"We've found Xiao Jia — he's unconscious but physically fine." Li Zheng paused, then continued. "However, something seems to have happened to that Chen Ge."
"Something happened to Xiao Chen? Where are you? I'm on my way!" Captain Yan's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie.
"He might have been traumatized. When we received the distress call, he was on the twenty-third floor with those four lunatics — something truly terrifying must have happened."
Li Zheng looked at Chen Ge, who sat motionless on the stairs, and felt a pang of unease.
He hadn't had a good impression of Chen Ge at first, especially during the interrogation — Chen Ge's attitude had been practically arrogant.
But after hearing Chen Ge's distress call, Li Zheng had cast aside all his preconceptions and led his team sprinting here at full speed. Unfortunately, they were still a step too late.
As the team leader of the First Action Group of the City Precinct's Criminal Investigation Unit, Li Zheng had seen a handful of survivors who made it out of murder scenes alive. Physical wounds would heal with time, but psychological trauma could follow a person for life.
"If only we could have been a little faster." He wanted to encourage Chen Ge to be strong, but he didn't know where to begin.
Chen Ge sat frozen on the landing between the twenty-second and twenty-third floors, staring at his shadow for over ten minutes. He had discovered something terrifying — his shadow wouldn't change back!
Even when light fell directly onto him, it was clearly visible: two shadows overlapping each other.
"Something must have changed with Zhang Ya again. She used to hide inside my shadow — now she wants to become my shadow!"
Chen Ge recalled all of Zhang Ya's strange reactions when she saw the disfigured face. "The black bloodstains in that wooden box must be incredibly important to her. Black blood? Red-clothed? Is there some kind of connection between the two? If she absorbed that black blood, could her power break through some kind of barrier?"
The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. Chen Ge stared at his shadow — Zhang Ya's silhouette was slowly replacing his own. It seemed she had made up her mind to stay with him for the rest of his life, right up until he no longer had a shadow of his own.
His fingers touched the wooden box inside his jacket. Honestly, this was the first time a girl had ever given him a gift directly to his face. Something still felt off about the whole thing, but the facts couldn't be denied.
"It's a strange feeling," he muttered under his breath.
No matter what Zhang Ya might become in the future, one thing was certain — he would never say a bad word about her behind her back.
"No need to worry for now. Last time, Zhang Ya only swallowed half the body of a red-clothed old man and she fell into a deep sleep for several days. In the end, it was only after I called out to her countless times that she slowly woke up."
"This time, Zhang Ya devoured two complete red-clothed ghosts, two blood faces, a slender shadow creature, and that mysterious black bloodstain. To fully digest all of that, she'll probably be asleep for a very long time."
Zhang Ya was Chen Ge's main combat force. With Zhang Ya around, Chen Ge's haunted house could dominate the Ghost Story Association. Without her, even if Chen Ge brought his entire household along, they could probably only handle a single red-clothed ghost at best.
"The disfigured man, the married couple, the Manager Huang — excluding those four, the Ghost Story Association still has three people left." Chen Ge's expression remained calm; an outsider would never guess what he was thinking. "Those three include Number Ten, the President, and Wu Fei. I still can't determine which is which. But one thing is certain — all three of them are extremely dangerous and cunning."
"The Ghost Story Association sent out nearly their entire force and still failed to kill me. They shouldn't make another move anytime soon." Now that Zhang Ya was asleep, Chen Ge had temporarily escaped her obsessive "affection," but he had also entered a window of weakened strength. If the Ghost Story Association sent just two more red-clothed ghosts at this point, his haunted house would be completely wiped out.