48 Hours a Day Novel Chapter 645 - Unknowns and Suspicion

Chapter 645 Unknowns and Suspicion

Zhang Heng looked at the college student in front of him. The latter was akin to the proverbial inspirational protagonist from a soap opera who had overco many difficulties, defeated ntal illness, and finally regained a new life. All the gloominess that surrounded him seed to have gone.

He stood there, talking about how he overca all the difficulties that he faced in his life, even ntioning how bad he felt for allowing his parents and friends to be worried sick of him. His emotions, actions, or expressions were flawless, and judging by the lady cashier’s response; it appeared that the prodigal son had now returned.

ntal illness could be categorized as a disease itself. Only a minute fraction of people could heal themselves, and it usually took a very long ti.

The college student had been staying at ho for so long, rarely leaving his bedroom. Zhang Heng, who had just t him yesterday afternoon and the night before, knew his condition showed no signs of improving. He still rembered that the student even took off his pants in front of him to play dumb. And with the sound of the key being inserted into the keyhole, the look of horror on the student’s face wasn’t sothing he could make up.

In a span of less than a day, however, the student made a miraculous recovery. After a night’s disappearance, he abruptly reappeared, and he threw himself right into the public’s embrace again. No matter how one looked at it, sothing was not right. But before Zhang Heng confronted him, he pointed at the side of the student’s head, “Where did your hair go?” “Oh, I accidentally tripped and fell on the coffee table earlier. The doctor had to shave a bit of my hair before he stitched up the wound,” the student explained, moving aside the hair that covered the wound. Zhang Heng saw the stitches.

“Oh, does it hurt?” The lady cashier girl said with concern. “I also heard that soone broke into your house. Was your injury from a fight with the thief?”

“No, the thief had already left when we woke up,” replied the college student with a shake of the head. “I fell while tidying the house later on.”

Zhang Heng knew that the college student was lying because he noticed that the hair had clearly been ripped-off violently. His hair, alongside so blood stains and scalp tissue, had been kept in a Ziploc bag inside Zhang Heng’s bag. And his family was not even at ho last night.

One thing left Zhang Heng wondering, though – how did the student change overnight from a person cowering in fear and begging for rcy into a man so good at making up stories. Even Zhang Heng, who had completed the Deductive Reasoning quest, saw no weaknesses in him.

The college student had almost beco a completely different person.

Suddenly, Zhang Heng thought of sothing. He took an ice-cream from the freezer on the side and handed it to the lady cashier. At the sa ti, he said to the college student, “I don’t have enough change in my e-wallet. Can you pay for

first?”.

“No problem,” the student chirped cheerily. “We are all neighbors in this small area. And I have caused you guys so trouble before,” he added while taking out his wallet.

Zhang Heng raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Now, he was convinced that not only was the man in front of him telling the truth. The student had to be a completely different person since he didn’t couldn’t recall how Zhang Heng paid the one yuan when he bought a pack of cigarettes two days ago. When Zhang Heng asked him a favor, the student would have surely ntioned the incident.

Was this a precursor to what he had to deal with throughout the duration of the quest?

A creature that could morph into another person and replace the person.

And others hardly noticed. Judging by the lady cashier’s reaction, she obviously was oblivious to the fact that this was a different person she was talking to.

Hence, so things began to make so sense now. The college student must have been so afraid of his parents because they weren’t actually his parents. All his troubles had nothing to do with the so-called emotional entanglent. That had to be the real cause of his ntal illness.

No one was willing to believe him. After all, if he had not seen it with his own eyes, Zhang Heng himself would be having difficulties believing that sothing so bizarre could happen.

It was unimaginable how the student could live with his fake parents after getting discharged from the ntal hospital. Under the intense psychological pressure he had been subjected to, it was a miracle he didn’t go insane.

Now, it seed that whatever little luck he had would end here.

Just last night, what happened to his parents finally happened to him. Despite the truth being out, Zhang Heng did not imdiately act on it.

He was faced with the sa predicant the college student once struggled with. All of the above had been Zhang Heng’s speculation so far. He couldn’t prove that the college student was not the original one. There was simply no difference between the two, and Zhang Heng had no idea what sort of alien enemy he faced and what thods they used to replace the student. Was it so cloning technology, or were they parasitic, mind-controlling creatures?

If he were to attack the student now, there were consequences he needed to consider. Although this quest had a shorter duration than his previous ones, he still had to be here for 140 days. This place wasn’t like the vast West of the 19th-century United States. He could not just go into hiding after killing soone.

Zhang Heng was also oblivious to the number of enemies he faced. Other than the college student and his family, who else were under the control of these aliens? It appeared that the best course of action was for him to stay low for the ti being. He needed to collect more evidence to carry on with the investigation.

Of course, having to stay vigilant at all tis was a given. Judging from the college student’s reaction, he did not seem to know what happened before. Desperate to live to the next day, Zhang Heng was unclear if the original student told his fake parents about him.

In a worst-case scenario, his identity had been exposed. Many preparations had to be done in advance in the face of the most unfavorable outco. Zhang Heng took his ice-cream from the lady cashier, thanked the college student, and left the convenience store with his schoolbag on his back.

Although Zhang Heng did not look back, he was sure that the fake college student was watching him from behind.

It was a bad feeling. And more importantly, after discovering that the student had been silently replaced, Zhang Heng suddenly realized that perhaps he could only rely on himself in this quest because he did not know who else he could trust.

It had been a long ti since he encountered a situation as such. As of now, he did not know who his enemies were, where they ca from, and how many of them he was up against.

Going against them wasn’t the scary part. The unknowns and suspicions were the most threatening factors Zhang Heng had to endure in this quest.

When Zhang Heng opened the door and looked at grandpa practicing calligraphy on the table, he suddenly felt that the old man looked a little strange.