【Failure No. 10665.】
【This time, we went to great lengths to dodge the Underground Anomalous Emperor and avoid stirring any emotional waves in the Heavenly Master. We even kept the living dead entertained along the way. But unexpectedly, a boy who gets barely any mention in the novel ended up destroying the world.】
【The boy was sickly and obscure, living at No. 43 on Everbright Street. He seemed like an ordinary person in the novel’s world, but in truth, he was the source of the novel world’s curse.】
【When his body began to rot, the curse virus erupted across a vast area. The cursed humans and anomalies grew exponentially in number. Hair sprouted from the heart outward, devouring the body completely until nothing remained. The world became blanketed in hair sprouting from rotting corpses.】
……
Snow had been falling on Everbright Street for a very, very long time.
Bai Chen lay nestled in the boy’s arms, his two front paws pressed against the boy’s chest. Amid the bone-chilling cold, the spot where man and cat touched created a warmth so intoxicating it begged one to sink into it.
He gazed at the boy, who seemed to sense the stare. Even in his sleep, the boy opened his eyes, and the first thing he did was reach out to stroke Bai Chen’s fluffy head.
The boy had always been frail, his body temperature lower than a normal person’s—especially in winter. His face was deathly pale, his lips as if dusted with frost. His palm felt ice-cold as it caressed Bai Chen’s head, carrying no warmth at all. Yet Bai Chen contentedly narrowed his eyes and nuzzled harder into the boy’s palm, craving more.
So comfortable that he unconsciously splayed his front paws like blooming flowers, kneading rhythmically against the boy’s chest.
The boy’s strokes grew even gentler, as if he were caressing some rare and fragile treasure. The heat from his chest seeped into his weakened heart, carried by his blood to every corner of his body. Cradling the little cat, he sat up and peered out the window at the endless white expanse. “A Nuan, it’s snowing again.”
A smile curved the boy’s pale lips. “I like the snow.”
It had been just like this last year, on a frigid snowy day, when he first met A Nuan.
He rarely ventured out in such bitter cold, but his welfare check was long overdue. He hadn’t eaten in three days, so he had no choice but to drag his numb, temperature-deadened body out the door. He made it only a few steps down the street before collapsing into the snow.
Fat snowflakes drifted into his dull, lifeless eyes, dotting them white. As the last light began to fade, a shaky silhouette shattered the frozen scene—a scrawny little cat leaped from a trash bin and staggered toward him.
The kitten’s fur was soaked with melted snow, frozen into muddy clumps. Its leg must have been injured by someone, for it limped with heavy, uneven steps until it reached his hand and collapsed right into his grasp.
The sodden fur was freezing cold.
At first, he thought the little cat had mistaken his hand for a grave. Man and cat would perish together in the snowdrift. It wouldn’t be long before the blizzard buried them, silently erasing their forgotten existences from the world.
But soon the chill ebbed away, and he felt a warmth.
It was faint, emanating from the palm where they touched—a tiny, unfamiliar warmth that made his fingers tremble abruptly.
Not just warmth, but a feeble heartbeat, too, from a fragile young life.
Life. This vulnerable little being clutched his finger and rubbed against his palm with every ounce of strength it had, issuing a plaintive mew like a sob amid the silent white void.
That sliver of warmth had pulled him back from the brink, so he named the kitten A Nuan.
Clutching A Nuan felt like hugging a portable heater. Warmth softened every cell in his body. When he looked down, a gentle glow lit his eyes. “And you, A Nuan? Do you like snowy days?”
The little cat offered no reply, of course. He simply gazed up from his embrace, purring contentedly, his eyes growing heavy-lidded.
In these moments, the boy’s self-mutterings would fall silent as he listened intently to the soothing rumble. He had heard that a cat’s purr could ease depression—and it did more than that for him. He believed it could even heal his ailments.
“Purr… purr… purrrr…”
Outside, the snow swirled furiously, filling the world with that rumbling symphony. The deeper purrrr echoed the wind rattling the window, the snow pattering down, the rhythm of his own heartbeat.
Not until the snow finally ceased did the boy relent. He lifted his cat high and rubbed his cool cheek against its soft fur.
Sensing the depth of affection, Bai Chen splayed his pink paw pads once more, blissfully tempted to purr himself.
“Are you hungry?” The boy gently pinched one of those pink pads and asked. Guilt laced his voice. “Once I pick up this month’s welfare check, I’ll buy you some chicken legs, all right?”
His own life was wretched and worthless, sustained only by the three hundred yuan monthly welfare his teacher had fought for him as a child. He hated dragging A Nuan into his pathetic existence. Cats were carnivores, after all, and he couldn’t afford meat every day. Yet A Nuan never abandoned him, rubbing against him happily and keeping him company without fail.
Seeing that the snow had stopped, the boy declared, “I’ll go get it right now.”
The weather outside was frigid, and he had intended to go alone. But as he reached the door, A Nuan latched onto his ankle. And so, man and cat stepped out into the snow together.
It had been around this time last year when he braved a blizzard to collect his welfare. Back then, he could feel no temperature at all. Now, however, he carried a little heater in his arms, radiating steady warmth into him.
With the snow cleared, figures began to appear on the street. The boy noticed a few people eyeing the kitten in his arms. He wrapped the little cat more securely in his cotton jacket, his long, pale lashes lowering.
A Nuan might not get gourmet meals following him around, but the kitten had thrived over the past year. His fur was fluffy and soft, white as snow with a golden sheen. His tail curled like a squirrel’s, his cheeks plump, his face broad with a tiny nose, and his large, round emerald eyes more lustrous than any gem.
A kitten like that belonged in some wealthy family’s villa, pampered with care—not with a lowly wretch like him.
He didn’t deserve a cat as fine as A Nuan.
So were they staring at A Nuan, waiting to snatch him away?
The boy bowed his head, oblivious to the way those onlookers recoiled in terror at his cowering fear. Bai Chen merely cast a casual glance their way and saw them duck into a dingy alley.
“Don’t look! Don’t look!” Du Feili hissed urgently at the book transmigrators still craning their necks for a peek. “Don’t draw his attention!”
He eyed these reckless idiots and couldn’t help doubting whether the Anomalous Bureau and Book Transmigration Bureau had made the right call sending so many of them in.
“Relax, Captain Du. It’s just a glance—what’s the harm?” One of them finally pulled back, shrugging with infuriating nonchalance, as if Du Feili were overreacting.
“This is Mad Flower Blood Moon! It’s not some ordinary novel world!” Du Feili reminded them, his eyes bloodshot. He had returned from their last failure just days ago, the shadow of the world’s end still haunting him. Sleepless for days, he was frayed to the breaking point and longed to smash the skulls of these fools who hadn’t grasped the gravity yet.
Truth be told, Du Feili understood their attitude all too well. He had been the same way once.
They had all read those book transmigration stories, where the protagonists knew the plot inside out, wielded cheat abilities, navigated novel worlds with ease, and manipulated the characters at will.
When Du Feili first arrived in Mad Flower Blood Moon, he had approached it with the same breezy confidence—even knowing it was a forbidden book, even though his entry had been accidental and not the assigned novel at all.
But gradually, he realized something was deeply wrong. The world was far too vast, its powers far too horrifying. Places unmentioned in the novel were deadly traps in themselves.
On his first day, with nowhere to sleep, he crashed on a park bench and got dragged into the nightmare of a neighboring vagrant. His leg snapped in the dream—and it was broken for real when he woke.
At the hospital treating his leg, penniless, he was tricked by a crooked doctor into signing a blood donation contract. That night, slender tentacles slithered into his ward to drain him dry.
Trying to earn money, he took a job at a shady workshop processing human-bone snacks for anomalies. A machine—with a mind of its own—sliced off his finger and packed it into a bag.
……
He faced countless near-death perils before even encountering the protagonist.
Never one to overestimate himself, Du Feili had tried to flee as soon as he sensed the forbidden book’s true terror. Bedraggled, he escaped the novel world at last, a glimmer of hope igniting—only for a horrifying force to seize his ankle.
Icy black qi seeped into his veins, spreading through his body from a snow-white hand clamped there.
As he departed the novel world, a long-haired man had grabbed him. Worse, the man followed him into his own reality. Worst of all, though they had never met face-to-face, Du Feili recognized him as the novel world’s Underground Strangeness King, Yin Bujie.
Yin Bujie had surveyed their world, his blood-red lips curling into a greedy, savage smile. “Qiao Qingshuang shouldn’t be able to reach here, right?”
What followed was the first apocalypse—a nightmare that still plagued Du Feili’s dreams, one he never wanted to relive.
In the novel world, Yin Bujie and his horde of anomalies were perpetually suppressed underground by the protagonist, Qiao Qingshuang. Upon discovering this new realm, Yin treated it like a juicy slab of meat. He led his frenzied underground horrors in an invasion, draining and driving countless people insane.
By sheer luck, Du Feili possessed the Rewind Skill. He had acquired it during a transmigration task in an apocalyptic novel world.
Rewinding to six months before his first transmigration, he cut off every possible avenue to hear or see Mad Flower Blood Moon. He swore never to accept the Book Transmigration Bureau’s task on December 15th—the fateful day he had stumbled into this nightmare by accident.
Even so, the past half-year had been one of constant anxiety. The novel world’s powers were too terrifying. Yin Bujie had followed him across worlds. The apocalyptic world where Du Feili gained his Rewind Skill paled in comparison. Could he truly evade doom with this ability?
As expected, on December 15th, even without taking the task, he found himself back in the Mad Flower Blood Moon world.
He had spent that prior half-year devising ways to prevent Yin Bujie from destroying their reality. Upon arrival, he wasted no time complaining—instead, he sought out the protagonist at once: Heavenly Master Qiao Qingshuang, the one who kept anomalies pinned underground.
Qiao Qingshuang and Yin Bujie were natural foes. Wherever the Heavenly Master went, Yin Bujie’s influence could not follow. Staying near Qiao Qingshuang guaranteed safety from entanglement.
But Du Feili was too far away. As a mere human, not an anomaly, he could only travel by plane or train—and he had no money.
Someone bought him a plane ticket. First class, no less. Seated in comfort, he thanked the man cautiously. “You’ve spent too much on my account. I’ll pay you back.”
He dared not accept even the smallest favor from anyone in this world, no matter how normal they seemed.
The pale-skinned man paused a long moment before replying. “It’s nothing. Just pocket change.”
“You must be very wealthy.”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, the wealth accumulates on its own.”
When Du Feili heard those words, he immediately sensed something was off. The man looked far too young. Cautiously, he probed, “You look even younger than me. If I may ask boldly, how old are you?”
The young man replied, “Sorry, I forgot.”
That was when Du Feili started to feel nervous, terrified that the young man might notice something unusual about him. Desperate to keep the conversation going, he said, “Um, are you… heading out for a trip or something?”
“I’ve already wandered everywhere,” the young man said, lowering his head. “I’ve been all over the world. Where else is there to go?”
Du Feili: “…”
It triggered his PTSD. Every hair on his body stood on end.
This time, the man had followed him into their world. Gazing at it impassively, he remarked, “There’s still this place to wander around.”
With a wave goodbye, he set off to roam their world. Everywhere he passed, every human turned into a zombie.
Later, after poring over every page of Mad Flower Blood Moon, Du Feili pieced it together. This was the novel’s Living Dead—the Corpse King who had wandered the bizarre world for three hundred years. In the horror setting of the novel, that was manageable enough. But in their normal world, a single breath from him could turn an entire street into corpses.
