Chapter 166 Water Pump Station

Nangong Wuyue frowned. "The water's abnormal in other places too? Then it looks like there really is a problem."

Hao Ren didn't understand what was going on. "Huh? What did you find?"

"It started two or three days ago. People near our place kept saying the tap water was acting weird. There was even a case where a house had three faucets, one with no water and the other two working. Old Li on the street even said he saw the water in his faucet suddenly retract halfway while he was washing vegetables, which scared his old lady half to death," Nangong Wuyue said while playing with Doudou on the sofa, recounting what she'd heard these past few days. She was a well-behaved and likable girl, and her years of wandering had given her a great ability to connect with people. She was already familiar with many people on the street. "But it's not happening to every household, and since the pumping stations in the suburbs occasionally have problems, it hasn't spread too far yet."

Hao Ren hadn't realized the abnormality was this widespread. He thought for a moment, then felt something was off. "But our water is fine."

"Yeah, because I'm forcing the water through," the siren girl said, waving her hand to create a small water ball in mid-air. Doudou immediately jumped in happily and started swimming. "Our water was cut off two days ago. I've been forcibly supplying water ever since."

Hao Ren stroked his chin. "Looks like a supernatural phenomenon. Who's coming with me to check out the pumping station?"

Lili had also just returned and was now lying bored on the sofa, watching a dog biscuit commercial. "Lame... I'm someone who saves the world now, why do I have to busy myself with this stuff... I want to watch TV."

"I'll go with the landlord," Vivian said, wiping her hands as she came out of the kitchen, taking off her apron as she looked at Lili. "You have so little life experience. As a supernatural being, don't you know you should be vigilant about all the supernatural phenomena around your territory? Even if it's not a demon hunter, it could be another supernatural being. And you're a canine species, yet your territorial awareness is so weak..."

The moment Vivian said "territorial awareness," Lili suddenly reacted and jumped off the sofa. "I'll go! I didn't realize it had something to do with my territory!"

Hao Ren's mouth had no filter, and he blurted out without thinking, "Can't remember it's your territory unless you've peed on it, huh?"

As expected, Lili immediately barked in his face. Within minutes, his arm was covered in teeth marks—after many tries, the dog girl had finally found the right balance to leave teeth marks without triggering the rigid shield.

Hao Ren fled from Lili's jaws, looking like he'd lost a fight. No one around him offered to help. Even Vivian shook her head, laughing and crying at the same time. "Landlord, you can't just say that to a girl... not even a female one."

Nangong Wuyue stepped forward and patted Hao Ren on the shoulder. "Landlord, take my advice, your mouth would only get you through two episodes in a TV series. Change it."

Hao Ren: "..."

Lili bared her fangs at Hao Ren for a while before finally harrumphing and licking the teeth marks she'd made, indicating that this minor punishment was over. Hao Ren, meanwhile, pushed away the silly cat that kept coming over to make trouble and looked around. "So, who else is coming with me to check out the pumping station?"

Nangong Wuyue grabbed her brother. "My brother and I will go with you. I know a lot about water, and my brother at least has a lot of investigative experience."

And so, the group left home for the only pumping station in the southern suburbs. The pumping station was actually in the north of the city, but it wasn't too far from where they lived—ten minutes by car.

Please don't forget that Hao Ren has a car now.

Speaking of the pumping station, Hao Ren was very familiar with it. Because the southern suburbs were far from the city center, the facilities were relatively outdated, and the pressure in the water pipe network was a major problem. Ten years ago, the locals complained several times before the water company set up a pumping station to increase the pressure in the pipe network. Hao Ren remembered sneaking into the pumping station to play when he was in middle school, peering through the windows of the large red brick and cement machine room at the water pumps rumbling inside, and then fighting wits and courage with the guard dogs in the yard. Those were the days of youthful innocence, when the young man who was destined to embark on an uneven path steeled his ambitions under the training of vicious dogs—his greatest wish back then was to be able to beat the dogs in the yard once...

Now, the guard dogs in the old courtyard had all died of old age, leaving only one. His wish was not to be expected.

The pumping station was surrounded by a brick wall, and the iron gate was half-open. From the outside, you could occasionally hear the rumbling sounds from the machine room inside. Hao Ren parked the car in the open space outside the yard, and as soon as he led the group to the gate, they heard a dog bark in the yard. Several black backs on chains rushed out diagonally, pulling hard on their bodies to protest against the intruders, their imposing manner the same as their predecessors. Seeing this, Hao Ren laughed and cursed, "You sons of bitches, your old men wouldn't have dared to bark at me like that!"

Hearing this, Lili barked at the leading black back a few times, then turned around and exposed Hao Ren. "They said that you used to be chased all over the yard by their uncles and aunts, and once jumped into the old jujube tree in the yard and didn't come down for a long time."

Hao Ren: "... Damn it, forgot there was someone here who understands foreign languages!"

At this moment, a dignified old black dog strolled over from the yard. After seeing Hao Ren, it barked a few times symbolically, seemingly still remembering the brat who used to throw stones into the yard from the wall ten years ago. Hao Ren sighed at the passage of time, and then saw someone finally hearing the commotion and coming out of the pump room. It was a young man with a crew cut, probably the one in charge of the machines in the pump room.

"Who are you looking for?" the young man asked gruffly, then turned and rebuked the dogs. "Go back, go back! What are you yelling about!"

"I'm from the neighborhood. Why hasn't the water been normal these past few days?" Hao Ren asked with a smile.

People in the city might not be used to this kind of life in the remote suburbs, but the people in the southern suburbs were always used to going directly to the "unit" to inquire about problems. If the water stopped, they would go to the pumping station; if the heating wasn't working, they would go to the boiler room; if the power went out, they would go directly to the substation to ask the workers what was going on. Both those who were asking and those who were being asked took it for granted. This was a unique "community ecosystem" in a backward suburb without property management or various "branch offices."

Probably because people had been coming to inquire about this matter these past few days, the young man's face was a little impatient and a little helpless. "The water pressure at the water tower isn't normal. There's nothing I can do. The higher-ups have already asked the experts to come. Just go home and wait."

Hao Ren chatted with the young man at the pumping station for a few words. In the middle, Nangong Wuyue pretended to be curious and walked a few steps toward the yard, concentrating on listening to the sounds inside. Seeing this, the young man quickly reminded her, "Don't go into the yard, there are dogs inside, and the chains are long."

He didn't realize that after Lili also craned her head to look into the yard, the ferocious black backs had already prostrated themselves on the ground with reverence, as if they had seen their ancestors.

At this moment, a creaking sound suddenly came from the machine room in the yard, and then someone vaguely shouted loudly. The young man quickly turned back and ran. "There's something wrong with the engine again, I'll go back and watch it. Just go home and wait."

After the young man ran off, Hao Ren looked at Nangong Wuyue. "How is it? Is there anything?"

"The water's not normal," the siren girl said, pointing to the corner of the outer wall of the yard. "The situation here is already clearly a supernatural phenomenon."

Hao Ren looked in the direction Nangong Wuyue was pointing and was shocked to find a trickle of water flowing down the damp half of the cement wall. What was unbelievable was that this trickle was moving upwards along the wall!

Lili sniffed. "I feel like the humidity in the air here is also weird... Some places are very dry, and some places are as humid as if you're standing in front of a waterfall. There seem to be a lot of moisture pockets in the air."

"Could it be your people?" Hao Ren suddenly thought of the siren's water manipulation abilities. He turned to Wuyue. "Can sirens sense other sirens?"

"Yes, but they have to be close enough. And ever since humans started adding bleach to the tap water, this sensing talent hasn't worked very well in residential areas. I can only try my best." Nangong Wuyue frowned, sensing the direction of the abnormal water element flow in the air, and found that all the abnormal moisture was concentrated in one place.

She looked up at it—the water tower a hundred meters away.

Others couldn't see the abnormality of the water tower, but in Nangong Wuyue's eyes, the water tower was covered with fine threads, and countless water molecules that had broken away from the laws of nature were floating nearby.

It seemed that the young man at the pumping station had said that the place with the most abnormal water pressure was the water tower.