Zhang Anzai saw the bizarre humanoid figure in the black mist. It seemed to split its head diagonally down the middle, then twist the two halves in opposite directions, tilting its head in confusion.
Judging by the state of its hands earlier, this ghost had probably been run over by a car—thoroughly.
Whatever the case, their car shot forward in an instant. Zhang Anzai felt the battered old car's sudden acceleration press him back into his seat and gave Yiwu's cheap goods a hearty thumbs-up. "Who says modern stuff is all money down the drain? Thank you, great God of Industry..."
They had escaped for the moment, but even if Chen Xing beside him got every last bit of performance out of the Old Santana beneath them, the most they could do was cut a drive of over two hours down to exactly two hours.
What did that mean? Zhang Anzai had entered the instance less than an hour after finishing work that evening. Now they had driven along this highway more than twice and stopped at two gas stations. Add up all the time spent on other things, and most of the night was already gone.
He checked the time. They had just over two hours of rest left. It would soon be seven in the morning, and time to go to work.
He wasn't worried about whether he'd make it on time, or whether he'd have to split his attention and send his real body to his workstation. The main concern was whether they could get away at all.
They could make the drive in two hours, but would the evil spirit behind them really stop chasing them?
"We need to think of a way to draw it off..." Zhang Anzai recalled what he knew about ghosts in the Reflected World.
Then he promptly tore off another sheet of paper and started cutting it.
Sure enough, when he happened to glance at the rearview mirror, everything behind them looked perfectly normal at first glance: the highway and the night sky.
But after a closer look, the mysterious black mist had returned. The terrifying evil ghost's body kept breaking apart and sticking back together as it took step after step in pursuit of their already speeding car. It was almost upon them.
"Eeeek—" The brakes squealed again. The evil ghost seemed to have gotten smarter. Its body didn't rush to catch up; instead, it sent the black mist ahead to reach their rear wheels, and the car immediately began to slow down.
But just then, Zhang Anzai snipped off the last flaw in his paper cutout.
"Whoosh!" He opened the window, and wind rushed in. The incense stick wedged into the gap in the passenger-side storage compartment nearly blew out.
At that very moment, a magpie clad in black and white feathers—with a hint of blue visible on closer inspection—flew right out of the car.
The window snapped shut. The magpie flapped away, and their car instantly picked up speed.
"Just as I thought. This ghost is mindless, too. It'll chase anything alive." Zhang Anzai glanced over. The black mist was already chasing the magpie as it flew toward the wasteland.
Of course, this wouldn't buy them much time, so he promptly tore off another sheet of paper and began cutting.
At the same time, he bowed to the clod of earth in the bag beneath the windshield, cracked the window open, and shouted, "Return, soul! Come back, soul! Zhang Anzai! Chen Xing!"
Soul-calling was a ritual that was practically a fixture in southern households where someone had died.
In the old days, whenever someone fell ill or was thought to have been afflicted by evil, this was often one of the first things people tried.
Zhang Anzai had heard of this practice—and even seen it—in both the real world and instances, so he knew the general procedure. But calling his own soul back was a first.
The ritual was definitely wrong. But with a conceptual weapon right beside him, Zhang Anzai wasn't worried in the slightest that they'd fail.
Grandma had succeeded in the story, so the person beside him would naturally believe they could succeed too. And if he believed it, then it could happen.
"But... tsk, what a hassle!" Zhang Anzai had already folded a paper ingot in his hands. This was another thing most southerners knew well; plenty of kids had helped their families fold them when they were young.
All they were missing from the ritual now was burning paper and incense to persuade the ghost to leave them alone.
The problem was that folding enough paper ingots would take time. He glanced at the rearview mirror, and the ghost was closing in again.
Clearly, some abilities didn't work as well on certain ghosts.
Zhang Anzai had told Chen Xing earlier that the ghost was beside the Highway 45 sign. But even after they dug up its corpse, it still came after them.
He had also hinted that since Chen Xing had escaped being caught by a ghost as a child, he shouldn't get caught now. Yet they were still being held up. That showed Chen Xing's ability didn't fully work on this ghost.
Even the location of the ghost's corpse probably wasn't affected by him.
Zhang Anzai could only speed up. With his hands moving as fast as he could, he finished folding the paper ingot, then promptly tore off another sheet and folded it in half twice.
"Snip, snip..." Paper scraps flew everywhere.
Just as their car slowed once again and its rear end began to fishtail, as if they were about to be forced to a stop, two palm-sized butterflies flew out the window.
A four-fold paper cut, two butterflies—a slightly more advanced technique Zhang Anzai had only learned recently.
At any rate, butterflies counted as living creatures. They weren't fast, but there were two of them, and they flew on different paths. They should be able to stall the ghost for a little while.
Zhang Anzai promptly pulled out his lighter, lit the two folded paper ingots, and tossed them out the window. "Buddy, let us go. We're just passing through. Why make things difficult for us?"
Zhang Anzai didn't know any prayers or sacrificial words for begging a ghost's forgiveness. Besides, in the story, what mattered wasn't asking the ghost to forgive them. It was the soul-calling ritual that finally brought Chen Xing's soul back to his body.
All of this was just to help them reach the boundary of Highway 44 without incident.
"Whoosh!" After a while, another stack of paper, folded well enough and trimmed a little with scissors to look like real paper ingots, burned as he threw it out the window.
Zhang Anzai was wound tight and didn't dare relax, but things were going smoothly. They had already sped past the gas station.
He cut some paper money and incense, lit them, and tossed them out. Then he alternated by cutting out living creatures and throwing those out too. At last, they made it through this stretch.
The ghost was still chasing behind them, and the black mist seemed to be spreading wider and wider. It had covered the wasteland and woods on both sides, and now reached up into the sky. It looked like a vast black sandstorm.
The ghost itself hadn't grown, but the scene was clearly becoming more and more terrifying.
Zhang Anzai held his breath and concentrated, afraid to make a single mistake with each snip of his scissors. The car kept veering left and right under the ghost's influence, while speeding so fast that the jolts made him dizzy. He didn't have time to adjust.
If he slowed down even a little, the evil spirit's hand would immediately grab the rear of their car.
But after a whole night on edge, he could handle a little longer.
"I've worked this damn hard. We'd better get the hell out of here!" Zhang Anzai gritted his teeth and flung out another handful of paper money.
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