Chapter 2

After finishing the meal, not even a scrap of the two vegetable dishes remained in the boxes.

Once Bo Ting replenished his energy, his previously empty mind finally had some capacity to think.

It definitely wouldn’t do for him to speculate wildly on his own at a time like this.

There was strength in numbers, so he should gather collective wisdom instead.

He glanced at the bizarre, pitch-black environment outside and prepared to open the neighborhood chat group to see what reactions were there.

After all, aside from him, an unemployed youth, everyone else in the group had some connections.

By now, so much time had passed that the early-rising elders and aunties must have surely noticed.

Sure enough, as soon as he opened the neighborhood chat group, he saw a message from the user labeled [1603], Elder Wen from upstairs.

“Cough cough, neighbors, what’s going on?”

“Why did it suddenly get so dark outside today?”

“I had plans to go downstairs and play chess with my chess buddies, but now I can’t even see the road.”

Punctuation mixed with typos made it look especially laborious to type.

From what Bo Ting knew, Elder Wen upstairs was a solitary elderly man who lived alone, and his health wasn’t great either.

It was normal for the old man, with his age and presbyopia, to anxiously inquire.

But with visibility near zero outside right now, it would be bad if he went out and something happened because he couldn’t see the path.

His mind involuntarily recalled the last time Elder Wen had gotten stuck in the elevator; after waiting a while with no replies, Bo Ting typed:

“Elder Wen, please don’t go out today.”

“The road conditions outside are really poor. Better to wait until the property management turns on the streetlights.”

At that moment, Bo Ting had noticed that in this pitch-black weather, there wasn’t a soul downstairs—probably only the couple from Lele Restaurant were still open.

He had heard that Wu Ge and Sister Wu had just bought an apartment in the neighborhood last year and were still paying off the loan, so they started early and stayed late, even opening up in weather like this to hustle.

Fellow wage slaves under the same sky—having already spoken up, Bo Ting casually recommended Wu Ge, who had just delivered his food.

“Elder Wen, if you don’t have any groceries at home, you can have Wu Ge from downstairs deliver a quick meal.”

“I just ordered from Lele Fast Food, and it was pretty fast.”

After he sincerely sent that, the group upstairs went quiet for a bit before text slowly appeared.

It was Elder Wen, who had seen the message:

“It’s Little Bo.”

“Got it, thanks for the reminder. I really don’t have any food at home right now; I’ll order something for emergencies.”

After that message, things quieted down again. Bo Ting figured Elder Wen had gone to the delivery group to contact Big Brother Wu, so he felt relieved.

With Elder Wen speaking up, the group gradually livened up one after another.

It was Saturday today, and though the weather was abnormal, it wasn’t a mandatory workday commute, so the impact was minimal for now.

After replying, Bo Ting lurked for a while and found everyone sounding equally baffled, as if no one had received any official notices.

This incident really seemed quite sudden.

Even the weather station probably hadn’t forecasted it in advance?

But now, with so many people in the building noticing the anomaly at the same time, it made him feel much safer.

After all, it wasn’t just him seeing the “solar eclipse.”

Humans were like that—if only one person saw something different, they’d get paranoid. But with everyone chattering together, it actually made him relax involuntarily.

Bo Ting smiled faintly. Compared to the “solar eclipse,” suddenly turning into an air conditioner didn’t seem like such a big deal.

However, other matters could wait for notices, but he absolutely had to claim his unemployment insurance today, or he wouldn’t have money for next month’s rent.

Thinking about the extra electricity bills his home might rack up daily after turning into an air conditioner, Bo Ting’s smile faded, and his expression turned serious.

He picked up his phone again and switched to the insurance login page.

The customer service info from earlier was still there, and Bo Ting clicked in as usual.

But the next second, the page spun twice and showed a network error symbol.

Large characters appeared on the blank screen.

Bo Ting puzzled over it and clicked again.

—Still a poor network signal; it wouldn’t load.

But the neighborhood group’s network was fine, with chat messages already at 99+ unread. Why couldn’t the unemployment insurance page load?

Bo Ting hesitated, exited the page, cleared his phone’s memory, and logged back into the website. He planned to ask on Yunshan City’s largest Netizens Exchange Forum: Was the unemployment insurance mini-program under maintenance today, making it impossible to log in?

This time, the page sluggishly circled twice before freezing again.

Bo Ting glanced at it; with the mini-program looking like it was stuck for good, he got up to pack the takeout boxes first, then brewed a cup of coffee before returning.

The page, which had frozen for what felt like half an hour, finally loaded, but it was as laborious as if it were carrying an elephant on its back.

Bo Ting: …

Did this solar eclipse affect the external network too?

Whatever, no point overthinking. As long as it loaded.

His mindset stayed steady—even with the lag, it bizarrely logged him out…

No matter. Bo Ting registered a new account and logged in again.

But speaking of which, the Netizens Exchange Forum, which had always been a plain system white, had changed colors?

Logging in abruptly, it wasn’t the familiar pure white, startling Bo Ting. On closer look, he saw the background wallpaper had been swapped.

From the default system color to a deep red, which looked rather eerie.

He had no idea what aesthetic the forum admins were going for—the previous white had been easy on the eyes, but this tone was even worse.

No way; after posting, he’d leave feedback in the backend. He didn’t want to get jumpscared every time he logged into the citizens’ forum.

This place was his second favorite spot to lurk after the neighborhood group. He’d log in every night before bed to browse Yunshan City’s various gossipy and bizarre incidents.

Mentally docking points from the forum’s revamp, Bo Ting looked at the screen.

What normally required no such hassle now demanded re-login, nickname selection, and even a full profile picture upload—otherwise, posts wouldn’t go through.

Bo Ting: …

This trash forum.

No choice—unemployment insurance was a big deal, directly tied to whether he’d starve in the coming days.

No matter how impatient, Bo Ting followed the steps one by one.

Profile picture…

He didn’t have any saved images on his phone.

Fine.

Bo Ting turned to the window, picked up his phone, and snapped a photo of the neighborhood’s night view. He opened the nickname field and pondered what to choose.

Right, this was perfect!

So Many Eyes in the Sky Today!

Inspiration struck—didn’t the misty shadows he saw upon just waking up look just like countless closed eyes in the air?

Amused by his own vivid imagination, he typed the new nickname in.

Sure enough, the forum profile now showed complete, allowing normal posting.

What a ordeal—truly too arduous.

After all that hassle, he could finally speak.

He’d been holding it in!

Bo Ting eagerly posted about the unemployment insurance mini-program bug, and only then did his brows relax a bit.

…

At six in the evening, sunset dyed the ground a warm yellow.

As dusk deepened, the reflections of steel skyscrapers in the city center stretched long, appearing harmonious yet grotesque as they passed through the treetops of the green belts.

The members of the Resurgence Management Office Sixth Squad in Mengjia City had just crawled out of the sewer and couldn’t help leaning against the roadside to rest.

“I’m exhausted.”

“What the hell is that creepy thing? It runs so fast; nearly chased me till my lungs burst.”

The slightly older chubby guy yanked off his protective goggles, finally feeling some relief before his eyes.

The teammates nearby were the same—after staying so long in the poorly ventilated, polluted sewer, everyone’s faces looked pallid.

Fortunately, this mission had succeeded.

“Finally caught the thing.”

“What do you call this plaything?”

Xue Hengfu panted heavily as he asked.

It looked like a drift bottle, but which drift bottle floated in sewers, grew legs, and ran?

【Depressive Drift Bottle】.

The dark-faced youth who climbed up last spoke, placing the item into his portable isolation device.

“No idea where this thing came from. Unlike regular drift bottles that heal the heart, the patterns on this one underwent unknown creepy mutations. Ever since it flowed in, anyone who touched it committed suicide within three days.”

“Though its level isn’t high—just D-grade—spreading among young people caused no small impact.”

That was when someone reported it, prompting the Resurgence Management Office to dispatch them.

In recent years, with the resurgence of creepy phenomena, anomalous events had multiplied around them. Today’s incident was actually one of the easier ones to handle.

Si Ning said a few words, then turned to count his teammates, confirming no one was missing before taking out his phone to report to superiors.

The others slumped on the ground without any regard for image.

Fortunately, the spot was remote, near the stinking sewer, so no one came by.

As they listened to the captain’s report, they pulled out their phones to browse during the break.

Xue Hengfu had just logged into their exclusive Ability Users Exchange Forum when he saw several posts popping up on the home page.

【Anhua Road Private Hospital Morgue Incident…】

【Baishan Bridge Bus Fall Incident】

【Golden Summit Night Crying Woman…】

Several blood-soaked posts appeared one after another. He skimmed them and moved on—these had been perennial fixtures on the forum, visible every time he opened it.

They were too dangerous and lacked leads, so they’d gone unsolved.

Xue Hengfu could even recite the details of these creepy events from memory.

“Tch.” Just as he was about to look away, he heard the other teammates nearby suddenly go “Eh?”

“What’s up?”

Xue Hengfu turned, and Zhu Xiaocheng shoved his phone in his face.

The text jumped out abruptly. Xue Hengfu took one look and realized it was a new forum post, but… why was it on the Ability Users Exchange Forum?

—”Family, does anyone know if the unemployment insurance mini-program glitched this afternoon? Can’t log in at all?”

Xue Hengfu’s expression turned odd. “This trash forum glitched again?”

“Last time it pulled in posts from the livestock farming forum; this time it’s some question about ‘unemployment insurance.'”

“And it claims to be a public forum for friendly exchange and learning among ability users everywhere—yet it keeps making jokes like this.”

Zhu Xiaocheng: “Sigh, who knows.”

The forum had been developed in recent years specifically so ability users wouldn’t burn out, providing a place to chat and relax off-duty. It had been fairly user-friendly at first.

Only one flaw: it glitched frequently.

It could mess up in the most absurd ways, leaving users speechless. No one knew how the developers designed it—always needing patches.

This was clearly another glitch.

Not just Xue Hengfu; the other teammates noticed the out-of-place post too.

“X it out.”

“Leaving it here feels weird.”

Zhao Jiang, peering over with Xue Hengfu, shook his head.

“Whatever; the techs will clean it up later.”

Those guys were pros at patching by now.

“But… unemployment insurance? Does Mengjia City even have that anymore?”