Shrouded Seascape

In response to Anna's question, the Shattered God on the television said, "I've found the memory-altering Anomaly that you need."

Anna stretched out her hand toward Gao Zhiming and pulled him closer to herself. "Good. Send someone to deliver it here. I need it now."

"We certainly want to do so, but it is in the hands of others. We'll need some time to obtain it," the bronze doll replied.

Anna was a bit annoyed as she replied, "We've had no contact for such a long time, and that's the news you have for me? It seems like I have grossly overestimated you."

Anna thought that their strength would at least match that of a Governor in the Subterranean Sea, but it seemed they couldn't even compare to some of the strong explorers back there.

"I don't understand why you think that your request is so easy to accomplish. Controllable Anomalies are already rare, let alone powerful ones that can alter memories. What are Anomalies in your eyes? Can they be found on the streets?"

Anna wanted to say that Anomalies could indeed be found on the streets of the Subterranean Sea, but she thought that it would be pointless, so she refrained from doing so.

"If you're here to deliver that news, then you're done. You can leave," Anna said, her voice carrying a hint of disdain.

The bronze doll on the television screen didn't disappear. Instead, it spoke once again, saying, "It's going to take us some time to obtain that kind of Anomaly, but we've fulfilled your other condition. They'll arrive at your city's port tomorrow morning."

"Are you talking about the ten Anomalies? You've collected them so quickly?" Tobba asked in surprise, spitting out his pacifier.

"If their threat level doesn't matter, Anomalies aren't that difficult to collect. As for how powerful they are, that's for you to judge—they're all difficult to handle, anyway."

With that, the bronze doll revealed a detailed map on the television screen. "Tomorrow morning at three o'clock, the container will be unloaded on Pier Two. The serial number is 59041."

The clown took out a camera and proceeded to take pictures of the map. Once it was done, the screen went black and white smoke drifted from the big-bottomed television.

"I finally got something to do. I was about to get sick from boredom." Anna stood up, accepting a black coat presented with both hands by a Fhtagnist.

Ten Anomalies each with an unknown special ability weren't that special back in the Subterranean Sea, but they were quite a significant force on the surface world.

At the very least, Anna could easily escape a pinch similar to what had happened on that ship with the help of those Anomalies.

As for whether absorbing those Anomalies would harm the human body or not, Anna wasn't concerned about that at all. After all, she wouldn't be the one absorbing them. As long as they could be absorbed, they were good enough.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Why are you leaving so early? They said three o'clock in the morning," Tobba said. He was sitting on the dining table as he looked up at the woman putting on her coat.

"You'd better think hard about how you can be useful to me. If you keep being useless, I might have to throw you out soon," Anna remarked.

Tobba seemed a bit anxious upon hearing that as he retorted, "How can you say that I'm useless! When you were dealing with that iron lump at the time, hadn't I used my special ability to let you know that there was no danger?

"Had anything happened afterward? Nothing happened, right?"

Anna was rendered speechless as she stared at Tobba. In the end, she turned around to leave with the Fhtagnist.

"Goodbye, Big Sister!" Gao Zhiming exclaimed. Smiling, he raised his hand holding a pair of chopsticks and waved it at Anna.

Just then, the quiet Li Lu stood up and said, "Anna, I have to tell you that the so-called Shattered God isn't as agreeable as you think. My clearance is too low to know anything significant about them, but I know that those who've dealt with them have never had a good outcome."

Anna merely glanced at Li Lu before opening the door and walking away.

The car door was slammed shut, and the driver looked up at Anna in the rearview mirror, asking, "High Priestess, where are we going?"

"Have you brought them over here?" Anna asked a seemingly unrelated question.

The Fhtagnist nodded slightly and replied, "Yes, we've arranged jobs for them with the help of the Wang Construction Group. They're all concentrated in this city, and they are ready to be brought in at any time."

"Let's go take a look," Anna said. She pulled a pair of sunglasses from her bag and put them on.

The black car wound through many turns before finally stopping next to an office building. The Fhtagnist pointed at someone. Anna followed his finger and saw her target.

The Fhtagnist was pointing at a slightly chubby middle-aged man. His fingers flew rapidly across the keyboard as he focused on his work. Clearly, he was taking his job seriously. He cherished the job, as it was a high-paying position that he had somehow stumbled upon just as he became unemployed out of the blue.

Anna compared him with Charles' father and noticed that except for a few differences, particularly in their body shape, the two looked identical to each other.

The middle-aged man was going to be Charles' designated father, and Charles' "mother" was nearby as well. There was also a similar pair living on the other side of the city.

Anna had prepared the two pairs of designated father and mother for Gao Zhiming. Once the memory-altering Anomaly had arrived, Anna was going to alter their memories to perfectly replicate Gao Zhiming's life on the surface world.

Anna had been planning on taking it slow, but she had realized that the child was growing increasingly attached to her.

To make matters worse, her own feelings for him were deepening as well; she felt a tinge of reluctance at the idea of erasing their memories together.

Anna hated this feeling, and she felt like she couldn't no longer delay it. The longer she waited, the more difficult it would be to correct any mistakes. Moreover, if the Shattered God's Anomaly proved useless, they'd need some time to find something else.

Anna put her fingers together and pushed her sunglasses back up her nose.

"Let's go see the other pair," she said.

Upon checking the two pairs, Anna began her preparations for what was to come later in the night. Worried that something might go wrong, Anna had decided to make sufficient preparations.

Fortunately, her concerns had proved to be unnecessary. They had no issues retrieving the ten Anomalies, both in solid and liquid form, from the container on the pier.

The bizarre special abilities of these ten Anomalies varied greatly. The Shattered God hadn't provided any detailed explanations about their special abilities, unlike what the IMF would do, but it was fine, as Anna wasn't going to use them herself.

Inside a sealed warehouse, Anna conducted the fusion ritual and proceeded to fuse the ten Anomalies into the Fhtagnists.

One person died on the spot while someone else disappeared with a miserable howl, but the relic fusion ritual had succeeded perfectly with the remaining eight Fhtagnists.

However, the words "succeeded perfectly" weren't exactly apropos.

A blonde and blue-eyed Fhtagnist standing before Anna had absorbed an Anomaly in the form of a sculpture depicting a black demon with a grotesque face.

Upon taking in the Anomaly's Origin Essence, the blonde and blue-eyed Fhtagnist stood motionless in the sea salt that had been reduced to a pile of ashes. She was frozen, seemingly becoming a sculpture herself as well.