Bro, Is Your Hometown Mount Akina? Unleash the Power of Modern Industry!

"Crack!" A large chunk of asphalt shattered and was quickly flicked away by him. Zhang Anzai took a look; even the cement base underneath, which wasn't particularly thick, had been slightly pulverized.

He felt an indescribable surge of brute strength coursing through his entire body, and he decisively began hammering away, strike after strike.

There was indeed a thin layer of cement base underneath, but since this stretch of road was so remote, and considering Commissioner Wang—who had approved this project—likely lived well, the road standards weren't high, and the cement wasn't thick at all.

"Click, click, click..." With his enhanced physique, Zhang Anzai swung the sheep-horn hammer, which had already been worn down significantly, and easily chiseled through to the rammed earth layer below.

"Crack!" Zhang Anzai began digging into the soil with the hammer, but suddenly, he hit something brittle. Seeing a flash of gray-white exposed in the dirt, he immediately realized what it was.

"Damn it..." Zhang Anzai caught the accompanying stench and felt a wave of nausea. He decisively changed direction, dug fiercely a few more times, and simultaneously spread out the plastic bag he had prepared earlier.

"Friend..." Chen Xing's voice, still devoid of any emotional inflection, drifted over from the side.

Startled, Zhang Anzai immediately looked up to see that Chen Xing had somehow flashed to his side, pointing toward the direction from which Zhang Anzai had originally driven.

A bizarre, eerie mist had appeared out of nowhere, as if a pitch-black night sky had suddenly dissolved into fog. It seemed to be stirred by a wind, constantly spreading outward.

And within that black mist, which was groping its way forward, a strange, humanoid-looking black ghost—whose movements were inexplicably bone-chilling—seemed to have reached the edge of the mist and was continuously closing in on them.

"Damn! Get in the car, let's go!" Zhang Anzai quickly scooped up the dirt, tightened the plastic bag, and then grabbed his hammer and ran.

Before reaching the car, he thought for a brief moment and then decisively stated, "Chen Xing! You drive! I know you've learned how; I have other things to do."

Chen Xing said nothing. Zhang Anzai only saw him run to the driver's side with a somewhat mechanical, stiff posture and slowly sit inside.

Zhang Anzai wrapped up the cloth bundle and tossed it aside. No sooner had he pulled the car door shut than the vehicle performed a drift and a tail-whip, then sped off decisively.

"???" Zhang Anzai looked at Chen Xing, who was operating the car with extraordinary proficiency, unable to fathom where this guy had learned such god-tier driving skills.

"I thought you just learned how to drive. Buddy, did you just come down from Mount Akina?"

Although he was confused at first, perhaps due to the supplementary effects of the Ox-Horse Pill, Zhang Anzai felt his brain racing and quickly figured out the reason.

"Oh, right. The second story I heard earlier—the protagonist was a long-haul trucker who drifted through corners in the description. This must be me stealing someone else's skill..."

Zhang Anzai felt a surge of envy for his cheap teammate's skills.

However, there was a reason he hadn't let Chen Xing drive from the start; there simply hadn't been enough time to waste.

He decisively pulled out the notebook he had left in the car and, as the vehicle accelerated, took out the True-Form Scissors.

"The furnace doesn't matter... but paper money and incense sticks, these are absolutely essential!"

That's right—you couldn't use them in the player shop instances, and the Administrator Shop certainly wouldn't carry such things.

As for the gas station, let alone whether they had any, Zhang Anzai looked back and saw the night sky behind them appearing to return to normal. In the blink of an eye, he could still see the mysterious ghost suddenly flashing behind them.

There was no time for them to stop and scavenge for supplies.

So, whatever needed to be burned, he had to craft it himself.

"Vroom..." The old engine, with its unknown number of cylinders, seemed to have been built in the factory just for this day.

Zhang Anzai marveled at the terrifying learning ability of the entity beside him—who hadn't even been "human" before midnight—as their old car roared down the highway.

But the problem was: "Isn't this just increasing the difficulty for me?"

Zhang Anzai raised his hand and ruined a piece of paper with a snip.

This highway was mostly straight, but not entirely devoid of curves. In some places, there were mountains and forests on the sides, so they definitely had to turn. Coupled with such high speed, it was a real test of Zhang Anzai's technique.

"I haven't even practiced this into a talent yet in these few days..." Zhang Anzai thought to himself, forcing himself to stay calm and focus on his cutting.

After these days of training, his paper-cutting technique could basically handle the basic abilities of the True-Form Scissors.

This item was only a Tier-D prop, but it still had its own growth curve, depending on the user's skill level.

Currently, Zhang Anzai could only cut out real objects corresponding to the size of the paper, which could maintain their existence for two or three minutes.

If he were more precise, he felt the cutouts should change size when they became real, and last even longer.

Most importantly, their behavioral logic should be more realistic, unlike the living creatures he cut out, which at most could only move in a fixed, straight line.

However, to this extent, it was enough to deal with the current instance.

"Snip!" Zhang Anzai cut out three incense sticks, then fished a lighter out of the car's storage compartment and lit them.

"Screech!" A sharp sound of brake pads grinding suddenly erupted. Zhang Anzai's body lurched violently; had he not been wearing his seatbelt when he got in, he would have smashed through the windshield and flown out.

"What's going on?" Zhang Anzai, who had nearly set his clothes on fire with the lighter, held the lighter and the incense sticks up and turned his head to look.

Right at the rear of their car, a massive black shadow had swallowed the light of the taillights.

That horrifying black silhouette still hadn't stepped out of the range of the black mist, but the mist, twisting forward like a sea anemone, had already caught up to their rear bumper.

Perhaps because it was close enough, the black silhouette became increasingly clear, yet less and less human.

It seemed to have extended several hands, grabbing the back of the car.

Or, looking closer, it didn't seem to be many hands, but rather one hand that had split into many pieces—palm bones, arm bones, and individual fingers, all stained with flesh and blood, clawing at the rear of the car.

"We've been caught up!?" Zhang Anzai was shocked, immediately beginning to weigh his options: A ghost... I don't have the ability to deal with ghosts yet.

Despite this, as an Administrator, he had already had multiple encounters with ghosts through other players as mediums.

Turning his head back to the front of the car, Zhang Anzai suddenly saw the coin-shaped pendant hanging under the rearview mirror.

"Copper coins?" Zhang Anzai knew that this thing was most likely a modern handicraft, a relic from last week, and in all probability, it wasn't even made of copper.

However, within the intaglio patterns of these flower coins, there was a thick layer of red plating.

"Snap!" Zhang Anzai decisively broke the string, simultaneously rolling down the car window and flicking the topmost copper coin, which had come loose from the cord, out toward the rear.

"Hum!" The copper coin wobbled for a moment before suddenly shattering, and the black mist covering the tail of the car dissipated slightly.

The sedan lurched forward just a tiny bit before being dragged back by the black mist, its speed beginning to slowly decline.

Seeing that it was effective, Zhang Anzai decisively flung the remaining copper coins still threaded on the string out all at once.