Xiaobu's apartment was perfectly ordinary, and her adoptive father's home didn't look particularly well-off either.
"Should I break down the door?" Standing in the hallway,
Chen Ge stopped in front of the door and jiggled the handle. To his surprise, it wasn't locked.
With a soft click, the door swung open.
A faint, unpleasant smell drifted out from inside. Chen Ge narrowed his eyes slightly, his pupils shrinking as he activated his Yin Vision.
Coffee table, sofa, TV stand...
All the furniture was perfectly ordinary. Nothing special.
"Someone died in this room. You'd best not go in." His hands bound, the deranged killer hung his head, speaking as if to himself.
"How do you know that? Don't tell me you killed them." Chen Ge shoved the killer from behind, and the two of them entered Xiaobu's apartment together.
"There's a corpse smell in here. A very distinctive corpse smell." The grey patches on his skin crinkled together as the man flared his nostrils, his gaze drifting toward the bedroom. "The smell is coming from that room. Whoever died in there has been dead for a long time."
His wild, unkempt hair covered most of his face. The man spoke in a low voice — if he was helping Chen Ge find his way, it was less out of goodwill and more out of a desire to exploit Chen Ge's curiosity and create an opportunity to escape.
"In the bedroom?" The only source of a corpse smell in this apartment would be Xiaobu's adoptive father. But in the game, Chen Ge had seen the scene where the man was lying right in the living room. "The position of the body has changed. Someone's been in here. Was it the Raincoat Man? Or Xiaobu herself?"
Chen Ge opened the bedroom door and peered inside.
Every book on the shelf was arranged neatly. The floor was free of clutter, and several somewhat abstract paintings hung on the walls, their frames spotless, as though someone came by regularly to clean.
The only thing in the bedroom that looked out of place was a wooden bed positioned in the center of the room, far from any wall.
A thick quilt covered the bed, and lying flat on top of it was a middle-aged man.
"Xiaobu's adoptive father?" Chen Ge walked up to the bed. When he saw the man's face, his fingers instinctively tightened around his skull-crushing hammer.
A large portion of the man's skin had been replaced with cloth. He looked like a tattered rag doll that had been stitched back together.
"In Xiaobu's game, there was an option like this — sewing up the adoptive father's wounds and turning him into a cloth doll." Looking at the man before him, Chen Ge finally understood. Xiaobu's choice back then hadn't been neglect. It had been to keep her adoptive father by her side forever.
"What a ruthless craft." The serial killer from the bushes had crept closer as well. His eyes gleamed with excitement as he admired the man's stitched-together skin. "This fellow must be the most precious piece of art in the entire apartment. Whoever made him is a total lunatic!"
The killer burst into unrestrained laughter, his cackling echoing without inhibition — until a dull thudding sound came from the wall adjoining the next apartment.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Chen Ge pointed to the seam where the cloth met the skin. The edges of the remaining skin had turned a greyish-black. "The perpetrator must have cut away all the skin that had turned grey. She was trying everything she could to save this man. Or rather, she didn't want him turning into a monster like you."
"Monster?" The killer let out a sinister chuckle. "Before long, you'll become the very monster you just described. Desperation has already taken root and sprouted in your heart. The stronger your willpower, the more insane you'll become when the time comes!"
He coiled like a venomous snake poised to strike, his strength recovering, ready to lunge at Chen Ge at any moment.
"You should worry about yourself first. When I lose it, I'm definitely going to take it out on whatever's nearby. I'll use this hammer and bash it into you until I feel better." Chen Ge was just saying it offhandedly, but the killer took it at face value — he genuinely believed Chen Ge was capable of it.
"It's no use. Once you start going mad, no matter what you do, your mind will never go back to the way it was. So you'd better start controlling yourself now." The killer's eyes swept the room, searching for anything he could use. Being around Chen Ge was far too dangerous — he could lose his life at any moment.