To avoid colliding with the "cloned car" in front of her, Xi Xi instinctively swerved the steering wheel. In the nick of time, relying on her survival instinct and years of driving experience, she changed lanes.
The vehicle screeched as it left a long, arc-shaped trail in the tunnel.
Her heart pounded in her chest like a drumbeat, and Xi Xi's forehead was covered with fine beads of sweat.
Still shaken, she quickly looked around. The tunnel was still pitch black, with only the RV's headlights illuminating the way ahead.
The "cloned car" seemed to be drawn by some unseen force, suddenly disappearing from sight as if it had never existed, leaving no trace of its existence.
Unaware of what was happening, Aura and the little white duck were startled by the powerful inertia of the lane change.
The quacking little white duck flapped its wings and flew to Xi Xi's shoulder as fast as it could, shivering and curling up into a ball.
"Hallucination?" Chu Zhiqin opened her eyes, her breathing slightly rapid. She slowly turned her head and looked around. Everything seemed to have returned to its former tranquility.
However, the moment just before the collision was so realistic that it still feels unbelievable when I think about it, giving me a sense of surviving a disaster.
Xi Xi silently shook her head. It's important to understand that even in hallucinations, it's extremely difficult for two people to experience the exact same hallucination simultaneously.
“In that case, I think it’s necessary for us to each describe what we saw,” Xi Xi said to Chu Zhiqin after calming down. First of all, we must determine what exactly the thing was.
She drove the RV back to the roadside, turned off the engine, and after a brief silence, continued to explain: "If it's a hallucination, then it means that our memories have been read. Since it's a memory, there will always be some differences."
Chu Zhiqin felt that her daughter's words made a lot of sense, and she tried her best to recall the scene she had just seen.
However, after the mother and daughter finished their descriptions, they fell silent. Every detail of the speeding RV they had seen was exactly the same.
Chu Zhiqin didn't even recognize the Little Ear Dog IP hanging on Xi Xi's rearview mirror, and had never looked at it closely.
However, in the instant before the collision, she clearly saw the white pendant dangling from the car opposite.
“It really is exactly the same as this one…” Chu Zhiqin stroked the wings on the back of the little dog keychain, her heart suddenly sinking, and then as if she had thought of some terrifying scene, her face instantly turned ashen, “Right! There was no one in that car!”
Xi Xi naturally noticed this as well; both the driver's seat and the passenger seat of the car were empty.
According to the two people, every detail was perfectly matched, even the shape of the headlights, which they would not normally notice, was exactly the same.
Xi Xi was now certain that what she had just witnessed was not an illusion created by reading her memories.
If it truly is a highly sophisticated form of collective hallucination, then this hallucination is far too realistic...
With no solution in sight, Xi Xi, after pacing around the car for a while, had no choice but to return inside.
Outside the pitch-black tunnel, apart from the marks left by his own sharp turn, there were no other traces left behind, and no clues could be found at all.
In the distance, faintly, something seemed to be shimmering with a dim light.
Normally, Xi Xi might have calmly assumed it was just some kind of luminescent mineral, but after what just happened, she wasn't so sure.
She frowned slightly, quickly turned on the light screen camera, and pointed the lens at the mysterious light source.
As you gently swipe your finger across the screen, the image gradually zooms in.
When Xi Xi finally saw what the bright light was, her tense nerves relaxed slightly.
It was a firelight, like a lighthouse in the boundless darkness, piercing through the surrounding gloom.
Seeing this, Xi's mother, who had been anxiously watching Xi Xi, finally breathed a long sigh of relief. She murmured to herself, "Thank goodness, it was just ordinary firelight, not..."
Thankfully, it wasn't a will-o'-the-wisp.
Before Chu Zhiqin could finish her sentence, she suddenly realized that the presence of fire meant there were people inside.
As they drew closer, the firelight became clearer, illuminating a simple yet surprisingly warm scene.
A car was parked quietly on the left side of the road. A player sat on a large rock by the roadside. Beside him was a simple stove made of stacked stones, with an iron pot on it, which was bubbling happily and emitting a fragrant aroma of food.
And this player was none other than the short-haired blonde woman that Xi Xi had met at the transit station fast food restaurant.
The blonde woman seemed to have been startled by Xi Xi's RV. She stood alertly beside her car, one hand gripping a dry branch for starting a fire, the other behind her back as if concealing some kind of weapon.
When she saw that there were two women sitting in the small RV, the blonde woman visibly breathed a sigh of relief, but she still did not put down the dead branch in her hand, her body slightly tense, staring intently ahead without moving.
As the RV drew closer, the view through the windshield gradually became clearer. When she saw Xi Xi's face, she gasped in astonishment, her face filled with disbelief.
Xi Xi also did not expect to meet this blonde woman again here.
However, judging from their reactions, it is clear that there is no hostility or malice between them.
So, both sides simply nodded politely in acknowledgment. Xi Xi didn't stop; she continued to grip the steering wheel tightly and sped off.
Fortunately, before getting close to the fire, Xi Xi had already become suspicious, guessing that it might be a player, so she turned off the autopilot in advance, otherwise she would have been exposed when she got close.
Xi Xi currently has no plans to reveal the autonomous driving components she obtained using the magic pen, and probably won't in the future either.
While keeping an eye on the surrounding road conditions, she pondered to herself and suddenly changed her mind.
In this chance encounter, it's impossible to determine whether the other person is a copy recipient.
Because the terrain of this section is no different from other tunnels, anyone can pass through it, so it is really not advisable to alert the enemy or make any rash moves.
But one thing Xi Xi was certain of was that the area was a railway line, and no one had ever explored it beforehand.
After all, she hadn't found any signs of the train being ransacked when she searched it earlier.
On the train, everything—the floor, the tabletops, and the suitcases—was covered in dust.
“Something’s not right…” Xi Xi began to doubt herself again. Was this really an ordinary landscape? Then how should we explain the “paranormal event” just now?
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