Black hair crashed into the old man like a torrent, and a slender, pale arm reached out from the darkness of it, seizing his shoulder as though trying to drag him into the mass of hair.
The old man's body trembled the moment that hand grabbed him—clearly, he had suffered at its hands before. "I already sent you out! Why did you come back?"
In response, the old man received a merciless slam. His body crashed heavily against the blood-red floor, and even the red clothing he wore turned noticeably duller.
"Zhang Ya is here!"
From the old man's words, it sounded like he had already sent Zhang Ya away, but she had broken back through the door and found her way back.
"She came back specifically for me?" A trace of warmth blossomed in Chen Ge's heart. He was about to speak when Zhang Ya stepped out from behind the black hair, didn't even glance at him, and walked straight toward the old man.
Cruel, tearing sounds echoed through the otherwise silent world behind the door. Chen Ge's teeth chattered just listening to it. "Are all vengeful spirits this petty?"
The old man wouldn't have been entirely without the ability to fight back in his prime, but he had first been terrified out of his wits by the boy's awakening, and then had half his blood threads stolen by the boy. That was why, when facing Zhang Ya, he was being completely dominated.
"Red-clothed ghosts must vary in strength. This old man is probably on the lower end."
Seeing Zhang Ya, Chen Ge's heart—suspended high in his chest—slowly settled. In this strange place, Zhang Ya was the only "person" who could give him a sense of security.
With the situation stabilizing, he wanted to sheathe his knife and shift into a more comfortable position, but when he looked down, he found a pair of eerie eye sockets staring right at him.
The small boy in his arms had, at some point, had his clothes dyed red. His face was pale white, and his eye sockets were pitch black—no whites, no pupils.
Cold sweat slid down his forehead. Chen Ge looked at the wound slashed across the boy's neck, where countless blood threads were converging.
"What I did earlier was all to wake you up. I was forced into it—I never had any intention of hurting you."
The boy clung to him, seeming to crawl upward bit by bit.
Having a child crawl over him like this was deeply unsettling. Chen Ge wanted to shake him off but feared it would deepen the misunderstanding.
"Men Nan, I know your name. I came here to save you. Your alternate personality was attacked by a monster, and I helped him." Chen Ge wasn't trying to claim credit—at a time like this, he felt he needed to say as much as possible, lest the boy fly into a rage and not even give him a chance to speak.
The red-clothed old man had called the boy a devil earlier. To be called a devil by a red-clothed ghost spoke volumes about the deep psychological scars the boy had left on the old man.
The boy didn't stop what he was doing. He climbed until he was right in front of Chen Ge, their faces almost pressing together.
Only this close did Chen Ge see clearly that the boy's eye sockets held no eyes at all—just two terrifying hollows.
Chen Ge didn't know what the boy was looking at. The goosebumps on his neck were out in full force. His hand quietly slipped into his pocket, pulled out the photograph of Men Nan and his mother, and placed it between their two faces.
"I know your past. I understand your pain. If you have no one to confide in, you can tell me." Chen Ge repeated the same words he had spoken to Men Nan's alternate personality, this time to the original. "We've gone through similar things. Maybe we can become friends."
Fortune favors the bold, and that saying fit Chen Ge perfectly. Clinging to a one-in-a-million hope, he attempted to win the boy over—even indulging a faint fantasy of one day recruiting him as a haunted house employee.
Seeing his mother's photo, the boy's demeanor softened somewhat. He let go of Chen Ge and dropped to the floor. "Where did you find this photo?"