Watching
"A cop?" His reaction lagged a beat behind, and by the time he realized things had gone south, Chen Ge had already received a reply from Li Zheng, the team leader of Unit One.
"Hold on! We're on our way!" Hurried footsteps echoed from the floor below — Team Leader Li Zheng of Unit One was close by!
Manager Huang's expression soured instantly. In the past, when he created urban legends, there had been victims who tried to call the police, but those people always went through the whole process of pulling out a phone and dialing. Who could have anticipated that Chen Ge would pull a police-issue walkie-talkie from his jacket without the slightest warning?
And it was completely at odds with the demeanor he'd been putting on!
Resentment, screams, fear — these were the finest nourishment for vengeful spirits. To keep from being devoured by the ghosts they carried, one was forced to do cruel and terrifying things. Manager Huang knew this from bitter experience.
But the man standing before him had single-handedly sustained three vengeful spirits, including one in the highest tier — a Red-clothed Ghost. By the standards of the Urban Legend Association, that meant at least ten lives on his hands!
Yet this blood-soaked butcher, this killer, had chosen to call the cops at the critical moment!
And he'd done it with a genuine police walkie-talkie!
Fury churned inside him. Manager Huang knew tonight had spiraled beyond control — even if he killed Chen Ge, his public identity was finished.
"This is all your fault!"
Matters of the city's shadows were to be resolved by the rules of the shadows. That was the unspoken covenant, but no one had anticipated that a "traitor" would emerge from their own ranks.
The Blood Face reacted far more violently than Manager Huang. The mask of crimson threads lunged toward Chen Ge, and as it flew forward, its features shifted until they bore an eighty or ninety percent resemblance to his own.
"Not this again."
Chen Ge gripped the walkie-talkie and swung it at the Blood Face, but his full-force swing passed straight through the crimson visage. He couldn't so much as touch it.
"Kill you, or seize control of your body temporarily, and I still have a chance to talk my way out." Manager Huang's identity was known only to Chen Ge. If the Blood Face could burrow into Chen Ge's mind and make him shut his mouth for good, Manager Huang was confident he could clear himself.
The Blood Face closed in, and just as it was about to touch Chen Ge's face, his pupils contracted — like a cat in the dark — suddenly narrowing to a razor-thin slit that radiated a piercing chill.
"Yin Eyes!"
He gave the Blood Face no more than half a second's pause. Chen Ge's legs drove off the ground, his body surging forward as he did something insane.
He lowered his head and rammed straight into Manager Huang. The two of them tumbled down the stairs together.
His arm was scraped raw; pain lanced through him from a dozen places at once.
But what struck Chen Ge as strange was that the pain lasted only a moment before vanishing.
When his vision cleared and he sprang to his feet, ready to bolt downstairs, he discovered that every joint in his body was wrapped in a layer of black hair.
"
Save for a few superficial scratches, Chen Ge was completely unharmed. The stark contrast was Manager Huang, who had been dragged back upstairs by the black hair.
The Blood Face had been pierced through. Manager Huang was barely conscious, his body contorted and squeezed by the tangle.
Chen Ge turned his head in a daze and looked up from the 22nd-floor landing. On the 23rd floor stood Zhang Ya, clad in red, motionless and serene. Behind her, the black hair was threaded through the conjoined Red-clothed monster, the Blood Face, and the gaunt specter, filling the entire stairwell.
Red garments like fresh blood. Beneath her feet, the black hair spread in ever-widening tendrils. Ugly, horrifying creatures shrieked and wailed within its grip before being slowly crushed and swallowed into nothing.