Screams and wails echoed everywhere — this was a great purge. The Shadow had shown decisive ruthlessness at the critical moment, preferring to kill a thousand by mistake rather than let a single one slip through.
After Chen Ge ran out of the building, he quickly realized the gravity of the situation. Stains in human shapes were appearing everywhere — on streets, walls, and inside surrounding buildings.
They attacked everything they saw with frenzied aggression. Whether living humans or fierce ghosts, once spotted, they would pursue relentlessly until the end.
"Get away!"
A window on a building to Chen Ge's left was thrown open. Through the security grille, Chen Ge saw a man wearing only pants clutching a desk lamp, swinging it desperately into the corner of the room.
The door pushed open silently, and a stain radiating an aura of danger entered the room. It took the form of an old man with a hunched back and a face devoid of any features. Facing the man, it rushed toward the window with a speed completely at odds with its decrepit body.
"Damn it! Stay back!" The man grabbed an ashtray from the windowsill and hurled it, but the glass ashtray passed straight through the old man's body without slowing it down even slightly.
The terror in his eyes was practically overflowing. He threw everything within reach, but nothing could impede the stain in the slightest.
"This home was something I fought hard to take from those other lunatics." During his time living in Liwan Town, the man had seen all manner of strange things and survived many inconceivable events. But he had survived all of them.
He was a madman, committed to a psychiatric hospital by his family on several occasions. He firmly believed in God's existence, but unlike other believers, he stubbornly considered himself to be God. No matter how badly he hurt himself, he could never truly die — that was his proof.
"I'll fight you, old man! You're defying God!" The window had security grilles installed, so the man couldn't leave. The house that usually gave him a sense of safety had now become a cage trapping him inside. He had no choice but to fight.
The man snatched up a tipped-over chair nearby and smashed it down on the humanoid stain's head.
Striking the skull was the most effective way to utilize a blunt weapon's power. But what the man hadn't expected was that when the chair hit the stain's head, it felt like striking a puddle of liquid.
The chair passed through the stain's body, and the man quickly let go. But by then, the old man had already rushed up to him.
The man ran toward the bed. He spotted Chen Ge outside the security grille and shouted desperately for help, but it was already too late.
The humanoid stain climbed onto his body, adhered to his back, and then slowly merged into him.
The man's skin turned gray at a speed visible to the naked eye. His grip on the security grille went slack. Another face gradually surfaced on his own — full of wrinkles, skin shriveled and dry.
The two faces overlapped. Perhaps from the unbearable pain, the man lost his mind. He began squeezing through a small gap missing from the right side of the security grille — clearly a escape route he'd prepared for himself, one that would be nearly impossible to notice if you weren't looking. The fact that he hadn't been wearing a coat likely had to do with the possibility that outer clothing might get caught on the grille during escape.
"Help me! Please help me!"
His body was scraped into bloody streaks by the grille. His expression twisted in agony. Something seemed to be burrowing under his skin through the wounds, raising ridges that then burst open one by one.
Gray-black blood flowed from his lifeless body, filled with black and gray particles throughout.
After only a few seconds, those particles gathered together and emerged from behind the man.
The scene before him was utterly bizarre. The old man seemed to have been reborn through this victim. Chen Ge felt a second emotion emanating from him beyond mere destruction — a perverse pleasure in vengeance.
The man's corpse was wedged in the security grille. Even more horrifying, after the body dropped, a small stain appeared in the exact spot where he had died.
The stain hadn't fully formed yet, but Chen Ge had a premonition: if left unchecked, in a few more years, another humanoid stain might very well appear on that windowsill.
"Anyone killed by the stains becomes a stain too. This thing is practically contagious." The man's death was horrifyingly grotesque, and Chen Ge was even less eager to engage these things. "The Shadow's trump card really is terrifying. After he finishes his 'purge,' the number of humanoid stains in Liwan Town will only increase."
Crack, crack, crack…
A strange sound came from behind. The girl without facial features was still trailing him, and the old man from the room had spotted Chen Ge too, giving chase.
"This thing must have a weakness as well — I just don't have time to search for it right now." Chen Ge tried to shake off both the girl and the old man, only to discover even more humanoid stains ahead.
"Things aren't looking great." Chen Ge activated his Yin Eyes and peered into the distance. All the humanoid stains inside every building in Liwan Town were slowly awakening. Many of the serial killers had been driven onto the streets, most fleeing in one of two directions.
One was toward where Doctor Gao and the Shadow were clashing. That road had many stains too, but they were blocked by blood mist and chains, temporarily unable to enter.
Chen Ge didn't know where the other road led either, but to avoid drawing attention, he had no choice but to follow along, blending in with the pack of killers.
Those who could survive in Liwan Town, regardless of their abilities, were at least fast runners. When being chased by ghosts, only by running faster than everyone else did you stand a chance of survival.
Liwan Town wasn't large, and under the stains' pursuit, the group quickly covered half the town. They finally stopped in front of an old-style residential building.
The architecture was of a style many years old, and inside was installed a sliding-door elevator.
This kind of elevator was rarely installed in residential buildings — it was mostly used for transporting cargo.
"Out of the way!" The elevator could only fit a limited number of people, and getting in early meant an advantage. With their lives on the line, these killers revealed their true nature.
There was no concept of teamwork among them. They never considered mutual benefit — they only cared about surviving alone.
The building had nine stories, which was considered tall for Liwan Town. Chen Ge swept it with his Yin Eyes and noticed something peculiar about it.
Every other building had stains appearing inside, but this one was eerily silent — no stains, no ghosts, and seemingly no life of any kind.
"Why do I feel like this building is even more terrifying than those stains?" The killer at the front of the pack had already rushed into the elevator. He decisively hit the switch, practically wishing the doors would slam shut instantly.
"Bang!"
Those behind realized he was trying to escape alone in the elevator and immediately hurled their weapons inside. The old-style freight elevator doors were latticed and moved slowly, which meant the result was that nobody would be getting out via elevator.
"I'll just take the stairs then." Chen Ge had little interest in these killers — they didn't even have enough value to become his employees. Rather than scheming against them, he'd rather go in and investigate on his own.
He walked to the stairwell entrance but hadn't stepped inside yet. The moment he glanced upward, he froze as though struck by lightning, rooted to the spot.
Pasted right next to the building's only stairwell was a New Century Paradise poster!
The poster had yellowed and was missing a large section, but Chen Ge recognized it at a glance. Right in the center was his Haunted House.
Many years ago when the amusement park first opened, Chen Ge's Haunted House had been its flagship attraction. Back when information didn't travel as fast as it does now, the park had distributed its advertisements and posters throughout Jiujiang. Any visitors who came to play were also given beautifully made park posters as free souvenirs, so they could help spread the word.