Chen Ge wanted to warn the middle-aged man, but it was already too late. The cat's meowing grew louder and louder, so he quickly ducked into a nearby stairwell.
The elevator had stopped on this floor. There were no footsteps, no breathing.
After a moment, knocking echoed through the hallway.
The sound seemed to materialize out of nowhere, without any warning.
"The middle-aged man is very likely to tell Ying Chen about me." The knocking was loud, but no one opened the door. Chen Ge stood right on the stairwell steps, and even without his sight, he remained perfectly calm. In this situation, he still didn't flee—he chose to stay.
Ying Chen didn't know his information yet. The situation was temporarily in his favor.
After continuous knocking that went on for a long time, the security door finally opened, and the middle-aged man's voice carried out into the hallway.
"Ying Chen? What are you here for? Trying to collect property management fees from me?" There was a trace of impatience in the man's words. He hadn't taken Chen Ge's earlier warning to heart at all.
"My brother Ying Tong snuck out of the house to play and hasn't come home yet. I heard someone walking around in this area when I came upstairs, so I wanted to come ask—have you seen my brother?" Ying Chen's voice sounded quite young. His appearance in the door-world seemed to be a bit younger than in reality.
The door-world was woven from the memories of the person who pushed open the door. From this, one could draw a conclusion: Ying Chen's rather young voice was the one Ying Tong remembered most deeply.
In other words, Ying Chen might have done something to Ying Tong a long time ago, and that incident had become the deepest shadow in Ying Tong's heart—he remembered his older brother's voice from that time with perfect clarity.
"If your eyes are blind, be more careful. You didn't close your own door properly, and now that something's happened, you come asking someone else?" The middle-aged man had a truly awful temperament, as was evident from his earlier attitude toward Chen Ge.
"I'm truly sorry. These are some date cakes a relative from my hometown sent over—I hope you'll accept them. If you see my brother, please let me know. His eyes aren't good, and I'm terrified something might happen to him."
"Date cakes? They're so red. Did you put food coloring in them?"
"All natural. The texture is especially delicate—you can try one. If you like it, I have some more at home." Ying Chen was very enthusiastic. He acted exactly as the middle-aged man had described—like a spineless pushover.
"The taste really is quite good, completely different from what I buy on the street. Fine—if I see your brother, I'll let you know right away." The middle-aged man chewed on something as he spoke, eating while closing the security door behind him.
"The middle-aged man didn't reveal my existence, but the problem is Ying Chen hasn't gone inside his apartment either. Ying Chen should be standing right at his door now."
The sound of elevator doors opening came from the hallway, and Chen Ge was preparing to leave too—but that was when he heard another meow. The sound came from the middle of the corridor.
"Ying Chen didn't take the elevator!"
Pressing himself against the wall, Chen Ge immediately headed downstairs. He couldn't afford to make a sound—being blind was already slowing him down, and if he made noise, he would definitely be caught.
He had absolutely no way to judge Ying Chen's position now. All he knew was that the cat's meowing kept sounding, and that pervert was heading toward the stairwell.
"Hey!" The security door in the hallway opened again, and the middle-aged man's voice came from the doorway. "Why are there so many letters in this bag of date cakes?"
"They're letters my relative wrote to me. Sorry, I forgot to take them out." Ying Chen's voice rang out right above Chen Ge's head. He had already entered the stairwell—he was on the fourth floor, while Chen Ge had just reached the third.
Chen Ge broke into a cold sweat. He immediately held his breath and stood perfectly still.
"I'll take the letters then. If you see my brother, remember to let me know."
The cat's meowing stopped. When Ying Chen's voice sounded again, he had already left the stairwell and was standing next to the middle-aged man.
"Sure thing." After the middle-aged man said this, before long he spoke again: "Why do you keep looking into my apartment? Do you suspect your brother is inside?"
"Not really, I was just..."
The voices in the stairwell suddenly went silent, followed immediately by the sound of a heavy body hitting the floor.
"Ying Chen attacked the middle-aged man?" Chen Ge gritted his teeth. Without a word, the other party had struck directly—his methods were ruthlessly decisive. Such an enemy was terrifying.
"I need to get out of this building as fast as possible. Before my eyesight returns, I should get as far away as I can." Chen Ge didn't know what Ying Chen's ability was, nor what this world truly looked like. Perceiving the world through only hearing, smell, and touch left everything horribly incomplete.
Not daring to linger, Chen Ge quickened his pace heading downstairs.
"The middle-aged man is probably dead for certain. If Ying Chen mistook him for me, that would be even more perfect—but with Ying Chen's intelligence, he'd definitely grow suspicious. I need to prepare for the worst."
Gripping the wall, Chen Ge made his way downward, silently counting the floors in his mind.
"Assuming Ying Chen's family lives on the seventh floor, I should have reached the first floor by now."
There should be a landing between every two floors—it was impossible to miscalculate. But when Chen Ge took a step toward the next level, what lay beneath his feet was not flat ground—it was stairs.
"Does this building have a basement?" Chen Ge thought carefully and arrived at a terrible conclusion. He clearly remembered that the building where Ying Chen lived did not have a basement.
"This door-world doesn't correspond exactly to reality! This is bad!"
He was already blind, and up to now the only reason Chen Ge hadn't been discovered by Ying Chen was twofold—he relied on the cat's meowing, and more importantly, he had been here before. He had a basic mental map of the layout.
By cross-referencing the map in his head, he could keep from being completely lost.
But now he realized his mental map and this door-world had discrepancies, and that terror of the unknown swelled instantly.
"Should I keep going down, or knock on doors and ask the residents for help? There's clearly no basement in reality, yet this stairwell continues downward—I have no idea where it leads."
He should have already reached the first floor, but the stairs simply wouldn't end. With no basement in the building, Chen Ge couldn't figure out what was wrong.
"Could it be that this building has seven floors above ground and seven floors below—like inside and outside the door? All seven floors above ground are normal, and the seven floors below are nothing but blood and ghosts?"
Standing in the stairwell, Chen Ge descended a few more steps. He didn't feel any discomfort, and nothing seemed different. The surrounding environment appeared not to have changed at all.
"Probably not seven above and seven below. Could this be an infinite loop—a stairwell with no end?"
"The bottom floor connects to the top floor, and the top floor connects back to the bottom floor. For a blind person, the act of repeatedly descending stairs in the dark breeds a very particular kind of despair—as though nothing ever ends, and all effort is futile."
Most people wouldn't have that experience, but Chen Ge was different. Just a short while ago, he had taken on a nightmare-level mission at Jiangyuan Residential Complex, where he had blindfolded himself to experience what it felt like for a blind person climbing stairs.
Darkness, solitude, the unknown—all of it fermented in the heart, giving birth to a demon that embodied fear, one that would finally devour you whole.
"I can't keep going down. This door-world doesn't match the real terrain. I need to be more careful."
Chen Ge retreated back to what he believed was the "first floor." Feeling along the wall, he moved through the corridor, covering the entire floor—only to discover something deeply despairing.