Zhang Anzai was at a loss. "Huh? What's wrong? What happened to the story? Is it scary? Then let's change the station. I'm actually pretty timid."
Chen Xing's tone remained calm and even. "It is scary. His companion got off at the next stop, and a ghost took his place."
Zhang Anzai didn't dare turn around to look, but suddenly he had the feeling that Chen Xing had turned his head and was staring straight at him.
"Friend, you got out just now too, didn't you?" Chen Xing suddenly asked in a cold voice.
"?" Zhang Anzai was stunned. What the hell does that mean? A ghost suspects I'm one?
Still, he did his best to appear calm. "Yeah, but I went to..."
He'd been about to explain, but soon realized what was going on and added, "Look, my heels can touch the ground."
He alternated between pressing the gas pedal with his left and right foot, stomping each foot against the floor of the car. Then he took a deep breath and reassured himself:
Forget all that. If this guy's trying to learn how to imitate people, I'd better prove myself right now, or I'm done for!
The radio story had reached the part where the protagonist tricked Wang Qiang into getting out of the car, smeared the wrench in his own car with blood from his tongue, and prepared to drive the ghost out by force.
He was afraid the ghost beside him would get too immersed in the story, take it for reality, and mistake him for a ghost to be exorcised.
But proving himself in time would raise another problem: in the story, the protagonist had an important reason for deciding Wang Qiang was a ghost.
Sure enough, after he stomped his feet, Chen Xing immediately asked, "What about your temperature?"
"Phew..." Zhang Anzai took a couple of deep breaths. Realizing he couldn't avoid this, he gritted his teeth and held out his right hand. "Feel it yourself."
In the story, the protagonist had accidentally touched Wang Qiang's hand and discovered that her hands and feet were ice-cold.
This is make-or-break. Either the ghost wants me to reach out, or nothing will happen.
Just as his heart leaped into his throat, Chen Xing's hand grabbed his in a distinctly clumsy way.
The pose was strange. Chen Xing only managed to grasp two of his fingers.
But nothing happened after that. Zhang Anzai was so scared that his hands and feet went stiff, but at least they were still warm.
And it wasn't just him. Chen Xing's hand was surprisingly warm too.
Before long, Chen Xing lowered his hand and returned to his silent, motionless state.
The story on the radio ended with the protagonist successfully exorcising the ghost and saving his friend.
When the car fell completely silent, Zhang Anzai finally spotted the gas station's white lights up ahead.
Mustering his courage, Zhang Anzai said, "Wait here for me, okay? I'm going inside for a bit."
Perhaps Chen Xing had learned another strange thing. He nodded obediently, then did nothing else.
Zhang Anzai yanked out the car keys as if fleeing for his life, grabbed his two notebooks and the hammer, slammed the car door, and rushed into the gas station.
Surrounded by fluorescent lights in a brightly lit place, Zhang Anzai took deep breaths, trying to recover from the mental strain caused by that eerie, long staring contest.
He looked around from side to side at the entrance to the gas station's convenience store. After confirming that Chen Xing was still sitting obediently in the car, he went inside and searched around.
"As I thought, he's gone... So that guy was the clerk from earlier?" Zhang Anzai guessed.
He'd come back to confirm this. It was a beginner-level, low-difficulty dungeon, and such dungeons usually didn't contain too many anomalies.
The ghostly loop, Chen Xing imitating a person—those were two anomalies. So the clerk should count as one of them.
Sure enough, the clerk had disappeared when he returned.
"Then this place should still be relatively safe." Zhang Anzai looked around the convenience store, searching for anything that might help him.
"The most urgent thing now... is figuring out what the hell that guy is."
He couldn't help feeling that his luck was terrible. After watching so many explorations, he'd hardly ever seen an existence as bizarre as Chen Xing. And yet he'd run into one in his second dungeon.
He'd just started looking around from beside the counter when Zhang Anzai spotted the security camera inside the store.
"Right, there's that."
The dashcam in the car could also help him find out what was strange about Chen Xing, but he was too close to him and didn't dare make a move.
The convenience store was empty now. Checking the surveillance footage here was a good idea.
Zhang Anzai decisively climbed over the counter, only to get the fright of his life. He quickly backed away several steps and pressed himself against the wall.
"Shit!"
Beneath the counter, a somewhat portly clerk in a baseball cap and uniform lay dead, with a knife wound in his body and blood pooled all around him.
He'd been dead for quite some time, but because of the angle, Zhang Anzai hadn't noticed him when he was here before.
Zhang Anzai did his best to stay calm. Keeping close to the wall and as far from the corpse as possible, he made his way to the inner door, then decisively raised the hammer. "Crack."
With one blow, Zhang Anzai smashed the doorknob off the door leading to the back. "The surveillance system should be in here..."
The doorknob and lock broke off, and the door slowly swung open. Inside was a heap of miscellaneous goods.
There was a mattress on the floor serving as a small bed, and, just as he'd expected, a surveillance computer with only one screen.
There wasn't another corpse waiting to jump out at him, but he soon discovered another problem: the computer had no power.
Zhang Anzai immediately went out to check and found that the problem was with the wiring. All the computer's cables inside the room were connected to the cash register over by the counter before running back into the room.
"No wonder the cash register wasn't getting any power..."
When the fat clerk fell, the knife he dropped had cut the wires hanging beneath the counter.
Zhang Anzai thought for a moment, then fought back his disgust and moved the corpse aside. He promptly opened his notebook and tore off a sheet of paper.
He summoned the True-Form Scissors, then skillfully cut a sheet of writing paper from the notebook.
"Nothing to lose by trying..." Zhang Anzai hadn't expected this. "I've practiced traditional paper-cutting for so long, and the first thing I cut is a wire!?"
Still, it had come in handy, and his training really had paid off.
Although he'd never practiced making wires, he could imitate their shape. Using the special perspective technique of paper-cutting, he cut copper wire on the inside and rubber insulation on the outside, creating a new-style paper-cutting that looked just like the real thing.
As long as the shape was similar, the True-Form Scissors could create anything, whether living or dead, ancient or modern.
Zhang Anzai tore off two more sheets of paper to wrap around his hands. Then he picked up the broken wire and hooked the paper wire onto one end, then the other.
"Snip!" Zhang Anzai cut away the last tiny flaw, and a thin black rubber-coated wire suddenly took shape.
"Bzz!" The cash register above him suddenly lit up.
Zhang Anzai immediately ran back into the room and adjusted the computer, which had indeed powered on.
The computer had opened to the surveillance software, which was showing footage from the first half of the night. The software had several panes, each displaying a different view.
They showed the fat clerk pumping gas into someone's car, working the register behind the counter, and locking the door to this little room before leaving.
Zhang Anzai quickly skipped ahead, searching through the footage. "If I remember right, this should be around the time I passed this convenience store..."
Before you continue