Shrouded Seascape

Upon hearing Anna's words, the clown shrugged and placed the hat back on its head.

The wound was connected to a brand-new hand, so there were no more wounds, which meant there was no risk of excessive blood loss. However, it also meant that Anna had her one and only weapon—her very own bone.

Noticing Anna's troubled look, the clown crossed its hands, and a tiny flying knife used for popping balloons in the circus appeared in its hand.

It then placed the tiny flying knife into the hat, causing it to triple in size, transforming into a dagger.

"It's fine as long as it's usable. Follow me. We must climb up the floors. That thing must have affected something, so this could be our only chance to escape," Anna said, and she wasted no more time. Her figure vibrated at a speed imperceptible to the human eye before jumping to the floor up above.

Level -15, Level -14, and Level -13. The sights Anna witnessed on each floor made her heart sink. Everything seemed to have turned back in time, returning to their conditions prior to Anna's escape.

The bizarre phenomenon affected not only the objects she had destroyed but the people as well. Just a few moments ago, the man that Anna had consumed to satisfy her hunger had somehow come back to life and had run past her.

His heart is in my stomach right now, so how did he come back to life?! But if I hadn't eaten him, how come I'm still full? Anna thought. She then burrowed into a containment cell on the right and saw the faceless woman from earlier. She was still in a straitjacket and could not move at all.

If she's back, then doesn't that mean… Anna's heart thumped wildly against her chest. She rapidly shuttled through the walls and finally arrived at Level -8, where her containment cell was located.

Upon entering the monitoring room, she was stunned to find her own figure on the massive screen in the room.

Anna was covering her nose with an agonized look, and her face was flushed red from the exertion of holding her breath. Despite her suffering, she still showed no intention of yielding to the IMF.

Anna was familiar with that scene, as it had happened an hour ago!

Anna instantly realized what had transpired. She was still unsure about the abilities of the Anomaly on the bottommost level, but one thing was for sure—it was capable of traversing time and space.

Upon breaching containment, it traveled back in time to an hour ago, bringing Anna and the clown with it.

Staring at the incongruous scene before her, Anna suddenly thought of a plan.

Since there was another Anna suffering in this timeline, didn't that mean she was free? No one was aware of her presence, so she could take advantage of that and leave without leaving a trace.

Anna disregarded what was going on and continued her ascent. If she wanted to leave, now was the best opportunity to do so. Her other self down below would surely cause a commotion soon, and it would be the perfect time for her to seize an aircraft.

Anna reached Level -3 without any issues, but she could not continue her ascent.

The massive hole from earlier had reappeared above her head, and it covered every floor up above. Everything around it had disintegrated, and there were a variety of objects floating endlessly in the middle of the hole.

Compared to what she had encountered earlier, the living beings inside this massive hole seemed unaware of what was happening to them. They were doing whatever they were doing repetitively.

Li Lu, clutching her large belly, walked through a door and emerged from another. Then, she did that again and again.

A combat team member opened his mouth and spat a mouthful of coffee back into his cup. He laughed heartily for a few moments before drinking his coffee again and spitting it out to continue the same routine.

It wasn't just the staffers of this site. People wearing goggles and thick cold-resistant clothing were walking upside down against the frigid world outside right before the gazes of Anna and the clown.

"Roar!

" A polar bear stood up and roared. It collided with Roy, and the distance between the two widened in an instant.

"What in the world... is this...?" Anna realized that she had misunderstood that Anomaly's abilities. Its ability was definitely not as simple as traversing time and space; it was something far stranger and bizarre than that.

If asked to describe what the Anomaly was, however, Anna wouldn't be able to provide an answer. She could only guess that she was witnessing an interweaving of events from both the future and the past.

While Anna was thinking about how to navigate the bizarre scene before her and reach the airport, her eyes clapped on a rotting turtle with colorful crystals attached to its shell. It was crawling slowly below the hole.

It would sometimes glance at the cavity up above with a terrified gaze before frantically crawling toward a dark corner.

That turtle can see it? Anna's heart was filled with joy. She rushed toward the turtle, sticking as close as possible to the ground in her approach.

The corrosive flames scorched the turtle, forcing it to retract its limbs and take cover in its shell. The turtle's lack of resistance allowed Anna to absorb it as easily as taking candy from a baby.

She disemboweled the turtle using the dagger in her hand, and the turtle's pitch-black Origin Essence was taken out of the shell. Anna drew the array on the ground using sea salt.

Colorful crystals sprouted all over Anna. Immediately afterward, around eight interconnected pupils squeezed into Anna's right eye.

Anna's eyelids adorned with long lashes blinked gently, and she found that the world around her had transformed into their own independent colors. The air had transformed into their own independent colors, and the same went for the light.

Until now, Anna had no idea that the world was actually so colorful. However, Anna could still remember the reason she absorbed the turtle. She looked up and stared at everything up above.

Amidst the chaos, Anna finally saw the "Indescribable."

It was a dark yellow object covering an area equivalent to four football fields. If one were forced to make a comparison, one would most likely say that it resembled a series of nested bubbles.

However, Anna couldn't discern which bubble was inside and which was outside. It was a logic-defying scene, and it made Anna feel as if she were staring at an optical illusion.

Of course, she knew that she was not under any illusion. She was staring at something real, and it was right before her.

The enormous bubbles wandered in the air; their transparent, dark yellow figures devoured everything in their path. Whenever it devoured an object or even a fraction of the space before it, a temporal disturbance would be made.

Once the bubbles had departed, those left behind would always decrease or increase for some reason. Anna recalled something just then. She grabbed the pile of ashes left behind by the turtle and tossed it toward the hole.

The ashes coalesced in the air and were immediately subjected to the influence of the bubbles. Green flames manifested, and the turtle was revived. The next second, the turtle was engulfed by corrosive green flames, becoming a pile of ashes once again.