Two days later, Shen Xing was able to get out of bed and walk around the hospital room. During that time, he called his old classmate, Hong Anjie.
According to Hong Anjie, his father had made a full recovery. The two of them were currently out of Yungu City, visiting another state. They were staying for a few days at the home of Hong Bin's daughter and son-in-law, and taking the opportunity to travel and clear their heads.
Hong Bin had naturally celebrated his birthday at his daughter's home.
That worked out well. Once Shen Xing got home, he would have a few extra days to make a new half-length wooden carving, then deliver it after they returned from their trip.
Shen Xing didn't tell Hong Anjie about what had happened to him over the phone, so he wouldn't spoil the other man's vacation.
Over the next few days, Zhao Wenbo, a young member of the Special Case Investigation Unit, visited once. He said that Zheng Ruijun and Li Naijing had other tricky cases to handle and couldn't make time to come by.
This only made Shen Xing feel more curious and suspicious about the world around him.
In the original owner's memories, this world was exactly like Earth had been before Shen Xing was reborn. There was nothing different about it. But after encountering two identical Hong Bins, it seemed as though Shen Xing's worldview had begun to crumble.
After spending another week in the hospital, Shen Xing was discharged and went home.
His encounter with the Mange Dog that night had caused his Mental Antibody level to drop to rock bottom. Even now, it showed no signs of rising again. It seemed that it only increased when he stared at the wooden carvings that had absorbed the shadows. Otherwise, the Mental Antibody value stayed as it was, with no gradual recovery.
Still, Shen Xing believed that if he hadn't had his Mental Antibody to protect him that day, he couldn't have held off the Blood Pupil for so long, let alone turned the tables in the end.
When he reached his door, he found that the lock had indeed been replaced. He inserted the new key and turned it twice before the B+-grade atomic lock opened. Then he pushed open the slightly heavy security door and opened all the windows to air out the apartment.
"This kind of lock really does make you feel safer!" he couldn't help saying.
Of course, he didn't yet know that, for the anomalies and investigators he would encounter later, it made no difference whether he had a lock or not.
Anomalies could break in, and investigators could get inside. Neither cared how good the lock was.
Since a public security officer had put in a word for him, the landlord hadn't made things difficult for Shen Xing. After the door was repaired, he agreed to keep renting the apartment to him at the same price.
In fact, someone had died in the apartment, which was already bad for the landlord's business. He was more than happy to downplay the whole thing and keep renting it out.
As for Shen Xing, he felt no qualms about the murderer dying in the apartment or the Mange Dog dying in the bedroom.
At least, compared with the two shadows currently locked inside the wooden carvings, those were nothing. The shadows were what mattered most to Shen Xing right now.
After letting the apartment air out for a while, Shen Xing closed the living room door and went to the bathroom that had appeared in Ye Ting's video. He opened the window, and the stench from the garbage downstairs immediately flooded in.
Shen Xing ignored it. He leaned out and looked in the direction the security camera had been pointing, turning his head to the side.
The building where the camera had been installed was an old one, about twenty stories tall. It seemed people still lived there, but he couldn't tell whether there were any other cameras. If there were, they might already have been removed.
He looked straight ahead. Across from him was a row of low houses, common in the old part of town. There was nothing unusual about them.
He had no idea what Ye Ting had been saying to the air in that direction. The video was a little blurry, but perhaps an expert at lip-reading could make out the words.
Shen Xing mulled it over, closed the bathroom window, and returned to the bedroom with a frown.
He watched the video on his phone again. Ye Ting never looked up at him. She simply spoke to the air, then closed the window.
Back in the bedroom, he first tidied up his workbench.
Then Shen Xing placed the wooden carvings of Hong Bin and the Blood Pupil side by side in front of him.
When he focused on one of the carvings, the Mental Antibody progress bar beneath the corner of his eye began to rise slowly.
Shen Xing estimated that the Mental Antibody had a maximum level of about five. The bar's color would change five times before finally stabilizing.
After encountering a ghost like the Blood Pupil or Fake Hong Bin, he would lose a random amount of Mental Antibody, depending on how much contact he had with it.
The Mental Antibody helped him suffer less mental harm from ghosts, or avoid it altogether. So far, both the Blood Pupil and Fake Hong Bin could inflict mental harm on him, but the Blood Pupil's attacks were much stronger.
Shen Xing then turned his attention to the second progress bar beneath the corner of his eye, labeled "Physical Strength."
It currently showed a value of 52% for his Mortal Body. After absorbing Fake Hong Bin's trait, his ten fingers had gained a bizarre amount of strength.
Without that increase, Shen Xing was certain he wouldn't have lasted even a minute against the fitness instructor's sneak attack when he faced the murderer who had killed Lin Wanru.
What a relief!
As for the third attribute, labeled "Latent Skill," it was empty for now because Fake Hong Bin's traits didn't include one.
The Blood Pupil, however, might well have a Latent Skill. After all, it was far superior to Fake Hong Bin when it came to inflicting mental harm.
It seemed that encounters with ghosts were always extremely dangerous. These three attributes were undoubtedly his means of staying alive.
Shen Xing wasn't afraid of ghosts. His only concern was how to stay alive after encountering one.
After staring at the carvings for a while, he noticed that his Mental Antibody seemed to recover a few degrees faster when he looked at the Blood Pupil than when he looked at Hong Bin.
The difference in speed was small, but he could still feel it.
As usual, sleepiness soon set in after he had stared at the carvings for a while.
Shen Xing looked away from the Blood Pupil, thought for a moment, then opened the notes app on his phone and created two documents. He named one "Fake Hong Bin" and the other "Blood Pupil."
He typed as he considered what he knew, carefully organizing his current understanding of Fake Hong Bin and the Blood Pupil. To make the documents easier to edit later, he also came up with a template for describing ghosts.
[Name: Fake Hong Bin
Number: 01
Trait Description: This anomaly can copy a person from the current world and become exactly like them, then continue living as that person. In this case, it is Fake Hong Bin. It generally remains silent, rarely speaks, and seldom expresses its wishes to the outside world. However, it can indirectly control the real Hong Bin, causing him to behave abnormally and making it impossible for ordinary people to tell which of the two Hong Bins is real.
Method of Resolution: It should be possible to kill it directly, or ■■■■■.
Trait Strength: ?]
The ■ stood for using a "wooden carving" to absorb it. Since the documents on his phone weren't secure, Shen Xing used ■ wherever his secrets were involved. That way, even if someone stole the files, his secret wouldn't be exposed.
Shen Xing had originally planned to assign a strength rating to Fake Hong Bin's supernatural trait, but after thinking it over, he realized he hadn't encountered enough ghosts to judge their strength accurately. So for now, he put a question mark in that field.
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