Chapter 98: A New Mission (Part 2)
Sometimes, when you are completely speechless, all you can do is smile.
Song Yuqing did exactly that.
Was she really expected to go around cleaning up Lin Han’s messes?
“Yes, it’s going to be a lot of hard work,” Master Fu replied. “Lin Han has been abusing his powers to devour others, and his victims are being randomly scattered across various parallel worlds. Your job is to track them down and either settle them in those dimensions or bring them back to this world. The metric for success is simple: these victims must no longer harbor any resentment.”
Song Yuqing’s smile widened.
This was completely absurd. She had no idea how many people Lin Han had actually devoured, and the number of parallel realities was virtually infinite. How was she supposed to find them? Running into Sister Qin in a parallel world had been a stroke of absolute, miraculous luck—a coincidence among coincidences. There was no way she could count on being that lucky every single time.
“If you refuse, God’s Supermarket will begin to lose its authority,” Master Fu warned, his voice dropping into a grave, serious register.
“What do you mean by that?” Liu Xiaona asked, catching the shift in tone.
“If these three tasks are not completed within three months, God’s Supermarket will regress into a perfectly ordinary shop,” Master Fu sighed. “First, Song Yuqing’s spatial ability will revert to its original form. Next, the store’s inventory shelves will be slashed by two-thirds. Finally, the ability-boosting coffee will lose all its efficacy the moment a customer steps outside the cafe.”
“What about the cinema on the third floor? Will it disappear too?” Song Yuqing asked, her fingers tightly gripping the edge of the counter.
“No. The theater will remain active for the foreseeable future,” Master Fu said slowly, a profound sadness creeping into his voice. “You’ll be able to sit in that room and watch the absolute final seconds of this world’s existence. And when the light beam from the projector finally dies out, everything in this reality will reset to zero.”
“Why?” Song Yuqing asked. She could clearly feel the raw powerlessness bleeding through Master Fu’s words, giving her the distinct intuition that there were certain cosmic forces at play that even the mysterious system could not fight against.
“Because this is beyond my control. I am merely an assistant here—I don’t make the rules.”
“Why?”
Song Yuqing’s mind began to spin rapidly. An assistant? A planner? Control?
“Is there a controller ruling over this world?”
Master Fu offered no further explanation, retreating into an absolute silence.
Inside the quiet storefront, the staff looked at one another in utter bewilderment.
“A controller…?” Liu Xiaona’s heart hammered violently against her ribs. She shot a look at Song Yuqing, noticing that her manager’s face had gone entirely pale.
“Master Fu didn’t answer,” Song Yuqing murmured. “And it’s highly likely he didn’t answer because he isn’t allowed to.”
“Gaha…” Gaha whimpered softly, reaching out to grip the hem of Song Yuqing’s jacket.
Sensing the tension, the chubby little panda stepped forward, tilting his head up to let Song Yuqing gently stroke his fur.
“Let’s just… focus on completing the mission first,” Song Yuqing managed to squeeze out.
Was the very reality they inhabited being micro-managed by some higher power?
“Maybe Master Fu is just trying to scare us into compliance,” she added, trying to lighten the mood. After all, they had never known Master Fu’s true origins, his ultimate objective, or his identity.
“So, when are we making the jump to the parallel world?” Liu Xiaona asked, restlessly rubbing her hands against her apron. “Are we heading back to see Sister Qin first?”
“Yeah.” Song Yuqing nodded slowly. They desperately needed to gather more data from Sister Qin. Perhaps the victims Lin Han had cast out shared some sort of common denominator that would make them easier to track down.
“Gaha! Gaha!” Gaha barked suddenly, gesturing anxiously into the air.
“Right! We need to locate Lin Han too, before he can devour anyone else!” Liu Xiaona slammed her palm down on the counter. “That absolute bastard! We need to hunt him down and put an end to this nightmare once and for all!”
“Roar!” Little Meat Bun fiercely beat his chest, assuring Song Yuqing that he could personally handle the brute force department.
Song Yuqing lowered her head, locking herself in deep thought for a moment before looking back up. “We need to extract the information Master Fu is hiding from us directly out of Lin Han. For instance, we need to know the exact nature and mechanics of his spatial ability.”
If it meant securing the survival of her store and her world, Song Yuqing was more than willing to take a massive gamble.
Before deploying back to the parallel world to consult Sister Qin, Song Yuqing decided to film a specialized promotional broadcast starring Xiaoyi.
In the video, Xiaoyi acted as a host, introducing the supermarket’s latest high-tier amenity: the Future Cognition cinema.
“Why use Xiaoyi for the broadcast?” Liu Xiaona asked, scratching her ear in confusion. “Strictly speaking, she isn’t an official employee of God’s Supermarket. It feels a bit weird.”
Song Yuqing offered a mysterious smile. The reason was simple: Xiaoyi was Ruan Fanfan’s beloved younger sister.
Once the broadcast went live across the network, Ruan Fanfan was bound to see it and realize her sibling was currently taking sanctuary inside the supermarket. If the rogue faction ever targeted the store, Ruan Fanfan would almost certainly intervene or defect to protect her family.
Song Yuqing couldn’t help but wonder what kind of expression the wood-type mutant would make when she realized her best friend and her little sister were actively working together.
Ever since Xiaoyi had pitched the strategy of luring the snake out of its hole, Song Yuqing had been calculating a way to handle Ruan Fanfan. Perhaps, for the sake of her sister’s safety, the girl would finally drop her weapons, turn her back on the darkness, and sever ties with Lin Han, Zhang Lei, and Wan Youzhi for good.
An hour later, the video introducing the Future Cognition theater was fully edited and uploaded to the digital storefront. The footage kicked off with a sweeping tour of the cinema’s sleek interior design before cutting to Xiaoyi neatly explaining its core functions and pricing regulations.
Toward the very end of the clip, Song Yuqing stepped into the frame herself. She addressed the global viewership, informing everyone that the immediate sector of Chen Town had been entirely cleared of mutants, before tacking on a calculated little lie.
“If we cannot secure a steady influx of zombie corpses for exchange, God’s Supermarket will unfortunately face immediate bankruptcy.”
In a way, it wasn’t even a lie. If her team failed to clear Master Fu’s tasks, the world would literally dissolve into nothingness, and the supermarket would naturally cease to exist.
Song Yuqing harbored her own selfish motives with this broadcast. If Ruan Fanfan could stream the video, it meant Lin Han and Wan Youzhi would likely intercept it as well. This file was a piece of prime bait—a carefully laid trap designed to hook more than one target.
Once the video was successfully published to the platform, Song Yuqing distributed a fresh haul of rations to the water-type mutants staying next door, logged the credit transactions, and officially locked up the storefront so the staff could get some well-deserved rest.
The moment she woke up, they would make the jump to find Sister Qin.
While Song Yuqing was sound asleep, a battered, heavily patched modified car was slowly navigating an seemingly endless stretch of highway miles away. Lin Han sat behind the wheel, with Wan Youzhi riding shotgun.
Perched ominously on the roof of the vehicle was Chen Ke. Trailing directly behind the car was a massive, tightly packed legion of zombies that looked unsettlingly human.
Inside the cabin, Wan Youzhi was sprawled across the passenger seat, reverently holding a bulky, reinforced mobile phone. He had managed to salvage the device during an earlier raid on the road, and it featured built-in solar charging capabilities. After an eternity of waiting, the battery indicator finally flashed full, and the screen began its startup sequence.
“Well? Is it turning on yet? Let’s swap out soon—it’s your turn to drive,” Lin Han grumbled, constantly checking the rearview mirror to glare at his passenger.
“Don’t rush me,” Wan Youzhi replied flatly, not bothering to look up.
“I risked my absolute life to secure that tech,” Lin Han hissed, thoroughly dissatisfied. Why was he stuck doing all the manual labor while Wan Youzhi got to relax and play with the loot? God knows how long it had been since Lin Han had even touched a working smartphone!
“I have a feeling this device is going to help us get our operations back on the map.”
As the screen finally loaded the home menu, Wan Youzhi held the phone up like a religious artifact.
Lin Han let out an irritated growl, gripping the steering wheel tighter. If Wan Youzhi didn’t possess such an indispensable mutation, Lin Han would have pulled over and buried him in a ditch weeks ago.
But the truth was undeniable: ever since they fled Base 27, they had run into a dozen fatal crises along the road, and it was always Wan Youzhi’s raw foresight that delivered the critical strategy to save their skins.
When their provisions ran dry, Wan Youzhi could pinpoint the exact coordinates of a hidden bunker and list its remaining inventory down to the last can. When they were swarmed by a rogue mutant horde, Wan Youzhi could identify the alpha zombie controlling the pack, giving them the exact leverage needed to turn a lethal enemy into an ally.
Case in point: even Chen Ke, a fully mutated zombie entity, had been successfully converted into one of their core operatives, entirely thanks to Wan Youzhi’s terrifying calculations.
