Arriving at Hanjiang Medical School, Chen Ge called Gao Ruxue's phone, but no one answered.
After asking around among the school's teachers, he learned that Gao Ruxue had taken an extended leave of absence and hadn't been to the school for a long time.
"Her mother was killed by that hospital, and after her father committed an unforgivable crime he disappeared. Gao Ruxue must be suffering terribly inside."
Since Gao Ruxue wasn't picking up, Chen Ge had no choice but to go to her home in person.
He knocked for a solid few minutes before Gao Ruxue finally opened the door. She looked extremely haggard and had lost a lot of weight.
"Chen Ge?"
"Do you mind if I come in and chat for a bit?" Chen Ge was carrying his backpack. He hadn't slept all night, and his eyes were bloodshot, making him look rather tired. "I have something I need to say to your father, but to find him, I'll need your help."
Gao Ruxue gave a slight nod and let Chen Ge inside.
The room was covered in dust, clearly hadn't been cleaned in a long time, though it didn't look particularly messy.
"I want to see him too, but I don't know where he is now." Gao Ruxue sat on the sofa. Even though a considerable amount of time had passed, her expression still changed whenever she mentioned her father.
"I need a little of your blood." Chen Ge didn't want to beat around the bush and got straight to the point.
"Blood?" Gao Ruxue's lowered head slowly lifted. She looked at Chen Ge with confusion, then extended her arm toward him. "With my blood, you can find out where my father is?"
"There's no guarantee it will work. I'm just giving it a try."
Hearing Chen Ge's words, the light in Gao Ruxue's eyes dimmed, but she still didn't pull her arm back. "If you do manage to see him, remember to tell him that I miss him very much."
"I will." Chen Ge asked Gao Ruxue to close her eyes, then summoned the red high heels.
A black curse needle-thin as a steel spike entered Gao Ruxue's body and extracted a single drop of heart's blood.
"You can open your eyes now." Chen Ge looked at Gao Ruxue, whose face had gone pale, and made a solemn promise. "I will pass along your message to Dr. Gao, and I will do everything within my power to help your family."
Leaving Gao Ruxue's home, Chen Ge hadn't gone far before he received some good news.
The red high heels had successfully used the curse on the blood thread inside the white cat combined with Gao Ruxue's heart's blood to sense an extremely terrifying presence. Based on Chen Ge's guess, the monster radiating that horrifying aura was most likely Dr. Gao.
"As long as we can sense him, that's a good sign. Perhaps once I enter the world behind the door, this connection will become even stronger."
Leaving the residential compound, Chen Ge rushed to the Hanjiang Welfare Institute and obtained a drop of Fan Yu's blood.
With everything taken care of, he quietly returned to New Century Paradise and woke Lao Wu before the park opened to visitors.
"Brother Wu, wake up. It's time for us to head back to Xinhai."
Lao Wu, still groggy from sleep, blinked at Chen Ge with the bewildered expression of someone who had no idea who he was or where he was.
"Yesterday I asked you to come back to Hanjiang with me to pick something up. You didn't forget, did you?"
"I... vaguely remember." Lao Wu rubbed his head.
"Let's get going. I've finished what I needed to do." Chen Ge placed the white cat on the back seat. He had made all the necessary preparations. Next was to go all out against that hospital and uncover the truth about his parents' whereabouts.
The car pulled out of New Century Paradise, and they returned to Xinhai City at midday, when the sun was at its strongest.
"Brother Wu, don't drive this car on the road for a while. Also, pass along a message to Teacher Wang — don't go wandering out at night. The two of you are better off staying somewhere crowded." Chen Ge was worried that the car had been marked by the cursed hospital and wanted to give the warning.
"Got it."
Lao Wu dropped Chen Ge off at the Nightmare Academy, then hurried away.
Chen Ge carried his backpack, cradled the white cat, and pushed open the door to the Nightmare Academy. The moment he stepped inside, something felt off.
Since the haunted house wasn't officially open for business, the central air conditioning wasn't running, yet it was abnormally cold inside.
"Xiao Die? Zhang Jingjiu?"
A very bad feeling rose in his heart. Chen Ge immediately flipped open his comic book and released several Red Dress employees.
"Search the entire building!"
Chen Ge's tone was stern. He didn't walk deeper into the sets — he stood right at the entrance, ready to bolt the instant something seemed wrong.
Half a minute later, Men Nan appeared in front of Chen Ge. "There's no one in the haunted house."
"Was something here last night?" Chen Ge was deeply worried about the safety of his haunted house employees.
"We didn't sense the presence of any other ghosts, but something definitely did come in last night." Men Nan pointed toward the entrance to the sets. "Come look at this."
Surrounded by several Red Dresses, Chen Ge walked over to the set entrance. The wooden door leading into the interior was plastered with slips of paper, each one bearing the same sentence.
"This is a sick world. Why haven't you realized it yet? I'm going to cure you!"
The dense, overlapping slips of paper covered the entire door, a deeply unsettling sight.
"It was that hospital." Chen Ge recalled a detail — yesterday morning, when he had returned to the Nightmare Academy after hunting a Red Dress, he had felt a gaze watching him from inside the Shilixiang Deli. Perhaps from that moment on, he had already been marked.
"Let's go to the Shilixiang Deli."
The lunch rush had just ended and there were few people outside the deli. Chen Ge brought several Red Dresses straight to the front door.
"What can I get for you?" A clerk came over with an enthusiastic smile, but Chen Ge ignored him, opened the counter door, and stepped inside.
"Hey!" This was the first time the clerk had encountered someone so brazen. He was about to say something sharp when his legs gave out and he slumped into a chair.
There was no time to waste. Chen Ge refused to waste a single second on pointless matters. He entered the kitchen and saw the owner — the one they called the Head Eater — pouring something into a large ceramic vat.
"Zhang Yi!"