"The wrong soccer ball? The wardrobe?" The information in Ying Chen's words made Chen Ge frown. He had been to Ying Chen's bedroom and knew that Ying Chen had a headless corpse bound beneath his bed.
"Could the soccer ball he's talking about be the head of that corpse?"
A human head and a soccer ball were very different—even a blind person wouldn't mix them up. But that was assuming one's older brother was a normal person.
Ying Chen was a pervert, and a pervert with a strong desire for display. He had edited cat abuse videos in reverse and posted them on a cat rescue website, and most of the people watching his videos were cat lovers.
Every night, he probably sat in that room stained with blood and hair, staring at his phone screen, watching those cat lovers post their one after another messages of blessings and good wishes.
This kind of special experience probably gave him a certain kind of twisted pleasure, so it was entirely possible that he had hidden a human head inside the ball and then watched Ying Tong play with it at home.
Thinking about it this way, Chen Ge suddenly realized that the twisted, terrifying dolls on Ying Tong's desk probably had an even deeper meaning.
Chen Ge said nothing. After a pause of only a few seconds on both ends, Ying Chen on the other side of the phone detected something was wrong.
"You... you're not Ying Tong!"
Chen Ge didn't know how the other party had figured out he wasn't Ying Tong within three seconds, and this level of perception and judgment made him even more uneasy.
In Ying Tong's memories, his older brother Ying Chen was certainly a very smart and terrifying person, and this impression had been reflected in the world behind the door.
"Why are you in my house?"
Ying Chen's voice hardly changed at all, but through the receiver, Chen Ge could hear that his walking speed had clearly picked up.
This guy was trying to use words to keep Chen Ge calm, but in reality, he was rushing home at full speed.
Chen Ge didn't hesitate for a moment and immediately hung up the phone.
He couldn't get any useful information from the other party anymore. Even if the other party had revealed something, it was very likely a trap.
"I have to leave right now."
Both were extremely decisive people. In Chen Ge's mind, he could vaguely recall the location of the living room door. He didn't stay any longer and carried his backpack to the living room entrance.
The cold security door wasn't fully shut. Chen Ge pushed it open and stepped outside.
The temperature dropped again. It seemed even colder outside the house.
"Without my employees to help me, how am I supposed to fight that pervert in my current state?"
Ying Tong's door was the third-to-last door. Because Chen Ge had skipped the door representing Mingtai's heart—Nie Xin's door—the difficulty of the world behind the door had already reached an extraordinarily twisted level. This also showed just how terrifying Mingtai was as a four-star trial task.
Layer upon layer of fear, deepening step by step. And this excruciating night had only just begun.
"Ying Tong lived in a very old house. He grew up here from a young age, so his main memories should be concentrated in the Ming Yuan residential complex."
The architectural layout was something Chen Ge already knew, but having to play hide-and-seek with a psychopath in this building in total darkness — even he felt the pressure.
Stepping through the door, Chen Ge hadn't gone more than a few paces before something grazed his ankle again, as though a cat had fled the room along with him.
"How many cats does Ying Chen actually have?" Chen Ge edged along the wall and made his way slowly into the corridor. "There are stairwells on the left and right sides of the residential building, with the elevator in the middle — assuming this place mirrors reality."
Chen Ge knew very little about Ying Tong. He didn't know what Ying Tong feared most, couldn't take any targeted precautions, and could only play it by ear.
"Once an old elevator starts up, it makes a racket — essentially giving away my position. And I can't see a thing right now. If I press the wrong button, who knows — the moment those doors open, Ying Chen might be standing right outside."
Without a second thought, Chen Ge ruled out the elevator. That left him facing his next choice.
Which stairwell — left or right?
Ying Chen's apartment was near the left stairwell, practically right at the entrance to the stairs. Chen Ge figured that if Ying Chen wanted to get back home as quickly as possible, there was a very high chance he would come up through the left stairwell.
"Then I'll take the right one."
In this world behind the door, every decision could be a matter of life and death.
If Chen Ge chose wrong and ran into Ying Chen in the stairwell, that psychopath could easily slip in behind him and find some way to finish him off — after all, he already knew his secret.
Running his hand along the wall, Chen Ge gradually conquered his fear of the dark and broke into a slow jog.
The stairwell was clear of any debris. Just as Chen Ge was about to reach the right stairwell entrance, a cat's meow suddenly echoed from somewhere ahead of him.
A very, very soft meow — and the sound was coming from the mouth of the right stairwell.
"A cat is over there?"
If this were reality, encountering a cat wouldn't make Chen Ge this nervous. But this was the world behind the door.
Cats were complex, contradictory creatures — symbols of many things, carrying different meanings in different people's eyes. Chen Ge couldn't make an immediate judgment.
Ying Chen had taken in a huge number of stray cats, but he only did so to feed his own twisted, perverted appetites. If the cats had enough strength to fight back, they would have been the first to kill Ying Chen.
Unfortunately, whether in reality or in the world behind the door, Ying Chen was alive and well — meaning that even here, he had the ability to kill "cats" with ease.
While Chen Ge was thinking, another meow rang out from the right stairwell entrance, much louder than the first one.
Something grazed his ankle again. Before Chen Ge could even react, a third meow came — this time, the sound was right beside him.
The meows were growing shorter and shorter apart, and the sound was becoming more and more piercing, like the cries of a small infant.
"Are they warning me?"
Ying Chen was a cat abuser — the cats would never help him. Thinking it through, there was a very high probability that Ying Chen was in the right stairwell!
Trust the cats, or trust his own judgment — Chen Ge was faced with yet another life-or-death choice.
After a moment's pause, Chen Ge gritted his teeth and turned, sprinting toward the left stairwell.
Behind him, the cats' cries grew more piercing, shrill—like weeping, yet also like laughter. Utterly terrifying.
Stumbling and swaying, having lost his sight, even the basic act of running felt unnatural to Chen Ge.
He gave it everything he had to reach the left stairwell, hiding on the landing between two floors.
Crouching on the stairs, Chen Ge gripped the railing, lowering his center of gravity as much as possible. This way, even if someone pushed him from behind, he wouldn't simply fall down.
Not daring to move carelessly, he stayed there, wanting to verify one crucial thing.
"If the door opens in a moment, that means Ying Chen has returned home—he came up from the right passage. That would prove the cats are helping me! The louder their cries, the closer Ying Chen is to me!"