It was true that walking too many night roads could bring you face to face with ghosts, but when ghosts set ambushes on night roads too often, they might just run into Chen Ge instead.
The area was sparsely populated. Even if he ended up fighting an Evil God, no innocents would be caught in the crossfire. Besides, the Cursed Hospital was far away here, giving Chen Ge plenty of time to kill his opponent and then flee quickly.
Chen Ge might seem careless and reckless, but in reality he had thought through every step in advance.
An endless tide of blood surged from beneath his feet, covering the cement surface and flooding the entire stretch of road at breakneck speed.
The Red Clothes in front of him were just pawns. The real danger lay with the person controlling the blood threads — Chen Ge understood that perfectly well, so he sent all the Red Clothes to attack simultaneously, sealing off the entire area.
"Found you!"
The spreading blood quickly encountered resistance. Chen Ge turned to look.
A child sat in the doorway of an abandoned building by the roadside, head hanging low, clutching something that resembled a lollipop.
The blood rising from beneath Chen Ge's feet automatically parted around the child, unable to get anywhere near his body.
"Is that the Evil God?" Chen Ge was tense. He activated his Yin Eye and saw clearly that what the boy held was no lollipop — it was an eyeball that had been pierced through.
Even more horrifying was the pile of toys at the child's feet. They had all been fashioned from human facial features.
The Red Clothes in the middle of the road lunged at Chen Ge under the child's control, but when it was about a meter away, it could not advance a single step closer. A foul stench condensed into a thick miasma that shielded Chen Ge on all sides.
The Red Clothes shrieked desperately, its body deforming under the constriction of the blood threads. The child didn't care about its suffering in the slightest — he treated it as nothing more than a tool that could be discarded at any moment.
"No wonder you dared to run. Turns out someone was standing up for you." A cold, shrill voice emanated from the child's body. The boy sitting in the building's doorway raised his head. His face was pale as paper, and there was only a single mouth on his entire face!
"You're family — why did you run? The thing I hate most is people who abandon their families!" The boy's voice pierced directly into every person present, as though it intended to shred their eardrums.
Seeing the child growing more agitated, Chen Ge showed no fear — in fact, the corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. "He's not running? Looks like he still doesn't realize the situation he's in."
Chen Ge had once heard Chi Ren say that the very first person he dreamed of in the morgue was this child. Later, he had dreamed of a middle-aged man who also had only a mouth on his face.
Judging from the current circumstances, that middle-aged man with only a mouth was the real Chi-family Evil God, while this child with only a mouth could be the Evil God's clone — or his son.
Either way, one thing was certain: the other party's strength was formidable. So formidable, in fact, that he believed he could handle any trouble that came his way.
Even wrapped in blood threads, the child showed absolutely no intention of fleeing.
He knew he had been ambushed, yet the first thing he thought about was taking Chen Ge down along with him.
That was only natural thinking. Xinhai City was the Cursed Hospital's territory — there was nothing for him to fear.
Besides, he had only come to chase down a family member who had deserted. Who would have guessed that the target would be carrying an Evil God, three top-tier Red Clothes, and a host of uniquely gifted Red Clothes to set an ambush?
No sane person would have anticipated that.
Chen Ge had exploited exactly this mentality, doing the opposite of what was expected, and decisively laying a killing trap.
"This kid treats Red Clothes like toys — he's clearly connected to that Evil God in countless ways, and his own strength must be terrifying." Chen Ge's original plan had been to surround and kill him, but he hadn't expected the child to charge in directly for a head-on confrontation.
If the other party had taken one look at Chen Ge and run, it would have turned into a chase — and that would have been extremely unfavorable for Chen Ge. It was precisely the scenario he feared most. Fortunately, the child had done no such thing.
Watching the child walk toward him of his own accord, Chen Ge finally could no longer contain the smile spreading across his face.
One by one, Red Clothes stepped out of the blood mist. While the child's attention was drawn to the Red Clothes attacking openly, the Red High Heels and Little Cloth struck simultaneously from the shadows.
This couldn't be called dishonorable. This was tactics.
Two top-tier Red Clothes striking together from behind — by the time the child realized what was happening, it was already too late. Five fingers, etched full of curses, pierced through his chest, and countless black-red blood threads burrowed into his body.
A scream shattered the tranquility of the night. A cascade of living human facial features tumbled from the boy's body — and those features were still active. Eyes blinked, mouths wailed. The scene was absolutely nightmarish.
"Finish this quickly!"
After making contact, Chen Ge had also figured out the child's true strength. He was a top-tier Red Clothes, but unlike a normal top-tier Red Clothes, his body contained large quantities of black markings that didn't belong to him.
The feeling the child gave Chen Ge was that of a spare body the Evil God had crafted for himself.
Just as Chang Wenyu had split off a piece of her own heart, the Chi-family Evil God had imprinted certain markings of special significance onto this child.
The child couldn't wield that power to its full potential, and on top of that, he had been ambushed by two top-tier Red Clothes — one of whom was the Red High Heels, a supremely specialized top-tier Red Clothes who excelled at curses.
The battle had been a one-sided crush from the very beginning. That was Chen Ge's style — he would never hold back in order to conserve strength. The sooner the fight ended, the better.
Demons danced, ghosts stalked the night, blood and curses blanketed the empty highway, and even the clouds along the horizon had been stained red.
The Cursed Hospital's top-tier Red Clothes was being whittled away by a dozen employees of the Haunted House. His form flickered, and he suffered grievous injuries, yet he simply refused to die.
Those black markings on his body always protected him at the most critical moments. Finally, when he realized resistance was futile, he simply contracted his memories and consciousness into the black markings and abandoned most of his body outright.
The battle was still ongoing, but a sense of unease was slowly building in Chen Ge's heart. "If this drags on any longer, the people from the Cursed Hospital will definitely show up!"
The black markings on the child were being attacked ferociously — the Chi-family Evil God had surely sensed it by now. Once that Evil God arrived, the situation would spiral out of control.
Chen Ge's original plan had been to catch them off guard, but now the Cursed Hospital knew that a force capable of surrounding and killing a top-tier Red Clothes existed. They would never be careless again.
Since there was no more advantage to be gained, Chen Ge decided to quit while he was ahead. Several Red Clothes joined forces and sealed the dying child behind the door of the tunnel ghost's son.
"Old Wu! Step on it! We're heading back to Hanjiang!"
This was quite the haul for Chen Ge — he had directly kidnapped the Evil God's "son."
Not daring to linger, Chen Ge ordered Old Wu to drive away at full speed.
Once they hit the highway, Chen Ge glanced back toward Xinhai. In the night sky above the outskirts of Xinhai, a patch of blood-red had appeared — like a wound in the sky, growing wider by the second.
"Has something gone wrong inside the Cursed Hospital? Why haven't they chased after us?"
He touched the wedding ring on his finger, wondering whether all of this had something to do with Sun Xiaojun.
Old Wu had been scared witless. He drove straight back to Hanjiang without stopping. In his entire life, he had never driven that fast.