The Baldness Incident

Bai held a transparent cup, carefully poking the trembling, crystal-clear object inside with her finger.

She hadn’t forgotten the advertisement she’d seen at the cat café.

Fulfilling Bai’s wish, Wei the Cat had bought her a large bag of jelly.

Bai stared at this suspected food for a long time.

She remembered the advertisement clearly; it claimed this was edible and looked incredibly delicious.

Yet, once the jelly was in her paws, and she recalled the intricate production process from its history, it didn’t look edible at all.

Still, it didn’t appear threatening.

Ultimately, curiosity triumphed over the cat’s natural caution.

Bai opened her mouth and took a bite.

“Hmm, soft, cool, and tasteless.”

Compared to the supposed deliciousness of jelly, Bai found poking it with her finger far more entertaining than actually eating it.

If given a choice for a snack, Bai would much rather gnaw on an apple.

She wasn’t particularly fond of it, but Bai was a good cat, and she had no habit of wasting food.

In Bai’s estimation, every morsel that could be eaten possessed a complex past, having undergone countless transformations to eventually fill a stomach.

Such a journey should not be taken for granted.

Truly awful things were an exception, of course.

Bai, in particular, condemned that cola which had mercilessly attacked a cat’s tongue.

Holding the bag of jellies, Bai distributed them to everyone she encountered on her way.

Most of these recipients were researchers, as her residence was closest to the research centers, apart from the stationed troops.

Every person who received Bai’s unexpected gift was overcome with flattery.

Those privy to the truth regarded Bai as an invaluable treasure.

Even those unaware of her full story, influenced by Bai’s unique qualities, found her to be an incredibly cute mascot, thanks to her endearing and reassuring aura.

What’s more, Bai still maintained her human form, not having reverted to a cat.

Who, after all, could refuse a gift from an adorable cat-eared loli?

However, whether she was a cat or not, it would not have mattered.

If she were in her feline form, surely no one would refuse a gift from a cat.

“She really likes jelly?” a previously introduced researcher stroked his chin, an idea beginning to form.

“Probably?”

“Like a child.”

“All children love jelly, don’t they?”

The researcher stroking his chin decided then and there to add some special ingredients to the jelly, creating a batch of custom-made jellies as a surprise gift for Bai.

Indeed, this was the very researcher who had once incapacitated an entire squad of cat-people.

He was affectionately known by his nickname: Catnip Crusader!

Bai was living a leisurely daily life at the General Bureau, but for now, let’s leave her to it.

Meanwhile, some members of the deployed cat-person squad finally received their first mission.[Chen Miao: We’ve finally encountered our first anomalous object!]

[Yun Juan: Oh? Do tell, meow.][Chen Miao: Just received the mission brief.]

[Chen Miao: Strange things have been happening in a nearby village.]

Chen Miao recounted the details slowly, as if narrating a horror story.[Chen Miao: What was once a tranquil and peaceful village experienced a sudden, terrifying change at the village chief’s house overnight.][Chen Miao: This anomaly has gradually begun to spread, leaving everyone in a state of panic, wondering if they might be the next victim.]

Although Chen Miao’s description sounded like a horror story, it brought a sigh of relief to the other cat-people.

The fact that she could still joke around indicated that this anomalous event was not severe.[Gao Xin: Specifically? What happened?]

[Chen Miao: Simply put, everyone went bald overnight.][Yun Juan: Meow?… Was it the Monkey King?]

[Chen Miao: Don’t know.][Chen Miao: According to preliminary investigations, aside from the baldness, there are no other anomalies in the village.][Chen Miao: No one has entered or left the village.]

[Chen Miao: The victims experience no discomfort other than their hair loss.][Chen Miao: The only unusual thing is that all the bald victims went completely bald overnight—not just their hair, but all their body hair broke off at the root, with no signs of cutting.]

[Chen Miao: But it’s better to be safe.][Chen Miao: We should still check it out, and it’s a good chance to test the Appraisal Technique.]

[Wei the Cat: Indeed, caution is paramount.][Wei the Cat: Anomalous objects are strangely elusive, and no one knows if there’s an underlying threat beneath the surface of this baldness.]

[Chen Miao: Mhmm, okay.][Chen Miao: The cat will be careful.]

[Chen Miao: We’ve arrived at the village.][Chen Miao: I’ll try to investigate first.][Chen Miao: Subsequent reports will keep you all updated, meow.]

[Ten Thousand Whys: Remember the technique for using Appraisal.]

Closing the panel before her, Chen Miao, having activated her Versatility, jumped out of the car.

They had reached their destination.

The village before her was unremarkable, consisting mostly of low-rise houses, small courtyards, vegetable patches, stacks of firewood, farm tools, and chickens, ducks, and stray dogs wandering about the paths.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Their identity for this mission was that of police officers, here to provide assistance and conduct an investigation for the frightened and helpless villagers.

Not just the villagers, but few people had ever experienced such strange occurrences.

Furthermore, for villagers who already held superstitious beliefs, even if it was just baldness, the unknown was always the root of fear.

The villagers, along with a large group of victims, greeted their arrival.

Chen Miao and her accompanying teammates found it difficult to maintain their composure as they faced the tall, muscular bald individuals, whose scalps gleamed with reflected light, standing before them like a gathering of gangsters—even their eyebrows were gone.

“Pfft… cough, cough.”

“Ahem, well, could you please explain what happened?”

Forcibly suppressing her laughter, Chen Miao, taking charge of the investigation as the expert, was the first to speak, asking a serious question.

The bald villagers looked left and right, then selected a representative to step forward and recount the specific events.

“Officer, you must help us!”

“We haven’t done anything bad, honestly.”

“Our family was the first to… to go bald.”

“That night, nothing happened.”

“The door was locked tight, the courtyard gate was securely shut.”

“No one came in.”

“When I woke up, my pillow was covered in hair, and it scared me quite a bit.”

“I looked in the mirror, and goodness, not to mention my hair, even my eyebrows were gone!”

His opening complaint immediately resonated with the equally bald villagers nearby, who began chattering, each narrating their own experiences.

The Team Leader listened, nodding as he went.

After hearing their grievances, he summarized several commonalities and shared them with his teammates.

Although the times of the incidents varied, their experiences were identical: they all went bald after a night’s sleep, with no one having entered their houses.

Some villagers, out of fear, had stayed awake all night, but nothing happened.

It was only when they finally slept that they went bald.

The victims were individuals.

Those who were away from the village were unaffected, but among those living in the village, the baldness struck without any discernible pattern.

It occurred at night, with sleep suspected as a trigger.

It was localized and showed no pattern, suggesting the influence of a large-scale object-type anomaly.

Chen Miao tapped her pen, appearing to be deep in thought, but she was actually relaying the events in the chat group.[Chen Miao: That’s roughly it.]

[Chen Miao: Any guesses, cats?]

[Yun Juan: Sounds like radiation…][Chen Miao: No, only baldness.]

[Chen Miao: No other effects.][Ten Thousand Whys: Did you ask the people who didn’t go bald, meow?]

[Ten Thousand Whys: Find the differences.]

‘Oh, right,’ Chen Miao thought, feigning a sudden realization.

She turned to the village chief and inquired, “By the way, are there any villagers who haven’t gone bald, meow?”

‘Ah, damn it, I accidentally used a verbal tic. Did anyone notice?’

She shrank her neck, cautiously glancing around.

Since it was just a brief ‘meow,’ it seemed no one had noticed her verbal tic.

Chen Miao breathed a sigh of relief.

The village chief recalled for a moment, then nodded hesitantly.

“Yes, now that you mention it, I remember.”

“Most of those who haven’t gone bald are elders and young children.”

Elders and young children?

Logically, for such a wide-ranging effect, the lack of pattern would usually be due to differing physical constitutions.

So why were the most physically vulnerable elders and children mostly unaffected?

Was it a characteristic of the anomalous object?

Not necessarily.

Chen Miao drew a large question mark over her theory of a wide-ranging object-type anomaly.

Besides these points, there was something else in the recent exchange that puzzled Chen Miao.

When recounting their stories, the majority of the villagers had uttered a particular phrase: “I haven’t done anything bad.”

This sounded almost like a guilty conscience, as if they had done something wrong in the past.

While it could simply be the villagers’ reverence for spirits and deities in the face of inexplicable phenomena, Chen Miao’s cat-like intuition suggested there was more to it.

A theory began to form in her mind.

To confirm it, Chen Miao decided to go deeper into the village and specifically question those who hadn’t gone bald, searching for commonalities.

As the village chief mentioned, most of the unaffected villagers were children and elders.

The elders typically stayed at home, or if they ventured out, they didn’t go far.

The children, on the other hand, spent their days climbing and scrambling everywhere—in the woods outside the village, by the river, and on the hillsides.

At first glance, there seemed to be no common ground, but when combined with age, it became very easy to understand.

People have social circles, and social circles often correlate with age, even in a small rural village like this.

Children played with other children, elders had their own social circle, and middle-aged adults often spent time together.

Chen Miao’s hypothesis was quite simple: if it wasn’t a wide-ranging anomalous object, then it was an anomalous object held by an individual, influencing those around them.

Alternatively, it could be an anomalous object that only affected specific age groups, but that possibility was less likely, so she set it aside for now.

If it was a single-person-held anomalous object, then the particular scope of influence made sense.

It could only affect people they frequently encountered in their daily lives.

This could also explain why, even though most of the bald individuals were middle-aged, a small number of children and elders were also affected.

Even with social circles, people didn’t completely avoid each other in their daily lives.

Therefore, it could be assumed that the culprit was either among the bald individuals they had just met, or among the few unaffected middle-aged people.

But what benefit would such an act bring?

This question led back to the sense of guilt she had observed earlier.

Chen Miao had seen similar cases in her files.

The previous incident involved a villager who had inadvertently acquired an anomalous object with minor side effects, then used it to intimidate other villagers, spreading rhetoric about the guilty being punished, and subsequently established a cult to amass wealth.

She suspected this case was similar and decided to proceed from that angle.

Chen Miao currently had no tail, otherwise, it would surely be standing proudly erect.

According to standard operating procedures, after identifying a suspect, further interrogation and searches would be required to locate the anomalous object, whose true nature was unknown.

After all, not all anomalous objects triggered reactions from anomaly detection devices, and not all branch offices possessed low-hazard hypnotic containment objects to aid in investigations.

For minor anomalies like these, the investigation and handling process was not much different from a police detective solving a case.

However, that was under normal circumstances.

What was Chen Miao’s purpose in coming here?

To use the Appraisal Technique!

With the investigation scope narrowed to this extent, Chen Miao could already start to ‘cheat.’

Propping her head with both hands, Chen Miao’s eyes glowed faintly, her pupils contracting.

When using other skills shared via the contract, the additional use of mental energy sometimes caused the transformation skill to partially fail.

Fortunately, the Appraisal Technique didn’t take long to use, and an excited Chen Miao deliberately sped up the process upon realizing she was still in front of others.

Yun Nan, standing nearby, rubbed his eyes.

Had he just seen something strange? Fluffy ears?