The familiar scent of cigarettes tugged at Chen Ge's memories. He was not a sentimental man, but even so, he paused in his tracks.
"You ran off to a dangerous place like this without telling me, leaving me behind — just how many things are you people keeping from me?"
He knocked on the door. No response. Chen Ge called out softly, "Is anyone in there?"
The moment he finished speaking, an elated voice came from behind the door.
"Boss Chen?!"
Chains slid and latches sprang open on the other side. It took a long time before this seemingly ordinary door finally swung open.
Fan Cong stood behind it in his pajamas, tear streaks still visible on his face. The two-hundred-plus-pound young man saw Chen Ge and immediately charged forward, arms wide open, ready to envelop him in a bear hug.
"Keep it together." Chen Ge stepped back. He could tell Fan Cong was extremely worked up.
"I knew you'd come! Boss Chen, I almost never got to see you again!" Fan Cong's voice trembled on the verge of tears. He had so much he wanted to tell Chen Ge but didn't know where to begin. He paced back and forth across the room, his fleshy belly jiggling with every step.
"Calm down first. Do you have your phone on you? We talked a few hours ago — let me see your call history." Chen Ge was testing him. When Fan Cong had gone missing, his phone had been left behind in the room. Fan Dade had later used it for a brief exchange with Chen Ge.
"I don't have it. It fell out of my pocket when I was running away — it was too chaotic." Fan Cong gestured at his oversized pajamas, which had no pockets.
Chen Ge nodded and looked into the room. It was a perfectly ordinary rental apartment — bed, desk, electric fan. Nothing out of the ordinary.
"Why did you hide in this place? Who brought you here?" Chen Ge had always assumed Fan Cong had been kidnapped by the Shadow, but from the look of things, that didn't seem to be the case.
"Even saying it now, I can barely believe it myself." Fan Cong shuffled his portly frame aside and walked to the window.
"B-2 level. What's the point of fixing a window down here? Are you fooling yourself?" Chen Ge tightened his grip on the Skull Crusher, blocking the doorway.
"She brought me here." Fan Cong pulled back the heavy curtains, revealing a painting rendered on the concrete wall behind them in cheap watercolors — mountains, water, brilliant sunlight, flowers that would never wilt, and a family with smiles on their faces.
Chen Ge's gaze followed the curtain's movement and finally settled on one side of the window frame, where a little girl sat.
She was dressed in red, staring blankly at the painting on the concrete wall.
"Xiao Bu?" Chen Ge had seen this girl more than once, but each time she gave him a different feeling — warning, bone-deep cold, and now, helplessness.
"She was the one who took me away, back when we were on the phone." Fan Cong's eyelid twitched, as though even now the memory sent a chill through him. "The person who came back that night wasn't my brother. It was someone else. I can't even imagine — I had absolutely no clue, and I stayed in the same house with him for that long."
"Your brother was replaced by the Shadow?" Fan Cong's account matched what Chen Ge had previously speculated. "Xiao Bu told you this?"
"Yeah. My brother never came home that night. I'm a bit worried about him now too." Fan Cong sat on the bed. The old boards let out a groan, as though they might collapse at any moment.
Compared to his build, the bed looked absurdly small.
"These beds were all prepared for children," Fan Cong explained, sneaking a glance at Xiao Bu. He was afraid he might have crushed the bed.
"Prepared for children?" Chen Ge caught the key detail. "On the phone you told me that after Xiao Bu's game was completed, she entered this building. Is this building special in some way? Its interior structure doesn't look any different from the other buildings in Liwan Town."
"I heard it from Xiao Bu. Years ago, there was an epidemic in Liwan Town, and this building was the only one the infected avoided."
"The only one they avoided? What do you mean?" Chen Ge didn't quite follow.
"It's a long story. If you play through Xiao Bu's game to the very end, you'll understand everything. That game was set against Liwan Town — it faithfully recreated what the town was like back then." Fan Cong had cleared every side quest. He knew the full story. "Human nature is an incredibly complicated thing. It can blaze like the sun, sacrificing itself to bring warmth to the weak. But it can also sink into an abyss — pitch-black, murky, and without any bottom."
"The outbreak started at Liwan Hospital. The hospital was powerless against the disease. Those patients knew they weren't going to survive, and some among them deliberately sought revenge — smearing their blood and other substances onto fruit and medical equipment. The epidemic spread quickly."