Chen Ge pulled off the black robe's hood, revealing a face that had been completely disfigured.
"So who exactly is your chairman?"
"Definitely not me." The black-robed figure actually smiled at this point, his lips curving into an arc. "Take your time guessing. You'll definitely meet him before you die."
After speaking, wisps of blood seeped out from his mouth. Those blood threads seemed to possess a life of their own, crawling out from within his body.
One by one, bulging veins surfaced across his skin. The black-robed figure appeared to be enduring a pain that exceeded the limits of sensation—his mouth gaped wide open, and one could see that his palate and throat were covered in blood threads.
"The blood threads inside his body seem to be devouring him." Chen Ge gripped the Skull-Crushing Hammer tighter and wanted to walk over to test its effects on the black-robed figure with a solid strike, but the woman beside him stopped him.
Those blood threads drilled out of the black-robed figure's body and enveloped him, leaving only the vague outline of a human shape.
"The chairman has been right beside you all along. He's been watching you this whole time, and you're the most interesting person he's ever encountered."
A hoarse voice drifted out from within the black robe. Chen Ge and the woman in the red coffin watched as the black-robed figure was slowly devoured, transforming into part of the blood threads, which then burrowed into the blood-red earth.
"What exactly are those blood threads?"
"You can think of them as a part of a red-coat's body." The woman picked up the black robe from the ground, as though she had discovered something interesting inside it. "Take the two children and leave. Once you've been inside the door for too long, you won't be able to go back."
The woman clutched the black robe and vanished into the red mist. Chen Ge stared in the direction she had disappeared, a flicker of doubt crossing his mind. "What was hidden inside that black robe? I could swear I caught a hint of excitement in her voice."
Chen Ge found the white cat on the roof of the ancestral hall. It still had no idea what had just happened—it clutched the bottle in its mouth, white fur bristling, clearly terrified.
"Come down, it's okay now." It took a long while before the white cat finally leapt down from the eaves. When Chen Ge caught it, he noticed the cat seemed to have gained a bit of weight. "Why does this cat shove everything into its mouth?"
Chen Ge pried open the white cat's mouth for a look but couldn't find even a trace of blood threads.
"That stuff was prepared by the Ghost Story Society specifically for red-coats. If a cat ate it, could something go wrong?"
This was Chen Ge's first time encountering such a situation. After finding that the white cat seemed perfectly normal, he stuffed it into his backpack and brought the two children back to the bedroom where the woman had once lived.
"The Blood Door opened right outside her room—which means that every time this door opened, it was a nightmare for her."
The Blood Door in front of them had already closed. Chen Ge tried pushing it several times, but it was no use.
"Let me try. Jiang Ling taught me how to open the door."
Fan Yu pressed his hand against the door. Blood seeped out from the bracelet the woman had given him, staining his palm red, and gradually pushed the door open.
As they left through the Blood Door, Chen Ge pulled out the black phone for a glance—he had been waiting for a notification the entire time.
There was a very high probability that the black-robed man had been the patient of Ward Three's Room Nine—Wu Fei!
But after this person's death, the black phone had not sent any notification.
Every time he killed a patient from Ward Three, the completion rate of Ward Three's trial mission increased. Once the completion rate exceeded ninety percent, he would obtain the hidden prop for this three-star scenario!
When Xiong Qing had been captured and the Devil Man had been killed, the black phone had sent notifications both times. Yet this time, after Wu Fei's death, the phone remained stubbornly silent.