An impossibly massive "Past" loomed before everyone. No matter when, no matter who, there was no avoiding facing one's "Past."
After the first clash with Zhang Ya, the "Past" had been undergoing subtle changes. Countless memories and hazy silhouettes were linked together by black threads, and thick limbs extended outward in every direction, as though a prison had been inverted over the residents, trapping everyone within the apartment complex's several buildings.
The "Past's" upper body, resembling that of a colossal cicada, had split open along numerous fissures. Its paper-thin wings merged into the black mist, and the fog that had just been dispersed grew dense once more — the monster's wings seemed to draw the mist toward them.
The sky was sealed shut. Worse still, the ground was no longer safe either.
The lower half of the "Past" had sunk into the earth. A torso covered in ghostly faces dragged along the ground, old shells constantly crumbling and falling away — but every time a piece of the old shell dropped, a new layer of hard casing quickly grew in its place.
Compared to its upper body, the monster's lower half more closely resembled what people normally understood "the past" to be: inescapable, something you constantly tried to forget but could never stop remembering.
Again and again, until all that remained was a wounded monster. The monster's name should have been "oneself," yet the one bearing those wounds refused to acknowledge it and called it instead — "the Past."
Agonized faces emerged on the gray earth. Deep beneath the ground, a strange sound arose, like a heartbeat pulsing in the dark.
The Faceless Doctor possessed a variety of methods specifically tailored against the cloth doll. He was thoroughly familiar with every one of its abilities — he could suppress the doll even at the peak of its power. But the problem now was that a new monster had appeared in the world behind the door: the "Past."
The Cursed Hospital had known Mingtai would hold a trump card. What it hadn't anticipated was that Mingtai would willingly fuse with a monster born from the black mist. As a fierce god of the Cursed Hospital, the Faceless Doctor understood that monster's terror far better than Chen Ge did.
"Bringing Patient Number 4 back alive is no longer possible. He must have learned of the hospital's intentions, so he cut them off at the root." Even as he fought the cloth doll, the Faceless Doctor's mind raced. "Patient Number 0004's obsession is the desire for happiness, but Patient Number 011 misled him into believing that becoming human would grant him happiness. His path was wrong from the very beginning — failure was inevitable."
The Faceless Doctor pressed closer to the cloth doll. "If I can't bring Number 4 back alive, then the only option is to scatter his soul — eliminate this unstable variable. The hospital only truly cares about Patient Number 1. Everyone else is replaceable. The director should understand why I'm doing this. But... how do I actually kill him?"
One of the faces on the blood-soaked robe glanced at Chen Ge, its expression full of resentment. "Alliance with him? Impossible! Compared to Patient Number 4, the one I want dead more than anyone is him. That hunger surpasses everything. Damn it — if I had run into him outside the door, I wouldn't need to hesitate at all."
The transformations in the sky and on the ground continued. The cloth doll held the Faceless Doctor in place, while Zhang Ya stood guard in front of Chen Ge. Neither of the two fierce gods had left the bounds of the apartment complex — everything was proceeding according to Mingtai's design.
A heartbeat thudded from beneath their feet, gradually syncing with Chen Ge's own pulse. Each powerful beat made Chen Ge profoundly uncomfortable. He clutched his chest hard, but it did nothing.
He wasn't the only one. All the Red-cloaked spirits within the apartment complex and every monster shrouded in the black mist were experiencing the same thing — everyone's heartbeat had been disrupted by the sound rising from below.
"The Red-cloaked spirits' hearts are being affected too!" Chen Ge looked around at his employees. All of them were showing abnormal symptoms, but the High Heels in Red — who had devoured a massive quantity of Mingtai's curses — was hit the worst. The bandages wrapped around her body were nearly unraveled, and the eerie black patterns etched into her skin were all bleeding, as though they weren't marks branded onto her but wounds that had been slashed open.
"Take something from Mingtai, and you pay it back double. That monster is trying to swallow everyone whole!"
The sky and the ground merged together. The "Past" enveloped both Jiuhong Apartments and Jinhua Apartments. Countless curses intertwined and coalesced, falling as a rain of black.
Zhang Ya stood atop the sea of blood, bearing the brunt of the pressure head-on. She had no capacity left to shield any of the other employees.
As the black rain descended, Chen Ge immediately produced the comic book and recalled every employee into his backpack.
Before a fierce god, ordinary Red-cloaked spirits were nothing but liabilities. Only the most elite among them could enter the fray.