The morning sun rose. Chen Ge recalled all the red-clothed ghosts back into his comic album, then stood by the reservoir holding the two statues.
"I once heard Shadow say something—when the Nether Fetus is born, it may use an entire city as its host body."
The water was too deep to see the bottom. Beneath that crystal-clear surface, no one knew what horrors lurked.
The Nether Fetus probably wanted to have parents of its own, too.
Putting the two statues away, Chen Ge turned to leave. "Shadow's transformation began the moment he entered the world beyond the door. That door in the Horror House changed him completely. Once the Nether Fetus mission is over, I'll push open that door and see what's inside for myself."
He took a cab back to New Century Paradise, applied makeup to all his employees, then collapsed into bed in the staff break room.
He needed to rest up, because tonight would be the last night.
When the sun rose again, the person who opened their eyes to see the sunlight might no longer be himself.
The Horror House was already running smoothly and no longer needed his constant attention. The ghostly employees had grown accustomed to life here, and their "lives" had been extended in a different form.
At one in the afternoon, Chen Ge was jolted awake by his alarm. He grabbed his backpack and hurried out of the staff break room, following the address on the business card to the old district.
After all his winding about, he hadn't expected to end up back here again.
The old district was vast, and Chen Ge had only ever visited a small portion of it before.
Holding the business card, he asked for directions as he walked, and finally found the woman's workplace beside a run-down residential complex.
"Jiuhong Real Estate Agency?"
Half the letters had fallen off the sign, and the glass door hung open—some malfunction had left it unable to close properly.
The utility pole directly across from the entrance was plastered with a jumble of advertisements—matrimonial postings, skin disease treatments, and missing persons notices. Several bicycles were parked haphazardly beside the pole, one of them with a punctured tire.
The tiles at the entrance were reasonably neat, but beyond that small section, the pavement on both sides was cracked and broken. Step on it, and black murky water would seep up through the gaps.
As Hanjiang continued to develop, many parts of the old district had been renovated, but this place was clearly an exception.
Chen Ge glanced inside with the business card in hand. An old man sat on a battered wooden sofa, sighing heavily, clutching a cup of cloudy tea.
Someone appeared to be arguing inside, their voices so loud that Chen Ge could hear every word from the doorway.
"Ma'am, that place you recommended really isn't suitable for me! No matter what you say today, you've got to give me a refund!"
"Yeah, it's not like we're being unreasonable—the problem is, who would dare live in a place like that?"
"Refund! Don't give us excuses! We've got it tough too! If you keep refusing, we'll come here and make a scene every single day!"
Several people were gathered around the reception desk, agitation radiating off them in waves—they had clearly been swindled by the agency.
"Hey, Gramps, what are they arguing about?" Chen Ge slipped inside without announcing himself and casually sat down next to the old man as though they were old friends.
"Are you here to rent a place, too?"
"Yeah, why else would I come here?" Chen Ge glanced curiously toward the reception desk. The little boy's mother wore a bitter expression, repeatedly trying to explain something to the people surrounding her.
"Whatever you do, don't rent from here. Leave while you can," the old man whispered.
"Why?" Chen Ge asked casually.
"Don't fall for cheap prices. The rent here is the lowest in the area, but..." The old man scratched his head and finally squeezed out four words: "It's a long story."
"Don't leave me hanging like that—you're only making me more curious."
"Mainly because I don't even know how to put it. Anyway, their places are just weird—something always goes wrong. It even came out a while back that they were in the haunted-house business." The wrinkles on the old man's face bunched together. "You know what a haunted house is, right? Their boss would rent out places where someone had died at below-market rates, without telling the tenants. And it just so happened that one tenant was some kind of ghost story fanatic—always searching for real paranormal accounts online. Then one night he came across a report, and the photo they used in the article was of his own place."
"Well, that must have been quite a thrill." Chen Ge was finding the old man rather entertaining—even someone who knew about real paranormal stories.
"More than just a thrill—it nearly scared him to death. The bed he'd been sleeping in once held a corpse. The tub he bathed in had soaked a dead body. Who could handle that?" The old man sighed, the wrinkles on his face growing even deeper.
"So did the landlord give him a refund after that?"
"If he'd gotten a refund, it never would have made the news. The landlord refused to return the money and only offered to swap him to another room. The guy was a migrant worker with barely any cash, so he had no choice but to agree. Then the most ridiculous thing happened." The old man set down his teacup. "He moved by himself, starting in the afternoon and going all the way into the evening. As soon as he got to the new place, he went straight online to search for any murders connected to it, and the result was..."
"What happened?" Chen Ge asked, genuinely curious. He had a feeling the tenant couldn't possibly have been that "lucky."
"The previous room was a homicide scene. This room was a suicide scene. When you peeled back the wallpaper, there was still hair trapped underneath." The old man could barely bring himself to continue.
"That's outrageous—was the landlord deliberately screwing this tenant over?" Chen Ge set his backpack down, leaned back against the sofa, and shifted into a more comfortable position. "So did the landlord end up swapping him to another room?"