumbling upon a space-distorted ghost alley in broad daylight in a modern city is already an odd twist in the tale.

“I suspect there might be illusions or something, or maybe what’s called… space mirroring?”

Qianqian pondered for a moment–imagine that, the girl actually needed to think–and then she voiced her guess, only to have Little Baobao protest, immediately vetoing that proposal.

“Ah Jun,” Big Sister, who had been lingering at the entrance of the alley and occasionally standing sideways to study it, suddenly spoke to me through spiritual connection, “Stretch out your left hand!”

I did as she said, and then Big Sister immediately showed a look of realization.

“Ah Jun, that’s your right.”

No way! I couldn’t have reached the point where I can’t tell left from right, could I?!

I looked at my hand in disbelief. However I looked at it, this should be my left hand, right?

But I knew Big Sister wouldn’t joke around at a time like this, so with a half-believing, half-doubting mind, I clenched my left fist as instructed by Big Sister and quickly walked out of the alley.

“You see, you’re clenching your right hand~~”

Big Sister’s victorious smile was as if she had proven a grand theory, and I was even more baffled–what’s going on?

“Can this alley interfere with our perception of left and right?”

Qianqian and Sandora also tried it out several times with a sense of novelty and, without exception, discovered that their impressions of left and right in the alley were incorrect, which led me to only think that there was something in the alley messing with our perception.

“Impossible,” Sandora immediately shook her head, “How strong is our spiritual power? If there were something in the alley that could confuse our perception, I’m afraid the entire city would turn into idiots from a spiritual shock.”

“Then…” Qianqian and I exchanged glances and simultaneously turned to the erudite Sandora and the Great Sage Big Sister for the truth.

“It’s very likely that the concept of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in this space has been reversed, outside the alley, left and right are normal, but inside the space of the alley, left and right are the exact opposite. If the two are kept separate, then no one would notice the abnormality during the transition, and a person living in the alley would forever believe that their left hand is the right hand.” Big Sister always maintained a tranquil smile as she explained her speculation, and this time, Little Baobao did not object.

“It’s like the asymmetrical effect of the speed of light,” Sandora cited an example, “If there’s a space in front of you where the speed of light is 1 meter per second, and there’s a person moving forward at light speed inside, to you, that person would just seem to be walking slowly. But for someone on the other side of the space, his own speed is already so fast that he could directly observe redshift and blueshift.”

Although the inference was a bit hard to understand, I got the gist of it, but the question is, could such a fascinating… ahem, peculiar phenomenon emerge in our low-magic, low-power, mundane, ordinary peripheral world?

“Summoned Beast–Dingdang!!”

Seeing that there was no one else around, I immediately struck a pose with one hand on my hip and the other raised high like a lightning rod, and with a breath drawn deep from my diaphragm, I uttered a… hmm, soft shout, as a loud voice would attract attention.

“Dingdang has arrived! Responding to Ah Jun’s summon!”

Sure enough, as soon as my words fell, the Lord God–Dingdang, who can listen for his name being called anywhere in the whole world and appear instantaneously at any location in our world, predictably landed on my head, triumphantly raising his little hand, “Leave it all to Dingdang, Dingdang is very powerful!”

Behind me, Sandora and Big Sister both covered their faces with their hands, unable to bear witnessing the cringe-worthy interaction between two big dummies.

I casually grabbed Dingdang and stepped into the strange alley, then lifted the little thing like a probe and scanned around.

“Eh? Ah Jun, what are you doing? Put Dingdang down! Dingdang is getting dizzy!”

“Dizzy?” I showed a look of certainty. “Indeed, there’s something abnormal with the space here!”

The girls following me into the alley almost lost their balance and nearly hit the pavement, and Big Sister could only shake her head and laugh as she knocked on my head, “That’s because you made Dingdang dizzy, right?”

Is that so? I thought gods like Dingdang should be used like this, akin to those disposable detectors that engineers carry around to check for flammable gases, beeping erratically the moment some unlucky kid’s about to bite the dust… Wait, did I just mix up my metaphors?

“Dingdang isn’t a radar!” The little thing, put back down, immediately puffed up in protest after hearing my theory, “And Dingdang doesn’t make beeping noises! It’s only when Pandora is bored that she makes beeping sounds in her belly!”

Pandora: “…drip”

Hey girl, even if you’re bored, don’t make that dripping sound right now… Ah! Dingdang, don’t bite my ear! My defense is broken!

Dingdang, being the world manager, had reached a conclusion in less than two or three seconds after we reported our findings: This space might have been covered by a segment of chaotic information from outside the world.

That instant, I associated it with the anomalies that had appeared in Shadow City.

Initially, I thought it was just Little Baobao showing off a fun place she stumbled upon while playing, but who would have thought it would turn into something like this? Should I take pride in the fact that my daughter has inherited my troublesome knack to a tee?

Although it was just a small alley with abnormal distortions, Dingdang regarded it as an important discovery, even if careless people might completely overlook it. As the world manager, regardless of how unreliable she may usually seem, this little thing takes her job very seriously. A world’s significant upheavals often start with an inconspicuous little problem, and such small issues are hard to detect when they first emerge. If we hadn’t coincidentally discovered this topsy-turvy alley, it might have taken until the whole of K city exhibited widespread anomalies before the World Tree Temple received an alert, and by that time, Dingdang would definitely be grounded…

That afternoon, we released a large number of information probes. Centered on the alley, we began to detect anomalies in all directions. Although we were not clear about the principles behind these odd phenomena, we could be sure that the Xyrin Host’s capability to integrate information could effectively detect anomalies appearing in the city. Hundreds of thousands of invisible information collectors roamed the city, each backed by a powerful Xyrin Host analyzing the data these probes sent back. Bubbles, who had just resolved the Shadow City anomaly, had to temporarily abandon her games and dive back into a new round of work.

The next morning, we received the preliminary results of the information comparison. As expected, similar anomalies were not limited to that one alley; they spread across the entire city. Spaces turned inside out, sewers flowing backward, elevator doors materializing out of exterior walls–unnoticed, it seemed as if the entire city had mutated. While most of these anomalies were located in places rarely trodden by people, the weirdness of the situation was enough to cause concern.

Dingdang’s conclusion remained the same: chaotic information from outside the world had contaminated our world, and this contamination very likely spread across the globe.

That is to say, it wasn’t only K city we were in, but similar anomalies might have appeared all over Earth.

“We at least have one piece of good news,” when we were nursing headaches due to the bizarre phenomena that not even the Xyrin Apostles or Dingdang had ever encountered before, Sandora still had the leisure to seek comfort amidst a series of troubling events, “The Shadow City can now lift the attack alert.”

That, indeed, was good news.

We had always thought the anomalies in Shadow City were the result of “enemy” attacks, but now it seemed more likely that it was affected by the twisted Outer World. In order to expand the space of Shadow City at a low cost, all the information used for its construction was directly cloned from the reality of K city and its surrounding areas, which led to some erroneous information inadvertently mixing in. Now that Bubbles had established a new filtering mechanism, similar erroneous information would be directly filtered out.

Actually, with regards to this slight impact, even without filtering, the Shadow City system is so highly optimized it’s almost insulting–no matter how much erroneous information mixes in, a series of automatic defense mechanisms would compress it to an extremely low level. But still, too many supernatural events can affect the childhood of Sister Misakas…

Our speculation was soon confirmed; Lin Xue, who habitually came by for a free lunch the next day, brought up some intelligence that their organization had gathered recently, even before we could ask her to help.

“Foreign situations are still unclear, but domestically, quite a few similar phenomena have popped up, things like supernatural events.”

While brazenly plucking the last two meatballs from my plate, Lin Xue spoke with a full mouth.

“These incidents have no pattern. Sometimes, a big city might have just two or three such events in one day, while an unlucky small town might experience over two hundred anomalies in less than half a day. Still, no ordinary people have reported sightings. Initially, we thought this was because similar incidents only happened in secluded areas, but after analyzing the data, we realized… even if such things happen in busy urban districts, those ordinary people wouldn’t notice.”

Lin Xue’s unclear statement baffled me. Happening in busy urban districts and still not attracting attention? Could you have found a city of naturally oblivious people? A magical territory ruled by Silvia?

When I raised these doubts, Lin Xue gave me an unimpressed look: “Don’t talk while eating. That’s the most basic dinner table etiquette.”

Me: “…”

“You dare to mention ‘table manners’ in front of me? Weren’t you the one who climbed onto a stool just to snatch half a piece of eggplant from me?”

“These abnormal events won’t be noticed by ordinary people,” Lin Xue didn’t let my question linger long. Despite her mouth being stuffed full, her ability to speak normally was truly impressive. “That is to say, even if the sky suddenly starts falling apart right in front of a common person, they won’t react at all. They’ll think it’s all perfectly normal, and then, once they return to a normal zone, they’ll quickly forget any abnormal sight they witnessed.”

I thought about that upside-down alley and Sandora’s asymmetric light-speed scene.

In a twisted world, it’s the distortion that’s normal.

“Only we, with our extremely powerful spiritual abilities, can detect such changes. When ordinary people face abnormalities, not only does the world’s laws around them change, but even their own worldview becomes distorted. They won’t realize anything’s wrong when they see the normal world again. Even within the Superpower Team, those who can detect anomalies are few and far between. Most lower-level Superpower Users need a lot of support and teamwork to barely sense changes in their environment, which is why our investigation is progressing slowly.”

No wonder there have been so many anomalies in the city, yet no urban legends have spread. Blaming it on their occurrence in sparsely populated areas doesn’t make sense. With such a high frequency over a long time, it doesn’t add up that not a single ordinary person witnessed anything. The only explanation is: ordinary people can’t see them.

“Hey, Wood, you must have noticed something too, right?” Seeing us deep in thought, Lin Xue naturally guessed that we, the Imperial Leaders who were always idle, might have encountered something similar while out ‘soy-saucing’. “Given your exceptional spiritual power, you should be able to detect such anomalies on the spot.”

Psh, do you think you’re the standard?

We told Lin Xue everything we had discovered. Anyway, this guy probably had many ways to find out about our experiences, so there was no need to hide anything.

“Right, I thought as much. You can easily detect abnormalities, but to analyze the root cause of those phenomena, we’ll need the capabilities of the Xyrin Host… It seems the situation is worse than I anticipated–And it’s even related to the world’s roots?”

As she said this, Lin Xue suddenly clenched her right fist and lightly tapped it on her left hand.

“Alright, confirmed it’s a high-difficulty mission beyond our range. The task of saving the world is now yours, O Saviors!”

Me: “…Don’t you run away!”

“Psh, ‘black-hearted boss’, indeed–the most annoying kind.”

Is Miss Lin starting to learn how to act cute?

“We’ve already established a temporary host network, analyzing the source of these anomalies at full power,” Sandora interrupted the interaction between the most amoral Superpower Team manager and the laziest Imperial Leader on record. “Dingdang is also monitoring the information pathways across the world through the World Tree Temple. It shouldn’t take long to find the source of the mutations. But this time, it seems special. Against such invisible and intangible world anomalies, strong individual combat power might be of little use. I propose we prioritize enhancing the Xyrin Host’s capabilities, at least we need the ability to immediately decompose abnormal information. The current method of investigating after an anomaly appears is too passive.”

I nodded in agreement; what Sandora said wasn’t alarmist at all. The trouble we encountered this time couldn’t be resolved by mere fighting strength, much like that upside-down alley. I highly doubt Pandora’s Space Internal Bomb could really solve the issue of informational anomalies there… Of course, I guess that by then, we wouldn’t just be dealing with supernatural events.

“Got it, so, in other words, I’ve got to work like crazy to ‘produce children’ in the next few days? And they have to be high-quality ones,” Bubbles said, sharing dessert with her daughter while turning to us with her shocking words.

Me: “…”

Lin Xue: “…Such a monstrous guy…”

Can’t I have one or two normal girls around me? (To be continued. To find out what happens next, please visit www.wuxiaworld.site. More chapters are available, support the author, support genuine reading!)