The blood threads in the cup weren't many — roughly one-fifth of what the white cat had swallowed earlier.
After gulping down the blood threads, agony seized him. Scissors collapsed to the ground clutching his head, ghostly faces contorted in screams flickering through his eyes, and his own facial expressions kept shifting, eerily mirroring the wailing visages reflected in his pupils.
The pain was unbearable. Scissors clawed at his own body, leaving trail after trail of bloody scratches. What was even more terrifying was that beneath each fresh wound lay rows of hair-thin blood threads, writhing like tiny fish beneath the skin.
The agony lasted a full ten minutes. Scissors was drenched head to toe in sweat. Once he had endured the worst of it, he clenched his teeth and dragged himself up from the floor.
Blood oozed continuously from the wounds on his face, trickling down his cheeks and staining his collar crimson. The effect gave Scissors an oddly striking quality.
"I'm still alive!"
Regaining control of his body and climbing to his feet — that proved the blood threads were the real antidote.
He clenched his fists tight, then slowly relaxed them, and walked back to stand before
"I didn't do anything. You chose this yourself." Chen Ge finished speaking and turned to look at the other two passengers. The doctor shook his head, set down the grey-black cup, and wore a faintly apologetic expression.
The drunkard seemed terrified of the pain and was still hesitating over whether to drink. In the end, encouraged by Scissors, he downed the blood threads in one gulp as well.
"Keep an eye on him. I'm going to have a word with the shop owner." Chen Ge picked up the cup containing the grey-black sediment and walked up to the restaurant owner. He twisted off the lid. "There's poison in this, isn't there?"
"That's also an antidote! I'm not lying to you!" The shop owner stubbornly held his ground.
Chen Ge couldn't be bothered with his nonsense. He pried the man's mouth open and made as if to pour the grey-black sediment straight in.
"Wait! There are three of you poisoned, and there are only two bottles of antidote. I'll tell you where the third one is!" The owner thrashed desperately on the ground.
"The third bottle?" Chen Ge felt a flicker of interest. The blood threads had been beneficial for the white cat too — if there was extra, he could always bring it back to the haunted house and study it at leisure.
"I swear I won't lie to you this time!" Cold sweat erupted across the owner's forehead, and his beady little eyes were locked on Chen Ge with desperate intensity.
"Fine. I'll trust you once more. Where is the third bottle of antidote?" Chen Ge yanked the fat owner up off the ground and dumped him into a chair.
Grimacing through the pain, the fat owner's expression twisted. "The antidote — I actually put it in the kitchen fridge, on the top shelf."
"The kitchen fridge?" If Chen Ge hadn't played Xiao Bu's game, he might actually have believed that. He knew perfectly well there was no antidote in the kitchen fridge — only a Red-clothed ghost.
"If you don't believe me, you can take me along to see for yourself." The fat owner's gaze drifted in restless little darting motions, glancing toward the pocket where Chen Ge kept the teeth.
"You really won't give up until you're staring into the coffin." Chen Ge pried open the fat owner's mouth again, ready to force the bottle of poison down his throat. With both arms broken and only one leg left intact, the fat owner thrashed wildly on the floor — he still didn't realize Chen Ge had seen through him completely.
"I'm not lying! The blood threads really are in the fridge! If you don't believe me, go look!"
"Even at the very end, still trying to hurt me. What a vicious man. You're beyond saving." Chen Ge raised the skull-crushing hammer and smashed the fat owner's last remaining leg. Then he found a rag and stuffed it into the man's mouth.
The crashes against the restaurant's front door were growing louder and louder. There wasn't much time left.
"How are you two feeling?" Chen Ge looked at Scissors and the drunkard, who looked as though they'd just been fished out of a lake. Their entire bodies were soaked in sweat, giving them a rather wretched appearance.
"Never felt better in my life. My whole body's buzzing with strength — like I've gotten ten years younger." The drunkard pushed himself up from the floor and threw a punch that whipped up a gust of wind.
"Good. Now that you've recovered, get to work. Go inside and find rope — tie those two to chairs. If there's no rope, rip up bedsheets and use those instead." After assigning the two their task, Chen Ge turned to the doctor. "Don't worry. I'll go search elsewhere in a bit. There should still be more antidote somewhere in the restaurant."
"Alright." The doctor lay sprawled limply across the table. "Aren't you going to check that fridge in the kitchen? I'm curious — how did you know the owner was lying? Was it micro-expressions and psychology?"
"If you're curious about what's really inside that fridge, I can take you to see for yourself." Chen Ge tied the fat owner and the cook to chairs, then dragged them both to the restaurant entrance. When the rage-filled Headless Woman stormed in, they would be the first things she saw.
Once the female ghost started killing them, Chen Ge would immediately move to the next phase of his plan — release the Gluttonous Female Ghost from the fridge and let the two Red-clothed spirits wear each other down, while he stepped in afterward to clean up.
"The antidote isn't in the fridge. Let's hurry and search the rest of the restaurant." Chen Ge found the white cat, took out the empty bottle that had held the blood threads, and waved it under the cat's nose. Then he put the bottle away and pointed down the long hallway. "Remember this scent. Go."
Those beautiful, luminous eyes gazed at Chen Ge with incomprehension. The white cat lay flat on the spot, not moving an inch.
"Bro, are you seriously using a cat like a dog?" The drunkard hoisted the doctor onto his back. Looking at Chen Ge now, he simply couldn't connect this young man with the maniac swinging that massive hammer moments ago.
"I'm trying to unlock its potential." Chen Ge watched the white cat shrink back under the table and felt a headache coming on. This cat's courage was getting smaller by the day.
Once everything was packed up, Chen Ge and the others headed to the second floor.
A "No Entry" sign stood in the middle of the corridor, and uncleaned bloodstains still marked the floor.
Following the trail of blood, Chen Ge pushed open the door to a nearby room. The scene inside was rather gory — it looked as though a violent struggle had taken place, with blood and filth everywhere.
"Judging by the coagulation state of the blood, the victim's time of death should be within the last three hours. That means right before we entered the restaurant, a murder just happened here." Chen Ge squatted on the ground, long since accustomed to scenes like this.
The drunkard nodded with admiration, then gently nudged the doctor on his back. "Are you sure he works at an amusement park? Could he be an undercover cop the police planted there?"
Faced with the drunkard's question, the doctor could only smile bitterly. Heaven knew why this young man before them was so intimately familiar with murder scenes.
The group scoured the entire second floor and found that the place was essentially a factory of flesh and blood. The fat owner and the cook were utterly devoid of humanity — lives were nothing more than playthings and food in their eyes.
"Let's check the first floor."
They combed through the entire building and still found no antidote. The blood threads in that cup seemed to be something extraordinarily rare — even in the world behind the door.