"I heard it from some of the original residents," the tattooed man said, apparently worried that Chen Ge might misunderstand. He hurried to explain: "Before the gates of Liwan Town opened, this place was already extremely abnormal. If any of you lived in the Eastern Suburbs, you'd know that the older generation simply refused to set foot in Liwan Town — they always said the place wasn't clean. What they meant by 'not clean' actually carried two meanings: first, that this town had suffered a severe outbreak of infectious disease, and second, that many bizarre, inexplicable events had occurred there."
"Can that infectious disease hospital still be found?" Chen Ge asked casually as he stood in front of Building One.
"You're a strange one, you know that?" The tattooed man shook his head. "The more dangerous a place is, the more curious you seem to get." He thought for a moment. "I don't know the exact location. Apparently the hospital was later bulldozed — even the foundation was destroyed, dug all the way down, and then the entire building was buried underground."
"Bury a building? Not even a single brick could be scattered?" Chen Ge turned to look at the tattooed man. "Something that big — how come I've never heard about it? Do you know what infectious disease broke out in Liwan Town back then?"
"I'm not sure either. Some say it was leprosy, others say it was a variant of smallpox. The information is fragmented. What I know, what I can confirm, comes down to two points: first, this disease could spread not only through the air but also through drinking water, and the infection rate from waterborne transmission was several times higher than airborne; second, the first patient was a child — whether it was a boy or a girl, no one can remember anymore."
"Waterborne transmission? The first patient was a child?" Chen Ge suddenly thought of the Donggang Reservoir, and the massive hole at its bottom, and the Eastern Suburbs water treatment plant built beside it. His first confrontation with the Shadow had taken place inside that plant. "The Shadow is targeting the water treatment plant?"
The thread in Chen Ge's mind was growing clearer and clearer. "There's a monster hidden in the hole beneath the Donggang Reservoir. The water plant purifies the reservoir's water and supplies it to the entire Eastern Suburbs. If the Shadow mixes something into the water plant, the entire Eastern Suburbs population would be affected without even knowing it."
He didn't voice the rest of his thoughts, but he already had a rough idea of what the Shadow was planning.
The Shadow was composed of inconceivably vast negative emotions and despair. It was nearly impossible for him to be born into human form — no one could bear him into existence. So this creature had devised all sorts of methods.
To plant himself into another child, then use the entire Eastern Suburbs as nourishment.
The exact operational method was something Chen Ge didn't yet understand, but he knew in his heart that the Shadow's game was far larger than he had previously imagined.
"The Underworld Child is a four-star scenario. What exactly are four-star missions like? Could they affect the entire Eastern Suburbs?" Chen Ge had never completed a four-star mission. All he knew was that in order to unlock the Psychic Ghost School mission, he had completed several prerequisite tasks in succession before earning the right to take on the Psychic Ghost School mission itself.
The Underworld Child was a four-star scenario, and the Cursed Hospital mission was also a four-star scenario. What made it even more coincidental was that the tattooed man had just told him that after the key departments of the Liwan Town infectious disease hospital were broken up, some of the doctors had merged into a hospital in Xinhai — and the name the tattooed man mentioned bore a striking resemblance to what Chen Ge had seen earlier on the little boy's patient gown in the hospital.
These two brand-new four-star scenarios that had just appeared on the Black Phone seemed to be connected to each other as well. This only made Chen Ge's headache worse — he felt as if all the clues were tangled together into a dead knot in his mind.
"Four-star missions are too dangerous. Even with
Seeing through the complex and ever-shifting situation to grasp the essence of things in a single glance — that was an ability Chen Ge did not yet possess. So he decided to uncover the truth his own way.
"There's no need for it to be that complicated. All of this can be made simple!" It hadn't been long since Chen Ge received the Black Phone, but his rate of growth was truly astonishing. The only thing was, it seemed to be going in a direction the Black Phone hadn't anticipated. Chen Ge was sprinting down a path that no one could quite define, and he was doing it with surprising ease.
"The Shadow just said he's hiding among us. Then I'll keep a close eye on every single person here. If they're alive, I need to see them; if they're dead, I'll take the corpse. And if all else fails, I'll turn Liwan Town inside out — I refuse to believe I can't find him!"
If the Shadow was a master of psychological warfare, then Chen Ge was the opposite extreme. They shared a similar appearance, and there were some similarities in their personalities as well, but their methods of handling situations were completely different.
"Stop wasting time — everyone, follow me!" Chen Ge pulled the Skull Shattering Hammer from his backpack and pressed the switch on the repeater.
He was perfectly calm. Liwan Town was only a three-and-a-half-star difficulty mission, and a large portion of the smaller scenarios within it had already been conquered one by one. With the walkthrough he'd obtained from Little Bu's game, the difficulty of this mission had been reduced to its absolute minimum. He had decided to stop holding back.
He called Zhang Ya's name silently in his mind, and the shadow behind him rippled, like a woman fixing her hair and makeup who had turned to glance back at him.
"You seem more special today than before."
Chen Ge dragged the Skull Shattering Hammer into the building corridor with one hand. His steps were firm, and with each stride he took, strange sounds echoed around him, as if the space were packed with invisible people.
"Be careful!" The tattooed man stopped at the corridor entrance. The five women's heads tattooed on his arm were wailing, struggling as though trying to escape from his body — something that had never happened before. "Those women who were killed by the Underworld Child refuse to get close. There must be something incredibly dangerous hidden in this building. But the door to the outside world is also in this building…"
"Don't hesitate. Since you've chosen to trust him, just keep following him." Scissors licked the wound at the corner of his mouth with a cool demeanor. He had learned from the tattooed man how to better disguise himself as a deranged killer.
"He doesn't look all that reliable, but when it really counts, he's worth trusting." The drunkard, with the doctor still slung over his back, also entered the corridor.
Seeing that others had gone in, the tattooed man steeled himself, covered the five face tattoos on his arm with his hand, and dashed into the corridor.
"Should we go too?" Jia Ming didn't dare look at Li Zheng. He thought he had been disguised well enough, but even he hadn't noticed that he had already begun deferring to Li Zheng's opinion — something that hadn't happened when they first entered Liwan Town.
"Let's go together. I still have things to ask Chen Ge." Li Zheng and Jia Ming also entered the corridor. The blood mist grew thicker and thicker. A man whose face was frozen in a grin lingered outside for a long time before finally walking in as well.