Chapter 1 A Major Event

When sunlight streamed into the bedroom, Hao Ren was still lost in slumber, but a series of shouts from outside the door forced him awake. He vaguely heard Lily pounding on his door, yelling, "Landlord! Something big's happened! Landlord, something big's happened!"

Hao Ren groggily sat up, not even having time to open his eyes when he heard a loud crash from nearby. Then, through his eyelids, he saw two broken door panels hurtling towards him with incredible force. The sight nearly made his soul fly away. With the greatest agility he'd ever mustered, Hao Ren rolled out of the way of the first panel—only to be squarely smacked against the wall by the second.

The panels slid to the floor, and Lily pounced on him, pinning him against the wall while yelling, "Landlord, something big's happened!!"

Even if Hao Ren had possessed an ounce of sleepiness at that point, the suddenly frenzied husky-spirit would have chased it away. He felt as if everything from his lumbar vertebrae to his brainstem was flooded with blood, and he mustered all his strength to push Lily's head back a bit. "What the hell are you doing so early in the morning?! Your antics almost made something big happen to *me*, you know! Those two slams nearly took down a tenth of my shield!"

He was deliberately exaggerating to scare the hundred-year-old dog-spirit out of her frenzy, but to his surprise, the usually reliable trick failed this time. Lily didn't react at all, still grabbing his arm and pointing urgently out the window. "Land... Landlord! Look outside!"

Hao Ren finally turned to look out the window, and the anger the husky girl had roused in him instantly vanished, replaced with a look of utter disbelief. "...What the... Did someone finally decide to invest in a theme park in this dump of a southern suburb?"

"It's not a theme park!" Lily shouted anxiously. "Everything's gone wrong! Everything's gone wrong! Big Beard and Nangong Sanba just went out, and they came back with pale faces—other districts are even worse than ours!"

Hao Ren stiffly turned his head, gazing at the astonishingly bizarre scene outside the window.

A majestic stone temple with a Greco-Roman style stood at the end of the dilapidated streets of the southern suburb. If he remembered correctly, that should have been where the street-corner supermarket was—the chubby owner had finally gotten his wish and replaced his family's old house with a mansion. But this mansion didn't look like a place for people to live. Around the stone temple, sections of the worn-out concrete streets were paved with flagstones, and people dressed in all sorts of clothing from different eras and regions mingled together, interspersed with ancient modes of transportation that looked like they'd walked out of history books. There were even various unnamed birds and beasts flitting through the street corners. In just a brief glance, Hao Ren identified at least four or five distinct groups, including ancient Romans, ancient Egyptians, and ancient Persians. He even saw a team of Ming Dynasty soldiers in shining armor marching down the street, their ranks mixed with two bare-chested, axe-wielding Vikings...

Hao Ren took a deep breath, his gaze shifting further afield.

He saw a pyramid towering in the direction of the southern suburb's farmers market, and above the pyramid, he could vaguely see a mountain shrouded in mist. Two enormous, pterosaur-like flying creatures swooped down from the mountain, emitting ear-piercing screeches—and those strange creatures were ridden by heroic-looking, ancient Greek-style warriors, but they were clearly not ancient Greeks.

Ancient Greeks shouldn't be three or four meters tall...

"Landlord... you saw it, right..." Lily's weak voice came from behind him, finally bringing Hao Ren back to his senses. "Everything's changed."

"I saw it, I saw it..." Hao Ren said, blinking rapidly and quickly calming himself down. After all, he wasn't the newbie who'd been shocked by a flying PDA anymore. The visual impact of what was happening before him wasn't as exaggerated as some of the things he'd seen before. His initial shock had mostly come from being caught completely off guard. Even with his imagination and acceptance, he'd never imagined waking up to such a bizarre sight on Earth. But as that surprise faded, he was left with the calm attitude he always had when thinking.

"When did this phenomenon start?" he asked Lily, starting to inquire about the details now that he'd calmed down.

"I don't know," Lily shook her head, huffing. "I woke up and it was like this outside. I asked the others, and it was like this when they woke up too."

"So, the changes outside happened last night, silently and without anyone noticing?" Hao Ren nodded, frowning. "You said Nangong Sanba and Laowang already went out to investigate?"

Lily nodded vigorously. "Yeah, yeah, they went out to investigate as soon as they saw something was wrong, and they found out that it seems like everywhere has changed like this—at least, that's what they saw when they went to the city and the neighboring city."

"Is it an illusion or something else?"

"It's not an illusion!" Lily immediately shook her head, then took out a small object and handed it to Hao Ren. "Nangong Sanba brought this back from outside."

Hao Ren took it and saw that it was a somewhat crude silver coin. With his limited historical knowledge and artifact appraisal skills, he couldn't tell where the silver coin came from at all. He could only tell that it definitely wasn't Chinese.

"What is this?" he asked, looking up.

"A silver coin from the ancient Persian period," Lily blinked. "Nangong Sanba found it on a Persian Empire soldier who died by the road. The soldier was killed by an ancient Egyptian."

Hao Ren: "...It's so chaotic..."

"Landlord, what do you think is going on?" Lily shook Hao Ren's arm, her tail dragging stiffly behind her with tension. "Logically speaking, this shouldn't happen on Earth... This is supposed to be a safe zone!"

"Earth is just relatively peaceful, but ever since I found out that the God of this universe is a female psychopath, I've been mentally prepared for anything," Hao Ren joked, trying to relax Lily, while grabbing his coat from the side of the bed. "Um... Lily, go out for a bit, I'm going to change out of my pajamas. Oh, and take Doudou out with you, she's awake."

After changing, he went straight to the living room. As expected, everyone was gathered there, sitting around the coffee table, and even the Nangong couple had come, making for quite the lineup—except for Vivian.

"Where's Vivian?" Hao Ren frowned. Vivian's absence was a rare occurrence.

"Don't know where she went," May, sitting next to Nangong Sanba, answered him. "Haven't seen her since early this morning, and there's no sign that anyone's touched the pots and pans in the kitchen."

Hao Ren was stunned. "Nothing in the kitchen's been touched?"

He immediately sensed something was wrong: for Vivian, the kitchen was practically her own territory in this house. One of the most important things she did every day was to go to the kitchen on time to prepare meals for the whole family. No matter what happened, as long as she was home, she never delayed this.

Could it be that she was too concerned about the changes outside, so she put aside her housework and flew out to investigate on her own?

Hao Ren quickly dismissed this guess, because it didn't fit Vivian's personality. She was a very meticulous and detail-oriented person. Even in this kind of emergency, she definitely wouldn't leave everyone behind and run out on her own. At the very least, she'd leave a note or something.

"Did you search carefully?" Hao Ren turned to Lily. "I mean, with your nose."

Lily scratched her face. "I did, after all, the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is see what Vivian made for breakfast. Her scent is all from yesterday, and I didn't find any traces of her going out at the door, but if she flew out of the skylight, then I can't help it, I can't smell that."

An increasingly strong sense of unease surged up, making Hao Ren feel that Vivian's disappearance was probably related to the changes outside—although it was a bit too early to say that Vivian was missing, a series of abnormal circumstances still made him unable to help but care.

Even if she really just went out to investigate, the bizarre situation outside was enough to make him worry about her being out there alone for so long.

The more he thought about it, the more wrong it felt. He suddenly stood up. "I'm going to check the basement."

Vivian's room didn't seem any different.

Except for the unmade bed.

"Vivian wouldn't do this," Hao Ren looked at the uncleaned bed. "Making the bed in the morning is the first priority."

"I never make my bed," Lily said, staring with a matter-of-fact expression.

"Nonsense, yours is called a doghouse," Hao Ren glared at Lily, bent down and started to check Vivian's bed. "It's not cleaned up, she probably left suddenly after lying in bed to rest, but I can't see any signs of fighting, and the warning facilities around the house didn't react at all, so I can rule out the possibility of someone forcibly taking her away..."

Hao Ren didn't actually believe that anyone on this planet could kidnap Vivian silently: even though she was constantly weakening, she was still one of the most powerful creatures on Earth. No one could easily take her away without leaving a trace. Even if he didn't consider that, there were all kinds of alarm facilities set up inside and outside this big house. Those were all high-end things that the Xi Ling Empire had created, and every alarm device was directly connected to the data terminal's thought core and Hao Ren's own mental connection. With those things in place, even a demigod couldn't sneak into the house.

So Vivian left on her own.

"Did she disappear into thin air?" Lily scratched her face, muttering.