Chapter Seventeen: An Unusual Meal

Kuroba did not trust the capabilities of smart home technology to such an extent. He picked up a baseball bat placed beside the TV cabinet and began searching each room one by one.

After more than half an hour of this, Kuroba’s nerves were fraying; he had combed through every inch of the house and found nothing. Only then did he remember he possessed a system. What a pointless ordeal—he could have simply asked the system. He felt utterly foolish.

“System!” he called out quietly in his mind.

“I’m here,” came a cute, girlish voice.

He hadn’t paid much attention to this detail before. He decided not to dwell on it.

“Did anyone come by while I was sleeping?”

“No one did.”

“Then can you explain where these clothes came from?”

“Someone just left them here.”

As the system spoke, a virtual image appeared before his eyes, overlapping with the real scene. A woman in a sky-blue dress opened the door and entered. She was quite pretty, though her expression carried an air of aloofness.

The woman glanced at Kuroba, but paid him no mind; in the virtual image, Kuroba lay fast asleep on the sofa, completely unaware. If she had been an assassin like Yiren Zhishu, Kuroba would have been long gone.

The woman ignored him, moved into the kitchen and began bustling about, then went upstairs, took out a handheld vacuum cleaner, and started tidying the house. After a while, Kuroba glanced at the clock on the wall: 11:36.

“Fast-forward,” he willed.

The minute hand spun quickly, the woman’s actions sped up, appearing now close, now far, sometimes with a feather duster, sometimes with a cleaning cloth. When she brought out a table specifically for ironing clothes, Kuroba had the system resume normal speed.

Now he fell into deep thought.

Even as she finished folding the clothes and placed them on the coffee table, he remained lost in contemplation.

Afterward, the woman returned to the kitchen for a while, then finally left, closing the door behind her.

The playback ended.

Kuroba entered the kitchen. On the dining table sat egg drop soup, tomato and scrambled eggs, and a plate of plain rice, each covered by a transparent glass dome. Steam lingered inside, but the dishes were clearly visible.

He lifted the glass cover, and the aromas rushed out; it seemed the cover was made of a special material, able to trap the scents completely. He dipped a finger into the sauce of the tomato scrambled eggs and tasted it.

It was sweet.

He knew this flavor well.

Kuroba pulled out a chair and began to serve himself rice and food. Fifteen minutes later, the dishes were emptied.

Satisfied, he hugged his already round belly and gazed ahead.

He was utterly content.

The meal was exquisite. Though his fortunes had waned over the years, Kuroba had worked part-time in well-known hotels and restaurants, sampling many fine dishes. Yet what the woman had prepared for him seemed almost unreal in its deliciousness.

Tomato scrambled eggs is a common household dish, sometimes rendered more sour, sometimes sweeter depending on the cook. But what he tasted this time was unlike any he’d had before—perfectly balanced between sweet and sour, everything just right.

The egg drop soup was the same, as was the rice.

The flavor was spot on.

But that wasn’t the main point.

The main point was that, as he ate, his worries faded. He focused solely on the meal, his mind clear, free from any other emotion—be it pain or joy. At that moment, none of it mattered.

He simply ate, and when he finished, he stopped.

Comfort!

The feeling of comfort came from deep within. The satisfaction of being sated combined with a sense of complete relaxation, as though he had just undergone a sacred cleansing of the soul.

At that moment, Kuroba felt a profound admiration and gratitude toward the woman.

Yesterday’s relentless anxiety and the overwhelming shock of the new world had nearly crushed him.

But now, after this seemingly ordinary yet profoundly helpful meal, he felt wholly revitalized.

Perhaps things were not so bad after all. He even believed he could resolve Uncle Liu’s case before the day was out.

Without hesitating, Kuroba grabbed the clothes from the coffee table and entered the ground-floor bathroom, equipped with a shower.

He quickly bathed and changed into a white shirt and black trousers.

Standing before the mirror, he tidied his appearance: dark skin, round and plump, but lively; even his beard looked smoother, and his face seemed inexplicably adorable. Unable to resist, he pinched his cheek.

Cute!

A bit uncanny!

He stopped looking at the mirror, slipped on his slippers, and went to the front door, where a pair of black sneakers had been placed in the center of the entryway, beside a leather ottoman.

After changing shoes, Kuroba left the house.

The Wuling van was still outside, but the electric scooter was gone.

He paid it no mind.

Kuroba walked toward Uncle Liu’s house, along familiar streets, past familiar convenience stores and familiar passersby.

But when he reached the alley where Uncle Liu lived, Kuroba thought he’d taken a wrong turn.

He backed out and checked the house number at the corner.

It matched his memory.

Strange.

The houses were all surrounded by scaffolding made from thick bamboo, as if undergoing exterior renovations.

Outside Uncle Liu’s house was a pile of red bricks, cordoned off with police tape.

Kuroba recalled that last night, when he returned, Uncle Liu’s house had been cut away, leaving only the ground floor and a pile of bricks, with the rest vanished.

Looking at the damaged bricks, he felt a mysterious sense of familiarity.

Was this Uncle Liu’s house?

It hadn’t looked like this when he visited before.

“System, can you rewind time here?” Kuroba whispered.

Turning to the system for help had become his first instinct, though it wasn’t always reliable.

“I can only rewind events from within the past week. It requires twenty Celestial Fruit to activate.”

Kuroba didn’t argue; he quickly opened the shop, exchanged for four Celestial Fruit jellies, and consumed them.

“Rewind skill successfully activated. One use remaining. Would you like to proceed?”

“Yes/No”

Kuroba pressed “Yes.”

“Do you want to rewind to yesterday evening?”

“No, I want to see what happened in the house after I left yesterday morning.”

“Understood. Retrieving resources now.”

A beam of light descended from the sky, illuminating Kuroba. Within the beam, star-like specks swirled, resembling a river of stars. Kuroba felt a surge of energy. A man in Daoist robes leapt out of his body. Kuroba didn’t recognize him; this man had hidden in Uncle Liu’s third-floor bathroom, been absorbed into Kuroba’s body, and only now, with the Apocalypse System’s energy, could emerge.

The Daoist paid no attention to Kuroba, stepping out with his back toward him, utterly captivated by the celestial spectacle overhead.

His face lit up with joy as he sat cross-legged to cultivate. Most of the star river’s power flowed into Kuroba, but the Daoist’s meditation siphoned off some of his energy.

Kuroba kicked him.

“Hey! Why are you absorbing it?”

“Ah!” The man jumped, his energy began to spill, his face turned a deep purple. He looked at Kuroba, stunned.

The next moment, the Daoist was swept back into Kuroba’s body by the flowing river of stars.