Zuo Han looked extremely anxious, as though something had been chasing him the whole time.
"I went to Ping'an Apartments last night, but you weren't there." It wasn't that Chen Ge didn't want to help Zuo Han — he just felt that Zuo Han was still very young, and staking his life like this was too great a waste.
"After I left your haunted house that day, I was tailed by the hospital's doctors. To shake them off, I had no choice but to go back to the Western Suburb Private Academy and use One-Eye's power to hold them off." Zuo Han touched the wound on his face; the pain seemed to keep him lucid at all times.
"She helped you block the doctors, and in return you gave up your own organs?"
"A perfectly fair deal." Zuo Han sighed softly. "The tenants at Ping'an Apartments are people like us — trustworthy — but they're far too weak. This world isn't as simple as you imagine. Every suspicion I've had has been confirmed, one step at a time. We need One-Eye's help. Her very presence is a deterrent, and she can also help us understand this city more directly."
"Fine. I'll go with you." Chen Ge glanced at his watch. "But I have to leave before midnight, because I arranged to meet the Ping'an Apartments tenants on Liwan Street after twelve tonight."
"Thank you."
Chen Ge had intended to leave the white cat at home to guard the place, but the cat immediately leapt onto his backpack and refused to be shooed away, as if dead set on sticking with him.
Left with no choice, Chen Ge tucked the white cat in alongside his claw hammer, shouldered the pack, and set out.
Zuo Han didn't quite understand Chen Ge's behavior, but he said nothing more.
After leaving the haunted house, Chen Ge moved to hail a cab, but Zuo Han stopped him.
They walked instead, weaving through narrow city alleys for a long stretch before spotting a van parked at the far end of a back street.
"The driver's name is Tang Jun — another tenant at Ping'an Apartments. He lost most of his memories. By his own account, he used to be some kind of race-car driver."
Tang Jun was an excellent driver. He picked the emptiest back roads, and before eleven o'clock he had delivered Zuo Han and Chen Ge to the Western Suburb Private Academy in Xinhai.
For reasons unknown, the place had been abandoned for a very long time.
The moment they stepped onto the grounds, a series of cold gusts swept over them. The temperature inside the walls was noticeably lower than outside.
"Follow me." Zuo Han had been to the derelict school before. He guided Chen Ge away from the teaching buildings and straight toward the multipurpose laboratory building behind them.
Chairs were stacked everywhere inside, each one bearing a student's name written on the underside.
Students writing their names beneath their chairs had probably been a precaution against losing them during assemblies — but seen now, after the school's abandonment, those labeled chairs looked eerily like headstones.
"One-Eye is in the lab building?"
"Yes, though even she doesn't know why she likes staying here."
Every door in the lab building was padlocked, each one covered in all manner of grotesque graffiti. Something terrible must have happened at this private academy in the past, and the school's closure was tied to those events.
Between the third and fourth floors stood an iron door. A heap of broken chairs lay piled in front of it — from a distance, they looked disturbingly like a tangle of severed limbs.
Zuo Han found a path through the mountain of chairs and led Chen Ge in after him.
"Here we are. Once we go in, don't say a word. One-Eye has a strange temper — she might turn on you without warning." Zuo Han stopped outside the dance studio on the fourth floor, gave Chen Ge a few final instructions, and pushed open the door.
Biting cold rushed to meet them. The moment Chen Ge saw what lay inside the studio, his shoulders began to tremble uncontrollably and his heart pounded in his chest. It felt as though he had been here before — that this place held enormous significance for him.
A spacious dance studio. Honor photographs lined the walls, every face gouged out. At the far end stood a towering full-length mirror.
All the windows had been sealed shut with wooden planks, and several chairs were arranged in the middle of the room.
The enclosed space felt dark and oppressive, laced with a faint undercurrent of sorrow.
Zuo Han drew a small knife from his pocket, drew it lightly across the wound on his cheek, and blood began to seep from the hollow of his left eye.
Crimson droplets fell to the floor one by one. Zuo Han sat down in a chair, knife still in hand. "I'm here to fulfill my promise to you."
The temperature inside the studio dropped once more. The wooden planks over the windows crackled, and hairline fractures began to spread across the mirror at the far end.
After a moment, nothing seemed out of the ordinary — but anyone who looked closely at the great mirror would have seen a one-eyed woman in a school uniform standing inside it.
In the mirror, she ignored the bleeding Zuo Han. Right now she was standing directly behind Chen Ge.
His spine went rigid, as though flash-frozen. Chen Ge couldn't even manage to turn his head.
"It was me who came to make the deal!" Zuo Han fixed his remaining eye on the mirror, a note of confusion creeping into his voice. One-Eye had never shown this much interest in a single person before. What was it about Chen Ge that attracted her?
Perhaps hearing his voice, characters written in blood began to surface on the glass — Give me seven lives. I will enter the hospital and retrieve the medical file for you.
Seven lives for a single intervention from One-Eye. Chen Ge frowned slightly at the sight.
Hiding out in an abandoned school, One-Eye fit his idea of a vengeful spirit to a T — cruel, cold, terrifying, toying with human nature.
"Seven? Yesterday we agreed — I would offer my own life, and in exchange you would go into the hospital and steal Patient No. 1's file!" Zuo Han shot to his feet. Blood streamed from his left eye, coating his face in crimson. He looked truly horrifying.
The one-eyed woman in the mirror remained standing behind Chen Ge. She waved her hand, and new text bled onto the glass — Or you have another choice.
"You both?" Zuo Han caught her phrasing and a sense of dread began to settle over him. "What choice?"
Cracks multiplied across the mirror's surface, and a few savage characters materialized — Give me Chen Ge's left eye!
Seeing the blood-written words, both Chen Ge and Zuo Han felt the situation turn dangerous.
"How does she know my name?" Chen Ge was deeply puzzled.
Zuo Han was equally baffled. One-Eye's desire for Chen Ge far eclipsed her interest in him. "One of Chen Ge's eyeballs is worth the same as seven lives?"
This blood-soaked bargaining chip plunged Zuo Han into deep thought. His gaze shifted back and forth between the mirror and Chen Ge.
No one spoke inside the dance studio. Everyone was weighing the pros and cons.
Truthfully, Chen Ge badly wanted to see Patient No. 1's file. He had a vague feeling that Patient No. 1 was connected to the child who had been sealed inside seven jars — a key to breaking the deadlock.
"If I give you my left eye, can you guarantee that you'll bring Patient No. 1's file out of the hospital?" Chen Ge had no way to gauge One-Eye's strength. In his view, the hospital was a bottomless abyss — virtually no one could face it alone.
After a pause, a line of bloody text appeared on the mirror — No. But this is your last chance.