"New Sea Horror Rankings, Number 19 — Midnight Delivery. A brutal murder once took place in Room 444 of Crescent Tower. While the killer was disposing of the body, a delivery order placed by the victim arrived at the door."
"The deliveryman had no idea what had happened inside. After asking the killer to leave a five-star review, he was brutally murdered. From that point on, anyone who ordered delivery to Crescent Tower after midnight risked encountering the deliveryman who died so horribly."
After reading the information on his phone, Chen Ge jiggled the door lock of Room 444 in Crescent Tower.
Finding it unlocked, he walked straight in, pulled out his phone, and ordered beer and barbecue.
Perhaps because the delivery address was Room 444 of Crescent Tower, once the restaurant accepted the order, not a single delivery driver went to pick it up.
He waited a full half hour without the restaurant even dispatching the order, but then footsteps suddenly echoed from the hallway outside.
Moments later, someone knocked on the door of Room 444, and a man's voice came from outside: "Your delivery's here."
Chen Ge pressed his eye against the peephole and looked outside. A man stood in front of Room 444, holding a red box that was seeping blood.
"Did you deliver to the wrong room? My app says the restaurant hasn't dispatched yet." Chen Ge pulled out the comic book, flipping through it while calling out to the man behind the door.
"No mistake — the address is right here." The man outside hung his head low, his body pressed flat against the door.
"Must be a glitch with my app." Chen Ge quickly convinced himself, opened the door, and smiled at the man in the hallway.
At the same time, the three Red Dresses behind Chen Ge also turned their gaze toward the deliveryman.
The instant the door swung open, a strange smile spread across the man's lips — but it froze on his face almost immediately.
The red box in his hands seemed to grow suddenly heavy. His Adam's apple bobbed as he instinctively took a step backward. "Sorry, I got the address wrong. This isn't your order."
Clutching the red box, the man turned and tried to leave, but the Water Ghost Red Dress blocked his path.
"No mistake. The delivery we've been waiting for is you."
The Red Dress struck, and the deliveryman ghost couldn't withstand it at all. However, Chen Ge didn't feed him to Chang Wenyu.
This deliveryman ghost was lucid and sane, with no trace of curses on his body. Chen Ge also found nothing on him related to the Cursed Hospital.
"He's not even a half-bodied Red Dress, so there's no need to consume him. Plus, he seems pretty smart — and he knows how to make deliveries. That counts as a person with a useful special skill."
Chen Ge placed the deliveryman ghost inside the comic book and left him with Men Nan.
"This delivery ghost isn't as strong as the ghosts in the Crying Well, but the horror atmosphere he creates is a notch above. Hard to choose — I'll rank this urban legend just below the Crying Well for now."
Leaving Room 444 of Crescent Tower, Chen Ge rushed off to the next urban legend without pause.
Tonight he had already "visited" seven urban legends. Three of them had no ghosts at all. Of the remaining four, only the half-bodied Red Dress from the Crying Well was consumed. The ghosts in the other three were merely common Obsessions and Fierce Ghosts — nothing worth consuming.
"With such a massive city as New Sea, there isn't a single 'wild' Red Dress anywhere?"
Scrolling through his phone, Chen Ge arrived at a place called the Archway in New Sea's old town district. This had once been the most lawless neighborhood in the old city, but after a devastating fire, the entire area was abandoned.
Developers had acquired the land at a rock-bottom price, but for some unknown reason construction never began, and the neighborhood simply decayed into ruins.
The Archway was surrounded by a concrete wall. The moment Chen Ge vaulted over it, he knew something was wrong.
Inside and outside the wall were two completely different worlds. The air inside carried a foul stench of rot, thick and oppressive.
"Not a single sign of human life. How long has this place been abandoned?"
Abandoned buildings in the city sometimes became shelters for scavengers, but the Archway seemed to be an exception.
Trained by the Black Phone, Chen Ge could enter a location and, without carefully investigating, tell from the lingering aura alone whether any Fierce Ghosts were present.
He had experienced far too much. His body had developed instincts, mastering abilities that ordinary people could never even imagine.
Flipping through the comic book and pressing the switch on the tape recorder, Chen Ge pushed open the charred black doors and stepped inside the Archway.
"Why do I smell blood?" Chen Ge tilted his head and inhaled deeply, activating his Spirit Sniff talent. "It's drifting from somewhere deeper inside the building."
He passed through a corridor cluttered with card tables and wooden chairs. The moment he reached the corner, he sensed something wrong — accompanied by a steady dripping sound, he saw a person hanging in the hall at the end of the corridor.
Both the stench and the smell of blood emanated from that figure, and just as Chen Ge spotted them, the corpse — riddled with multiple fatal wounds — suddenly opened its eyes!
"Watch out!"
He summoned his employees without hesitation. Before the corpse could lunge at Chen Ge, the Water Ghost Red Dress and Xu Yin placed themselves between him and the body.
Dark red blood oozed from the mangled corpse, and black insects resembling centipedes kept dropping off its body. It showed no fear and felt no pain — even facing two Red Dresses, it neither flinched nor dodged, charging straight ahead.
The Water Ghost Red Dress blocked the corpse with ease, but the instant he made contact, the blood streaming down the corpse's back morphed into a red shadow that lunged at Chen Ge's face!
"Xu Yin!"
A crackling sound of static filled the air as a pale arm pierced straight through the blood shadow.
A piercing scream echoed through the hall, but what happened next was even more terrifying.
A face appeared in the cracks of the splitting floor. Black insects poured out, and the floor near Chen Ge's feet bulged upward as something raced rapidly through the ground below!
In barely a fraction of a second, a face covered in wounds surfaced right beside Chen Ge's shoes.
"Another one?"
The face was about to burst out of the ground, but Stench stomped it right back down.
The bloated figure of Stench transformed into black fog, wrapping his body around Chen Ge like a shield.
The screams in the hall multiplied. The ceiling paint peeled away like shedding skin, revealing a roof plastered with black-and-white photographs.
Face after face stared down at Chen Ge, their features twisted, utterly devoid of fear.
As if receiving some command, countless evil spirits burst from the photographs and swarmed toward Chen Ge like a plague of insects.
Xu Yin, having already torn the blood shadow apart, reappeared and crushed every spirit that dared approach Chen Ge.
In the instant Xu Yin was swarmed and entangled by the spirits, a fine web of blood surfaced across the floor, and a charred, black-red ghostly figure sprinted from the deepest recesses of the building. Its target was unmistakable — Chen Ge.
If Chen Ge had only two Red Dresses protecting him, he might already be dead. The ghost inside the Archway was ruthlessly cunning — it had waited until every Red Dress was occupied before revealing itself.