Not a single car moved along the midnight road. The surroundings were terrifyingly quiet. Occasionally a stray cat would pause, but it seemed to sense something and darted away almost immediately.
"Who are you?"
The scout stood in a muddy back alley. His shoes were gone, his bare feet planted on a heap of garbage. Blood seeped from wounds on his soles.
"You can't even recognize my voice?" The man in the shadows stepped slowly forward, a savage and terrifying iron hammer hanging from his hand.
The dim yellow streetlight stretched his figure long across the ground. The speaker was clearly a man, yet his shadow took the shape of a long-haired woman.
The scout caught a clear look at the man's face. His jaw clenched, and he forced out two words: "
"You and I have never met, yet you can call me by name. Looks like I guessed right." The man blocking the alley's exit was none other than Chen Ge. He and Captain Yan had searched the entire Building Three but never found the last hidden killer.
That was when Chen Ge had grown suspicious. After learning from Captain Yan which hospital the scout had been sent to, he had returned to the New Century Amusement Park, picked up the skull crusher, and quietly laid an ambush inside the hospital.
"How did you find me?" Now that the moment had arrived, the scout grew calm instead. A strange smile hung on his face as he stared at Chen Ge.
"Why would I tell you?" Chen Ge clicked the recorder's switch and advanced into the alley, both hands gripping the hammer.
"Killing me won't benefit you in the slightest. This is just a will I left inside a substitute ghost. And don't forget — I'm currently inside a police officer's body." The scout had genuinely been startled when he first saw Chen Ge, but he recovered quickly: "If I die, this officer dies with me."
Chen Ge couldn't be bothered with talk. His phone had been recording the entire time — every word between them was captured.
Watching the savage iron hammer draw ever closer, the corner of the scout's mouth twitched. Chen Ge's expressionless face seemed to tell him: neither of us is a good person, so drop the cheap threats.
"We can still talk this through. Aren't you curious about my identity? Don't you want to know who I am?" The patient made one last effort, trying to engage Chen Ge in conversation, but Chen Ge's posture made clear he had no intention of humoring him.
As Chen Ge closed in, the patient shifted tactics again: "Don't you want to know who the President of the Ghost Story Association really is?"
"Who the President is — that's a multiple-choice question, and I'm solving it through elimination right now." Chen Ge told the scout in the most polite way he could that the man probably wouldn't live past tonight.
Chen Ge didn't actually intend to kill him. The reason he had snuck away from Captain Yan to come here was because he had something else in mind.
He planned to bring the scout back to the haunted house and interrogate him at leisure.
What was that saying? There's strength in numbers.
"Restrain him first, then hand him over to the police." Chen Ge said this purely because his phone was still recording. His real plan was simpler — break both legs for now and leave him alive.
Nothing worked on the man. The scout couldn't find a single opening in Chen Ge, yet his expression barely changed, as though he still held a card in reserve.
"Chen Ge, what I'm about to say will definitely interest you. If you let me go, I'll tell you how the doors were formed, and how to open and close them." The scout's expression was eerie — half a smile, half something else. He seemed certain Chen Ge would bite.
"Give it some serious thought. You know how valuable this information is." The scout's demeanor was composed, though his body unconsciously retreated two steps. "What's controlling this officer is just a substitute ghost containing one-third of my will. Even if you kill him, I won't be harmed."
"If you won't be harmed, why are you in such a hurry to leave?" Chen Ge slowed his pace. "Show me your sincerity. That's the premise of any deal."