Another Self

After seeing what he was wearing, Shen Xing looked again at the person crouching behind the door.

For a moment, he felt as if he had fallen into a dream.

This person... even his socks were identical to Shen Xing's. But there was no way the other man was deliberately disguising himself as Shen Xing!

Could it just be a coincidence?

Shen Xing stared in disbelief at the crouching figure, who had remained silent the whole time. No, it couldn't be a coincidence.

His Adam's apple bobbed. "Come out. I can see you."

The crouching person didn't react.

The situation was so absurd that, as Shen Xing looked at the person behind the door, he briefly felt as if he couldn't breathe.

"Come out!" he shouted again.

The other person still didn't react.

With no other choice, Shen Xing strode over. He clenched one hand into a fist and used the other to pull the bedroom door open, fully exposing the crouching person.

The person was indeed a man. He was crouched with his arms wrapped around his knees, dressed exactly like Shen Xing.

Even without the other man looking up, Shen Xing was now certain that this guy was very likely him.

He didn't move any closer. Instead, he took a step back, warily watching this crouching "self."

"Can you hear me?" Shen Xing asked.

Several seconds later, the crouching person slowly raised his head. His eyes were unfocused, as if he wasn't looking at anything in particular.

Shen Xing focused all his attention on the man's face. Just as he'd expected, it was identical to his own!

The man then let go of his knees and slowly stood up. His face was stiff and his expression indifferent. Seemingly unable to see Shen Xing, he walked toward the living room.

Shen Xing watched him in silence until the man disappeared from the bedroom. The footsteps outside in the living room soon stopped, too.

Ever since the man had stood up in front of him, Shen Xing had felt as if he were looking in a mirror. Aside from the other man's stiff movements, he seemed to be none other than Shen Xing himself.

There was no further sound from the living room.

After a moment, Shen Xing slowly walked to the bedroom doorway and glanced into the living room.

His other self hadn't disappeared. He was sitting on the sofa, staring blankly ahead without doing anything, like a mindless idiot.

Shen Xing fell silent and simply watched the man's profile.

He thought he was beginning to understand. Could absorbing the Blood Pupil Wood Carving have triggered the trait of Fake Hong Bin, which he had absorbed earlier? What was happening to him now was exactly like what had happened to Hong Bin back then.

He'd thought this situation shouldn't occur after absorbing Fake Hong Bin's trait. From the looks of it, something had gone wrong.

Shen Xing also didn't know whether this identical version of himself would keep appearing, or whether it was some kind of side effect that would eventually make him disappear in a particular way.

For now, though, this guy seemed to pose no threat. He was just an idiot.

Most importantly, after this person appeared, Shen Xing hadn't started feeling disoriented or behaving strangely like the real Hong Bin had.

Perhaps that was the difference between doing something actively and having it happen to you passively.

Hong Bin had encountered this guy and then been copied, putting him in a passive position. Shen Xing, on the other hand, had actively absorbed a trait, and a copy had appeared as a result of some "side effect." It had happened because he'd taken the initiative.

The difference was that Shen Xing, the original, was very unlikely to be affected by the other man. The copy of Shen Xing, by contrast, seemed rather dull.

Come to think of it, though, his profile did look pretty good. Like a well-aged wine, it only got better the more you savored it.

After shamelessly admiring himself for a moment, Shen Xing turned and went back into the bedroom.

He went to the workbench and picked up the wooden carvings of Fake Hong Bin and Blood Pupil. After studying them for a moment, he saw that the shadows inside the carvings were still intact. The only thing missing was their traits.

Shen Xing turned and went into the living room, glancing at the man sitting on the sofa.

The guy's lips were slightly parted. He sat perfectly still, looking as if he might start drooling at any moment.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

"Shen Xing, open up."

It sounded like Li Naijing!

A figure moved outside the window beside the living room door, apparently trying to peer inside and see whether he was home.

Shen Xing was startled. The window was covered with decorative paper, so no one outside could see in. But he definitely couldn't let Li Naijing see his other self.

He glanced at the man sitting on the sofa. The other man still looked like an idiot.

Shen Xing didn't answer Li Naijing. Instead, he hurried to the bedroom, picked up his phone, and immediately switched it to silent mode.

Not long after he'd done that, the phone screen changed to display the words "Incoming call from Officer Li Naijing."

Holding the phone without answering, he quietly walked into the living room and fixed his eyes on his other self, who was still sitting motionless.

He needed to get the guy to hide somewhere first. Shen Xing looked around, trying to find a place in the apartment where he could conceal a person.

He grabbed his seated double, hauled him to his feet, and pushed him toward the bedroom.

As he did so, Shen Xing finally saw the drool fall from the guy's mouth. It landed on the floor with a splat, and Shen Xing pushed him into the bedroom.

When he returned to the living room, the incoming call had been going for nearly a minute. At last, it ended.

Li Naijing's voice came from outside. "Is he home or not? He's not answering."

The young man, Zhao Wenbo, replied, "Maybe something's happened to him, or maybe he went out. Should we wait a little longer?"

After that, there was no sound from outside.

A moment later, the living room door lock suddenly rattled. It sounded as if someone had inserted a key into the lock.

Shen Xing was startled. Then he heard Zhao Wenbo ask, "Sister Jing, should we go straight in?"

The rattling stopped, and Li Naijing replied, "That guy came back from Song Xiaoyu's place, but he's not answering the door or his phone. What if that Missing Scalp has possessed him again? We have to go in and check. Besides, our Special Case Investigation Unit has the authority to enter any private residence without the owner's permission."

Shen Xing remembered hearing Li Naijing say the same thing before. It was clearly one of her trademark lines.

But from what she'd said, the woman was trying to force her way in because she was worried about his safety.

She'd done this sort of thing plenty of times, and even though Shen Xing had changed the lock on his door, he had no doubt she knew how to pick it.

He quickly turned to hide his other self in the bedroom, but when he looked around, he found it completely empty.

The guy he'd just pushed inside had vanished without a trace.

He didn't know whether the man had hidden himself or disappeared. Shen Xing had no time to think it over. Behind him, the lock started turning again, then clicked.

"I unlocked it, even though the door was locked from the inside," Li Naijing said.

In other words, someone might have been inside all along.

Though she meant well, Shen Xing's heart was still in his throat. He flung himself onto the bed and lay completely still, pretending to be asleep. At the same time, he slipped his phone under the pillow.

The next second, the door opened, and Li Naijing and Zhao Wenbo walked in one after the other.