Starting with dissecting ghost stories

Chapter 177 Tom and Jerry (4K)

"Netizens have woken up."

In his private hospital room, Shen Xing lay in bed waiting for the anesthesia to wear off when he heard the nurse beside him speak.

"So fast?" Shen Xing was taken aback. The anesthetic was wearing off quickly, but he wasn't fully recovered yet. "Did he do anything rash?"

"He jumped off the building and ran away," the nurse said calmly. "I'm keeping an eye on where he's going."

Ran?

Would a normal person wake up in a hospital and immediately run away? Especially not jump off a building?

"Are you sure he was just touched by Wu Xiaoting?" Shen Xing asked. "He asked Wu Xiaoting for help himself."

"Yes." The nurse nodded.

What is he going to do?

This sudden act of jumping off the building is quite inconsistent with Wang Xinran's previous description of Cheng Ren, the online friend.

He was abnormal... What did he remember?

"Can we check the surveillance footage? Does he have noise in the footage?" Shen Xing asked.

In some ways, Cheng Ren and Shen Xing are very similar.

Cheng Ren may have memories of the strange events from five years ago, and Shen Xing may also have come into contact with the strange events five years ago... otherwise it would be difficult to explain the strange phenomena that suddenly appeared on his body.

What if Cheng Ren also developed unusual abilities five years ago?

But why have they been lying low for so long? And why do they seem to have genuinely lost their memory?

What exactly happened during this period?

"Someone's here," the nurse controlled by Wang Xinran suddenly spoke, then looked towards the ward door.

"Sorry, you can't go in there, there are still patients inside..."

""

The sound of pushing and shoving came from the doorway, and soon, Shen Xing's hospital room door was pushed open.

A man who looked to be about the same age as Shen Xing, with long hair simply tied in a ponytail, stood smiling at the door and waved to Shen Xing and the nurse.

"Hi," the man said to Shen Xing in a soft voice.

In Shen Xing's vision, the other person's body was twisted with terrifying gray-white specks... almost covering "him" entirely.

"That head on the wall," Wang Xinran said softly, looking at Shen Xing, "but its hair has grown longer, and it looks younger."

Another head on the wall in Wu Xiaoting's room?

Another manipulator of [04—Dream Bell]?

Shen Xing's body experienced abnormal blood and flesh surging, his body temperature rose rapidly, and his metabolism accelerated.

This anomaly... is very dangerous.

But there was no hostility?

Cheng Ren strolled along the street.

Memories surged and resurfaced in his mind. He clenched and unclenched his fists, and finally took out his phone to look at the message sent to him.

Did the restart fail...?

No... it hasn't failed yet.

Compared to the last time, all the anomalous sensations have been significantly weakened; the anomalous creatures have indeed suffered heavy losses.

Their plan was correct.

Once all the anomalies are brought together, the resonance can be rekindled...

Cheng Ren put on his wrinkled suit jacket, opened his briefcase, and began rummaging through its contents.

Bracelet... No.

Inside the briefcase were the documents he had collected over the years.

He stretched out his right hand, his skin melting from the inside out, and his blood dripped onto the briefcase, completely enveloping and corroding it.

With a wisp of smoke, nothing was left.

His company is now listed on the stock exchange. Although he was stripped of his actual control due to mental health issues, his shares are still paying dividends. He now has enough money for two people to live on for several lifetimes.

But... what's the use?

His right hand is recovering rapidly, with the bones, flesh, and nerves fully restored.

It's solidified; the ability has been solidified.

He stared at his right hand, slightly bewildered.

Under his control, his bones slowly pierced through his body, forming crystalline, diamond-like bone spurs, with crimson blood lines adding a touch of bloodiness.

I didn't die...

His memories of his wife's death are gradually returning.

He remembered helping that person concentrate all the anomalies in one area, because some of the anomalies were too powerful, and he had to trap them inside his body, imprisoning them temporarily with his flesh and blood.

Cheng Ren himself had no intention of surviving in the new world, so he chose to swallow the anomaly that killed his wife whole.

Logically, he should die after the Resonance Reboot ends.

Because within his body, there are three different anomalies that are tearing at each other, eroding each other, and vying for control of his body.

Regardless of which anomaly wins, he will become a dead man.

The endless erosion of acid rain, the endless proliferation of stillborn organisms, the crystallization of minerals...

But these three anomalies seem to have achieved a delicate balance... allowing someone who shouldn't have survived to live on, and even retaining a human form.

Then, the little girl named Wu Xiaoting, whose power came from that person, reactivated the three mutually restraining anomalies within him, reviving them along with his memories.

Although the plan failed, it showed initial success; the anomaly did disappear from the world for a short period of time... but it has recently resurfaced.

This resurgence must be nipped in the bud.

That person has also woken up, and the plan must be restarted, restarted, and continued.

All anomalies must be eliminated, and the whole world will return to its original state.

Cheng Ren's pupils gradually developed a crystalline coating as he scanned the surging crowd like a hunter searching for prey.

Those women from earlier... seemed to know something.

They knew something was wrong, and that the woman named Lu Wenying seemed to have connections with official organizations.

The existence of an official organization means that they have contained a number of anomalies.

It saved him a lot of trouble.

Cheng Ren had witnessed firsthand just how fast research could proceed if the authorities abandoned their bottom line.

It's still early; we must use swift and decisive measures.

"Friends" have already told them their location; all they need to do is be careful not to run into that strange person named Wu Xiaoting.

She will be the first containment object.

Sorry.

But for the sake of a normal world.

Sacrifice is necessary.

"I don't know you," Shen Xing said, feeling the power of his flesh and blood surging within him.

The man pulled over a wooden chair, sat down with the back facing forward, clasped his hands on the backrest, rested his chin on it, and tilted his head to look at Shen Xing.

"You smell so good." The man sniffed. "So many scents... three? four? One of them is even moving."

What? Shen Xing frowned slightly.

"Who exactly are you?" Shen Xing didn't answer the question, but asked directly.

"Me... um..." The man tilted his head. "I'm not sure either. What do you think I am?"

"5

Shen Xing did not respond.

He couldn't quite figure out what the other person was thinking; someone who had come to his door seemed to have some intellectual abnormalities...

And there seemed to be no hostility.

"What do you want?" Shen Xing asked, changing the direction of the question as if he were talking to a doll in an early childhood education setting.

"What do you want...?" The man grinned. "I want to be your friend."

Seeing that Shen Xing did not answer, the other party continued.

Have you ever... done a jigsaw puzzle?

"A jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces, a very large picture."

The man released one hand from the backrest and gestured in mid-air.

"It took me a long time to finish assembling it, and I put it on the table."

Then someone walked by and "whoosh!" they all pushed to the ground.

The man made a pushing motion, his lips twitching as if he was about to cry.

"It shattered all over the floor."

"What would you do?"

Shen Xing was silent for a few seconds before speaking: "Piece it together again."

"Right?" The man leaned forward. "You'll re-score it too, right? Because you remember what it looks like."

"But what if...it wasn't just the puzzle pieces that fell to the ground?"

The man moved even closer.

"Even the very fact that 'you remember what the drawing looks like' has shattered?"

"You don't remember doing puzzles, you don't remember drawing pictures, you don't even remember having two hands."

"Who will put it back together?"

The man's gaze fell on the pink diamond bracelet on his left wrist, his thumb rubbing the heart-shaped pendant.

He looked up, and a smile returned to his face.

"Someone has to remember what the original drawing looked like, otherwise how can we put it back together?"

"What are you saying?" Shen Xing interrupted him directly.

He dislikes ambiguous ways of speaking, not because he can't understand them, but because he can't judge how much of what the other person says is true.

"What exactly do you want to do?"

"What are you doing..." The man tilted his head again, at an almost unnatural angle. "You mean... if a house has people living in it, and also rats living in it."

People find rats disgusting and want to kill them.

"The rats find humans terrifying, so they run and hide as fast as they can."

"But actually..." The man held up a finger and tapped his temple. "The house is big enough."

"There's enough room."

Shen Xing narrowed his eyes slightly.

Before Shen Xing could think further, the man had already stood up and slowly circled Shen Xing's bed, his fingers sliding along the metal railing at the foot of the bed, making a tinkling sound.

"By the way, have you ever experienced this?"

"You stare intently at a word for a long time, and then suddenly realize... you don't recognize it?"

"These are words I write every day, but after looking at them for a while, you start to wonder, what are they? Are they really just words?"

The man stopped and bent down to get closer to Shen Xing.

As the two drew closer, Shen Xing could see the layer of gray-white specks covering his body subtly pulsating.

"If you stare at a word for a long enough, you'll forget it's a word..."

""

What if you observe the "abnormality" for a long enough time?

"Have you seen enough of everyone?"

"Does that mean it's no longer abnormal?"

The man narrowed his eyes, smiled, and said, "You're back to normal."

It's not symbiosis, it's integration.

Should we erase the concept of "abnormal" from the world altogether? Should we make all of humanity lose even the ability to recognize what is "abnormal"? Or should we perceive "abnormal" as "normal"?

Is it even possible to do that?

Shen Xing was curious.

"You did it?" Shen Xing stared at him and asked, "Five years ago?"

The man straightened up, took two steps back, and asked in surprise, "Did you guess or did you remember it yourself?"

"Just a guess."

"You guessed half right, didn't you?" The man shook his left hand, the pink diamonds on his bracelet refracting light under the fluorescent lamp. "I tried it once, but I messed it up."

"We have to do it again."

One more time? Is this city the target?

No...that's not right.

If the other party is capable, why bother talking about it? Why not just do it directly?

"You can't do it?" Shen Xing asked.

"Hmm?" The man tilted his head.

"You couldn't do it before either, so you asked someone for help? Was it Cheng Ren?" Shen Xing continued to speculate. "Just like the reason you came to see me this time."

Like myself, I suspected that I had come into contact with someone unusual five years ago.

Cheng Ren, online name: Materialist Tangka.

"Oh, you know Ah Ren?" The man clapped his hands. "Ah Ren is a very good person, a very brave one. He was willing to put a lot of things inside his body, to the point that he almost died."

"How did you convince him?" Shen Xing asked.

The man quieted down and lowered his gaze to the bracelet on his left wrist.

"Do you know Ah Ren's wife?"

Shen Xing didn't know the specifics, but he knew some bits and pieces from Cheng Ren's post.

Cheng Ren's wife, a woman who has disappeared from everyone's memory.

"What happened to her?" Shen Xing asked. "She's dead."

"He died before that incident, because of an anomaly."

"Ah Ren was heartbroken. He felt that if there were no abnormalities in the world, his wife wouldn't have died."

I told him there was a way.

"Help me, I can make the world normal again."

"I want you to help me too, Xing-ge."

The man looked up and gave Shen Xing a forced smile.

Looking at the smile in front of him, Shen Xing felt a sense of familiarity... It was very similar to Wang Xinran's, but even more "innocent".

When the person in front of me said these words, he didn't think he had done anything wrong. It seemed that the concept of "deception" did not exist in his mind, just like an infant does not know that killing an ant is killing.

"Alright, that's enough." The man walked towards the door. "Let's talk again next time. Next time, bring some good food. What do you like to eat? Sweet or salty?"

'

'

"I'll bring them all. You have to promise to be my friend next time!"

He stopped and turned around when he reached the door.

"By the way, don't bully Ah Ren."

"He's just an ordinary person who wants to get his wife back."

"Hmm... I guess he's just an ordinary person."

The man tilted his head and thought for a moment.

"Never mind, it's about the same. He's different from us."

The man pushed open the door, and his footsteps disappeared into the corridor.

Shen Xing stared at the closed door, remaining silent for a long time.

"Nervous?" Wang Xinran instructed the nurse to speak.

"No, an anomaly... an anomaly with self-awareness." Shen Xing shook his head slightly, "and possesses some kind of ability beyond the scope of cognition."

He began to mentally reconcile the conversation that had just taken place.

The amount of information is enormous, but it's all fragmented.

The other party is not conveying a message; they are just talking.

The puzzle metaphor...does it mean something was broken five years ago?

Houses, people, rats... the relationship between the anomaly and humanity? Seeing a single word until you don't recognize it... the most bizarre thing, is it talking about a change in cognition?

Cheng Ren's wife died under suspicious circumstances... So Cheng Ren was involved in the incident five years ago?

Shen Xing tried to piece the fragments together, but the more he put them together, the more something felt wrong.

He wasn't sure which of the other person's statements were true, which were metaphors, and which were pure nonsense.

Ultimately, Shen Xing formed a preliminary conclusion.

The other party possesses the ability to influence human cognition on a very large scale, even involving the collective amnesia of everyone regarding the anomaly five years ago.

It wants to do it again.

They needed help, they needed a container to "hold things," and Cheng Ren was that container before, and may also be one of those containers.

Cheng Ren had previously served as a vessel and nearly died. Now, it has its sights set on itself. It has fused with multiple anomalies within its body and is a more perfect vessel than Cheng Ren.

However, there's a huge problem with this deduction: what is the other party's true purpose? Is it to integrate the anomaly into human society? Or to rewrite human cognition to the point of accepting the anomaly?

The difference between the two is like the difference between "getting a cat used to mice" and "making a cat think that mice are also cats".

The former is adaptation, the latter is...

Shen Xing thought of a possibility, but he didn't say anything.

"Ask Lu Lingyun for me," Shen Xing said, looking at Wang Xinran.

"Um?

'

What is the current situation of the fallen Mother Nest City?