Chen Ge wasn't going to answer the beak-masked man's question. The moment the black hair wrapped around his neck, his fate had already been sealed.
When Zhang Ya struck, she never left anyone alive.
In the Third Ward, she had chased the escaped Slender Ghost right through the doorway into the world beyond, tearing apart the red-clothed Director in the process.
Zhang Ya as a vengeful ghost was the complete opposite of her personality in life — she had swung to the other extreme. But fortunately, she seemed to have a particular fondness for Chen Ge.
Standing obediently by the door, Chen Ge pretended not to see a thing. He picked up the strange tool the beak-masked man had flung aside and began examining it.
"Ahh!"
A scream echoed from inside the room. The blood vessels covering the beak-masked man's face burst outward, transforming into a sharp-beaked red bird that tried to fly away.
It was fast — in the blink of an eye it had reached the doorway — but what happened after it flew out was even more despairing.
When the beak-masked man was still speaking, the black hair had already begun spreading outward, sealing off this entire corridor long ago.
The surging black hair engulfed the blood bird and the beak-masked man alike. After a moment, the blood bird vanished without a trace, leaving only a man crumpled on the ground.
His eyes were vacant, his consciousness seemingly destroyed.
Even after devouring the blood bird, Zhang Ya was still not satisfied. The black hair slipped through the door cracks into room after room.
Finally, without any warning, she began to retract the black hair — apparently having found something.
"Did you find something else?" This was the Bizarre Tales Association's stronghold; there could very well be important items hidden here.
The black hair withdrew. Zhang Ya tilted her head and studied Chen Ge for a long time, then said nothing before slipping back into his shadow.
Chen Ge's skin crawled under her gaze. He didn't dare take a deep breath until the red hue in the shadow had completely faded.
"The affection meter's rising way too fast. At this rate, Zhang Ya doesn't even want to go back anymore. If this keeps up, sooner or later she'll accidentally kill me." Chen Ge recalled the look in Zhang Ya's eyes and felt his scalp go numb — she had genuinely seemed to be weighing whether to just make her move right then and there.
"I never realized I was this popular with girls! I haven't even done anything, and the affection just keeps skyrocketing. In the future, whatever happens, it's probably best not to involve Zhang Ya."
Chen Ge walked over to the beak-masked man and studied his face. After being inhabited by the creature from behind the door for so long, his own features had become completely deformed.
"His appearance alone doesn't yield any useful information."
Leaving that room, Chen Ge made his way to the end of the corridor and pushed open the last door.
A dining table stood in the center of the living room, but not a single person was inside.
"How did they leave? Where's the other passage?"
Gripping his pig-slaughter knife, Chen Ge circled the dining table. It was a perfectly ordinary table — the only notable thing was that each chair had a corresponding number, from one to ten.
"The president is among those ten. To use the power of the creatures from behind the door to establish an association like this — this person can't be underestimated."
Chen Ge stopped beside the chair marked Number Ten. When he had first walked in, Number Ten had said something to him, but at the time Chen Ge's entire attention had been focused on summoning Zhang Ya, and he hadn't paid it any mind.
Now that he thought about it, Number Ten was highly suspicious.
"The first thing he said to me was that he liked my mask — he made a point of singling out the mask. Was he trying to tell me something?" Chen Ge was wearing the Skull-Fracturing Doctor mask; only people who had visited the haunted house had ever seen it. "Could Number Ten be a former visitor to the haunted house?"