Chapter Twenty-One: The Child Who Plays with Knives

The newcomer exuded an even denser, more bizarre aura, yet in front of Qi Chen, nothing out of the ordinary was revealed; facing the Overlord’s assault, he didn’t dodge in the slightest—at times, it even seemed as if he was welcoming those iron fists head-on.

It was truly baffling.

Qi Chen, whose knowledge of the bizarre was so shallow it barely counted as entry-level, could find no explanation for these anomalies. He could only reason simply.

“A true enemy wouldn’t be foolish enough to brazenly flaunt their strange aura as they approached me…”

As he pondered, several more figures emanating that same intense, bizarre energy staggered toward him. Apart from their features, everything else about them seemed as if they’d been cut from the same mold.

Their expressions, their movements—identical, every one of them!

“What the hell are these things?” Watching a group of marionettes shuffle toward him, Qi Chen felt a surge of irritation rising from the Overlord’s influence, a single thought blazing in his mind: to smash these neither-human-nor-ghost things to pieces!

Fortunately, he’d grown somewhat accustomed to the side effects of the Overlord’s manifestation. Straining to hold onto a sliver of reason, he restrained the Overlord from striking to kill, keeping them at the edge of his projection’s reach, methodically knocking each abnormal intruder to the ground.

“They’re watching me now.” Qi Chen forced himself to stay alert, scanning his surroundings. Such a concentrated flock of anomalies all converging on him said more than enough.

The rat lurking in the shadows had set its sights on him.

“Are these meant to pin me down, or are they just lulling me into dropping my guard, so the real attack can slip in among them?”

His mind raced. For the first time, he felt the headache that came with facing enemies wielding the bizarre—not like contending with simple anomalies, where the key was merely to see through the logic of their abilities.

When dealing with those who commanded the bizarre, it was just as crucial to weigh the human heart as the power itself. That was where the fiercest battles among wanderers truly lay!

Again!

A larger crowd, shambling like the walking dead, closed in step by step. Each had vacant eyes, mouths agape, drool trickling freely—a perfect image of the living dead.

“Overlord, can you handle this?”

As if offended by Qi Chen’s doubt, the Overlord’s black-and-white mask twisted, the already weeping visage growing more sinister. Steel-grey muscles rippled beneath its pale, powerful frame, bunching and swelling in anticipation.

Whoosh!

Fists rained down like a storm. Once again, the Overlord displayed its inhumanly extreme fundamentals, unleashing a barrage of punches at impossible speed, each blow precise and powerful.

It was no exaggeration: every punch dropped an approaching anomaly, one after another.

In mere seconds, a ring of unconscious bodies lay piled at Qi Chen’s feet, stacked up to his knees.

Even so, the enemy lurking in the shadows didn’t reveal itself.

But then Qi Chen’s vision shifted. In a blink, the towering spire at the city’s heart was no longer a building—it had become an upright tentacle!

He darted a glance around. The swarm besieging him were not simply victims of some mental affliction—they were frog-like, humanoid monsters!

In the span of a breath, the world had twisted into the grotesque; everything within his gaze warped beyond the bounds of normalcy.

“Qi…%&……*”

A cacophony exploded in his ears—a sound so unbearable it was as if a fish had wriggled into his ear canal, crooning the language of deep-sea things. In alarm, Qi Chen pulled the source from his ear, only to find a small, quivering lump of flesh.

“Roar!!”

A thunderous bellow resounded beside him. The Overlord’s tyrannical will surged like a tidal wave down their shared link, and Qi Chen’s mind rang with a shock.

The world remained as bizarre and incomprehensible as before, but his sense of self grew markedly clearer, and suddenly he understood much more.

The enemy could apparently affect him through those anomalous beings!

That endless stream of people was a process—quantity becoming quality.

“So, they want to plunge me into cognitive chaos?” Qi Chen suddenly laughed, then threw his arms high and began to dance wildly on the spot, twisting awkwardly, chanting nonsense syllables that defied comprehension.

The moment he began his dance, the Overlord vanished into thin air.

He reveled in this for several minutes. During that time, many more passersby—minds muddled by confusion—drew near, but Qi Chen never summoned the Overlord to attack them again; he even approached some himself.

“What a fledgling.”

Within the dazed throng, a slight, childlike figure cast a furtive glance at Qi Chen, a trace of delight flickering in his eyes. He kept up the vacant act, but his steps inched purposefully toward the one he’d just called a fledgling.

“To confront the bizarre so boldly—he must be a new recruit in the Bureau of Paranormal Affairs. The aura about him only shows brute strength, not a shred of special ability.

“Utterly uninteresting.”

Closing the distance, the slight figure continued his assessment. In his eyes, Qi Chen posed almost no threat—a complete neophyte, a pitiful soul who could die at any moment once lost in the Mist.

“Let’s give you another taste of my Blade of Confusion.”

Suppressing his expression, the child conjured a single-handed curved blade, invisible to ordinary eyes, and lightly brushed it across the body of a nearby, already confused victim.

The blade left no physical mark, but the eerie aura surrounding the struck individual instantly deepened.

“Head that way,” he whispered to the blade, pressing it to his lips. Eerily, the one he’d just marked obediently turned and shuffled in the indicated direction!

So long as this person made contact—even just with their aura—that was enough to transmit the power of the Blade of Confusion.

Caution was the rule among wanderers of the bizarre, especially when one’s own powers lacked direct lethality. All the more reason to ensure the enemy was rendered helpless.

“Rookie of City Three—since the executioner met an accident, I suppose your little life will have to make up for it, if only a little.”

…