Chapter 68: Desperate Chase

The taxi sped wildly on the asphalt road, its engine letting out a strained roar.

"Damn it! Damn it!"

The driver gripped the steering wheel with both hands, veins bulging on the back of his hands, eyes wide like copper bells, cursing nonstop, trying to use his voice to dispel the bone‑deep chill.

Liu Guanglin curled up in the corner of the back seat, his face ashen as paper, his body shaking uncontrollably.

He didn't dare look back, but he could hear it.

"Click...... click...... click......"

That weird, plastic‑joint‑twisting sound lingered neither far nor near, always behind the car like a death‑knell pendulum, striking precisely at every taut nerve.

Impossible!

Absolutely impossible!

It's just a plastic mannequin! How could it possibly run faster than a car!

Hallucination! It must be a hallucination from my recent stress!

Liu Guanglin desperately tried to self‑hypnotize, but the clear, eerie sound mercilessly mocked his self‑deception.

The driver glanced again in the rearview mirror at the twisted pursuing figure, his soul nearly flying out of fright.

The Smiling Dummy's limbs began to bend backward at utterly inhuman angles, like a huge, deformed, pallid spider, crawling and jumping on the ground at a weird frequency, each landing accompanied by a crisp "click", each leap carving a stiff, straight arc in the air!

No matter how hard he pressed the accelerator, even pushing the speed to 120, that white specter clung stubbornly tens of meters behind the car, neither pulling away nor drawing closer, like a patient hunter toying with prey about to be caught.

"Ahhh! I can't shake it off! I can't shake it off!" the driver broke down completely, his voice choked with sobs.

"Overpass! Get on the overpass!" Liu Guanglin suddenly bellowed, as if clutching a lifeline, "Get on the overpass to shake it off!"

The driver snapped out of his daze, seeing the overpass entrance not far ahead, as if it were a stairway to heaven.

He wrenched the steering wheel, tires screeching on the pavement, the taxi shot toward the entrance ramp at a perilous drift angle!

However, just as the car's nose lined up with the ramp and the headlights' beam illuminated the road ahead,

the driver's scream cut off abruptly.

His pupils shrank to pinpoints in an instant.

Only then did he see another figure standing squarely in the middle of the ramp at the overpass entrance.

Identical, pallid and stiff limbs.

It had its back to the car, utterly motionless.

In the blinding headlights, its neck twisted at a one‑hundred‑eighty‑degree, scalp‑tingling angle with a soft "click", slowly turning around!

That exaggerated, painted‑on smile faced them!

"Ahead...... ahead...... there's another one!"

The driver shouted this in despair, his mind going blank, his sole instinct to survive!

He jerked the steering wheel hard to the right as if gone mad!

"Bang——!!!"

At high speed, the taxi failed to switch lanes and instead went completely out of control, like a bull breaking free of its tether, slamming hard into a thick tree in the roadside greenery.

The violent impact deformed the whole body, the airbags exploded instantly, pinning both occupants firmly in their seats.

Liu Guanglin felt his vision go black, a buzz in his head, and then lost consciousness completely.

After an unknown amount of time.

The driver struggled to wake first, his forehead split open, warm blood streaming down his cheeks and blurring his eyes.

He shook his dazed head, laboriously pushed the airbag off his face, and glanced at the rearview mirror.

Liu Guanglin in the back seat was also groaning, seeming to come to.

"We......" the driver's words weren't finished when, through the rearview mirror, he saw a horror he would never forget.

"Bang!!!"

With a tremendous roar!

The rear car door was violently wrenched off by an unimaginable force from outside, the twisted metal sheet tumbling through the air and slamming heavily to the ground.

Countless smooth, icy, pallid plastic arms reached in from the torn‑open car door!

Those arms had no joints, yet like the most supple snakes they instantly coiled around Liu Guanglin's limbs, neck, and torso.

"Ugh...... ah......"

Just awakened, Liu Guanglin didn't even have time to utter a full plea for help before the countless plastic arms tore off his seatbelt and dragged him bodily out of the car!

"No! Save me!"

His final anguished cry was choked off the instant he was dragged from the door, leaving only a string of muffled dragging sounds.

The driver was so terrified by this surreal sight that his soul fled and his blood ran cold.

Run!

Must run!

He turned his head as if gone mad, trembling hand reaching for the ignition key, trying to restart the car to escape this hell.

However, his hand had just touched the key.

A face, a huge, pallid dummy face bearing a weird smile, silently pressed against the windshield before him.

The glass, under pressure, emitted a creaking groan.

That face was less than ten centimeters from him.

He could even make out the paint streaks on that face and the pair of black, lifeless eye sockets.

The two black holes met his gaze.

The corners of its mouth stretched wider.

"Ah——!!!"

The driver let out a gut‑wrenching scream, his eyes rolled back, and he was completely frightened into fainting.

The next day.

The Dong Lin City police, after receiving the report, sealed off the scene.

The terrified taxi driver babbled incoherently, repeatedly repeating, "Dummy… a laughing dummy… they twisted and crawled, dragging him away…"

The technicians at the scene only collected the taxi driver's fingerprints and blood, while the violently ripped‑off car door was astonishingly clean.

The missing person, Liu Guanglin, director of the Tong'an Public Security Sub‑bureau, is nowhere to be seen alive, nor is his corpse found dead.

Dong Lin City City Bureau.

In the newly appointed Director's Office, the atmosphere was so oppressive it could be squeezed for water.

"What did you say? Liu Guanglin disappeared?" City Bureau chief Zhang Guozheng listened to the subordinate's report, his brows knotting into a lump.

"Yes, chief. The scene was Weird; aside from a terrified driver, there were no clues."

Zhang Guozheng's complexion grew increasingly grim.

He recalled that over the past month, Dong Lin City had experienced a series of bizarre disappearances.

The missing included street thugs, corrupt corporate executives, and even a few prostitute‑registered women in anti‑prostitution files.

Their sole commonality was that they vanished alive and left no corpse, completely evaporating from this world.

It was as if… something had "eaten" them.

Now, even a sub‑bureau chief has…

Zhang Guozheng sprang to his feet, pacing back and forth in the office, fine cold sweat beading on his forehead.

This is no longer a routine criminal case!

He walked to his desk, looking at the internal notification File that had just been issued from the province, concerning a "special incident," and at the unfamiliar agency name at the end of the File.

Federal Weird Investigation Bureau.

He hesitated for a long time, then his gaze became resolute.

Zhang Guozheng picked up the red, encrypted‑line telephone on the desk, trembling as he dialed a number from the Federation capital.

The moment the call connected, he summoned all his strength to steady his voice.

"Report! This is Zhang Guozheng of the Dong Lin City Public Security Bureau! Our city… our city may have experienced a 'special contamination incident'! Requesting support! I request… the Weird Investigation Bureau to intervene!"