The fog thinned, and the blood moon overhead grew sharper, its crimson light spilling across the ground and illuminating a string of grotesque, bizarre silhouettes.
Crack!
The window beside Chen Ge burst open from a outside force. A figure with its face wrapped in coarse cloth leaned out—it had been watching Chen Ge for some time, lying in wait for the perfect moment to strike.
There was no reason for the attack. Maybe it simply found Chen Ge an eyesore, or maybe killing him would grant a fleeting rush of pleasure.
That was the logic of a psychopathic killer. Their brains were wired differently from ordinary people's. They didn't care about others, acted without considering consequences, operated on impulse rather than plan, were easily provoked, and harbored an innate, predatory aggression.
Blood seeped through the coarse cloth. Chen Ge couldn't see the man's face, and he wasn't about to waste time figuring out what it looked like.
When the freak extended both hairy arms toward Chen Ge, trying to drag him into the room, Chen Ge sidestepped, raised the Skull-Shattering Hammer, and swung it straight down.
A weapon like this was a rare sight even in Liwan Town. The Shadow kept these killers around to harvest negative emotions—he wasn't running a gladiatorial arena. The tools the killers used for their work were all mundane household items.
The freak's shoulder caved in. A corner of the cloth slipped off his face, revealing a pair of eyes filled with confusion. He had no idea where Chen Ge had obtained such a massive iron hammer. A strange feeling crept through him: the other guy was breaking the rules, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
The man staggered backward, retreating toward the room he'd been hiding in.
Normally, someone fleeing for their life wouldn't bother wasting time on small fry like this. But Chen Ge was clearly the exception.
"I don't care whether you're human or ghost. You want to kill me, then be prepared to be taken out by me. That's what I call fair." He vaulted through the window and charged after the fleeing figure with the hammer raised. "You tried to kill me, so you're definitely not innocent. Getting you out won't earn me any Black Phone rewards—it'd just disrupt public order. So I might as well spend a little extra time finishing you off."
He burst into the room. Chaos erupted. A regular wooden door was one swing for Chen Ge—even a reinforced security door, he could handle in five hits or fewer.
The cloth-faced freak had never seen anything like this. Before he could even make it out of the room, Chen Ge was on him.
He went in through the left-side window of the building, smashed through the right-side window, and came out the other end—the whole thing took less than thirty seconds.
Chen Ge stuffed the coarse cloth he'd peeled off the freak's face into his backpack. "Consider it a souvenir."
In Xiao Bu's game, the streets became extremely dangerous after dark—which was more or less the situation Chen Ge found himself in now. The only difference was that the game's protagonist was the powerless little boy Xiao Bu, while the one walking the streets of Liwan Town in reality was the newly appointed president of the Ghost Story Society.
"I don't know what Dr. Gao's objective is—that's a major problem. For now I just need to wear them down as much as possible." Chen Ge's route was completely unpredictable. Whenever a person or a ghost provoked him, he immediately changed course, smashed his way straight through, and moved on to yet another street.
The buildings of Liwan Town concealed vengeful spirits and psychopathic killers behind almost every door. For ordinary people, this was the kind of place that sounded terrifying just to hear about. For Chen Ge, it produced a peculiar thrill not unlike drawing lots.
Before entering every room, he felt a surge of anticipation. He couldn't quite explain why—maybe it was just his boundlessly strong curiosity at work.
"Feels like I'm some kind of street sweeper. If only the out-of-control doors wouldn't expand on their own. That way I could make regular sweeps."
The blood moon blazed overhead. The fog churned. Chen Ge sprinted through countless pairs of eyes brimming with malice.
"The human-shaped shadows at the crossroads are still there. The guy with the tattoos said those shadows leaked out of the Shadow's main body—they're probably linked to him somehow." Chen Ge was rough on the surface, but meticulous underneath. He knew the only reason he could tear through the place with reckless abandon and poach vengeful spirits was that the Shadow was fully occupied dealing with Dr. Gao and couldn't spare the attention.
If the Shadow figured out that Chen Ge himself was the key, things would change fast.
"As long as I'm careful, I should be able to drag this out for quite a while." Chen Ge swung the Skull-Shattering Hammer at another window. Wherever he spotted human-shaped shadows, he plowed straight through the building. With the hammer in hand, wherever Chen Ge went, there was a path.
In a way, the blood fog symbolized the Shadow's strength. Now the fog was thinning and strange noises were erupting everywhere, and plenty of imprisoned killers and vengeful spirits realized their opportunity had arrived.
At first the disturbances came only from behind Chen Ge. Gradually, screams and wails echoed across the entirety of Liwan Town.
Order collapsed. The Liwan Town that the Shadow had painstakingly constructed descended into total chaos. Long-suppressed lunatics and deviants poured out of their hiding places.
Whether their aim was to escape or to unleash the darkness within, every one of these monsters and spirits—who represented the very bottom of human nature—was on the move.
If the Shadow hadn't been pinned down by Dr. Gao, he could have made an example of one and ruthlessly crushed the rest. Disobey, and you die—a heavy-handed crackdown that brooked no defiance.
But right now he couldn't be in two places at once. And the longer he stayed out of sight, the worse things spiraled. The fear those lunatics felt would erode entirely until they were swallowed whole by their own negative emotions.
Weeping and manic laughter drifted side by side over the town. The sounds of combat rang out from every direction. The blood fog continued to thin, yet the scent of blood in the air grew heavier by the moment.
"What a bunch of lunatics. Terrifying." Chen Ge stepped over an unconscious killer. At the same moment, Xu Yin crumpled the lingering obsession he'd just defeated into a neat ball and tucked it away.
Man and ghost worked in perfect tandem. Chen Ge handled the living; Xu Yin dealt with vengeful spirits and obsessions. Unless they ran into a red-robed ghost, there was virtually nothing that could stand in their way.
In just a few minutes, Chen Ge's backpack had accumulated all manner of strange and peculiar objects. A showerhead ripped from its mount, for instance, with a man's obsession clinging to it—a man who liked to perch on the showerhead and peek at people bathing. His combat power was essentially zero, but his appearance was horrifying. Chen Ge felt the guy had potential in his line of work, so he took him in.
There were plenty of other things as well: a flashlight that turned itself on, a ghost hiding underneath a water cup, a female spirit who liked to lurk under tables, and so on.
Whatever was easy to carry, Chen Ge stashed directly in his bag. Whatever wasn't—like the female spirit who preferred hiding under tables—he simply smashed the table into pieces and had her possess one of the planks. He promised her that someday he'd get her a brand-new table.
The haul from this mission exceeded even Chen Ge's expectations. He opened the Black Phone, and several new messages had appeared on the employee page.