Crack! A large chunk of asphalt broke apart and he quickly tossed it aside. Zhang Anzai took a look and saw that the not particularly thick concrete base beneath it had been smashed to pieces too.
He felt an indescribable surge of strength welling up through his whole body, and promptly started pounding away with one hand, again and again.
There really was a thin layer of concrete underneath, but this stretch of road was so remote, and Commissioner Wang, who'd approved the project, probably hadn't exactly skimped on his meals. The road hadn't been built to a very high standard, and the concrete beneath it wasn't thick.
Crack, crack, crack... Zhang Anzai swung the ram's-horn hammer with his enhanced body. Though the hammer had already been worn smooth in several places, he easily broke through to the compacted earth below.
Crack! Zhang Anzai started digging into the soil with the hammer, but suddenly hit something brittle. When he spotted a little patch of grayish white poking out of the dirt, he immediately realized what it was.
"Shit..." Zhang Anzai caught a whiff of the smell that came with it and felt sick. He promptly changed direction, dug into the soil twice with all his strength, and spread out the plastic bag he'd prepared earlier.
"Friend..." Chen Xing's emotionless voice came from beside him.
Zhang Anzai jumped and immediately looked up. At some point, Chen Xing had appeared right beside him. He raised a hand and pointed in the direction Zhang Anzai had driven from.
A highly unsettling fog had appeared there at some point. It was as if the dark night sky had suddenly broken down into mist, which was now spreading steadily, as if blown by the wind.
And within that ever-advancing black fog, the strange, human-shaped shadow—with movements that were somehow deeply disturbing—seemed to have reached the edge of the mist. It was still drawing closer to them.
"Shit! Get in the car! Go!" Zhang Anzai quickly dug into the soil twice more, cinched the plastic bag shut, then grabbed the hammer and ran.
Before they reached the car, he thought it over briefly, then made a firm decision. "Chen Xing! You drive! I know you've learned how. I still have something to do."
Chen Xing didn't say anything. Zhang Anzai only saw him run to the driver's side with a somewhat stiff, mechanical gait, then slowly climb in.
Zhang Anzai wrapped the cloth around the bundle and tossed it aside. He'd just shut the car door when the car fishtailed into a drift, then sped off without hesitation.
"???" Zhang Anzai watched Chen Xing, whose movements were remarkably practiced, and couldn't figure out where the guy had learned such incredible driving skills.
"I thought you'd only learned how to drive. Bro, did you just come down from Mount Akina?"
He'd been puzzled at first, but perhaps because of the Ox-Horse Pill's additional effects, his mind was working incredibly fast. He soon figured out what had happened.
"Oh, right. The protagonist of that second story I heard earlier was a truck driver. The story described him drifting through a series of turns. So Chen Xing stole his skills..."
Zhang Anzai was deeply envious of his cheap teammate's ability.
But there was a reason he hadn't asked Chen Xing to drive from the start. They didn't have time to waste.
He promptly pulled out the notebook he'd left in the car. As the car picked up speed, he took out the True-Form Scissors.
"The stove doesn't matter... But paper money and incense sticks are essential!"
That was right. The Player Mall couldn't be used inside the instance, and the Administrator Mall couldn't possibly stock stuff like this either.
As for the gas station, even if they had what he needed, Zhang Anzai glanced behind them and saw that the night seemed to have returned to normal. Still, every second or two, he could see the mysterious ghost suddenly appear behind them.
There was no way they could stop and pick anything up.
So whatever they needed to burn, he'd have to make himself.
Vrooom... The old engine, with who-knew-how-many cylinders, seemed to have been built at the factory for this very day.
Zhang Anzai marveled at the terrifying learning ability of the being beside him, who hadn't even been human before midnight. The old car they were in raced down the road.
But the problem was...
"Is this thing trying to make it harder for me?"
Zhang Anzai raised his hand and ruined a sheet of paper with the scissors.
The road was mostly straight, but not completely. Some stretches were bordered by hills and forests, so they still had to take the occasional turn. Combined with the car's high speed, it really put Zhang Anzai's skills to the test.
"I still haven't practiced enough to make this a talent..." Zhang Anzai thought as he forced himself to stay calm and focus on cutting.
After all these days of practice, his paper-cutting skills had improved enough for him to more or less handle the True-Form Scissors' basic ability.
It was only a D-grade item, but it still had its own growth curve. Its effectiveness depended on the user's skill.
At the moment, Zhang Anzai could only cut out real objects corresponding to the size of the paper, and make them last for two or three minutes.
If he made more intricate cuts, he figured the paper creations would change size on their own when they became real, and last longer too.
Most importantly, their behavior should be more lifelike. The living things he cut out now could only move straight in one fixed direction at most.
Still, this was enough to deal with the current instance.
Snip! Zhang Anzai cut out three incense sticks. Then he rummaged through the car's storage compartment for a lighter and lit them.
Screeeech! A sharp squeal of the brakes suddenly rang out. Zhang Anzai lurched violently. If he hadn't buckled his seat belt when he got in, he would've smashed through the windshield and flown out.
"What happened?" Zhang Anzai had nearly set his clothes on fire with the lighter. Holding it and the incense sticks, he turned to look behind them.
A huge shadow had already swallowed the light from the car's taillights.
The terrifying black outline still hadn't emerged from the mist, but the black fog, twisting and reaching forward like a sea anemone, had caught up with the rear of their car.
Perhaps because it was so close, the black outline had grown clearer. But it looked less and less human.
It seemed to have reached out with several hands and grabbed the back of the car.
Or perhaps, on closer inspection, those weren't several hands at all. It was just one hand, split into numerous pieces. The bones of the palm and arm, along with the individual fingers, were all smeared with flesh and blood as they clung to the rear of the car.
"It caught up!?" Zhang Anzai was startled, and immediately began thinking of a way to deal with it. "A ghost... I still don't have any way to fight ghosts."
Even so, as an administrator, he'd already clashed with ghosts several times, using other players as intermediaries.
Zhang Anzai turned back to face the road and suddenly noticed the lucky coin charm hanging beneath the rearview mirror.
"Copper coins?" Zhang Anzai knew they were probably modern replicas. They could even be antiques from the Western Zhou dynasty, though they were quite possibly not made of copper at all.
But the recessed engravings on the lucky coins were coated with a thick layer of red.
Snap! Zhang Anzai decisively snapped the string, rolled down the window, and flung the top coin, now detached from the string, at the ghost.
Whirr! The coin trembled, then suddenly shattered. The black fog covering the rear of the car scattered a little too.
The car lurched forward a short distance, only to be dragged back by the black fog. Its speed began to drop gradually.
Seeing that it worked, Zhang Anzai promptly flung the rest of the coins, still threaded on the string, at it.
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