Chapter 142 The Center of Attention

"Sir, may I help you?" The eerie usher, dressed in a blood-red coat, displayed extraordinary politeness. That bright smile was absolute enough to make an ordinary person swoon with a feeling of being moved.

Qi Chen was also moved, revealing a similar smile, but a sturdy, gray-white phantom immediately manifested behind him.

"Roar!"

The roar split the clouds and shattered stone. Overlord's fist drove forward faster than lightning, landing solidly on the usher's face. The tremendous impact knocked the usher down instantly.

The usher, slamming heavily onto the ground, made an intimate contact with the floor. The head, serving as the primary point of impact, smashed into the ground with a loud bang, creating a large crater covered in spiderweb cracks!

Without a second thought, Qi Chen vaulted over the service counter and sprinted wildly toward the location of Warm Man!

"Why didn't you stop this guy?" Qi Chen panted heavily, asking with great confusion.

Warm Man wore a helpless expression and pointed to the trajectory along which the usher had traveled. A dense cluster of small holes was quite obvious on the ground, and similar small dents, as if smashed by something, marred the exterior facade outside the cinema.

It clearly looked like the strike effect produced by enthusiastically punching the air.

"I tried to stop him. This fellow is a pure anomaly; physical things in the real world can't touch him. But as for you, I kept calling out to you—how come you didn't even make a peep?"

Qi Chen was slightly stunned. Aside from the very first warning which he had heard clearly, he hadn't noticed any subsequent alerts.

On second thought, it seemed his attention had been completely captured the moment that single line of text appeared, causing him to fail to perceive the commotion Warm Man had created.

It was quite normal for anomalies to be able to distort perception.

"Never mind that, let's hurry into the cinema and find a screening room!"

"Do you know how to get to the sixth floor?" Warm Man glanced back at the usher, who was trembling on the ground and about to crawl back up, seizing the moment to probe Qi Chen for the intelligence he had acquired.

"I'm not sure of the specific path, but once we get inside the cinema, we'll definitely find it!"

Regarding the text that appeared at the very end of the Employee Code, Qi Chen directly interpreted the so-called "brand-new world" as the sixth floor. Based on the intelligence currently at hand, only this sixth floor matched that description!

Swish!

A blood-red afterimage suddenly appeared right in front of the two running men—it was the usher who had just been punched into the ground by Overlord.

Whether it was because his head had taken Overlord's brutal punch, the usher looked somewhat unrecognizable now. Aside from the corners of his mouth split open to the sides at the very beginning, his entire head was now covered in a dense network of cracks.

With a crisp snap, all the cracks opened simultaneously, and the usher's head suddenly bloomed like a man-eating flower covered in sharp teeth!

Even so, the usher approached Qi Chen and Warm Man with utmost enthusiasm. His head, mutated into a jagged maw, lunged straight for Qi Chen's head, attempting an all-around, dead-angle-free intimate contact.

Bang!

This time, Enthusiastic took the initiative and attacked before Overlord. Throwing both fists forward, he simultaneously infused his ability into his punches!

Thud! Thud!

The usher's reaction speed was not much different from an average person's, and facing Enthusiastic's attack, he had no way to dodge at all. His chest was struck by the fists, interrupting his lunging and biting offensive, and he was even sent stumbling backward in a disheveled manner all the way to the railing.

However, because he was a pure anomaly, Enthusiastic's ability—which could alter the hardness and softness of matter—had no effect on him.

"Attack the railing!" Warm Man's voice rang out sharply. The attack that landed on the usher had not achieved the effect he wanted, but with his rich experience, he immediately devised a new countermeasure based on the shifting battle.

With a projection range of a full ten meters, Enthusiastic effortlessly materialized beside the railing the usher was leaning against. He unleashed a fierce whip kick that struck the metal balustrade. As his ability activated synchronously, the rigid railing instantly became as soft as fabric, failing to provide the usher with even the slightest bit of support.

Having taken Enthusiastic's attack, the usher was still in a state capable of interacting with real-world objects. With no support behind him, he tipped backward and fell straight down from the height of the fifth floor all the way to the ground floor!

The deafening sound of the heavy fall echoed throughout the Minsheng Mall, and Qi Chen and Warm Man could faintly hear the terrified screeches of livestock that seemed to have escaped on the first floor.

"This anomaly's movement mechanism is a bit rigid, and its shifting between solid and ethereal is too foolish, but knocking him down won't buy us much time. Let's hurry and get into the cinema like you said!" Warm Man spoke at a rapid pace.

Daring not to delay any further, the two men immediately broke into a sprint toward the nearest cinema entrance, not caring at all if the name of the cinema above the entrance wasn't Minsheng Cinema at all.

Anyway, the cinemas they could see on the fifth floor were of all sorts, and none of them were Minsheng Cinema; they just had to pick the nearest one.

Rushing into the cinema, even the ticket-selling lobby was mostly pitch-black, with only a few electronic screens emitting a harsh glare. Neither ticket-selling nor reception staff were to be found anywhere.

Unmanned operations within rule-based anomalies were far ahead of the outside world.

"The screening rooms should all be in there!" Qi Chen raised a hand to point. About twenty paces straight ahead stood a sign bearing the characters "Ticket Checkpoint," and behind the sign was an entrance blocked off by two strands of yellow warning tape.

Vibrating sound effects emanated from beyond the entrance, most likely caused by the screening rooms inside.

"Damn... Don't tell me there are actually movies playing in this theater, and actual audiences inside?" Warm Man wore an unnatural expression. Trapped within the domain of a rule-based anomaly, compared to lively scenes, he actually preferred places with fewer people.

Just like the roast suckling pig shop on the first floor, things you assumed were normal might truly be abnormal monsters.

"Hiss!"

A slight hiss suddenly came from behind. Without a second thought, Qi Chen summoned Overlord and launched a fierce, powerful straight punch directly at the source of the sound behind him.

Bang!

A dark shadow crashed backward out—it was none other than that usher in red!

"Why can't even Overlord's strength kill this thing?" Traces of rising anger unknowingly surfaced in Qi Chen's eyes.

"In all likelihood, the entire rule-based anomaly is backing it up. With just the two of us as Anomaly Walkers, of course we can't fight something that uses an entire anomalous domain as its source of power!"

Cursing under his breath, Qi Chen had no choice but to break through the warning tape guarding the entrance with Warm Man and charge straight into the screening room area.

"There's one right here!" Calling out, Qi Chen had Overlord take the lead. The sturdy torso collided fiercely with the door of a screening room, and the immense strength smashed the door wide open instantly.

The moment he followed Overlord through the door, Qi Chen found himself seemingly standing in the very last row of the screening room—which happened to be the highest position.

And countless pairs of eyes were focused upon him at that exact moment.

"I..."