"What are you talking about? I'm not sure I follow." Dr. Gao was already frayed from the whole Men Nan situation and was having trouble keeping up with Chen Ge's pace.
That wasn't really Dr. Gao's fault. Only Chen Ge knew about the black phone's prompts, and the single most critical clue for the trial mission was its very name — The Room of Three People.
Chen Ge would never reveal anything about the black phone to anyone else, so he offered no explanation to Dr. Gao. He walked alone to the door of the rented room.
Men Nan kept repeating the same dream, and this dream was the most deeply etched scene in his memory — washing his hair. The dream itself wasn't exactly a nightmare. Men Nan had said it himself while at the theme park during the day: the first time he had the dream, he hadn't felt afraid. It was only after the man drew closer and closer that panic set in.
By that logic, the one who truly posed a threat to Men Nan was the man.
Men Nan's own description of the dream confirmed this. During the hair-washing, he suffered no harm. But when that strange man appeared, he felt unmistakable hostility. In the last dream he'd had, the stranger walked right up to him and seized him by the throat — a clear attempt to kill him.
Comparing the two made the problem even clearer. There were three people in the room. Besides Men Nan himself, one wanted to protect him, and one wanted to harm him.
Washing hair in a dream, according to the Duke of Zhou's dream interpretation, was a sign of sweeping away dust and filth. Men Nan's dream was very likely a warning, urging him to take precautions — danger was closing in slowly.
After learning about Men Nan's past, Chen Ge felt that the person shielding him in the room was almost certainly his mother.
His father was away from home year-round. Mother and son had depended on each other for survival, so his mother had absolutely no reason to harm him.
As for the person who wanted to hurt him — that had to be the former tenant of Room 303 in the apartment building.
The first time Chen Ge had entered Haiming Apartments, he'd noticed red cords tied to the hallway railing, knotted in a very specific way. It was a traditional method of warding off evil. From that moment on, Chen Ge had suspected that something unclean really did lurk inside the building.
Combine that with the conversation he'd had before entering Men Nan's room with the disheveled uncle from 301, along with the black phone's mission prompt, and Chen Ge was more certain than ever of his guess.
"To figure out who that man in the dream is and truly put Men Nan's troubles to rest, I need to go into Room 303 and see for myself. Besides, that's the black phone's mission to begin with." If someone was harming people in dreams, whatever unclean thing resided in Room 303 was definitely no benevolent spirit. It was probably something like the mirror monsters Chen Ge had encountered before.
"More of those things to deal with, then." People could be good or evil, and ghosts were no different. When it came to dealing with unclean spirits, Chen Ge would never show mercy.
"The uncle in 301 said no tenant has moved into 303 ever since someone died there. Whatever's been lingering in that apartment building is probably the victim turned vengeful ghost." Of the several types of ghosts Chen Ge had encountered, the weakest were residual thoughts — lingering fragments of will with no real power. Slightly stronger than those were Xiao Xiao. Stronger still were the mirror monsters. His best estimate was that whatever haunted the apartment building was roughly on par with a mirror monster.
"Back then I wasn't afraid even when I was alone. Now with this many of us together, brimming with yang energy, there's even less reason to fear ghosts." Chen Ge walked over to Men Nan, asked which room the landlord stayed in, then opened the door to Room 304 and left.
He navigated around a huge pile of junk cluttering the hallway, made it to the first floor, and knocked lightly on the door of Room 101.
After a short while, a fat woman in her fifties opened the door. She looked Chen Ge up and down. "Looking to rent?"
"Yeah. My friend lives in 304. I'd like to rent the unit next to him — 303."
"303's not for rent. Pick a different room."