Starting with dissecting ghost stories

When Shen Xing stopped the car, the man walked away looking dejected, seemingly unaware of Shen Xing's car parked by the roadside.

Grandma Zhang and Li Xiaohua didn't notice Shen Xing standing by the roadside, out of the streetlights' view; they seemed to have been thrown off balance by the man's arrival.

But Shen Yuan saw Shen Xing immediately.

After whispering something to Li Xiaohua, she reached out and patted Li Xiaohua's head, then stuffed a five-yuan note into Li Xiaohua's hand before leaving the shop. She ignored Shen Xing and headed straight home.

Perhaps because of what had just happened, Shen Yuan seemed to be walking much slower than usual.

Shen Xing noticed this as well, but instead of slowing down to follow, he pushed the cart to her side.

In the residential area, the laughter and screams of children playing and the clamor of adults calling out names and urging their children to come home from upstairs seemed to be drowned out by the sound of the bicycle chain between the two people.

After walking for a while, Shen Yuan took the initiative to speak.

"...Xiao Hua's father came to see her." Shen Yuan seemed to want to talk to Shen Xing about something, mentioning the scene from earlier, it was unclear what the scene had reminded her of.

"Oh... I recognize him, I've seen him before." Shen Xing nodded, then, after carefully choosing his words, replied, "What's he coming back for?"

Shen Xing continued the conversation, and it was good to be able to chat with Shen Yuan for a while, at least it would give them a chance to ease the cold atmosphere that had been between them for so long.

"Tomorrow is Xiaohua's birthday, and he wants to take her away, but Grandma won't let him." Shen Yuan murmured, her hands behind her back and her head looking down at the ground. "Xiaohua has been drawing pictures of herself with her parents. She misses her dad a lot."

"Grandma said he's incorrigible, but I think people can change... He might want to live a good life now."

Perhaps Li Xiaohua's experience reminded Shen Yuan of something, because her tone was slightly melancholy.

Perhaps it was because the word "Dad" reminded her of the deceased Shen Jingwei, Shen Xing thought to herself.

But Shen Xing had to step forward and shatter Shen Yuan's illusions. She was the type of person who believed others just by crying and saying sweet words. If she didn't change her ways, it wouldn't be surprising if she got kidnapped one day.

How could someone who gets hooked on gambling, gambles until their family falls apart, their credit goes bankrupt, and they're drowning in debt, possibly have the word "suddenly come to their senses" in their dictionary?

Gamblers only think about how to raise money to try their luck again.

"To confirm whether he's living a good life, you can have Grandma check his bank statements to see if there's anything else besides normal living expenses and part-time income..."

Shen Xing tried to analyze the feasibility from the perspective of understanding that the gambler had finally come to his senses, but Shen Yuan had already quickened her pace after hearing the first half of the story and was walking quickly towards the stairwell and up the stairs.

Would it be better to start by showing empathy?

Shen Xing locked his bicycle in the stairwell and went upstairs. By the time he unlocked the door, Shen Yuan had already entered her room and closed the door.

Shen Xing didn't say anything. After locking the door, he took his handbag and went to his room, where he locked the door again.

He took out his laptop and placed it on his desk, then took out his DV camera and started searching for recordings.

The tape probably needs to be replaced...

Shen Xing turned the dial, pressed the REW button to rewind for a few seconds, and then clicked play.

On the small LCD screen, a blurry warehouse scene appeared, along with my own reflection.

Shen Xing fast-forwarded through the earlier experiments with chicks and meat, mainly wanting to see the scene where the small muscle was pinched up later.

But the more Shen Xing looked at it, the more something seemed off.

Hmm... where's the meat?

Previously, when Shen Xing used tweezers to place the meat in front of the camera, the meat in the lens would only cause the screen to display snow and noise.

But now, the noise and static are still there, but the meat is gone...

Shen Xing reviewed the recordings from the first day, and then checked the recordings from this morning until noon.

The painting still exists, and I still exist, but the details about the muscle that was squeezed out have completely disappeared.

In the video, Shen Xing is holding a DV camera and filming directly onto a plastic dish, recording the constantly changing direction of the muscles. At this point, only the lens is pointing at the empty plastic dish and a black and white mosaic inside—not even a trace of red remains.

All the video footage of that small muscle... has disappeared...

The tape was damaged?

Or is it the power of that piece of meat?

Why are those video recordings still available?

Questions began to appear in Shen Xing's mind.

That piece of flesh, which seemed only capable of healing injuries, could probably do far more than I imagined...

Since I can contain all this flesh and blood... could I gain some of this ability?

Shen Xing opened the notebook on his desk and glanced at it; the notes he had made were still there.

It can be recorded, but not saved by the recording device?

I currently only have a handheld DV camera, which doesn't represent all recording equipment; other situations remain to be observed.

What if... only you, as the abnormal being, can see it, and others can't? That would be easy to verify, but the choice of who to use...

It's not too late to try this later.

Shen Xing picked up his pen and lightly tapped the notebook with the tip, making a soft tapping sound.

To facilitate subsequent recording and to distinguish those special flesh and blood from ordinary biological flesh and blood, Shen Xing felt it was necessary to give these special things a name that would be easy to identify and record.

Shen Xing didn't want to complicate a simple name, so he decided to use a combination of name and number.

The wall in the infirmary that caused the alteration in the photocopy was what Shen Xing decided to temporarily call "Wall-01".

01 represents that this is the first thing he discovered, while "wall" is the name of the object itself.

As for the derivative paintings generated by the wall, and the derivative muscles of the paintings, they are directly expanded into a subset [Painting-01] and a subset of paintings [Painting-01-1] within the category of wall.

When he wanted to describe meat, Shen Xing simply used a simplified number, writing it as "[01-1-1]", which represents the first muscle produced by the first painting on wall number 01.

Source number - Carrier number - Sample number.

This way, he can recall what a number is just by looking at it, and even if someone accidentally sees this string of numbers in Shen Xing's notebook, they won't know what it is.

The derivative organization 0111 has been absorbed into my body, and the 011 drawing has been completely dismantled. I can go to the infirmary tomorrow to number the remaining drawings.

After taking a shower, Shen Xing briefly planned out what he needed to do the next day, then lay down on the bed and went to sleep.

He simply created a simple numbering system to assign a number to all the anomalies that were currently occurring.

If it's just pure numbers without any special categorization, the brain would have a hard time figuring out what such a string of numbers means, since it's neither a computer nor someone with hyperthymesia.

Shen Xing had not considered at all how to number the different anomalies he encountered.

Just as he hadn't expected to encounter any other anomalies.