Starting with dissecting ghost stories

"Gurgle, gurgle."

On a quiet weekend, the sound of suitcases being dragged echoed through the corridors of the campus administration building.

Shen Xing stopped in front of the wooden door of the school clinic, took out a key from his pocket, inserted it into the lock, and turned it.

The suitcase he was dragging seemed to vibrate slightly. He glanced down at it, then instead of going directly into the school clinic, he dragged it to the restroom on the first floor of the administration building.

After confirming that no one was in the restroom, Shen Xing went into the innermost stall, locked the door, slowly squatted down, put his ear next to the suitcase, and gently tapped the suitcase.

"What is it?" Shen Xing asked directly, looking at the suitcase.

A subtle voice rang out directly in Shen Xing's mind.

"Fear.."

"Are you afraid of the place you just visited?" Shen Xing asked, somewhat puzzled.

"Fear."

"And here?" Shen Xing continued to ask.

"I'm not afraid."

【02-Doll】Is it afraid of the school clinic? Why? Is it its instinct to keep it away from the school clinic?

It cannot resonate with [01-Wall]?

It clearly developed a certain dependence on itself, which was a byproduct of the [01-Wall], and a kind of "homecoming" mentality, and even called itself "Mom".

But it developed a fear of the [01-Wall] itself?

Is there some kind of hierarchical relationship here? Or is it similar to a phylogenetic hierarchy in biology that humans can understand?

The doll cannot resonate; it cannot pass the "identity verification" of the [01-wall].

But why wasn't I initially rejected by the [01-Wall]?

Shen Xing stood up and began to think.

Shen Xing first noticed the abnormality in his body because he had no immune rejection response at all.

Human skin and blood, even with different blood types, can survive on the surface of the body for a period of time.

Even the skin and fur of frogs and mice can be transplanted into one's own body... although they will quickly die after a period of time, but Shen Xing is unaffected.

It looked as if Shen Xing's body had actively "rejected" those low-grade flesh and fur.

[01-The Wall] didn't reject itself, and its own body didn't reject the abnormal flesh; they seemed to have mutually acknowledged each other's existence and thus reached some kind of mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. ...

Just like bees and flowers, flowers can produce nectar to provide bees with the nutrition and protein they need to survive, while bees can also carry and spread pollen from flowers to complete the reproduction of plants.

The abnormal flesh and blood were strengthening Shen Xing's body, and his act of constantly hanging paintings on the wall was actually helping the [01-Wall] increase and spread the abnormal flesh and blood it created.

The flesh and blood that Shen Xing "spreads" out—such as that on the doll—may, after being abnormally deeply eroded by the flesh and blood, affect the host's ability to "join" the resonance when walking to the school clinic.

It's like some kind of parasite.

[01-Wall] treated Shen Xing as a host for mutual benefit and [02-Puppet] as "food".

Shen Xing suddenly remembered what [02-Puppet] had said to him yesterday.

"Don't eat me."

So that's what that sentence meant?

Shen Xing opened his suitcase and took out his shoulder bag.

The suitcase, along with the doll and the tin mooncake box inside, were left here by Shen Xing for the time being.

After taking his bag back to the school clinic, he picked up a utility knife and went back to the restroom.

To verify his hypothesis, he needs a portion of the [02-Doll] itself.

He wanted to see if the [01-wall] would really cause the doll to have a feeding desire.

It didn't take Shen Xing much effort to cut off part of the black mycelium-like tentacles of [02-doll].

Because the doll didn't resist, before Shen Xing could even utter a couple of threats, a small section of black mycelium had already extended from it, which Shen Xing then cut off. After relocking the suitcase, he temporarily left it in the bathroom, carrying the small piece of the doll's limb from his pocket, and returned to the school clinic. He turned on the light, skillfully closed and locked the door, and set up his DV camera.

Immediately afterwards, Shen Xing entered into an even more tedious task—he used a craft knife to pick out the flesh and blood from each painting in his satchel, including a piece of real chest flesh that he originally intended to feed to [02-Doll].

As the resonance point approached, Shen Xing was working diligently to combine the restless, abnormal flesh and blood into two sets of human life support systems, from internal organs to blood vessels.

Just as Shen Xing finished the last piece of the puzzle, the hands of the round clock on the wall pointed to five o'clock.

Shen Xing will join this strongest resonance to date and carefully observe the changes.

This relates to how he will re-examine the relationship between himself and the [01-wall].

This time, there was no school bell ringing. Shen Xing felt a sudden darkness before his eyes, as if the light from the incandescent bulb above his head had been absorbed by something.

The two sets of abnormal flesh and blood on the table began to come alive, and a warm current flowed through Shen Xing's body.

In Shen Xing's view, the two life support systems were struggling to move. They climbed up the wall and stopped at the circle that Shen Xing had marked with his pen, but the wall refused to let them pass.

The two life support systems were intertwined, writhing frantically in place, looking like a twisting ring of flesh growing out of the wall... like the mouthparts of some terrifying creature.

Shen Xing reached into his pocket, took out a section of the dying black mycelium, walked towards the wall, and then tossed it directly into the center of the circle.

"Snap"

The black mycelium struck the ring surrounding the organ, but instead of falling, it was firmly adhered to the center.

In Shen Xing's vision, a violent noise flashed by—this was not the black and white noise that Shen Xing usually saw, but the noise with scarlet spots that he had first photographed on the [01-Wall] derivative.

The entire wall looked as if it were about to be torn apart, with countless blood vessels spreading and pulsating outwards from the organ rings.

With those blood-like lines as a reference, Shen Xing could even see that the wall itself was constantly twisting. The wall was like a white film with blood-like lines, and something was constantly squeezing outward, trying to break through the film.

"laugh"

A crisp tearing sound rang out, and the white membrane ripped apart.

Countless blood threads surged from the ring, almost instantly filling the entire school clinic and even touching Shen Xing's entire body. But in the next moment, those terrifying, twisted blood threads quickly retracted, and the black mycelium at the center of the ring completely disappeared.

They accepted the offerings.

This time, Shen Xing felt no desire to "return home," but simply accepted the even more surging energy, which felt like a "reward." So that's how it is...

So you're not a cold wall after all... you also have desires similar to those of living beings...

What would your inner self, your truest self, your appearance after being dissected... be like?

How do you operate? Before you met me, how did you survive?

Shen Xing looked at the now completely restored yellowed walls, his hands involuntarily opening slightly, a genuine smile of joy and delight on his face. It was like a child's cherished, long-treasured, cold toy suddenly coming to life and keeping him company, or like a devoted man's long-cared-for, vegetative girlfriend suddenly waking up.

Wanting to know everything about it, wanting to understand it more deeply, wanting it to become one with oneself, to be one's possession forever—perhaps this is love, Shen Xing thought.