The surroundings had once again become familiar: endless plains and forests, night so dark it seemed impenetrable, and the gas station that appeared ahead after they had been driving for a while.
It had the same layout, stood in the same place, and even the few trees around it looked nearly identical. One glance was enough for Zhang Anzai to confirm it was the gas station he had visited before.
But Zhang Anzai didn't waste his energy panicking. He silently checked the time on his phone, then drove right past the gas station.
He did his best to calm himself and accept the fact that there was something strange sitting beside him.
"There's no escaping it, and getting worked up won't help. So let's give this a try..." Zhang Anzai kept driving and occasionally tried out little things.
For instance, he unscrewed a bottle cap and drank some water while driving. He also checked his phone, which was just a useless brick without a signal.
No matter what he did, Chen Xing barely reacted.
"But this kind of monster's abilities would naturally include learning and imitation."
After Zhang Anzai had driven for a while longer, he saw that Chen Xing had learned to unscrew a bottle and drink from it. He could also operate the phone.
He even seemed to have taught himself a few extra tricks. Zhang Anzai saw him pick up the phone and take a picture of the pitch-black view outside the window. Then he took a biscuit from the storage compartment and ate it.
He just wasn't very good at any of it yet.
When taking the picture, he completely covered the phone's camera lens with one hand. When eating the biscuit, he simply stuffed it into his mouth and swallowed it without even chewing. Somehow, he didn't choke.
Zhang Anzai could see all of this only by the faint light from the car's low beams filtering into the cabin.
And because he was watching Chen Xing on the sly, he couldn't make out the details. Chen Xing's behavior—humanlike, but not quite human—seemed even more bizarre.
"This isn't good news..." Zhang Anzai had tried those things because he knew nothing about the strange creature beside him.
But doing that wasn't going to help him figure out Chen Xing's behavior. Instead, the sudden learning and progress made him feel uneasy.
Zhang Anzai worried that once the creature beside him had learned enough, it would kill him and take his place.
Wasn't that the most common pattern for these humanlike monsters?
With that nagging fear in the back of his mind, Zhang Anzai soon saw the Highway 45 sign up ahead again.
He immediately took out his phone and started recording with his left hand as he drove past the sign.
As expected, when he looked in the rearview mirror again, the sign had vanished.
"At a steady eighty or ninety, it takes a little over an hour to reach the gas station after passing the Highway 45 sign. It also takes a little over an hour to get from the gas station back to the sign."
Zhang Anzai had made the trip specifically to confirm he was trapped on a looping road, and he'd also worked out roughly how long the loop was.
By now, he was back at the starting point again.
This time, he didn't rush to set off. Instead, he tried turning around and driving the other way.
As soon as he turned around, he saw the intersection he'd passed earlier—the one where someone had been burning paper.
"Now I just need to find out what happens if I drive this way."
There was no one there now, but as the car passed the intersection, Zhang Anzai turned his head and clearly saw the ashes from the burnt paper scattered on the grass beside the road.
"Phew..." Zhang Anzai glanced at Chen Xing out of the corner of his eye. Chen Xing hadn't made a move.
That was good. But a bad sign followed right after: this time, he'd driven for only a few minutes before passing the intersection again.
"So both ends of this road... eventually lead back to the spot where the road from this intersection reaches the gas station." His test was over. Zhang Anzai immediately turned around and headed for the gas station.
There were still a few directions he hadn't tried, of course—the surrounding plains.
But even setting aside the monsters and other supernatural elements of the instance, the wasteland around him was no place to drive. His ordinary sedan might fall apart before he got far, or he might get bounced around until he threw up.
Besides, judging by his experience with other instances involving ghostly loops, that kind of solution was almost certainly out of the question.
The monster beside him was quiet, but it kept learning. Zhang Anzai wasn't brave enough to waste time.
"There's only one thing left to confirm..." He floored it and drove toward the gas station as fast as he could.
"Friend."
Zhang Anzai jumped. The thing he'd been afraid of had happened: Chen Xing had suddenly spoken.
"Hmm? What is it?" Zhang Anzai answered as calmly as he could, thinking, Has he evolved enough to talk so naturally now?
"Can I... listen to this?" Chen Xing pointed at the radio, though he seemed unable to remember what it was called.
Zhang Anzai forced his fear-fogged thoughts to start moving again. "Uh... sure."
He immediately turned on the radio and tuned it to a music station.
In the 2000s, rock music in China had still been going strong. Cui Jian's rough voice came through the radio.
Zhang Anzai was still young, but for some reason he liked music from that era. Normally, listening to Cui Jian while driving would have put him in a pretty good mood.
But how am I supposed to get into it now...? After he changed the station, an eerie silence settled over the car. The old-school rock only made the strange quiet inside the car more unsettling.
"The one from before." Chen Xing spoke briefly, his tone odd.
Zhang Anzai frowned, looking rather perplexed, but did as he asked and switched back.
A slightly hoarse male host's voice came through: "I immediately sensed that something was off about Wang Qiang, who was beside me. Ever since he got out of the truck to use the restroom, he seemed to have suddenly become unfamiliar with the cargo truck we were in..."
That's right. Chen Xing had wanted to switch to the Midnight Stories channel.
"Damn it, this station is bad enough, but why does this story sound so familiar!?" Zhang Anzai gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were turning white.
In the story the male host was telling, Wang Qiang was driving alongside the protagonist. After he went to use the restroom, it seemed a ghost possessed him. His hands and feet were cold, his heels didn't touch the ground, he spoke strangely, and he swallowed his food whole.
"Isn't this exactly like what's happening to me right now?" This time, Zhang Anzai didn't care at all whether the story contained any clues.
He was only worried that Chen Xing was deliberately using the story to mess with him, and that he'd already evolved into something almost fully human. Or maybe the story would set him off and make him reveal his true form, then kill Zhang Anzai.
Just as he was worrying about it, Chen Xing suddenly spoke. "This story..."
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