Formulating Anomaly Numbers

Two days later, Shen Xing was able to get out of bed and walk around his hospital room. During this time, he gave his old classmate, Hong Anjie, a call.

According to Hong Anjie, his father had made a full recovery. The two of them were currently not in Yungu City, but had traveled to an outer province to stay with Hong Bin's daughter and son-in-law for a few days, taking the opportunity to sightsee and relax.

As for Hong Bin's birthday, it would naturally be celebrated at his daughter's home.

This was for the best; after returning home, Shen Xing would have a few extra days to craft a new bust, which he could then send over once they returned from their trip.

Shen Xing did not mention his own ordeal to Hong Anjie over the phone, so as not to dampen the other man's mood while he was on vacation.

Over the next few days, Zhao Wenbo, a young man from the Special Case Investigation Unit, came to visit once. He explained that Zheng Ruijun and Li Naijing were tied up with other thorny cases and couldn't spare the time to come by.

This only made Shen Xing feel more curious and skeptical about everything in this world.

In the original owner's memories, his understanding of this world was identical to the Earth he knew before his rebirth, with no differences whatsoever. Yet, ever since he encountered two identical Hong Bins, Shen Xing's worldview had begun to be gradually subverted.

After staying in the hospital for another week, Shen Xing was discharged and returned home.

That night he encountered the Mange Dog, his Mental Antibody level had plummeted to freezing point. It still showed no signs of increasing, as if it required him to stare at the wood carving that had absorbed the black shadow in order to grow; otherwise, the value would remain stagnant and would not recover on its own.

However, Shen Xing believed that if he hadn't had the Mental Antibody to resist that day, it would have been impossible for him to hold out against that Blood Pupil for so long, right up until his final counter-kill.

Upon reaching his front door, he found that the lock had indeed been replaced with a brand new one. He inserted the new key into the keyhole and turned it twice to open the B+ grade atomic lock. Pushing open the slightly heavy security door, Shen Xing opened all the windows in the apartment to let it air out.

"Now this is a lock you can rely on!" he couldn't help but exclaim.

Of course, he didn't know yet that later on, he would discover that for the bizarre entities he encountered—or even for the investigators—having a lock or not having one made no difference at all.

If an anomaly wanted to invade, or an investigator wanted to enter, it had nothing to do with the quality of the door lock.

Because a police officer had put in a good word, the landlord of this rental unit hadn't given Shen Xing a hard time. Seeing that the door had been repaired, he agreed to continue renting to Shen Xing at the same rate.

In fact, the death in the apartment was bad for the landlord's business; he was more than happy to downplay the incident and keep renting it out.

As for Shen Xing, he felt no psychological burden regarding the murderer dying in the room or the Mange Dog that had died in the bedroom.

At least compared to the two black shadows currently locked inside the wood carvings, they were the primary focus of Shen Xing's attention for now.

After letting the room air out for a while, he closed the living room door and went to the bathroom, which had been captured in the video Ye Ting had taken. He opened the window, and the stench of garbage from downstairs immediately wafted in.

Shen Xing didn't pay it much mind. He leaned out and, following the angle of the surveillance footage, turned his head to look in that direction.

The place where the surveillance camera had been installed was an old, twenty-story building. It seemed people still lived there, but it was impossible to tell if there were any cameras left; if there were, they might have been dismantled by now.

He looked straight ahead at a row of low-rise houses. Such buildings were common in the old city district and appeared perfectly normal.

He wondered what Ye Ting had been saying to the empty air in that direction at the time. Although the video was a bit blurry, perhaps a lip-reading expert could try to decipher it.

Shen Xing pondered this as he closed the bathroom window and returned to the bedroom, frowning.

He watched the video on his phone one more time. In the footage, Ye Ting never looked up at him; she simply spoke to the air and then closed the window.

Back in the bedroom, he first cleared off his workbench.

Then, Shen Xing placed the wood carvings of Hong Bin and the Blood Pupil side by side in front of him.

As he focused his gaze on one of the carvings, the Mental Antibody progress bar beneath the corner of his eye began to grow slowly.

Shen Xing estimated that the maximum level for this Mental Antibody was likely 5, meaning the progress bar's color would shift five times before finally stabilizing.

After encountering ghosts like the Blood Pupil or the Fake Hong Bin, a certain amount of Mental Antibody would be randomly consumed, depending on the level of contact with the entity.

The function of this Mental Antibody was to allow him to suffer less or no mental damage from ghosts. As it stood, both the Blood Pupil and the Fake Hong Bin could inflict mental damage, but the damage from the Blood Pupil was clearly far greater than that of the Fake Hong Bin.

Shen Xing then shifted his attention to the second progress bar at the corner of his eye, labeled "Physical Strength."

It currently displayed a value of 52% for a "Mortal Body." After absorbing the characteristics of the Fake Hong Bin, the increase in this value had brought about a strange strengthening of the strength in his ten fingers.

If it weren't for that boost in strength, Shen Xing believed he wouldn't have lasted even a minute against the sneak attack from the fitness coach who had murdered Lin Wanru.

Thank goodness, thank goodness!

As for the third attribute, labeled "Latent Skill," it was currently empty because the Fake Hong Bin's characteristics did not include one.

However, it was highly likely that the Blood Pupil's characteristics possessed a Latent Skill, given that it completely outperformed the Fake Hong Bin in terms of mental damage.

It seemed that encountering ghosts would always be extremely dangerous, and these three attributes were undoubtedly his means of survival.

Shen Xing didn't feel afraid when facing ghosts; his only concern now was how to survive after encountering them!

After staring at the carvings for a while, he noticed that when he focused on the Blood Pupil, the recovery speed of his Mental Antibody seemed to be slightly faster than when he stared at the Hong Bin carving.

Although the difference in speed was small, he could still feel the change.

As usual, after gazing at the carvings for a period of time, drowsiness soon set in.

Shen Xing shifted his gaze away from the Blood Pupil. After a moment of thought, he opened the notepad on his phone and created two new documents: one named "Fake Hong Bin" and the other "Blood Pupil."

In these two documents, he typed out his thoughts as he pondered, carefully organizing his current understanding of the Fake Hong Bin and the Blood Pupil. To make future editing easier, he established a format for describing ghosts.

[Name: Fake Hong Bin ID: 01 Characteristic Description: This anomaly can replicate itself to become identical to a human in the current world and continue living. Currently, it is the Fake Hong Bin. It generally remains silent, rarely speaks, and rarely expresses its own will to the outside world, but it can indirectly control the real Hong Bin, causing the real Hong Bin to exhibit abnormal behavior, making it impossible for ordinary people to accurately judge which Hong Bin is real and which is fake. Solution: Should be able to be killed directly, or ■■■■■. Characteristic Strength: ?]

The ■ represented the act of absorbing them with the "wood carving." However, the documents on his phone currently lacked security, so Shen Xing used ■ as a placeholder for anything involving his secrets, ensuring that even if the phone were stolen, his secrets would not be exposed.

Shen Xing had originally intended to assign a strength level to the Fake Hong Bin's supernatural characteristics, but after careful consideration, he realized he hadn't encountered enough ghosts to accurately determine a strength scale, so he left a question mark in that column for now.

Throw your tickets at me!