Icy fingertips sliced open
The thudding of his heartbeat amplified in his ears. Chen Ge could no longer feel pain; all he felt was cold.
The place that had once radiated warmth throughout his entire body now seemed sealed in ice, bone-deep chill spreading outward from his chest to every limb.
His thoughts had frozen. He couldn't sense the passage of time. He strained with every ounce of strength he had, and the only thing he could manage was to rotate his pupils — watching helplessly as Dr. Gao's palm passed completely through the puppet, watching the black hair binding the puppet's limbs and neck unravel, snapping strand by strand.
The black hair drifted down through the rain of blood. Chen Ge felt something slipping away from him.
He was familiar with that feeling. At first it was fear, worry, dread — but somewhere along the way, something else had seeped in too. More than just pity. Sometimes even Chen Ge himself couldn't quite name it.
His heartbeat slowed. Dr. Gao's fingertips seemed to have already touched his heart.
Threads of blood — woven from despair and resentment — seeped from Dr. Gao's fingertips, trying to crawl over Chen Ge's heart, replacing the blood vessels around it, preparing to extract the organ completely intact.
"You're the person I admire most. I'll take good care of this heart of yours."
The heart was the warmest place left on Chen Ge's body, and it had given Dr. Gao a trace of long-lost warmth. His palm slowly opened, and just as he was about to close around that heart —
The shadow behind Chen Ge, unnoticed by anyone, rippled. And across the entire blood-red world, every being heard a woman's voice.
"Let go."
Every ghost, every remnant corpse froze for a beat — including the master of this blood-red world, Dr. Gao himself. In that instant, even he had instinctively stopped moving.
Pitch-black as ink, the shadow spread like a rift torn open into an abyss. Look down into it, and you would see an endless expanse of black hair surging upward at terrifying speed!
Chen Ge was facing Dr. Gao and had no idea what was happening behind him. It was the first time he'd heard that woman's voice — only two words, but those two words reignited a spark of hope in his chest.
His frozen thoughts began racing again. The heart that had nearly been seized lurched with a violent beat, and a name he knew all too well surfaced from the depths of his mind.
"
The answer was a piercing scream — shrill enough to seem as though it would tear the entire blood-red world apart!
The shadow behind him transformed in an instant into a vast black ocean. Boundless black hair poured from within, smashing into everything around it with the most brutal force imaginable.
No restraint. No hesitation. Grinding to pulp everything it touched.
The disfigured puppet's task complete, it dissolved unwillingly into black smoke. Dr. Gao was forced back at the same moment, his expression dark and sullen. A flaw had appeared in his perfect plan.
He had deliberately left an opening — even gone to the hospital in person to give Chen Ge the most oblique of hints — then used a substitute ghost to relay false information through the police, all to lure Chen Ge into the underground morgue as quickly as possible.
Dr. Gao knew perfectly well that Chen Ge still had one top-tier Red Coat ghost on his side. But having devoured too many Red Coats at once, it had fallen into deep slumber. That made now the best opportunity to eliminate Chen Ge.
He had controlled the Blood Gate for years, conducting countless experiments with Red Coat ghosts. He knew exactly how long a ghost needed to sleep after consuming its own kind — and it was precisely because of that knowledge that he had orchestrated today's trap.
Unfortunately, the situation had now changed. The moment that woman's voice echoed from behind the door, events had slipped beyond his control.