The thick fog isolated Chen Ge from the riverbank. The small boat drifted in place, slowly rotating as it lost all sense of direction.
"Chen Ge…"
That familiar voice sounded in his ear once more. Chen Ge's brow furrowed. He strained to recall, but his mind held no memory of this voice.
It was warm, intimate—familiar in a way that suggested this voice had once accompanied him for a very long time.
"Could it be my parents? No—that can't be right. How could I possibly fail to recognize my own parents' voices?"
In the midst of the fog, Chen Ge felt his mind start to blur. He bit down hard on the tip of his tongue.
"This kind of setup doesn't match a two-star trial mission. I might have walked into an ambush." Chen Ge quickly calmed himself. He knew full well that he had disrupted the mastermind's plans in the eastern suburbs multiple times. The other party surely hated him to the bone.
The shampoo bottle inside his backpack was vibrating even more violently now. Strands of black hair crept out from the gaps around the bottle's mouth, wrapping around the entire bottle. The sight was bizarre and deeply unsettling.
"Is there something you want to tell me?" In Chen Ge's mind, Wenwen's sister was a victim. She shouldn't be helping the mastermind go after him.
The black hair spread outward, intertwining into shapes that resembled signposts, pointing Chen Ge toward a direction.
"She's guiding you. The body is over there," Old Zhou spoke up.
"Things have changed. Let's not rush over there." Until he figured out who was calling him through the fog, Chen Ge wasn't about to move blindly.
The mist continued to thicken. Chen Ge pulled out his phone and checked—no signal. He couldn't reach anyone on shore, couldn't call for help. Right now, he had only himself to rely on.
"Old Zhou, did you hear someone in the fog calling my name?" Chen Ge sat in the middle of the boat, listening to the voice drifting through the mist. A slow, indescribable loneliness began to creep over him. It was as though someone were telling him a harsh truth—he had always been alone, and he would remain alone forever.
"No." Old Zhou shook his head.
His tone was the same as always. His expressions and gestures hadn't changed much either. But to Chen Ge, all of it suddenly felt different. Looking at Old Zhou's face, he sensed a chill and indifference—as if Old Zhou were hatching some dark scheme, plotting to take his life.
"Chen Ge…" The calls came one after another, as though the person closest to him were urging him to stay away from ghosts and spirits.
"For ordinary people, staying away from ghosts is the right thing to do. But my situation is different. Whether it's my parents or myself, our attitude toward ghosts has never been the same as ordinary people's. Especially now, without relying on the power of ghosts, there's simply no way I could survive." Chen Ge was very clear about this: "I treat ghosts as friends. How could I possibly think my own friends are dangerous? Besides, compared to people, sometimes ghosts are the ones who feel more familiar."
Staring at the water's surface, Chen Ge's eyes hardened with resolve: "I don't know who you are, but you're being a little too eager. If you're trying to drive a wedge between me and my ghosts, you've picked the wrong person."
Though his mind wavered slightly, Chen Ge's attitude toward ghosts had not changed. This was a conviction he had built since childhood, shaped by his parents and the black phone. His understanding of ghosts was entirely different from that of ordinary people.
"Your voice sounds familiar and warm to me, but everything you're trying to get me to do is nothing but harmful. The one who truly wants me dead is you. Stop playing these petty tricks and come out—let me see your real face."
The fog had sealed off the reservoir. The little boat drifted lazily, bobbing up and down on the waves, and the memories in Chen Ge's mind grew increasingly hazy.
"Chen Ge…"
This calling voice made him feel at ease, and that was the most terrifying part of all. He had never known a person like this. In his memory, this voice simply did not exist. That sense of familiarity had nothing to do with memory—it felt as though it had been branded into his very body.
He had experienced something similar before. During the tunnel nightmare mission, after taking forty-four steps, a voice from deep within the tunnel had called his name.
The same intonation. The same timbre. Chen Ge clenched his fists. He vaguely recalled something.
After hearing that voice during the tunnel mission, he had witnessed an inconceivable scene—he had been killed as a small child.
That strange experience of watching his own death was something he could never forget.
His consciousness sank gradually into the depths of his mind, and before he could control it, he began reliving what had happened.
"I entered the depths of the tunnel when I was very young. The person who killed me was standing right behind me. From the look of it, they seemed quite close to me."
The memories drifted. His body swayed with the rocking of the boat. When Chen Ge finally broke free from that memory, he suddenly realized that on the small boat, there was nothing left but himself.
The backpack, Old Zhou, Xu Yin, and Wenwen's sister—all gone. He was the only one on the boat.
The fog shrouded everything. Chen Ge felt as though the entire world had cast him aside. An indescribable loneliness surged up from the bottom of his heart.
The temperature kept dropping. Moisture beaded on his exposed skin, cold to the touch—a sensation quite different from that of a living person.
"What's going on here? The special ability of some unknown ghost?" He sat in the boat, gripping the oar. Even now, Chen Ge refused to give up. He was ready to fight.
"Chen Ge…"
The voice came again, and this time Chen Ge heard it with perfect clarity. It was getting closer and closer to him.
"A strange feeling. I've heard this voice in the tunnel before. When I first got the black phone and took on my first nightmare-level mission, this same voice came from inside the mirror. When Dr. Gao destroyed the entire underground morgue scene and opened the passage to the blood-colored city outside, I sensed a hint of familiarity as well. Even the bathroom door in the haunted house sometimes gives me that same familiar feeling—as if something behind the door is calling me." His mind was crammed full of all sorts of information, and Chen Ge felt his head throbbing. "Have I forgotten something? Is this connected to my parents' disappearance?"
"Chen Ge…"
The voice sounded once more—only a few meters away now.
He took a deep breath, placed the oar into the water, and began to row, deciding to go see for himself.
After rowing forward two or three meters, Chen Ge spotted a blurry silhouette through the fog.
Not very tall—it had to be a child.
"Wenwen's sister's body?" Even now, he was still thinking about the black phone's mission. It had become an instinct.
The boat drew closer. The fog parted to either side, and the outline of the figure came into focus.
It was not Wenwen's sister's body. It was a little boy.
The moment he saw the boy's face, Chen Ge's hand instinctively tightened around the oar. A chill raced up his spine.
The child was him when he was young. The same familiar features. The same intimate voice. The difference was that the child's neck had been snapped—his head hung at an almost impossible angle on his shoulder, and every feature was twisted into something that bore an expression Chen Ge had never seen on himself: venomous and filled with hatred.
"Yes… that's my own voice."
Chen Ge had always felt the voice sounded familiar and warm. It was only when he saw the child in the fog that the realization hit him—the voice that had been calling him all along was his own.
"Why would I be calling my own name? And who is this? Why does he look exactly like I did when I was a child?"