The other party didn't seem to expect such a direct reply. It took a dozen seconds before a new message came through: "I'm hiding in the wardrobe of Room 3239. There seems to be something nearby."
"Describe its general appearance for me," Chen Ge said. Too lazy to type, he sent a voice message.
"I can't see clearly. It's very dark outside, but I can feel their presence."
"You have a phone, don't you? Why not turn on the flashlight and take a look?"
"They'd find me."
"Then how did you get into Room 3239? Do you have a key?"
"No. The door was open, so I hid inside."
"What about Old Wang?"
"O-Old Wang?"
The conversation moved quickly. On Chen Ge's end, the other party was perpetually shown as typing, yet no message ever appeared.
"Did I kill the conversation?" Chen Ge waited for a long time with no reply. He took out his phone and sent another message: "You there?"
The elevator rose to the twenty-third floor. In that span of time, Chen Ge sent thirteen consecutive "You there?" messages. By the time he sent the fourteenth, he realized he had been blocked.
"You're the one harassing me, and you're the one blocking me. Are you out of your mind?" He stepped out of the elevator and pressed the button on the repeater.
The bloodstained cassette tape rotated slowly. Chen Ge's pupils contracted gradually as the influence of darkness on him dropped to the lowest possible level. "If you're out of your mind, you'd better get treatment quickly."
His nerves taut, he hugged one side of the wall and made his way slowly toward the far end of the corridor.
"After Jia Xiao saw the message on his phone, he completely lost control and bit his companion. The ghost hiding in the shadows must have the ability to affect the minds of the living."
"The blood-faced ghost of the Strange Tales Association has a similar ability, but the blood-faced ghost must get close to the target and shift into a face identical to theirs before it can manipulate them."
"This is a special category of ghost. In general, ghosts with such unique abilities tend to have low combat power—Take笔仙, for instance."
When Chen Ge had come over, he hadn't brought the skull-crushing hammer or the butcher's knife. One hand reached into his pocket, gripping a ballpoint pen, while the other hand trailed along the wall. He feared that any door ahead might suddenly burst open and a ghost head lunge out.
Counting the numbers on the doors, Chen Ge quickly arrived outside Room 3239.
He tugged at the lock. The security door didn't budge.
"This should be the room." He knocked on the door. "Anyone in there?"
The bloodstained cassette tape emitted a piercing burst of static, as though Xu Yin was sending Chen Ge a warning.
After several knocks, to Chen Ge's surprise, a man's voice actually came from inside Room 3239.
"What do you want? It's the middle of the night! Is something the matter?"
"Someone's here?" Chen Ge was actually more startled than the man inside. He thought to himself, could this person be under the control of the Strange Tales Association, or was the man inside a member of the association himself?
He was on high alert, paying attention with everything he had.
The security doors in the Fanghua Garden complex were double-layered. Soon, the inner door was opened by someone.
A man standing about five-foot-seven stood inside, his face cold.
"Something the matter?"
"I'm assisting the police in tracking down a fugitive. Our people will be up here shortly." Chen Ge's tone of voice was strikingly similar to Captain Yan's.
"Another fugitive broke in?" The man's expression soured even further, his brows knotting together.
"Honey, what's going on?" A woman in her thirties walked out from the living room.
"They say a fugitive got in."
"Didn't they just catch a fugitive in our building last time? This place is way too unsafe—how many times has it been now?" The woman's voice was somewhat shrill. "I told you ages ago we should move out, but you wouldn't listen!"
"Move out? Where would we go?"
The man's temper was running just as hot. Neither was willing to back down, and they began to bicker.
Chen Ge watched the whole scene with cold eyes. He still couldn't be sure whether these two were members of the Strange Tales Association; he only had an instinctive feeling that something was off about them.
"When people argue, they naturally look at each other and may even use physical gestures. But these two didn't. Their bodies were stiff—were they deliberately restraining themselves, or were they putting on a performance for me?"
After a few more exchanges, the woman retreated into the inner rooms while the man stayed at the doorway.
He looked like he was simmering with pent-up anger, and his attitude toward Chen Ge was thoroughly unpleasant: "We're just residents of this building. We haven't seen any murderer, and we haven't heard any strange sounds. You'd better go ask someone else."
Getting knocked on by a stranger in the middle of the night—under normal circumstances, no one would open the door. Chen Ge had already considered this. If the other party opened up and invited him inside, that was when he should truly be on guard.
"I just want to ask you a few questions." Chen Ge gestured toward the neighboring units. "How well do you know your neighbors?"
"Nobody lives on either side. Across from us there's a man living alone. He moved in about a month or two ago. Rarely sees him go out. Never spoken to him."
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"Wednesday evening, I think. I came home three hours later than usual because of overtime and ran into him in the elevator."
"Wednesday? The elevator?" Chen Ge instantly connected the man across the hall with the Strange Tales Association. "Do you know his name?"
"No." With that, the man shut the door.
The sound of the security door closing echoed far down the corridor. Chen Ge stood in the middle of the hallway and turned to face the room directly across from 3239.
"Could the Strange Tales Association be hiding in the room across?" Doubt flickered in his eyes. The couple in 3239 appeared perfectly normal on the surface, yet they had "inadvertently" fed him the most critical pieces of information—Wednesday and the elevator. Only someone who had entered the Strange Tales Association would know those details.
"Did they say that on purpose? Are they trying to lure me into the room across?"
Chen Ge couldn't tell whether this was coincidence or a trap. Ever since obtaining the Black Phone, he had grown increasingly cautious.
His right hand tightened around the ballpoint pen. His left hand gripped the doorknob of the room across from 3239. With a slight effort, the security door swung outward.
"Not locked?"
The instant he realized the security door was unlocked, Chen Ge immediately retreated. The true killing ground had to be this room across from 3239.
And in the very moment he let go, a small blood-red hand reached out from inside!
The two sides were separated by mere centimeters!
"What the hell is that?!"