Chen Ge vaguely recalled the period right after he'd first drawn Zhang Ya. Back then, he didn't know the difference between a Red-clothed ghost and an ordinary vengeful spirit. A newborn calf fears no tiger — he'd simply steadied Zhang Ya with pure sincerity, bit by bit.
"Making Zhang Ya hate you gets you killed. Touching Zhang Ya too deeply also gets you killed. I have to control it to just the right degree. Having this one on me is terrifying enough. If I attract even more dangerous entities, it'll be impossible to contain the fallout."
Too many uncontrollable things would follow if his title upgraded — something Chen Ge wanted no part of.
"If I draw two more vengeful spirits, the Vengeful Spirit's Favorite title will level up. But statistically speaking, the odds of drawing a vengeful spirit aren't that high. I still have two chances…"
Chen Ge felt himself wavering. He stared at the Horror Roulette on his phone screen and slowly raised his finger.
Truth be told, the Horror Roulette was one of the most important features on the black phone. Zhang Ya, Xu Yin, Yan Danian — the three vengeful spirits he'd drawn had given him enormous help. Without them, there was no way he could have made it this far.
"There are two ways to strengthen yourself: complete Nightmare-tier daily tasks, or win something useful from the roulette." Chen Ge had possessed the black phone for quite a while now, but up to today, everything he'd drawn was either a vengeful spirit or something related to vengeful spirits. That left him feeling somewhat hopeless. "Maybe the moment I drew Zhang Ya on my very first spin, things started heading in a direction nobody could have predicted."
He hadn't slept all night, and his head felt heavy. "I'll try one spin first. It's not like drawing two more vengeful spirits would level up the title right away anyway."
He lit a cigarette, stood up, and circled his haunted house once. He'd gone to extraordinary lengths trying to draw something good — he'd tried spinning at noon when the sunlight was at its fiercest, at dawn when all things burst with vitality, and even cycling a kilometer or two away from the amusement park to spin there. But none of it had made the slightest difference.
"Should I try fighting fire with fire this time? Wait until midnight, when yin energy is at its peak for the day, stand in the deepest part of the haunted house, and spin?"
After thinking it over, Chen Ge still abandoned the idea. "I'll just ask the Pen Spirit."
He descended into the underground area, planning to combine the abilities of the Pen Spirit and the Weeping Sculpture to figure out whether this spin would yield a vengeful spirit.
He pushed open the door to the girls' dormitory and saw a ballpoint pen wrapped in layers of tape, mindlessly drawing circles on paper.
"Long time no see." Perhaps startled by the warmth in Chen Ge's voice, the pen rolled away from him.
"Where are you going? I have a serious question." Chen Ge picked up the ballpoint pen and asked whether he would draw a vengeful spirit from the black phone's roulette on his next spin.
But before he'd even finished asking, the Pen Spirit was already on the verge of breaking down. He hurriedly stopped.
Next, he tried the Weeping Sculpture, but the result was the same. It seemed that whenever anything involved the black phone, these spirits' abilities went haywire.
"Really strange. The phone my parents left me is anything but ordinary."
Unable to cut corners, Chen Ge dropped the matter. He washed his hands in the bathroom, then climbed aboard the Route 104 spirit bus. Once his mind had fully calmed, he tapped the roulette wheel on the black phone's screen.
His eyes locked on the screen as the wheel spun slower and slower, and Chen Ge's heart climbed into his throat.
The scream points he'd accumulated recently were enough for five consecutive draws. If this spin didn't yield a vengeful spirit, he would keep going until his scream points were completely spent.
With a soft click, the wheel stopped. The pointer came to rest on one particular spot.