Sitting on the edge of the bed, Chen Ge leaned against the wall with one hand reaching into his backpack, his head tilted up as he stared at the creature on the ceiling.
There was no fear in his eyes—only a trace of bewilderment. It was a look the creature had never seen before. They stared at each other like that, neither making the first move.
"Wen Qing was rescued by an invisible child. If that child is the Nether Embryo, then why would he constantly watch over Wen Qing's safety? That's not the Nether Embryo's personality. He's not the kind of being who would sacrifice himself for someone else's mother. In the other children's worlds behind the door, he never once tried to save their families."
Chen Ge pondered for a moment. The most likely explanation was that Xiang Nuan and the Nether Embryo had already merged into one—or rather, Xiang Nuan had never existed from the very beginning. Xiang Nuan was the Nether Embryo.
A rustling sound came ceaselessly from above. The creature, composed of human heads, crawled across the ceiling, black tendrils reeking of decay extending from every eye socket, nostril, and ear.
The creature was far more cautious than Chen Ge had expected. Pair after pair of venomous eyes fixed on him. It hesitated for a long time before finally approaching this prey who didn't look quite right.
The stench was overpowering. Heads hung just inches away. A sight that could drive a grown adult insane, yet Chen Ge merely furrowed his brow.
"The monsters in the Black Mist seem fundamentally different from the ghosts in the Blood-Colored City. The feeling they give me is entirely different." The confusion in Chen Ge's eyes faded. Like a zoologist in the real world, he was studying an endangered species up close that he had never encountered before.
"Most ghosts in the Blood-Colored City carry traces of blood. Vengeful Spirits, Half Red-Robed, and Red-Robed ghosts—their strength can be gauged by the amount of blood and hatred they carry. But the creatures in the Black Mist are different. Their power has nothing to do with how much blood stains them. They're drenched in loathing and a desire for destruction."
"The essence of a Vengeful Spirit is obsession. Facing a Vengeful Spirit doesn't fill me with disgust—sometimes I even feel sympathy for them. But the creatures in the Black Mist make me recoil on instinct. These things don't seem to have any chance of becoming employees."
His thoughts racing, Chen Ge looked at the creature before him and finally spoke his mind aloud: "I can't just give up on every 'person.' Once all the employees wake up, I can try capturing a few of these Black Mist creatures alive. See if I can help them correct their twisted view of life."
Chen Ge knew this would be enormously difficult, but he still wanted to try. Perhaps this was another way of interpreting the idea of "teaching without discrimination."
The creatures in the Black Mist had almost no humanity, but that didn't mean they couldn't think. They were exceedingly cunning.
The heads on the ceiling probed again and again, and finally determined that Chen Ge posed no threat. The feeling of being deceived enraged it. Every head making up its body opened its mouth.
To be perfectly honest, the scene was terrifying. A dozen human heads twisted and writhed right next to Chen Ge's face. Black tendrils dangled from the creature's body, reaching to pierce through Chen Ge's flesh and then coil around him like serpents.
The image was unsettling just to imagine. Being wrapped by a giant python would at most cause suffocation. But if this creature latched onto you, its countless faces would press against your skin, those split-open mouths ceaselessly gnawing at your body.
"No way to communicate. No capacity for empathy. Nothing in their eyes but malice and destruction. Why do creatures like this even exist in the world? What purpose do they serve?" Chen Ge stared at the heads that were almost pressed against his face. The hand he had been hiding inside his backpack finally emerged, and in his palm he gripped a blood-soaked red high-heeled shoe.
He thrust the shoe in front of the creature's face. Before it could react, Chen Ge had already swung his arm and driven the sharp heel deep into the creature's face.
"Pretty sharp, actually."
The head-creature had never been attacked with such a weapon before. Fine, thread-like filaments surged from its torn-open mouths. Every head became like a piranha spotting raw flesh, lunging wildly at Chen Ge.
But just as they were about to bite into his body, strange patterns surfaced across the red high-heeled shoe embedded in the creature's face.
On every line, the wrongly dead pleaded for mercy. Look closely and you would see that all the patterns were formed from living human faces twisted into place, containing their most vicious curses and deepest despair.
The black patterns spread across the head-creature's body. In less than a second, they formed a vast net that ensnared it.
"Vengeful Spirits apparently can't directly devour creatures from the Black Mist. Even killing them is rather difficult." The red high-heeled shoe had not yet fully broken free from the restraints of the World Behind the Door and couldn't manifest outside its vessel. This was the only way Chen Ge could destroy a creature from the Black Mist.
The reason he dared attempt this was that the very first time his palm had touched the red high-heeled shoe, the blood threads and curses on its surface had voluntarily entered his body to help him locate the source of his weakening.
That was when he realized that although the red high-heeled shoe couldn't leave its vessel, it could already use a portion of its power.
The head-creature thrashed across the living room like a giant centipede. Watching its agony, Chen Ge pulled out the other high-heeled shoe from his backpack and drove its heel savagely into the creature's neck.
"The red high-heeled shoe may only be able to use a fraction of her abilities, but she's an existence close to a top-tier Red-Robed ghost. How can a mere head-creature still be alive after this long?"
Chen Ge certainly didn't mean to underestimate the red high-heeled shoe. He simply felt that the creatures in the Black Mist were extraordinarily hard to deal with. The head-creature was only a relatively ordinary one—he had seen vast, incomprehensible shadows lurking in the Black Mist.
The black patterns enveloping the head-creature slowly tightened. It took a full ten minutes before the creature was completely killed. Its body crumbled apart, countless black threads burrowing out of its skulls and dissolving into black smoke, becoming part of the Black Mist once again.
Chen Ge picked up the high-heeled shoe and examined the patterns growing ever more distinct upon it. He knew the red high-heeled shoe was on the verge of breaking free.
After the head-creature's body shattered, the black mist inside the room thickened. It gave the impression that the creature hadn't really died—it had simply changed its form of existence.
Using his Yin Eye, Chen Ge discovered some black particles in the spot where the head-creature had been, like ash left behind after something had burned away.
"What is this?"
Chen Ge found a thermos in the room and collected the black particles inside. He had no idea what use they might serve, only that he would bring them back for careful study. Perhaps they could reveal some secret about the Black Mist.
He stretched his body. His hands and feet were ice-cold—his body temperature was very low now—but the exhaustion emanating from the depths of his soul had lessened considerably.
"After that invisible child took Wen Qing away, my strength has also been slowly recovering. It seems the abnormalities happening to me really are connected to him." Chen Ge's expression was calm. When he had entered the other children's Worlds Behind the Door, none of them had been willing to help the Nether Embryo. They were enemies of the Nether Embryo, and in the end, they always became Chen Ge's allies. But Xiang Nuan's door was different.
From the moment he entered the World Behind the Door, Xiang Nuan seemed to be on the Nether Embryo's side.
The Xiang Nuan in the real world was a child who never communicated with anyone. No one knew what he was truly like. Even his mother didn't truly understand him.
"Before the employees wake up, I'll stick with Wen Qing. Wen Qing is protected by the Nether Embryo, and I can borrow his authority to avoid certain dangers. But now that my employees are nearly awake, there's no need for me to stay with them anymore." Chen Ge without his employees was barely stronger than an ordinary person, but with their help, everything changed.
"The employees' power is my power. I'm still myself, but the abilities I possess keep growing. That should be my greatest advantage." The Horror House's power was growing stronger and stronger, but Chen Ge refused to let it go to his head. The light of humanity shone from within him—a quality none of his opponents possessed.