"You're just going to leave him like that? You're going to let him stay here alone?" Chen Ge didn't think leaving Wu Sheng alone in the cabin was the best choice.
"I'll draw them away. I'm the one who caused this mess — it has nothing to do with the boy. I can't let him suffer what he shouldn't have to." Wu Jinpeng slammed the lid of the wooden box shut and ran toward the outside.
Chen Ge watched Wu Jinpeng's retreating figure, then glanced back at Wu Sheng.
The little fellow was hiding inside the box, both hands pressed over his mouth, not saying a single word, silently watching his father run out.
"Has this kid been silent all along because of his father's instructions?" Chen Ge felt he might have missed something. "Never mind — as long as I stick close to Wu Jinpeng, everything will work itself out."
In Wu Sheng's eyes, he was just a child hiding under his father's protection. He had witnessed every hardship the family had endured, but he was only a child — powerless, able to do nothing but watch his father walk ahead, bearing enormous pressure on his own.
Chen Ge worried that moving too slowly would give away Wu Sheng's location. He didn't dare linger in the cabin for long, so he shut the rickety wooden plank door and chased after Wu Jinpeng.
Above them, the night sky held neither stars nor moon. On either side of the street, the attics gave off a faint stench that felt oppressive and suffocating.
Wu Jinpeng charged ahead — he didn't know what lay in front of him, but he had no other choice. To prevent his dog from being treated as a stray once more, to keep Wu Sheng from becoming a homeless child, he could only keep running.
"The monsters with their mouths sewn shut probably represent not just the neighbors, but also the various difficulties encountered in life."
More and more monsters were now chasing behind Wu Jinpeng. They wore all manner of clothing — sharply dressed white-collar workers, vagrants draped in threadbare padded coats, thieves hiding daggers, and even more who wore ordinary clothes, looking like strangers you'd pass on the street in the real world.
Disdain, scorn, bullying — under the Nether Embryo's influence, evil was magnified without limit.
Chen Ge couldn't imagine what would have happened if Wu Jinpeng hadn't existed in Wu Sheng's world.
How was such a small child supposed to face so many monstrous, terrifying creatures? Chen Ge was certain that without his father, Wu Sheng would have been doomed to sink forever into this world of despair — becoming the most suitable host for the Nether Embryo to parasitize.
"Fortunately, he has a great father. Wu Jinpeng is the only light in this dark world."
Sprinting down the endless, pitch-black street with sewn-mouthed monsters in pursuit — nowhere to hide, nowhere to run — yet even so, Wu Jinpeng was still doing everything he could to buy time.
"Perhaps that's the reason people are people."
The Nether Embryo lured the chosen children toward despair, opening illusory doors for them. But the worlds behind those children's doors were different from the true worlds behind doors. No matter how despairing or painful these children's worlds were, there was always a single, unquenched ray of light.
Jiang Ming's world behind the door was guarded by the old woman and his mother. Wu Sheng's world behind the door had Wu Jinpeng. In their memories, there was always a small harbor where they could rest for a moment.
Running behind Wu Jinpeng, Chen Ge slowly began to develop a deeper understanding of many things. He had known about the door in his haunted house ever since he first obtained the Black Phone. Back then, he had only felt fear toward the door — an innate human dread of the unknown.
But as he learned more, Chen Ge's perception of the door kept changing.
The door was pushed open by the desperate. What lay beyond was not a world of salvation, but an even deeper abyss of despair. The door was sinful, terrible.
Initially, Chen Ge had wanted nothing to do with the door. But under pressure from the Ghost Stories Society, when his life was threatened, he had no choice but to approach it.
Through repeated contact, he gradually discovered that the door itself didn't inherently represent fear, and couldn't simply be equated with despair.
He wouldn't try to control the door or profit from what lay within, the way the Ghost Stories Society did — but without fully realizing it, he had stopped hating the door so much.
At the Spirit Channeling School, Chen Ge had encountered the painter behind the door — that madman who wanted to build a heaven on the other side, to nurture a small flower from the soil of despair.
The painter had ultimately failed, but what he'd done once again shook Chen Ge's understanding of the door and the world behind it.
And the event that truly set Chen Ge to reflecting had taken place at Jiangyuan Residential District. When he saw his younger self being pushed off a tall building by a man in a white coat, when he heard the words he himself had once spoken — that was when his view of the door truly began to change.
"Maybe the children's worlds behind the door aren't so different from the real worlds behind doors. The real world behind the door might have its own light too..." Chen Ge watched Wu Jinpeng sprinting, and the countless monsters chasing him. "But the light in a child's world behind the door is chased by countless monsters. If the real world behind the door also has light, then it must be hunted by even more terrifying, darker things."
"What would the light in a world behind the door look like?" His parents' silhouettes flashed through his mind. Chen Ge suddenly recalled something that had happened long ago. He reached into the lining of his backpack and pulled out the wooden toy the Nether Embryo had stolen.
"This toy was given to me by my father before bed. He told me 'Happy Birthday' at the time — but he'd already given me a birthday present during the day and had already said 'Happy Birthday' to me. There was no reason to say it again when I was half-asleep at night. And he didn't hand the gift to me directly — he just set it on the nightstand behind me." Chen Ge recalled more details. "Could it be that this toy was originally meant for the Shadow?"
Staring at the bloodstained toy in his hands, Chen Ge slowed his pace. "A birthday gift for the Shadow? Then that final 'Happy Birthday' was meant for the Shadow too? Could he have noticed something back then that neither the Shadow nor I realized?"
"Stop spacing out! Run!" Wu Jinpeng was already gasping for breath. Seeing Chen Ge slow down, he grabbed Chen Ge's sleeve with genuine concern. "Don't stop! I know a place where we can lose them!"
Wu Jinpeng led Chen Ge to an intersection on West Street, where a private hospital stood.
The scale wasn't large, and the decoration was quite plain, but though the sparrow was small, it had all the organs — every facility it needed was there.
"The hospital has a back entrance. Last time, that's where I shook them off. Those things don't dare come in."
"If even the monsters don't dare come in, doesn't that mean there's something even more terrifying inside?"
"We'll figure that out once we're in."
Wu Jinpeng brooked no argument and pulled Chen Ge into the hospital. The moment the monsters saw them enter, they all came to a halt at the intersection.
Once inside the hospital, every noise in Chen Ge's ears vanished — all that remained was the sound of a child crying.