The shadow walked out of the third-floor room of the haunted house. He saw a marble rolling down the stairs, and he followed it all the way down to the first floor.
No one was around. The lonely shadow continued forward. He watched the marble roll into the bathroom and come to a stop in front of a stall door.
The midnight chimes had already ceased. The shadow walked up to the stall, bent down to pick up the marble, and noticed in passing that the stall door wasn't fully closed.
He pressed his face against the door panel and peered inside. His eyes met a field of blood-red.
Clutching the marble in both hands, the shadow stepped through the door. He moved through the crimson expanse. Perhaps it was because some memories had been lost, but the buildings on either side were extremely blurry — he could only vaguely make out that this was a blood-red city.
Unable to find his way back, the shadow wandered aimlessly with the marble in his grip, until a hand landed on his shoulder.
It was a child's hand, its fingers caked in dark, crusted blood.
The shadow was startled. He slowly turned his head, and the scene in his mind vanished at that very moment.
"The door in the haunted house connects to the Blood-colored City? That door leads to the center of the Blood-colored City?"
Judging solely from this memory, at least before entering the world beyond the door, the shadow had still been relatively normal. He would sneak out at night to play, yes, but all in all it was still within an acceptable range.
"A blood-soaked child met the shadow behind that door. That child was the key to making the shadow change."
To guide an ordinary shadow into becoming a vengeful god — just thinking about it made Chen Ge shudder: "Good thing I didn't go through that door the moment I noticed something was wrong with it. Otherwise, I wouldn't even know how I died."
Fang Yu's world beyond the door was on the verge of collapsing. Chen Ge called his employees back and picked up the largest shard of the fish tank from the ground.
"Fang Yu?"
He looked at the blood-red little goldfish, his expression odd. This was the first time he had encountered a situation like this.
The world beyond the door was woven from the door-pusher's memories. If the door-pusher had lost all memory — if she had even forgotten who she was — what form would she take in the world beyond the door?
Hearing Chen Ge's voice, the goldfish swished its tail nervously on the shard. Its body was covered in wounds.
"Let me get you out of here first. If you really are Fang Yu, then perhaps you can prove something else — that the world beyond the door doesn't only contain human-shaped ghosts. Other things can exist there too, even if they were all once human."
With the help of the red-clothed ghost, Chen Ge held the fish tank shard and pushed open the black iron door.
"Aah!"
A scream rang out in his ears. The moment Chen Ge opened his eyes, something came flying at him, and he quickly ducked to the side.
A desk lamp smashed into the wall, its glass shade shattering across the floor. If that had hit him in the head, it would have left a nasty gash.
"Calm down!"
Chen Ge turned on the light and immediately opened the bedroom door. The kind woman next door had apparently been pressed against it eavesdropping the whole time — when the door suddenly swung open, she stumbled straight into the room.
"Both of you, calm down for a moment! The treatment is over, and it went very well!" Chen Ge looked at the two confused faces in the room, then walked straight to Fang Yu's bedside. "Did you just dream that you turned into a blood-red goldfish? Did you see a gray-white city? Did you dream about me?"
Fang Yu had finally calmed down. She studied Chen Ge and nodded in a daze. "It seems like you showed up in my nightmare."
"That was hypnosis," Chen Ge said with a deadpan expression. "After much deliberation, I decided to use hypnotherapy on you."