A middle-aged man whose features could not be seen sat upright and rigidly at the head of Yang Jian's bed. He held the first newspaper aloft in one hand, completely motionless, as if he were genuinely reading the news with great attention.
Everything seemed perfectly normal. Nothing appeared strange.
Yet the room was far too dim for reading a newspaper.
Moreover, from the time Yang Jian had gone online until now, this person had maintained that exact posture without changing even once. No ordinary person could possibly do that.
The only change was that he had moved from the sofa in the living room to the head of the bed.
Only his position had changed.
From far away to nearby.
That reduced distance did not bring any sense of security. Instead, it brought an inexplicable threat and fear.
Why was his father suddenly sitting beside him, reading the newspaper?
Had he ever had such a habit before?
Looking at the memorial portrait hanging on the cabinet in his room and listening to Liu Xiaoyu's urgent urging from the other end of the call,
Yang Jian realized that something was very wrong.
If the file Liu Xiaoyu mentioned was real, then was this person still his father?
It seemed so. Yet it also seemed not to be.
Had his father really died in a car accident when he was young?
Yang Jian's mind clearly believed that the person before him was his father. Everything felt so natural, without the slightest hint of falsehood.
"Even so, something is still very wrong."
Yang Jian immediately withdrew his hand. Rather than pushing aside the newspaper blocking the man's face, he grabbed his phone, abruptly stood up, and backed away.
He tried to get as far away from the newspaper-reading man as possible.
Had something affected him and altered his memories?
Or was everything before him just a dream, something unreal?
Or perhaps there was something strange about the entire apartment building?
"No matter what, I need to leave first. I'll figure out what exactly is going on afterward." Yang Jian could not determine whether something was wrong with him, his father, or the surroundings.
He cautiously backed out of the room and into the living room.
He did not disturb his father, who was reading the newspaper.
As he retreated from the room, curiosity made him try to see the man's face clearly.
But before Yang Jian could make it out, he noticed that one corner of the newspaper was crimson, as if it had been soaked in blood. That dense scarlet seemed ready to turn into blood and drip down.
A newspaper stained with blood!
Would a normal person read a newspaper like that?
Yang Jian's pupils contracted. At that moment, he completely believed Liu Xiaoyu. His father had died in a car accident when Yang Jian was in elementary school. The file on Liu Xiaoyu's end was real, so this so-called father before him could not possibly exist. The dead did not come back to life.
And if his father did not exist, then there was only one possibility for the man sitting on the bed reading the newspaper.
A ghost.
His heart immediately trembled.
When had it happened?
When had this ghost slipped into his home? When had it appeared in the house? And when had his memories been altered?
Or had he been living with this ghost all these years?
If not for Liu Xiaoyu's phone call, would he have remained unaware forever?
The more carefully Yang Jian thought about it, the more horrified he became.
Just as he stepped out of the room,
the newspaper-reading man suddenly moved. His head turned toward Yang Jian at an eerie speed.
Yang Jian immediately staggered backward in fright.
The man had no face, no features, only a layer of flesh and skin.
"Run."
Yang Jian roared inwardly. Without another word, he turned and fled.
He was completely certain now.
This man was a ghost.
Yet the instant he turned around, his vision went black as though he had crashed into something.
A newspaper.
Sticky and foul-smelling, as though drenched in thick blood.
The newspaper slapped against his face and immediately stuck fast. He instinctively tried to tear it away, but the bloodstained paper seemed to have turned into the skin on his face. The moment he pulled at it, agonizing pain shot through his face, and it could not be easily torn off.
"This ghost has started attacking me?" Yang Jian immediately realized.
He had already encountered two waves of ghost attacks at school.
"Only ghosts can deal with ghosts."
Gritting his teeth, an eye suddenly split through the flesh on the back of his hand and emerged, radiating a faint red glow.
When the hand bearing that eye tore at the newspaper covering his face again, it worked.
The newspaper slowly peeled away from his face, like a plaster being gradually ripped off.
But at that moment,
the ghost apparently had no intention of letting him go so easily.
Yang Jian felt the ghost draw close, as if it were pulling on the newspaper from behind.
A terrifying force came through.
The newspaper wrapped around his face tightened again, pressing firmly against it. A powerful feeling of suffocation and dizziness swiftly overwhelmed him.
If this continued, he would not need the ghost to kill him. This bizarre newspaper would suffocate him to death.
"If you want to play, then I'll play with you. You're a ghost, but I'm not human either." A beastlike growl came from Yang Jian's throat.
Two red eyes suddenly emerged on his face.
The newspaper where the eyes had appeared immediately made a tearing sound and split open.
The moment the newspaper tore, the terrifying pulling force behind him weakened considerably.
"Again." Yang Jian gritted his teeth.
He could not use the power of these eyes too often. Every use brought him one step closer to death. But he had no choice now. If he did not borrow the power of the ghost within his body, he would die right here.
Another eye emerged from his forehead.
Screech!
The bloodstained newspaper stuck to his forehead tore open once more.
The pulling force behind him weakened again, and the suffocation and dizziness rapidly faded.
"Keep going."
Yang Jian knew the ghost's power inside his body was still not enough.
A fifth eye emerged from his neck.
Another crack split open through the newspaper constricting his neck.
Then Yang Jian exerted force with his hand. With too many tears in it, the newspaper wrapped around his face instantly shredded apart.
The suffocation and oppression completely vanished.
He sucked in great mouthfuls of air.
Four eyes had grown on Yang Jian's face, all emitting a faint red glow.
He turned around to look.
But there was no one behind him anymore. Only bloodstained scraps of newspaper lay scattered across the floor.
"Get out of here."
Yang Jian's heart pounded wildly. He did not dare remain any longer. Without taking anything, he immediately opened the door and swiftly left the house.
Not long after he left,
someone walked out from the room where he had just been.
This person picked up the shredded newspapers scattered all over the floor and pieced them back together.
Soon, the newspaper returned to its previous state. It was still stained crimson with blood, but on that scarlet newspaper, there was now the outline of a human face.
That face was Yang Jian's.
The person picked up the newspaper, then calmly walked over to the nearby sofa and sat down. He raised his arm and stared motionlessly at the newspaper before him, in exactly the same posture as before.
Several hours passed.
Then, suddenly, the person moved.
He slowly lowered his arm. He no longer had no features or no face.
At that moment, he bore Yang Jian's face.
However, on this "Yang Jian's" face, the places where the eyes had previously grown were blank, as though several sections had been forcibly cut out of a clear photograph.
The face was imperfect.
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