"Director!"
Doctor Sun, his face covered in scars, cradled three glass jars against his chest. He had not obeyed the Vice Director's orders to leave. Instead, he was striding toward them at a quick pace.
Despair and agony filled his eyes as he stared at the dying Vice Director, bloodshot to the point where it looked as though he might weep tears of blood.
Hearing the voice behind him, the Vice Director slowly turned his head. When he saw Doctor Sun walking toward him despite the danger, his cold, scarred heart skipped a beat.
But he quickly composed himself, and the rotting faces plastered across his body shrieked in unison: "Don't come any closer! Run!"
The Vice Director screamed himself hoarse, but Doctor Sun was deaf to his pleas. He seemed to have lost all reason, as though he intended to fight
"Doctor Le! Get him out of here!" the Vice Director howled with his last ounce of strength. He knew those seven jars were far more important than his own life.
Already gravely wounded, he now split his focus as well. The Curse Woman nearly tore him apart. He was barely clinging to a thread of life.
But when he saw that Doctor Le had talked Doctor Sun down and was forcibly dragging him away, the weight finally lifted from his heart.
A venomous light rekindled in his eyes. The Vice Director stared fixedly at Chen Ge: "Evil thought! I will curse you with everything I have! I will make you suffer ten times, a hundred times the pain I've endured! I swear I will—"
"Vice Director!"
That familiar voice rang out again, cutting his words short. He instinctively turned to look.
Doctor Le stood alone, holding all seven glass jars. The organs inside the jars were slamming violently against the glass walls, and countless threads of blood surged outward like a massive maw clamping down on Doctor Le.
"Don't put all seven jars together!" The Vice Director's heart nearly burst with worry, but what he saw next was a sight he would never forget for all eternity.
Doctor Sun's hand was pressed against Doctor Le's back. Trapped by the blood threads pouring from the seven jars, Doctor Le could not dodge.
With tears still streaking his face, Doctor Sun slowly applied pressure, driving a sharp shard of mirror deep into Doctor Le's body from behind.
Reflected on that ordinary piece of mirror was the face of a small child — a child who looked very much like Chen Ge from when he was young.
The blood threads cinched violently into Doctor Le's body, sucking at him like a parasitic monster, devouring everything he was in great gulps.
The glass jars gradually turned red with blood, and hairline cracks began appearing across the sealed lids.
Witnessing all of this, the Vice Director had lost the ability to speak. Doctor Le himself died with his eyes wide open.
"Doctor Sun, you…"
The Vice Director's head was severed from his body, and the world flipped upside down. The last thing his gaze settled on was Doctor Sun.
That evil, deranged Doctor Sun — consumed by destructive urges, a symbol of calamity and despair — now stood beside Chen Ge like a child.
"Boss, I found 'your' body from the past. I also gathered information about the Red Raincoat's child, and I've protected all the living people who came in from outside." Doctor Sun's voice carried a note of remorse. "I'm sorry that
"You've already done well." The moment Chen Ge laid eyes on those seven glass jars, a subtle resonance stirred in his mind, as if the jars contained nothing less than himself.
Clutching the knife formed by the curse at his chest, Chen Ge bore the weight of every ghost's past and shouldered the cost of their recovered memories. In silence, he walked up to the seven glass jars.
Doctor Le, whose strength had been comparable to One-Eyed's, had been completely drained. The seven jars had turned entirely blood-red.
"The force that keeps this city running comes from these seven jars. Countless curses continuously extract power from the organs inside. After all these years, the organs still exist — it's nothing short of a miracle." Doctor Sun's attitude had shifted dramatically from before. Inside the hospital he had learned a great deal, and the more he learned, the deeper his respect for Chen Ge became.
"How can I find Zhang Ya? How can I destroy this city?" Chen Ge repeated the two questions. The memories belonging to the Third Person in his mind had already been activated, and those cruel images constantly reminded him that the organs in the jars belonged to someone else — someone who had lived through entirely different experiences.
"Zhang Ya was taken by the Director. As for destroying this city, the method is simple — destroy these seven glass jars." Doctor Sun did not offer even the slightest bit of perfunctory reply simply because Chen Ge had not yet recovered his memories.
Chen Ge slowly crouched down. In truth, he had already reached his limit. Every blood vessel in his body now coursed with curses, and with each heartbeat, the number of curses multiplied exponentially.
"The Vice Director called me an evil thought, but I am clearly myself. Everything I have experienced is absolutely not some delusion. Every person and every ghost who follows behind me — they can all attest to my existence."
Chen Ge's hand slowly touched the blood-red jar. The memories that the jar had once siphoned away surged back into his body like a tide.
Every lock on those memories was shattered. In the final moments of his life, Chen Ge recovered his memories!
He remembered every person around him. He recalled everything they had all been through.
The gambles between life and death. Dancing on the edge of a blade. And every night spent walking alone.
Of course, he also remembered the first birthday he had ever spent at the haunted house. He remembered the birthday gift the ghosts had prepared for him, remembered how he had taught the spirits to scare people, remembered how they had all made movies together and gone on team-building trips to other people's amusement parks.
"I have never once considered myself an unfortunate person. Meeting them has been the greatest fortune I could ever have."
Chen Ge was the last to recover his memories. He had shouldered the cost of every single employee regaining theirs. This time, he stood at the front of them all — just as they had once stood unwaveringly before him.
The memories belonging to the Third Person did not vanish. The child who had taken
Chen Ge did not try to stop it, nor did he have the ability to do so.
As the memories slowly overlapped, the blood threads that had been embedded in Doctor Le's body all burrowed into Chen Ge instead.
The instant the two streams of blood converged, the cracks on the glass jars began to multiply explosively!
For every new crack that appeared on a jar, a corresponding crack split open across the blood-stained sky above their heads.
Chen Ge and the employees stared intently at the glass jars, but Doctor Sun seemed to have known it all along — as though the "person" who had helped him in the hospital was none other than the ghost sealed inside the jars.
The dark, oppressive city had been dyed blood-red by Chen Ge and his people. The jars once brimming with black curses now glowed crimson.
The sky, already stained with blood, began to crack apart. The small glass jar containing the child's body started to fracture as well.
That tiny glass jar — it was as if it were this city of despair itself.