Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“Sir, I caught a cat!”
In the courtyard, Meng Mo excitedly held up a filthy yellow cat for Li Que to see.
Li Que felt rather helpless. These students were a real handful. None of them could stay focused on anything for more than a minute.
“Go play with it, then. Just be careful it doesn’t scratch you.”
Li Que waved a hand. Meng Mo beamed. “Thank you, sir!”
He carried the cat over to the banyan tree in the courtyard and sat down beneath it.
The cat in his arms, however, seemed frightened out of its wits. It cowered with its ears flattened and didn’t dare move a muscle.
Meng Mo was wondering what game he could play with the cat when his eyes suddenly darted to Bai Lu, who was looking at herself in the mirror nearby.
“Bai Lu, how about letting it look in your mirror?”
Bai Lu was smoothing her bangs. Her face in the mirror looked beautiful and aloof. At his suggestion, she slowly turned her head.
“Why don’t you take a look first?”
Meng Mo froze. Then he chuckled awkwardly. “Never mind, never mind. I was only joking.”
That mirror… seemed to scare him.
Embarrassed at being rebuffed in front of Bai Lu, Meng Mo irritably kicked the cat. “Stinky cat, dirty cat! Go on, do a backflip for me!”
The cat reacted as though it had been granted a royal pardon. It leaped from his arms and immediately performed a backflip.
“Hahahaha!”
Meng Mo burst into delighted laughter.
On the other side of the courtyard, Li Que had no time to worry about Meng Mo and Bai Lu. He was busy cleaning, and a sheen of sweat had formed on his brow.
He couldn’t help grumbling to himself. The old lady really didn’t care much for cleanliness.
Thick layers of dust had accumulated everywhere.
“I heard anomalies are more likely to form in filthy, cluttered, damp places. Good thing it’s perfectly safe here.”
During a brief pause, Li Que checked the system.
In addition to granting him Good Teacher Points and all kinds of rewards, his Good Teacher System could also scan his surroundings.
The system would automatically warn him the moment he encountered a dangerous anomaly.
According to its explanation, an anomaly reading above 100 meant that a highly dangerous anomaly was nearby.
The current anomaly reading was 0.0001.
It hadn’t changed once since the day the system awakened. That meant Li Que had never encountered an anomaly and had been perfectly safe all this time.
Excellent.
Li Que wrung out his rag and was about to get back to work when a voice suddenly rang out behind him.
“Who are you?”
Li Que turned around. At some point, a woman had appeared in the doorway and was now studying him warily.
She wore a strange tactical uniform that made her look like a secret agent from some movie.
She was quite pretty, though.
“Me?”
Li Que said, “I’m a teacher at Mingjiang No. 7 Special School. I brought a few of my students here for a community-service lesson to care for an elderly person living alone…”
After briefly explaining, he asked curiously, “Are you a relative of the old woman?”
Leng Qingyan immediately grew agitated.
“Get all your students out here, now!”
“That old woman isn’t human. She’s an anomaly!”
An anomaly!
Li Que froze, then asked in bafflement, “Miss, are you feeling all right?”
“That old lady is perfectly nice. There aren’t any anomalies around here!”
He had a system. How could he not know whether an anomaly was nearby? The anomaly reading hadn’t changed at all.
Leng Qingyan was furious. What kind of teacher was this? He was utterly irresponsible!
“There isn’t just one anomaly here-there are two! That old woman is the Cat-Faced Crone, and the Stray Cat is a man-eating monster!”
Li Que looked even more astonished.
Wasn’t that a little far-fetched?
“When you say Stray Cat, do you mean that one?”
He turned and pointed beneath the banyan tree a short distance away.
Leng Qingyan followed his finger. In an instant, her entire face went slack with shock.
That B-class anomaly, a cat that had killed countless people, was currently performing… backflips in front of a boy!
What the hell was going on?
She rubbed her eyes without thinking. Was she seeing things?
With that cat’s power, it should only take a few seconds to kill everyone here.
But now… this was far too strange!
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
“Meng Mo, bring the cat over here.”
Li Que beckoned to him.
Meng Mo had been having fun, but when he heard Li Que calling, he hurriedly got to his feet. He picked up the cat and carried it over.
“What is it, sir?”
Li Que took the cat from his arms, looked it over, then smiled and said:
“Miss, look. This cat is perfectly docile.”
“Don’t believe me? Try holding it yourself.”
With that, Li Que handed the cat to Leng Qingyan.
She accepted it without thinking. A moment later, she realized what she’d just done and went rigid with shock. This was a B-class anomaly! Was it really something she could simply hold in her arms?
She nearly had a stress response on the spot, but then she noticed the reading on the watch strapped around her pale wrist.
Zero.
What?
Leng Qingyan stared in disbelief.
The watch could detect anomalous presences.
Ordinarily, coming into such close contact with a B-class anomaly would send its reading soaring to around seventy.
But a reading of zero meant this cat had…
Turned into an ordinary cat?
What the hell?
Had they tracked the wrong target?
That was impossible. They had followed it here the entire way and were absolutely certain. Besides, the anomaly domain surrounding this place was proof enough that this was the Stray Cat.
The cat had only been inside for a few minutes. How had it ended up like this?
Could the cat have encountered some other anomaly?
The bizarre thought flashed through her mind, but she hurriedly shook her head. What was she even thinking?
The cat itself was an anomaly!
“And that old woman! She’s the Cat-Faced Crone!”
Coming back to her senses, Leng Qingyan hurriedly raised the alarm again.
She had no idea what had happened to the cat, but the Cat-Faced Crone was an anomaly infinitely close to A-minus-class.
She was the greater danger.
“The old lady is making dumplings with two of my students.”
Li Que smiled. “Meng Mo, go call Xiaoyu and the others out here.”
Meng Mo nodded and was about to head for the kitchen when its door opened.
Lin Xiaoyu walked out. Her face was sweet and obedient, her expression calm.
“Sir, Grandma Zhang is gone.”
Li Que froze.
What did she mean, gone?
Surely the old woman hadn’t died?
He immediately strode toward the kitchen.
Leng Qingyan hurried after him.
The scene before them brought everyone to an abrupt halt.
Zhang Mingcui sat peacefully in a chair, a smile still resting on her lips. She looked as though she had passed away without a single regret.
Beside her, a pot of dumplings bubbled over the fire. Nian Youyu was cooking and eating at the same time, completely unconcerned that a corpse had appeared next to him.
“How did she die?”
Li Que was dumbfounded.
“She died happy,” Lin Xiaoyu said. “Sir, before she died, I shared one of my candies with her. She was so happy…”
Li Que was speechless.
His heart sank. This was a complete disaster.
Now that he thought about it, the old woman had simply been far too lonely.
Several well-behaved students had suddenly come to visit her today. She must have become so emotional that her aged body couldn’t take the excitement, and she’d passed away!
She might have departed in peace, but Li Que was in serious trouble now.
Would people think he was a murderer?
Li Que immediately regretted coming here.
“Dead… She’s dead?”
Beside him, Leng Qingyan was shocked to her core.
In disbelief, she walked up to Zhang Mingcui and reached out to examine her.
The anomaly reading was zero.
Not only was she dead, every last trace of anomalous aura had been wiped clean!
Even trained specialists from the Anomaly Suppression Bureau couldn’t accomplish that.
Leng Qingyan’s head buzzed.
The Cat-Faced Crone-the most troublesome anomaly she’d ever encountered, a creature responsible for countless atrocities-had simply died here?
Then there was the Stray Cat, whose anomaly reading had inexplicably fallen to zero…
An incredible possibility suddenly occurred to her. She whirled around and stared at Li Que.
“You-no, all of you… Who exactly are you?”
Her voice trembled.
The Stray Cat and the Cat-Faced Crone would never have died for no reason.
The only possible explanation was Li Que and his students.
But even an A-class anomaly wielder might not have been capable of dispatching the Stray Cat and the Cat-Faced Crone, who had been infinitely close to A-minus-class, with such ease.
Could Teacher Li be A-plus-class? Or perhaps even…
A storm raged in Leng Qingyan’s heart.
…
At the same time, on Central Avenue in Mingjiang City…
“Faster!”
A specially modified vehicle raced down the road.
Xu Changjiang, director of the Anomaly Suppression Bureau, was drenched in sweat. He kept glancing anxiously at his watch.
One Stray Cat, plus a Cat-Faced Crone that had already formed the rudiments of an anomaly domain… By his calculations, Leng Qingyan and her team wouldn’t last more than ten minutes!
He only hoped they would make it in time.
…