After ten o'clock that night, Chen Ge already knew the exact location of her apartment from Dr. Gao's account. When he looked in that direction, one unit among the buildings was blazing with light — every single lamp inside seemed to have been turned on.
"That should be the one."
The windows were shut tight. Behind the curtains, a woman stood there, her expression tense. She kept pulling the curtain aside to peer down at the street below.
"Gao Ruxue?"
The woman spotted Chen Ge eventually, but instead of showing surprise or relief, her face was flooded with sheer terror — as though she were looking at something truly horrifying.
"It seems the Phone Ghost is affecting her."
When a person encounters a fright that exceeds their capacity to cope, they may faint — it's the body's self-preservation mechanism.
But the terror the Phone Ghost created was different from a sudden shock. It worked by luring out the victim's own fears, slowly torturing them, keeping them teetering on the edge of a breakdown for an extended period. Under that kind of pressure, the victim could easily be driven to madness or driven to do something incredibly reckless.
"Don't do anything stupid!"
Chen Ge charged into the stairwell and hit the elevator button, but the elevator was stuck on the thirteenth floor and wouldn't come down.
He had no choice but to take the stairs.
After completing so many tasks issued by the Black Phone, Chen Ge felt that compared to logic or courage, the area where he had improved the most was his physical stamina.
He switched on the tape recorder, gripped the Skull Crushing Hammer, and — not caring at all about alarming the other residents in the building — sprinted upward at full speed. He was fast!
One floor at a time, the motion-sensor lights flickered on as Chen Ge raced all the way to the thirteenth floor in a single breath.
In the empty hallway, one apartment had its outer security door left wide open, standing out like a sore thumb.
"Found it!"
Chen Ge rushed to the door and shouted Gao Ruxue's name, but no one inside answered. All he could hear was Gao Ruxue's agonized moaning and the sound of something being smashed to pieces.
The girl he remembered as calm and rational had apparently gone berserk. Not daring to waste another second, Chen Ge swung the Skull Crushing Hammer at the inner door with everything he had.
*Boom!*
A full-force blow — the blood groove in the hammer's head seemed to flicker with strands of crimson. Chen Ge didn't know how many times he struck, but eventually the door lock gave way.
Hammer in hand, Chen Ge burst inside. At a glance he saw Gao Ruxue's upper body leaning out the window.
What was even more terrifying was the emaciated child perched on top of Gao Ruxue's head. The child had wrapped its arms around her head, pressed its body against her ears to block out sound, and clamped both hands tightly over her eyes.
"Xu Yin!"
Chen Ge's roar echoed through several floors. Every light in the apartment went out in that instant. The air seemed to freeze as a blood-red figure lunged toward Gao Ruxue.
When Xu Yin appeared, the child on Gao Ruxue's head twisted its face in horror and, without a shred of hesitation, released its grip and vanished.
Gao Ruxue's senses returned to normal, but before she could even recover, she saw a blood-soaked evil ghost in red, dripping with gore, hurtling straight at her.
She wanted to scream, but her throat could no longer produce any sound. Her hands went limp, and she let herself topple backward.