Chapter 53: Sir, Would You Like to Buy a House?
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When a "figure" appeared, Chen Mu was not surprised.
After all, this was the apocalyptic era of anomalies, and the Landscape Courtyard had transformed into an anomalous zone. Encountering a ghost was entirely normal.
However, as the person drew closer, Chen Mu was surprised.
This "figure" turned out not to be a ghost at all, but a living human being!
Well, that was truly seeing a ghost!
In the dead of night, in this remote wilderness, how could there be a living person?
Shouldn't there be ghosts here instead?
The person was a young man in his twenties. When he saw Chen Mu, he immediately rushed toward him frantically, like a drowning man grasping at a straw.
As he ran, he shouted:
"Sir, are you looking to buy a house?"
Imagine this: in the dead of night, in the city suburbs, a young man chasing after you, relentlessly asking if you want to buy a house...
This scene sent chills down a person's spine.
It was utterly abnormal!
Chen Mu felt that running into an anomaly would have been preferable—at least that would have been more normal.
The young man sprinted toward Chen Mu, only to slam hard into an invisible air barrier.
Chen Mu realized that this air barrier was not only blocking him from entering, but also trapping the young man inside.
Suddenly, Chen Mu seemed to understand something.
With a pleading and pitiful gaze, the young man looked at Chen Mu and asked, "Sir, are you buying a house?"
As he spoke, the young man handed a card to Chen Mu.
To one's surprise, the card was actually able to pass right through the air barrier!
Chen Mu's eyes lit up, and the puzzle pieces instantly fell into place in his mind—
Why this young man appeared here;
Why he asked Chen Mu if he wanted to buy a house;
Why the card could pass through the air barrier;
Having figured all this out, Chen Mu had already found the lifeline within the rules.
Chen Mu reached out, took the card from the young man's hand, and said, "Of course, I'd love to buy a house. I came here specifically to buy one."
As soon as Chen Mu finished these words, a line of bloody text appeared before him:
[Anomalous Mission: Landscape Courtyard]
[Mission Introduction: Luxurious villas stand nestled in the city's outskirts. This was once a paradise for the wealthy, until the day disaster struck...
Everything changed.
Dilapidated villas, dried-up swimming pools, empty ballrooms...
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The Landscape Courtyard awaits its new master...]
After these lines of bloody text flickered into existence, the air barrier in front of Chen Mu split open with a gap.
Chen Mu could now enter the Landscape Courtyard!
"Wait for me outside. I already know what's going on inside."
Chen Mu said to the driver.
With that, Chen Mu gazed at the Landscape Courtyard shrouded in the dark night, a playful smile curling the corners of his lips:
"Interesting, truly interesting. Things are starting to get fun."
A new anomalous mission mode had begun!
In the apocalyptic era of anomalies, this new mode had a professional term—an expanding anomalous zone.
Chen Mu preferred to call it by a more colloquial name: the pyramid-scheme recruitment mode.
Depending on their scale, anomalous zones could be divided into two types:
The first was the small-scale, fixed anomalous zone.
For instance, the Duke's Foggy Museum was a classic example of a fixed anomalous zone.
Zones like this were small in area, usually restricted to the size of a single building, and at most no larger than a city block.
The most important point was that these anomalous zones did not expand over time.
Even if another ten years passed in the apocalypse, the Duke's Foggy Museum would remain the exact same size; it was impossible for it to expand to the scale of a city.
The second type was the expanding anomalous zone.
This was the most terrifying existence in the apocalyptic era!
True to its name, an expanding anomalous zone would gradually enlarge its territory as time progressed and the apocalyptic advancement deepened.
Zones like Chen Mu's Midnight Hotel and Dark Night High School actually belonged to this category.
As the apocalyptic era advanced, Chen Mu's influence would grow ever larger, with more Midnight Hotels opening and more campuses of Dark Night High School being built.
In fifty or eighty years, perhaps the Midnight Hotel could expand to the size of an entire city!
Later-stage anomalous zones capable of accommodating tens of thousands of people participating simultaneously were precisely of this expanding type!
And the Landscape Courtyard before him, as Chen Mu had already discerned, was an extreme manifestation of an expanding anomalous zone—
A zone like the Landscape Courtyard did not exist simply to kill people, but to crazily expand its scale.
It forced the victims participating in the mission to seek out more people and drag them into the anomalous zone.
As long as a sufficient number of people were recruited, the victim would be granted release and earn the qualification to leave.
In order to find enough people, those victims would likely set their sights on people they were familiar with, or even... their own family members...
The number of people inside the anomalous zone would steadily increase, expanding its scale ever further.
When an anomalous zone of this "head-hunting" type appeared, it was an extremely dangerous omen, signifying that the apocalyptic era was growing increasingly perilous!
The young man from earlier was a recruiter, desperately trying to pitch houses to Chen Mu.
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Once Chen Mu showed interest and accepted the card, he would be dragged into the anomalous zone.
This was also the only known method Chen Mu was aware of to bypass the air barrier!
That was why Chen Mu had worn a playful smile and accepted the card.
Upon entering the Landscape Courtyard, Chen Mu cast his gaze across a pitch-black, desolate scene.
Just as described in the mission, the villas in the Landscape Courtyard were already dilapidated, reduced to crumbling ruins.
The moonlight falling from the sky cast a cold and gloomy pallor over the ground.
Chen Mu surveyed his surroundings, finding himself momentarily dazed.
At that moment, a middle-aged ghost appeared before him, wearing a loose-fitting suit, a thick ghostly gold chain, and a monocle—the quintessential attire of a capitalist.
Noticing Chen Mu's dazed expression, the capitalist ghost smiled disdainfully, thinking to himself that this was just another young man frightened out of his wits.
It figured this must be his first time entering an anomalous zone, and his courage had already been shattered by the sights before him.
"Little brother, what are you thinking about?" the capitalist ghost asked.
It had assumed its sudden speech would startle Chen Mu.
However, Chen Mu merely glanced at it indifferently, showing no trace of panic whatsoever.
Chen Mu's subsequent words left the capitalist ghost frozen in place.
Far from showing any fear, Chen Mu let out a sigh with a tone of profound regret and said:
"Sigh! I was just thinking, with this villa so dilapidated, how much underworld currency am I going to have to spend to fix it up after I buy it?"
Capitalist Ghost: ???
Is this guy's brain circuit malfunctioning or what?!
Please, you've just entered an anomalous zone!
Why aren't you acting a bit more scared? It makes me look like I have no dignity at all.
And what did you just say?
You want to *buy* the anomalous zone?
What the hell!
The moment you step into an anomalous zone, instead of thinking about how to survive, you're already plotting how to buy it?
No wait, listening to his tone, buying it sounded like a casual, effortless chore.
He was actually considering how to renovate it afterward!
Is this young man out of his mind?
Are young people these days really this abstract?
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