You're Cutting a Very New Kind of Paper

Zhang Anzai was somewhat at a loss. "Huh? What's wrong? What's wrong with this story? Is it very scary? If so, let's change the station quickly; I'm actually quite a coward."

Chen Xing's tone remained flat, devoid of any fluctuation as he stated, "It is scary. A companion gets off the car, and then they are replaced by a ghost."

Zhang Anzai didn't dare to turn around and look, but he suddenly felt as if Chen Xing had turned his head and was staring straight at him.

"Friend, you got off the car earlier too, didn't you?" Chen Xing suddenly said in an icy tone.

"?" Zhang Anzai was stunned. What the hell does that mean? Am I being suspected by a ghost?

However, he still tried his best to appear calm and replied, "Yeah, but I only went to..."

He originally wanted to explain further, but Zhang Anzai quickly realized something and then said, "Look, my heels can touch the ground."

He alternated his feet on the gas pedal, stomping each one inside the car, and then took a deep breath, comforting himself in his heart:

Forget it, if this guy is just learning and imitating, and I don't prove myself immediately, I'm done for!

In the radio story, the plot had already reached the point where the protagonist tricked Wang Qiang into getting out of the car, smeared tongue-tip blood on a wrench, and prepared to physically exorcise the ghost.

He was afraid that the ghost beside him would get too immersed in the story, identify with it, and try to eliminate him as if he were the ghost.

However, proving himself in time would lead to another problem: the protagonist in the story had a very important basis for confirming that Wang Qiang was a ghost.

Sure enough, after he stomped his feet, Chen Xing immediately asked, "And what about the temperature?"

"Hoo, hoo..." Zhang Anzai took two deep breaths, realizing he had nowhere to hide, and gritted his teeth as he extended his right hand. "Touch it yourself."

In the story, the protagonist had accidentally brushed hands with Wang Qiang and discovered that her hands and feet were ice-cold.

This is it—do or die. Either this ghost is just trying to lure me into reaching out, or I'll be safe.

Just as his heart jumped into his throat, Chen Xing's hand grabbed his with a rather awkward motion.

The posture was strange; it only gripped two of his fingers.

However, nothing happened afterward. Zhang Anzai was so scared his limbs had gone stiff, but at the very least, he still had body heat.

Not only him, but Chen Xing's hand was actually reasonably warm as well.

Soon, Chen Xing let go of his hand and returned to that silent, motionless state.

The story on the radio ended with the protagonist successfully exorcising the ghost and saving his friend.

As silence completely enveloped the car, Zhang Anzai finally saw the white lights of a gas station ahead.

Zhang Anzai gathered his courage and said, "Wait for me here, okay? I'm going inside for a moment."

Whether he had learned something strange again or not, Chen Xing nodded quite obediently and did nothing else.

Zhang Anzai pulled out the car keys as if fleeing for his life, grabbed the two notebooks and the hammer, slammed the car door shut, and rushed into the gas station.

In this bright environment surrounded by fluorescent lights, Zhang Anzai panted heavily, recovering his mental state which had been damaged by the eerie long-distance mirror earlier.

He looked around the entrance of the gas station convenience store, confirmed that Chen Xing was indeed sitting obediently in the car, and then searched the interior.

As expected, he's gone... So that guy, was he the clerk from earlier? Zhang Anzai speculated.

He had returned here specifically to confirm this; in a beginner-level, easy-difficulty instance, there usually wouldn't be too many anomalies.

The ghost wall and the human-imitating Chen Xing—with those two present, that clerk should be categorized as one of the anomalies.

Sure enough, upon returning, the clerk was gone.

"Then it should be relatively safe here for now." Zhang Anzai scanned the convenience store, looking for anything that might help him.

"The top priority now... is to figure out what kind of ghost that guy actually is."

He couldn't help but lament his bad luck. Having watched so many explorations, he had basically never seen an existence as bizarre as Chen Xing, yet he had run into one in his very second instance.

Just as he leaned against the counter to look around, Zhang Anzai locked eyes with the surveillance camera in the room.

"Right, there's this thing."

Actually, checking the dashcam in the car was also a way to discover Chen Xing's clues, but since he was too close to that guy, Zhang Anzai didn't dare to act rashly.

Now that there was no one in the convenience store, checking the surveillance here was a good method.

Zhang Anzai decisively vaulted over the counter, only to be startled, quickly retreating several steps until he hit the wall.

"Damn it!"

Right beneath the counter, a somewhat chubby clerk wearing a baseball cap and uniform lay dead, having been stabbed once, with blood pooled all over the floor.

The man had been breathless for a long time, but due to the angle, Zhang Anzai hadn't noticed him at all during his previous visit.

Zhang Anzai forced himself to stay calm, hugging the wall to stay as far away from the corpse as possible as he headed toward the inner door, then decisively raised his hammer. Clack.

Zhang Anzai smashed the doorknob of the inner door leading to the back in one go.

The doorknob shattered along with the lock, and the door popped open, revealing countless piles of miscellaneous goods.

Inside, there was a mattress placed directly on the floor serving as a bed, and as expected, a surveillance computer with only one screen.

There was no jump-scare corpse here, but he soon discovered another problem: the computer had no power.

Zhang Anzai decisively went back out to check and found it was a wiring issue; the various cables for the computer inside were actually connected to the cash register at the counter before being routed back in.

"No wonder that cash register didn't have any power earlier..."

As the fat clerk collapsed to the ground, the falling knife happened to sever the electrical wires hanging beneath the counter.

Zhang Anzai pondered for a moment, suppressing his nausea as he first moved the corpse aside, then decisively flipped open the notebook and tore off a sheet of paper.

He summoned the True-Form Scissors and skillfully began to cut the paper from the notebook.

Might as well treat a dead horse as a living one... Zhang Anzai had never expected this: "I've practiced traditional paper-cutting for so long, and the first thing I actually cut is an electrical wire!?"

Still, it counted as being useful in the end, and his training had certainly paid off.

Even for something like an electrical wire, which he had never practiced before, he could mimic its form. Through the special perspective technique of paper-cutting, he cut the copper wire on the inside and the rubber casing on the outside, artificially creating a new-style paper cutout that resembled the real thing.

As long as the image was similar, whether it was living or dead, ancient or modern, the True-Form Scissors could manifest it.

Zhang Anzai tore two more sheets of paper to pad his palms, then grabbed the broken wires, hooked the paper wire he had cut onto one end, and then the other.

"Click!" Zhang Anzai snipped off the final imperfection, and a thin, black-rubberized electrical wire suddenly took shape.

"Zzzzt!" The cash register above suddenly lit up.

Zhang Anzai decisively ran back into the room and began adjusting the computer, which had indeed powered on.

The computer, with its surveillance software open, was paused on the playback from the first half of the night. The software displayed several split screens, playing different scenes.

They showed the chubby clerk refueling a car, collecting money at the counter, and finally locking the door to this small room before walking out.

Zhang Anzai decisively scrubbed backward, searching rapidly: "If I remember correctly, before I passed by this convenience store, it should have been at this time..."