Starting with dissecting ghost stories

The "little flower" they were referring to was just that doll.

That doll can disguise itself as the person who was devoured, and then reappear in front of others. Going home and communicating are not problems at all.

Li Ya could easily use a puppet to commit murder, then use the puppet to impersonate the victim, go back to live normally for two days, downplay his influence, and then create the illusion that the already dead victim is still alive for more people to witness.

In this way, after the doll goes missing, no one will suspect Li Ya.

The dolls, like the flesh created by the wall in [01], have the ability to erase their own images from the video. In that case, no images of their disappearance will remain, leaving only the last person who came into contact with them and the witnesses.

As long as those heads are not discovered, Li Ya is safe for the time being.

If Shen Xing's previous deduction about split personality is also correct, Li Ya can use other, more flexible personalities to deal with other people's inquiries and visits, making it less likely to expose flaws.

He does have some counter-surveillance awareness, but not enough.

The fact that all the missing persons eventually came into contact with him meant that as the number of missing persons increased and the local criminal police ran out of clues, he would also be listed as a key target of the investigation.

Even the local detectives, who were not very experienced in homicide, did not realize this, and the intervention of the task force would also point the finger at Li Ya.

He left too many loose ends; he won't be able to extricate himself from this mess.

Even if Li Ya might possess some ability to utilize abnormal puppets, he is not a suitable partner for Shen Xing.

Shen Xing put his phone in his pocket, went to the kitchen, and made himself a simple breakfast.

As he sat down at the table to enjoy his breakfast, the same landline rang again.

They haven't changed locations to play, so it's probably not something urgent.

Shen Xing pressed the call button to answer the phone.

"Damn it, why aren't you answering the phone? The doll's back, when are you coming to get it?"

Li Ya's voice came from inside.

The doll has been retrieved. He couldn't reach Shen Xing by phone, and he didn't come directly to find him, leaving behind surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts, which shows that he still has some sense.

"Where did you call from?" Shen Xing didn't answer his question, but instead posed a question to the other party.

"Phone booth." Li Ya's voice sounded a little impatient, but she still answered Shen Xing's question.

Li Ya should not be in the police's sights at the moment. These randomly initiated public phone calls are absolutely impossible to retrieve recordings afterward, so Shen Xing can talk freely without worry.

But while talking with Li Ya, a plan began to take shape in Shen Xing's mind.

He needs to verify something and fill in the gaps in his plan.

"Call me back in half an hour." Shen Xing didn't say anything more and hung up the phone before Li Ya on the other end could yell at him.

Li Yalai's intentions are not good.

If the doll could truly share the devoured personality with Li Ya, then Li Ya, who possesses at least one more ruthless and stable personality, would not wholeheartedly trust Shen Xing and cooperate with him.

From Li Ya's perspective, what would he do?

They retrieved the doll without leaving a trace and immediately called me to come over. Was it out of kindness to share information about the doll with me?

not necessarily.

If his puppet could truly devour human flesh and personality, and if Shen Xing were Li Ya, he would definitely kill Shen Xing after already killing three people.

A personality that has gone to university, worked as a police officer, and would never betray others is more helpful than Shen Xing's personality combined.

Shen Xing had to prepare for the worst, but he already had a contingency plan in mind.

If we hadn't gone to find Li Ya, things wouldn't have gotten to this point.

This wasn't an accident on Shen Xing's part; rather, it was his intention... to develop things to this point.

He desperately needs a living subject for his experiments, and it cannot be a human being, or rather, it cannot be an ordinary human being.

Li Ya's existence perfectly fulfilled all of Shen Xing's preconceived conditions, giving him ample motivation.

He had no reason not to do it, and he expected to do it; Shen Xing was trying every possible excuse and justification for himself.

That was a bloodthirsty impulse that Shen Jingwei had been suppressing and disciplining all along.

When Shen Jingwei was still alive, he would take himself back to the countryside to dismantle corpses while hunting wild animals, and he could release this impulse by dissecting corpses in the morgue. But now, he has suppressed it for too long.

Old Shen, he will escape legal punishment, and he's not human...

We cannot treat him the same way we treat humans.

Shen's father probably never imagined that there was such a loophole in his education—he had not considered the existence of anomalies.

After quickly finishing his breakfast, Shen Xing got up, went back to his room, picked up the DV camera, changed to a new tape, started recording, and set up the DV camera in front of the full-length mirror in the room, pointing the camera at himself.

He took a few steps back so that the DV camera could capture his entire body, and he could also observe the content on the DV camera screen through the reflection in the mirror.

He desperately needs an ability, an ability from the mutants.

At the very least, one's exposed skin and facial features must be removed.

Although he lacked the ability, he was confident he could exonerate himself, but if he had the ability, he could have done better and had more plans.

Snowflakes, noise...

That ability to erase what is inherent in electronic devices.

Face is the most important thing.

How can I blur my facial features?

Shen Xing's first thought was to change the facial muscles and distort the skin.

Under his control, his facial muscles began to contort, and in the mirror, his facial skin began to swell abnormally, his features were completely distorted... as if someone was stretching his face.

...It looked like it was wearing a cheap, terrifying human skin mask.

The absence of any snow or spots in the DV camera indicates that the face could be preserved by the recording equipment.

This was not the effect Shen Xing wanted. Moreover, a forensic artist could redraw his facial features, making it easy to obtain a portrait of his original appearance.

Those muscles, or rather, those variants that appear as muscles, are the key to blurring the surveillance equipment.

In the mirror.

Shen Xing's neck swelled slightly, as if flesh and blood were being transmitted and surging upwards.

Several symmetrical slits appeared on his cheeks, and scarlet muscle bundles tore through the flesh and slowly closed, covering Shen Xing's face.

The second manipulation was even more precise, and not a single drop of extra blood was spilled.

The Shen Xing in the mirror was like a mask of blood and flesh, terrifying and horrifying, with only a pair of eyes calmly watching the outside world through the gaps in the blood and flesh mask.

In the DV camera, Shen Xing's face was completely covered by a mass of noisy, snowy, scarlet mosaic. Even the DV camera's image began to flicker erratically, as if it had encountered a strong radiation source.

There are also fingerprints.

Shen Xing stretched out his hands and spread them in front of him. His arms, palms, and backs of his hands were all split open, and bloody muscle bundles emerged, wrapping around Shen Xing's hands like vines.

It seemed that the abnormal entity protruding from the body had reached a certain limit, and Shen Xing in the DV camera began to flicker strangely all over his body, with noise and snow jumping wildly around him.

Shen Xing took out his phone, looked at himself in the mirror, and pressed the shutter button.

Aside from the DV camera, the photos of Shen Xing are terrifying and bizarre.

It's like a blurry, distorted, eerie shadow in an old black and white photograph.