His head throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, but even in this state, he gripped the coffin lid and the rope piercing the doll's heart with a white-knuckled ferocity.
After a few deep breaths, Chen Ge finally managed to steady himself. He looked at his phone screen.
"Twins Water Ghost (Mission Difficulty: Two Stars). Mission Completion: 100%. Hidden item reward obtained — The Drowned One's Coat."
"The Drowned One's Coat (Resentment Value: 17): There are things down in the water. They crawled slowly into my clothes and dragged me into the depths."
"Mission completion at 100%. Looks like the cave beneath the reservoir wasn't counted as part of the Twins Water Ghost mission by the black phone." Chen Ge put the black phone away, though his mind was still full of questions. "The coffin was jammed in the middle of the hole — was that meant to block the entrance?"
Chen Ge had noticed earlier that
After getting dressed, Chen Ge laid the coffin lid across the boat. "There's no way I can carry this thing back. A taxi driver's definitely not going to let me bring a coffin lid aboard. I need to think of something."
The coffin lid he'd hauled up from underwater was much smaller than a normal one. Its surface had rotted through, covered in reddish patches — insect corpses, perhaps, or some kind of withered aquatic plant.
After scraping off the debris on the surface, Chen Ge made a startling discovery on the tail end of the lid.
A vicious ghost had been carved into the rotting wood. The creature was bound in chains and bore six eyes — almost identical to the fiend the Ghost Story Association had carved on the haunted house's door.
"The Ghost Story Association held their ritual, killed people, gouged out their eyes, and in the end carved something just like this on my haunted house door. They were trying to seize my door, so this ghost pattern must have some kind of power to guard a 'door.'" Chen Ge took out his phone and snapped a photo of the carving. "The coffin was jammed at the cave entrance, and the lid has this ghost carved on it. Could this whole arrangement have been meant to guard the cavern beneath the reservoir? To keep whatever's inside from getting out?"
Using a coffin to seal a cave — that was probably an idea only Chen Ge would come up with.
"The black phone sent me here on this mission to retrieve the body, which means it must have accounted for the possibility that I'd take the coffin along. So even if there's something terrifying inside that cavern, it can't pose a threat to me." The lid was already out; asking Chen Ge to return it was completely out of the question. He was really just giving himself a justification. "The coffin was most likely set up by whoever's pulling the strings behind the scenes in the eastern suburbs. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. They didn't want the monster in the cave to get out — well, I'm going to let it loose."
Chen Ge had no idea what was actually inside the cavern, nor did he know which direction the passage led.
Truthfully, he wasn't the least bit curious right now. All he wanted was to put as much distance between himself and this place as possible — before something did come crawling out and took its pent-up fury out on him.
Just as Chen Ge was preparing to row away, a patch of deep black shadow surfaced on the still water.
"Almost forgot about her."
The shadow pressed against the edge of the boat, and strands of black hair floated up from below, spreading into the boat's interior as though they possessed a life of their own, before crawling into one of the dolls.
Chen Ge picked up the doll and noticed it was different from the others. She wore a small dress stained with blood, her hair was real human hair, and the name carved into her back was written in blood-red.
"Zhao Shuang'er? This doll is Wenwen's sister?" The Twins Water Ghost mission was already complete, but the boat was still full of dolls.
"Every single doll has a name carved on its back. Each one represents a life." While he'd been underwater, Chen Ge had felt the children's terrified emotions. They were still so young — most of them had never even had the chance to properly see the world.
"This goes way too deep for me to handle alone. I should tell Captain Yan and the rest." Every year, ninety percent of Jiujiang's missing persons cases originated in the eastern suburbs. If they had all died because of the Shadow's plan, that number was beyond horrifying.
He carefully detached the doll hiding Wenwen's sister from the rest. There was one odd thing about this one — the dress was perpetually damp.
Chen Ge was worried she'd soak his manga, so he tucked her into his pocket.