"A door?"
Chen Ge had followed the water ghost here, but he hadn't expected to find a door inside the building. The crimson surface, the blood vessels extending outward in every direction—all of it looked disturbingly familiar.
"It's not midnight. Even if a door had been pushed open here before, it shouldn't be appearing now. Could this be a conspiracy aimed at me? A trap laid by the mastermind behind the eastern outskirts?"
Chen Ge was no longer the simple toy designer he had once been. Ever since obtaining the Black Smartphone, he had learned to approach problems from multiple angles.
Unable to make up his mind, Chen Ge didn't dare approach the door. Wenwen's sister had only been a monster from a two-star trial task—nothing compared to the mastermind pulling strings behind the scenes in the eastern outskirts.
He summoned Xu Yin and Bai Qiulin. Having a few vengeful spirits by his side at a time like this gave Chen Ge a measure of safety.
While he was still wavering, the blood-red door began to tremble faintly. The blood vessels on its surface bulged outward, as though something was trying to force its way through.
"There's something behind the door? It wants to break out?"
This was the first time Chen Ge had encountered something like this. He had no idea what to do.
The bulges on the door grew more and more prominent. The blood vessels started to flow, twisting across the door's surface as if alive, weaving together into thin chains.
If you looked closely, you could see pained human faces carved into each chain. Every strand of blood vessel represented a memory of agony and despair.
"Why does this look so familiar?" Chen Ge recalled the final battle in the underground morgue with Dr. Gao. The blood vessels controlled by the president of the Ghost Stories Society looked very similar to the ones on this door—not simply blood-red, but imprinted with human faces. Get close enough and you could hear the wailing of the living.
It wasn't midnight. In the real world, an invisible force was suppressing the blood vessels on the door, pushing back against them.
Forcing the door open at a time like this was far from easy. The blood vessels were constantly being eroded, but the monster behind the door had gone mad, throwing everything it had at the problem. The instant one blood vessel vanished, a dozen more would burst out from inside, tangling together to form chains that extended toward other parts of the corridor—as if trying to wrench the door open from the outside.
"The thing behind the door could have simply waited until midnight to come out. Did it sense something, which is why it's become so frantic?" A scorched smell permeated the building, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. "The only difference from before is that I've entered the corridor and stopped at the door. Did the monster sense my presence? Is it because of the Vengeful Spirit's Favorite title?"
Chen Ge narrowed his eyes. This didn't feel like a scheme orchestrated by the mastermind behind the eastern outskirts. The water ghost itself hadn't even known Chen Ge would show up tonight—this was something random.
"A scorched building, a blood door—this building matches the description of the Ghost Fire Tower trial from the Black Smartphone. According to Dr. Chen, my parents had come here before they disappeared. Could it be that the two of them left such a deep impression on the vengeful spirit behind the door that it's now sensing the same bloodline and going berserk? But that still doesn't explain why the blood vessels on the door look the same as those used by the Ghost Stories Society…"
Questions piled up one after another in his mind. Chen Ge gripped his Skull Crushing Hammer. Emboldened by both skill and audacity, he inched closer to the door.
The moment he approached, the monster behind the door lost all reason. Countless chains pierced through the blood door simultaneously, pushing the sealed door open from the inside just a crack.
"Aaargh!"
Chen Ge heard a hysterical roar. The overwhelming stench of blood nearly short-circuited his sense of smell.
Forcing his eyes open, Chen Ge peered through the gap in the door. His pupils contracted to pinpoints and his heart lurched violently.
"Is that him?!"
A face was crammed against the crack—hard to make out clearly—but those unmistakable eyes sent a jolt of recognition through Chen Ge.