Wen Qing stared at the two people inside the room, her head throbbing with confusion.
In such a bizarre and terrifying place,
After hesitating for a long time, Wen Qing finally stepped inside. She didn't dare sit down—she just stood behind Chen Ge.
Grandpa Huang was slumped on the sofa, seemingly paying no attention to Chen Ge whatsoever. He slowly closed his eyes, and his body seemed to fuse with the sofa, truly growing into it in the most literal sense.
With no one disturbing him, Chen Ge took this rare opportunity to survey the surroundings.
The layout of this room was different from the others—noticeably smaller. The kitchen and bathroom were combined into one, and there was only a single bedroom and living room.
"Compared to Wen Qing's apartment, this room is missing the area of an entire bedroom and kitchen."
Chen Ge suspected the source of the stench came from the missing room. He sat on the sofa for quite a while, and in the meantime took the opportunity to examine the blood vessels threaded across its surface.
Strange as it was, when Chen Ge sat on the sofa, those blood vessels were nothing more than decoration. But when Grandpa Huang sat on them, they came alive like a writhing mass of small snakes, crawling across the stained leather surface in a thoroughly unsettling display.
"The blood vessels hidden beneath the grime in this room can recognize Grandpa Huang. They only reveal their true form in front of him."
Chen Ge didn't fully understand the connection between the blood vessels and Grandpa Huang. He wanted to try asking the old man about it, but Grandpa Huang appeared to have fallen asleep—his facial creases bunched tightly together, not a word escaped his lips, and his body had sunk deep into the sofa.
"Chen Ge, I don't think Grandpa Huang is going to be much help to us in this state." Wen Qing's voice deflated with disappointment. She had harbored high hopes for Grandpa Huang before coming here, but the greater the hope, the sharper the disappointment.
"You told me before that the apartment Grandpa Huang lives in was rented to him by his boss, right?"
"Mm-hm. Why?"
"Then between you and him, who moved into this complex first?" Chen Ge posed his next question.
"When Xiang Nuan and I moved in, Grandpa Huang had already been living here for some time. His boss is a decent person—when he found out Grandpa Huang had nowhere to go, he rented this apartment to him at a very low price."
"Grandpa Huang suffered a workplace injury. Do you know how much compensation his boss paid him at the time?"
"I'm not sure about that. It's Grandpa Huang's personal business, after all." Wen Qing didn't understand what Chen Ge was getting at.
"So out of all the rooms, this is the only one with a different layout—it's missing the space for a kitchen and a bedroom…" Chen Ge paced around the room, his hand sliding along the wall's surface until it stopped beside the wall adjacent to the master bedroom. "Based on your apartment's layout, there should be a door here leading to another bedroom."
His fingertip dug into the plaster, revealing blackish-red residue caught under his fingernail. "There's a layer of white paint on the surface, but underneath it's all this blackish-red grime."
The main reason Chen Ge had found this spot was the smell—that stench that seemed only he could detect.
From the moment he'd entered Grandpa Huang's apartment, he'd been searching for its source without success. After carefully discerning the direction, he'd arrived at the spot where the odor was most concentrated.
"The stench is seeping in from behind this wall."
Chen Ge glanced back. Grandpa Huang remained huddled in the sofa, seemingly incapable of waking no matter what they did.
"There's a hidden room here, and the stench in Grandpa Huang's apartment originates from it." His fingers kept digging into the wall—the plaster was damp and soft, and behind the surface there was no brick or cement, only that blackish-red unknown substance.
Half of Chen Ge's finger had already sunk into the wall. The sensation at his fingertip gradually shifted, as though he were touching the thin membrane of a blood vessel.
He withdrew his finger and activated his Yin Eyes, peering into the small hole.
Inside the wall was a tangled network of blood vessel-like structures, and nestled in the gaps between those "vessels," Chen Ge caught sight of a single eye.
"Is there a corpse on the other side of the wall?" He opened his backpack and silently pulled out the Skull-Crushing Hammer.
"What are you going to do?!"
"Smash through it."
"We've barely been in here five minutes, and the owner is still asleep."
"That's exactly why now is the perfect time to act."
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Wen Qing thought Chen Ge was being completely irrational—this would definitely offend Grandpa Huang and earn them an enemy for no reason.
While the two were talking, Grandpa Huang seemed to have regained some strength in his sunken position on the sofa. He turned his head with visible effort. "You two haven't left yet?"
Seeing Grandpa Huang awake, Chen Ge casually tucked the Skull-Crushing Hammer back into his backpack. "Grandpa, you're renting this place, right?"
"Mm. The owners don't live here. I stay and keep an eye on the place for them—it doubles as somewhere for me to lay my head." Grandpa Huang's tone was unchanged from before. It seemed that no matter what situation he encountered, his way of speaking never varied.
"Understood." Chen Ge nodded.
"If there's nothing else, I won't keep you. I'd like to go rest in the bedroom." Grandpa Huang slowly rose to his feet. Every blood vessel on the sofa returned to normal, as though the bizarre spectacle had never occurred.
Trembling, Grandpa Huang shuffled over to the bedroom door. He coughed several times—likely from the weakness of his body—and braced one hand against the doorframe. One of his fingers tapped lightly against the wall beside the bedroom door a few times.
"When you leave, close the door behind you. I've been getting more and more tired lately. If you have any questions, you can ask the landlord—he lives on the top floor. But the landlord doesn't have the best temper, so be careful how you ask." His tone, which had never changed throughout the entire conversation, grew slightly heavier on the last few words. He seemed to be emphasizing those final two words—be careful.
"Then we won't disturb you any further. If you have any leads, or if you happen to see that child, feel free to contact us anytime. We're somewhere in this building."
Chen Ge pulled Wen Qing out of Grandpa Huang's apartment, closing the door behind them as they left.
"I swear, you're the most impulsive person I've ever met. You were about to smash through the wall a moment ago, and now you're just leaving? We finally tracked down Grandpa Huang—at the very least we should have kept pressing him for information." Wen Qing spoke with genuine regret. "He's lived here his whole life and knows more about the complex's secrets than I do. You've wasted a perfectly good opportunity. And why did you suddenly want to smash the wall? I think you scared Grandpa Huang."
"You only saw the first layer." Chen Ge didn't elaborate. He glanced back at Granny Li. When he and Wen Qing had entered Grandpa Huang's apartment, Granny Li—who had been following them the whole time—hadn't dared come inside, choosing instead to keep watch outside the door.
"Should we go back and have a proper talk with Grandpa Huang?"
"There's no need." There were things Chen Ge couldn't say outright. He had realized that Grandpa Huang didn't refuse to help them because he didn't want to—it was because he didn't dare help them directly.
When they'd first met Grandpa Huang, both Chen Ge and Wen Qing had been startled by his appearance. To be blunt, Grandpa Huang looked absolutely terrifying—his entire face was covered in bite marks, the kind that made you want to stay far away.
That was when Chen Ge had begun to wonder whether the Grandpa Huang inside the door was different from the one outside—whether this old man truly had a dark, horrifying side as well.
A terrifying appearance combined with the pungent stench inside the apartment—it was only natural for Chen Ge to draw that conclusion. But gradually, he came to realize that wasn't the case at all.