Chapter 612. Weaving Nightmares?

The female ghost in the tunnel chased passing vehicles because she wanted someone to rescue her child. So if a driver stopped and took her along, she would sit in the car and keep following the driver until, guided by her, they reached the scene of her child's death.

For those who refused to stop and drove away heartlessly, the female ghost would leave something special in their car.

Compared to her child, who had already turned into a monster, the tunnel ghost was still relatively kind.

His body had been trapped, and he had watched death approach with wide-open eyes, his small body gradually consumed by flames. That bone-deep agony was something the boy would never forget.

His clear eyes were consumed by malice and hatred. Flames burned across his body, filling him, utterly transforming him.

He loathed everything, sought revenge on everything, tore apart everything he saw, and used their bodies to fill his own emptiness.

If you encountered that red-clothed female ghost in the tunnel, the worst that would happen was a car accident — the vehicle would be wrecked, but the people would mostly survive.

But if you ran into that child, there was virtually no chance of survival.

Vengeful spirits were vengeful spirits in the end. Hatred had blinded their eyes, clouded their hearts, and become the very meaning of their existence.

Chen Ge listened patiently to the story of the tunnel ghost and her child. It was a tragedy. Human nature was gray — sometimes kind, sometimes cruel. As an outsider, he had no right to judge right or wrong. All he could do was listen in silence.

No one had stepped in to help. The child had been trapped in the car. The mother had chosen to return and stay with her child, choosing death on her own terms.

In Chen Ge's view, the reason the child had later become a monster, his resentment far surpassing his mother's, was likely rooted in self-blame and guilt.

Perhaps somewhere deep down, he had subconsciously believed that he was the one who had dragged his mother down, that he was the one who had gotten her killed.

He had wanted to vent those emotions, and so he had been completely consumed by darkness.

Looking up at the massive spider shadow above him, Chen Ge wouldn't dare say he wasn't afraid at all — that would be a lie. But now that he understood the full story, he could somewhat comprehend both the tunnel ghost and her child, the monster that resembled a spider.

"So you've been enduring this kind of pain all along," Chen Ge said evenly, without forcing any sympathy, just a quiet sigh.

"Pain? No. At first it was truly awful, but gradually I grew to love this feeling — every nerve scraped raw by a blade, watching the blood flow from my battered, broken body, and then bringing that pleasure to more people. I love watching their expressions. I know they must be admiring mine too." The boy's upper body was fused onto the enormous spider, his face wearing an "innocent" smile.

"I can understand you. Honestly, I admire you too." Chen Ge's expression returned to normal. The last trace of discomfort had vanished from his face. When it came to mental fortitude, no one in all of Jiujiang could measure up to Chen Ge.

"You admire me? Well, I'm truly sorry, but your admiration just makes my scalp tingle. Watch your words and actions, please, and don't come any closer — you're making me very uncomfortable." The boy rejected Chen Ge's goodwill, eager to simply leave. "Go back wherever you came from. You're not welcome here, and my mother can only stay with me. She's not going anywhere."

The monster spoke with a childish tone, but paired with his grotesque, horrifying body, it made any observer feel deeply unnerved.

"Since you insist on not letting your mother leave with me, I won't push the issue. Can you at least answer a few simple questions for me?" Chen Ge didn't even wait for the boy to respond before asking directly. "Why is there a fork in the Bai Long Cave tunnel? Why did the tunnel I saw when I opened my eyes feel completely different from the one my body sensed when my eyes were closed? After closing my eyes, I heard voices and car horns, and my hand even touched the outline of a car — but when I opened my eyes, all of that had vanished."

"You sure have a lot of questions." The boy was visibly annoyed. His thick, spindly legs scraped along the wall with each movement, producing a rasping sound that was genuinely unnerving.

"I'm just curious, is all."

"There's only one tunnel here. Just now, I pulled you into my dream."

The boy's follow-up surprised Chen Ge greatly. "A dream?"

"It's hard to explain to you clearly. No one's ever asked me about this before, so let's just call it a dream." The boy stared at Chen Ge, visibly agitated. If Chen Ge's earlier composure hadn't been so flawless, he would have already made his move.

"In a dream, only the mind is active while the body is still, but what I just experienced was nothing like a dream. I couldn't see, but my body could touch things, and my ears could hear." Chen Ge didn't believe for a second that this boy could weave a dream, much less that he could drag someone into one.

"Why do you have so many questions?" The boy saw Chen Ge's unwavering resolve, and the killing intent inside him surged, but he managed to restrain himself in the end. "I already told you — 'dream' is just a shorthand. You can think of it as one of my abilities. As long as you're inside this tunnel, I can drag anything into the dream."

"There's a terrain restriction? It only works inside the tunnel?" Right to the boy's face, Chen Ge casually pointed out the weakness of this ability. He didn't care that the boy's expression turned gray, and instead lowered his head in thought.

The boy was different from typical red-clothed ghosts. Compared to a spirit, he was more like a deformed monstrosity — the disparity between his upper and lower body was enormous. This had caught Chen Ge's attention.

Recalling the world his arms had touched when he'd closed his eyes, the boy had been trapped inside the car with only his upper body exposed. His lower body had been wedged inside.

After becoming a vengeful spirit, his upper body had been preserved, but his lower body was gone.

"Where did his lower body go?" Chen Ge's mind raced, and suddenly another thought struck him — in every three-star trial mission scenario on the Black Phone, there was always a door. So where was the "door" of the Bai Long Cave tunnel?

In a straight, unbroken tunnel, it was unlikely they would have built a door into the wall.

"A person only pushes open a 'door' in their most desperate moment. This child's final moments were spent pinned against the car window, his body crushed against the deformed frame." A sharp glint flashed through Chen Ge's eyes. The "door" of the Bai Long Cave tunnel was very likely the door of that car!

But then another question arose. The abandoned vehicle had long since been towed away by the police. How had the "door" inside the tunnel been preserved?

With a puzzled gaze, Chen Ge looked at the boy's body — the extreme asymmetry between top and bottom.

"The door couldn't have… grown onto his body, could it?" Chen Ge startled even himself with that thought. If that were true, then the red-clothed ghost before him was something truly extraordinary — "A mobile blood door…"

Stared down by Chen Ge, the boy's delicate brows furrowed together. He couldn't shake the feeling that Chen Ge wasn't looking at a vicious, murderous ghost, but rather appraising a rare and fascinating work of art.