Sequence Beyond: My Wife is a Mysterious Boss

"Seven hours left."

Lin Bai glanced at his phone, his eyes instantly sharpening, and his previous dejection vanished.

He strode toward the elevator, his finger about to press the button, when his movement suddenly froze.

A sharp pain suddenly shot through my forehead!

[Maliciousness Detection]

You will feel a stinging pain between your eyebrows when someone treats you with malice.

Lin Bai suddenly turned around.

The dimly lit stairwell was deserted; there wasn't a soul in sight.

But he could clearly sense that several pairs of eyes were staring intently at him from the shadows at the end of the corridor, behind the peephole, and even from the gaps between the piles of broken cardboard boxes in the stairwell.

That was blatant greed.

Like a pack of wolves that have been starving for three days, staring at a piece of braised pork that has just come out of the pot.

"Damn it..." Lin Bai cursed inwardly.

"So, it's no secret that I'm a living person in this neighborhood? All those kind-looking old men and women are actually holding back their saliva as they greet me every day?"

What kind of hellish difficulty start is this?!

The elevator doors opened.

Lin Bai braced himself and went inside.

As the elevator descended, the stinging sensation between my eyebrows intensified with each floor it dropped.

The stinging sensation reached its peak the moment I stepped out of the apartment building and stood in the central garden of the community!

It was 11 p.m., but the neighborhood was bustling with activity.

An old man playing chess under a tree, children swinging back and forth on a swing, and a few middle-aged women walking their dogs.

The moment Lin Bai appeared, all movements paused for a split second in unison.

Countless eyes were focused on him.

"Hey, Kobayashi, where are you going so late?"

An older woman walking her dog spoke up; the "Teddy" at her feet was grinning, revealing two rows of serrated, sharp teeth.

Lin Bai felt like his brow was about to explode.

In the past, he would have been so frightened that he would have knelt down on the spot and become a buffet for these neighbors.

But now—

A hint of impatience flashed across Lin Bai's face, his brows furrowed, and he exuded a sense of dejection, as if he had been crushed by life.

He tightened his coat, waved at the older woman, and his tone was full of resentment:

"Buying medicine! What bad luck, I cut my hand, it hurts like hell. Are you out for a walk, ma'am? See you later!"

After saying that, he completely ignored the creepy stares around him and strode through the crowd with an arrogant and unapproachable air, cursing and swearing.

"This damn weather is so cold, even the streetlights are broken..."

He muttered to himself as he walked, his eyes fixed straight ahead, as if the drooling monsters around him were nothing but air.

Behind him, a sticky, glue-like malice almost overwhelmed him, but nothing actually pounced on him.

As long as he doesn't break his public persona and maintains his status as "an ordinary resident of this community," the rules will be his shield.

It's like a large-scale immersive horror play.

Although the audience wanted to rush onto the stage and devour him, no one could overturn the table before the final curtain call.

......

Finally, I took that step out of the community gate.

The feeling of being pricked between the eyebrows vanished instantly, as if the power had been cut off.

Lin Bai paused, turning back with some surprise to look at the faded and peeling signboard of "Happy Home".

a step far.

Inside lies a den of malice raging within, while outside... all is calm and peaceful?

The streets were bustling with traffic, and the neon lights were blindingly bright.

The delivery guy riding his electric scooter looked like he was in Formula 1, and couples occasionally strolled by hand in hand, everything seemed so normal.

Lin Bai tentatively stared at a passerby.

There was no reaction between his eyebrows.

[Maliciousness Detection] Not triggered.

"Interesting..." Lin Bai narrowed his eyes, his brain working at a rapid pace.

Does that mean only the ones in the neighborhood are haunted?

Are all the people on the street outside normal?

No, it's impossible.

The parchment clearly stated that everyone in the city, except for him, was strange.

In the previous death records, the three police officers who rushed from outside the community mutated faster than anyone else.

So there's only one truth—

Only the eerie creature in "Happy Home" knows he is alive and is extremely greedy for him.

The "things" outside had no idea who he was.

As long as he doesn't court death and self-destruct, in their eyes, he's one of their own.

Having figured this out, Lin Bai felt a little more confident.

He could navigate the neighborhood with ease thanks to his con artist skills; now that he's out in the open, isn't he free to roam the world?

To verify his suspicions and to leave this troublesome place as soon as possible, he simply hailed a taxi.

"Squeak—"

A green taxi stopped in front of me.

Lin Bai opened the passenger door and found someone already slumped in the back seat.

Dressed in a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase, his face was deathly pale, and his dark circles looked like he'd been punched twice. He looked like a corporate slave who had been brutally beaten down by life.

"Hey bro, wanna carpool?"

The driver was a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and huge eye bags that could hold coins. He was shaking his leg as he spoke.

"Take this guy to the Central Hospital first, is it on the way? If not, wait for the next one."

At this point, the next bus might not be available for a while.

"It's on my way, I'm going that way too. Let's share a ride, I'll pay you as usual."

Lin Bai calmly got into the passenger seat, closed the door, and fastened his seatbelt, his movements fluid and effortless.

"Alright, sit tight."

The driver stepped on the gas, and the car darted into the traffic.

The train car was playing a midnight radio program, its static crackling as it broadcast news that a certain area had been designated a restricted zone.

Lin Bai leaned back in his seat, observing the person and the ghost inside the car through the rearview mirror... or rather, the two ghosts.

That's too "normal".

The driver swayed his head to the music and even picked his nose while the light was red.

The office worker in the back seat looked out the window with a look of utter despair, sighing every now and then.

If Lin Bai hadn't known the truth, he would have thought he had escaped alive.

After driving for a few minutes, the young man in the back seat suddenly loosened his tie and swore:

"What the hell, another one of our employees has died."

Lin Bai's ears twitched slightly.

The driver in front, clearly a chatterbox, immediately chimed in with the tone of a bystander: "What? That lunatic again?"

"That's right." The young man's voice was filled with an barely suppressed fear.

"Right next to my workstation. A perfectly healthy person suddenly started tearing at their own face, saying there were bugs under their skin..."

"You didn't see that scene. Blood spurted like a fountain, all over the walls. I don't know what's wrong with this world."

Madness? Tearing off one's face?

Lin Bai listened calmly, his fingers lightly tapping his knees.

Although his face remained expressionless, he was mentally recording their conversation.

"Sigh, this illness is strange." The driver shook his head, lowered his voice, and acted mysteriously.

"I heard several places in the city have been sealed off, I wonder if it's related to this madness. But let me tell you something amazing, do you know that Happy Home in the west of the city?"

"That's where this guy just got on the bus."

Lin Bai's fingers, which were tapping his knee, suddenly stopped.

"Yeah, I know, so what?" asked the young man in the back row.

"That's what's so weird!" The driver swallowed hard.

"The whole city is ravaged by madness, even the mayor's family has been affected. But that Happy Home community, within a two-kilometer radius, is famously clean! Not a single person has fallen ill!"

"I have a relative who works the night shift. He said he once saw a mentally ill patient go crazy and run in that direction."

"And guess what? As soon as he reached the outside of the community wall, he was so terrified, it was like he'd seen some kind of hellish being, that he immediately knelt down and kowtowed!"

"Even if they knocked their brains out, they wouldn't dare take a single step inside!"

Lin Bai's pupils suddenly contracted.

Even crazed monsters dare not approach?

"Holy crap, this is way too far-fetched!" The young man in the back row was clearly skeptical.

"But speaking of which, haven't there been rumors lately that the higher-ups have launched some kind of god-making project? They say it's going to open the door to a new world."

"Tch—" The driver chuckled dismissively, looking as if he had seen through the illusions of the world.

"Creating a god? I think that's creating a disaster. You actually believe in such a baseless and unfounded thing?"

"If you ask me, we're just working people, living one day at a time. If the world really ends, the tall ones will be the ones holding it up."

The conversation between the two continued, and the content became increasingly outrageous.

But Lin Bai gleaned from their conversation...

Madness, forbidden zones, happy homes, god-making projects...

Various clues spun rapidly in my mind like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

He suddenly realized that his perspective had been too narrow.

He thought all the strange occurrences in the city were targeting him, a living person.

However, it seems that the outside world, though strange, maintains a delicate "order".

But the "happy home" he lived in was, in the eyes of these monsters, the real one—

Forbidden Zone of Life.