The moment Chen Ge spotted Li Zheng and Jia Ming, the two men at the door spotted him as well.
"Chen Ge?"
Li Zheng and Jia Ming spoke in unison. Neither of them had expected to run into Chen Ge here.
"What are you doing here?" One of Li Zheng's hands was resting behind Jia Ming's back, and even in the midst of obvious shock, that hand hadn't moved an inch.
"Don't go over there — he might not be Chen Ge." Jia Ming whispered the warning, looking visibly frightened. "Did you forget what I told you before? The shadow looks exactly like Chen Ge!"
From the perspective of a third party, Jia Ming's reasoning actually made a lot of sense. A living person suddenly appearing in the middle of the night inside a hotel shrouded in blood mist — there was definitely something wrong with that.
"You're asking me? I was about to ask you the same thing." Chen Ge didn't dare approach Li Zheng and Jia Ming recklessly. Before entering Liwan Town, Li Zheng had sent him a message telling him that Jia Ming had escaped and they were conducting a citywide manhunt.
Yet in only two or three hours, Li Zheng and Jia Ming had both shown up in Liwan Town — no matter how you looked at it, that was deeply unsettling.
Li Zheng's hand had remained hidden behind Jia Ming the entire time. He could very well be pressing a gun against Jia Ming's back to prevent any irrational behavior.
The other party was armed, and Chen Ge didn't dare act rashly. A handgun was useless against vengeful ghosts, but it posed a serious threat to a living person.
"Let's all just calm down first." A standoff inside the hotel would only waste precious time. Chen Ge decided to prove his identity first. He pulled out his phone and showed Li Zheng his call history. "Captain Li, I'm Chen Ge — there's no question about it. The reason I'm here is because I received a distress call."
Chen Ge pointed to his call records with Fan Cong. "This person once visited my haunted house. His mental state was extremely off, and he said a lot of strange things to me. Out of curiosity, we exchanged contact information. But what I didn't expect was that he went missing tonight, and his life or death is unknown. I was the last person he contacted. To figure out what happened, I rushed here to Liwan Town in the middle of the night."
Li Zheng asked Chen Ge a few more questions, and when Chen Ge answered all of them correctly, he relaxed slightly. "Jia Ming escaped from the hospital. We searched along the streets and eventually determined he'd headed toward the eastern outskirts."
"At first, we thought he was trying to flee into the mountains. After expanding the search radius, I noticed something very strange through the surveillance footage."
"At a certain fork in the road, Jia Ming covered his face. Although he was still wearing the same clothes, his gait had become somewhat unnatural."
"I compared the footage over and over and concluded that Jia Ming might have swapped places with someone at that intersection."
"I told the rest of the team to continue the search as planned, and I tracked toward the fork myself."
"The rainstorm was far too heavy, which made the search extremely difficult. But persistence pays off — I eventually found him in an alley behind the streets."
"I chased him all the way until we reached Liwan Town, and only then did I catch this kid."
After hearing Li Zheng's account, Jia Ming waved his hands frantically. "Everything I did was forced by the shadow! If I didn't do as he said, he had a hundred different ways to kill me."
"Forced? Then why do I get the feeling you deliberately lured me to this godforsaken place? What exactly are you and that shadow planning? Start talking — you don't have any more chances." Li Zheng's reason for entering Liwan Town — chasing Jia Ming — was acceptable to Chen Ge on the surface, yet it also felt somewhat far-fetched.
He kept feeling that the Li Zheng and Jia Ming in front of him looked a little off, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what was strange.
"Captain Li, this place is very dangerous. Come inside — don't linger at the entrance." Chen Ge pressed the button on his repeater and walked toward the hotel's front door. "Did you encounter anything terrifying on your way here?"
"This place really is bizarre. It's pouring rain outside, but inside the town the ground isn't even wet. I'd guess it has something to do with the blood mist." Li Zheng dodged the question, grabbing Jia Ming with one hand as he stepped into the hotel.
Chen Ge knew exactly how horrifying Liwan Town was. Vengeful ghosts and maniacal killers were everywhere. If the killers were something Captain Li could handle, how had an ordinary person like him subdued all those vengeful ghosts?
Looking at Li Zheng and Jia Ming, they appeared merely tense — there was no real fear in their eyes.
"Could it be that the shadow is among them? That the ghosts of Liwan Town voluntarily avoided them?"
One was a police officer, the other a criminal — Chen Ge couldn't determine which one the shadow was hiding in. "I can't afford to lose my composure. Both of them could be real, and the shadow could be hiding somewhere else entirely."
Ever since obtaining the black phone, the shadow had been the most formidable opponent Chen Ge had ever faced. He had a feeling that the shadow had orchestrated Li Zheng and Jia Ming's arrival at the same time specifically to throw him off balance.
Chen Ge kept his guard up around Li Zheng and Jia Ming, but they clearly didn't fully trust Chen Ge either. They already knew the shadow possessed the ability to transform and mimic others — for all they knew, the Chen Ge standing before them could be the shadow in disguise.
"Make yourselves comfortable. Wait here for a moment — I have a few companions upstairs." Chen Ge headed toward the second floor.
After he turned his back, he heard Jia Ming whisper to Li Zheng in a barely audible voice: "I've already told you everything about the shadow. Now you've seen with your own eyes that he's right here — which proves I wasn't lying. The shadow is Chen Ge! We have to leave, and now! If we don't, it'll be too late — he'll definitely silence us!"
"You went to all this trouble just to bring me here so I could see this?" Li Zheng's tone was icy and stern. "If you had a way to lure me here, then you clearly had a way to lure Chen Ge here too. Whether he's the shadow or not is still unclear."
"It's this obvious and you still don't believe me?" Jia Ming's voice grew louder. "Think about the kinds of things that person has done — do you really think an ordinary person is capable of that? He's just using you, using all of you to cover up his crimes."
"Cover up crimes? Do you even know how crimes are defined?" Li Zheng pushed Jia Ming down against a table. "Stay put. Don't say things you shouldn't say, and don't do things you shouldn't do. I have my own judgment."
Li Zheng and Jia Ming continued their hushed conversation as Chen Ge slowly moved away. When he reached the second floor, the front door of the hotel on the first floor was knocked on once more.
"Is anyone here?" A young man with a black backpack stood in the doorway. He looked rather frail. "I'd like to stay here for the night."
His voice sounded a bit awkward, as though he was going through puberty. In every other respect he seemed quite ordinary — like a high school student who had run away from home.
He adjusted his glasses, gave Li Zheng and Jia Ming a wide berth, and carefully made his way to the front desk. "Is anyone here? I'd like a room."