Chapter 261: Home

Zhang Wenda slowly made his way home, thinking about what had just happened.

'Looks like getting Old Tan to use his Third Line connections to figure out why I got two red rewards is a bust. In the end, I'll have to handle it myself.'

Then again, it wasn't like he had high hopes in the first place. It was just a shot in the dark. More importantly, his hands were itching for a fight, and he really wanted to punch Tan Yougen.

"Sigh, too bad. The old bastard learned his lesson. He's actually on guard against me now."

"1999... 1999..." Zhang Wenda muttered, then began to mull over the information he'd just received.

'I've been in this world for so long, and this bizarre place is finally showing me the tip of the iceberg. At least not everything is a complete mystery anymore.'

'The one silver lining is that Bureau 507 is actually getting things done, not just resting on its laurels, rigid and bogged down in bureaucracy.'

Still, for Zhang Wenda at the moment, the information was of little use beyond satisfying his curiosity.

'It was obvious that finding 1999 or fighting the so-called Lizard People who knew its location had nothing to do with me, at least not anytime soon.'

Even if Old Tan ordered him to take on such a mission, he'd find a way to get out of it. Zhang Wenda had never forgotten his true purpose for joining Bureau 507: to kill Qianxi.

'But to get my revenge, I need my own Current, at the very least. First of all, my path of advancement clearly has a problem now. There's too much red. I have to find some blue to balance it out, and fast.'

But how was he supposed to find "blue"? That was the question. And another worry gnawed at him.

'Red, blue... if things follow a logical pattern, the next one should be yellow. But what if I search and search, only to find another red? What would I do then?'

'Just this one extra "red" is already having a huge impact on my emotions. If I get another one, won't I completely lose control and become a homicidal maniac, killing anyone I see?'

As he dwelled on it, he grew more and more agitated. The rage inside him began to boil over, and he had to repeatedly force down the urge to kill the pedestrians walking past him.

By the time he dragged his exhausted body to the door, pulled out his key, and opened it, he thought for a second he'd come to the wrong house.

The ceiling, which should have been white, was completely blanketed in black cats. At a glance, it looked as if the apartment had been given a bizarre, furry renovation.

Zhang Wenda immediately rounded on Song Jianguo, who was watching TV. "Jianguo! What do you think you're doing? Didn't I tell you to leave the cats in the park? How are we supposed to live here with over a hundred thousand of them in the house?"

Watching a Coke commercial on TV, Song Jianguo lifted her can and took a long drink, her cat ears twitching happily. "Are you blind? Does this look like a hundred thousand cats to you? There are a few hundred at most, okay!"

"Can't you just put them all outside?" Zhang Wenda tossed his keys into the wicker basket by the door after greeting Hu Maomao on the sofa with a jut of his chin.

"Of course not. They stand guard while we sleep, and they have other great uses, too."

Song Jianguo said with a triumphant grin, then proceeded to show off for Zhang Wenda. "Sky Cat Genie, close the window for me!"

At her words, with a chorus of MEOWS, a cat near the curtains on the ceiling stretched out a paw and pulled them shut.

"Sky Cat Genie, I'm a little cold." A large clump of cats dropped from the ceiling, draping themselves over her shoulders like a warm blanket.

"Sky Cat Genie, now I'm hot." The black cats on the ceiling rapidly reconfigured themselves into an electric fan and began to spin with a whir of MEOWS.

"Sky Cat Genie, take out the trash." A humanoid figure made of black cats promptly detached itself from the ceiling, grabbed the trash bag overflowing with snack wrappers, and headed for the door.

When she was done showing off, Song Jianguo looked at Zhang Wenda proudly. "So? Pretty amazing, right? I learned it from watching TV!"

"Amazing? What's so amazing about it? You should try learning something decent from TV for a change. Are you using the Black Cats to cosplay as black slaves?"

Zhang Wenda walked over to the sofa and dropped onto it. The familiar comfort of his surroundings helped to settle his mood.

Zhang Wenda was enormous, so when he sat down and spread his legs, he squished Hu Maomao right into Song Jianguo's lap.

Hu Maomao didn't seem to mind, though. She just settled against Song Jianguo and asked, "So? What did Old Tan say?"

"Not great. It's a long story." Zhang Wenda then gave them the condensed version of events.

"1999..." Hu Maomao murmured, falling into deep thought. The news had clearly shaken her.

"Ah, let's not get bogged down by that. Let Old Tan and his crew get a headache over the big stuff. We should be thinking about how to find 'blue.'"

As he spoke, Zhang Wenda snatched the Coke from Song Jianguo and, over her gasp of protest, chugged the entire can.

"Is there any way to ask your teacher?" Hu Maomao suggested. "Maybe he knows how to handle your current situation."

Zhang Wenda shook his head. He crushed the empty Coke can in his hand into a small metal ball as if it were paper, then flicked it toward the ceiling, where the black cats immediately started fighting over it.

"No chance. When he was teaching me, he treated it like a nine-to-five job. We didn't even exchange numbers when he left. I'm not even sure he owns a cell phone."

It had been a long, draining day. First, dealing with Tang Xingxiong, then the matter with Qianxi, and now this conversation with Hu Maomao after getting home... Zhang Wenda was both exhausted and sleepy.

He yawned, his eyelids suddenly feeling heavy as lead.

Just then, Hu Maomao stood up and headed for the door. "You get some sleep. I'll ask around the archives department for you, but don't get your hopes up."

"Mmm..." The sound barely escaped him as he slowly closed his eyes.

"What do you want for dinner? I can grab you something from the cafeteria."

But Zhang Wenda didn't hear her. The moment his eyes shut, he was fast asleep. Perhaps because he had finally enacted a part of his great revenge, he slept more soundly than he had in a long time.

When he opened his eyes again, it was already the next morning.

He found himself in his bed, though he'd fallen asleep on the sofa. Curled up in a ball on his chest was the incredibly flexible Song Jianguo, rising and falling with each of his breaths.

A long-cold meal sat on the bedside table, with a note resting on top. "Heat it up in the microwave."

"What time is it? How long was I asleep?" Zhang Wenda mumbled, pulling out his phone and struggling to swipe the screen.

Luckily, Third Line phones were designed to be exceptionally durable for combat; otherwise, his sharp fingertips would have shredded the screen long ago.

The moment he unlocked it, he saw over a dozen missed calls. He assumed they were from Hu Maomao, but the name on the screen was Jia Junpeng.

'Him?' Zhang Wenda froze for a second, staring at the ridiculous contact icon.

'That's right! How could I have forgotten about him? For something like this, why not ask the god-tier trolls on the forums?'