Blood seeped through the window frame, flowing across the hand-painted landscape — a very conspicuous sight.
"Even if it means facing death, I won't take away your freedom. Besides, I've gone all these years without a shadow and I'm still doing just fine. When the cart hits the mountain, there'll be a road — there's always a way." Chen Ge had an optimistic personality. Though his looks were ordinary, there was an indescribable magnetism about him, the kind that could always give people hope.
Xiao Bu remained expressionless. On the wall, the blood wrote out the same sentence over and over, as though she wanted Chen Ge to think it through carefully.
For people who had been hurt many times, they would rather bear physical pain than place their trust in someone lightly. They knew full well that the feeling of having given your trust only to discover it was all a lie cut far deeper than any blade.
"Let's set that aside for now. You've met my parents — did they tell you anything? Like where they were planning to go? What places they'd be visiting next?"
Chen Ge had sunk his own money into keeping the haunted house running precisely because he wanted to hold onto something of theirs. It was the only thing his parents had left him, and he wanted to protect it with everything he had.
Finding his parents had become his obsession. So now, whenever a new clue surfaced, he seized it and refused to let go.
Xiao Bu seemed to have anticipated this question. More blood oozed from the window frame, and another line of red characters materialized on the wall — They didn't tell me where they were going next, but they mentioned the Xinhai Central Hospital in their conversation.
"That cursed hospital? One of the two new four-star missions on the Black Phone?"
Chen Ge leaned against the wall, lost in thought. "The Shadow is connected to the Netherborn, and my parents' disappearance is connected to the Xinhai Central Hospital. Both scenarios are four-star, but I'm not planning to tackle either of them right now. The other four-star mission — the West Suburb one — the Psychic Ghost School is almost due. Once we leave Liwan Town, that's the first thing I need to finish."
The trial missions inside the Black Phone grew exponentially harder with each star. Chen Ge really wasn't confident about them.
"Forget it, I'm not going to think that far ahead. Let's just get through what's in front of us first." Chen Ge shuffled his body a little closer to Xiao Bu. He was already very near, and Xiao Bu didn't flinch or show any impatience. The sight of it made Fan Cong break into a cold sweat — after all, this was a genuine Red-clothed Vengeful Ghost.
"Did my parents tell you anything about the Shadow? Like whether he has any weaknesses?" Chen Ge was hoping to squeeze more useful information out of Xiao Bu, but her reaction left him somewhat disappointed.
The bloodstains on the wall merged and shifted, and once again that same sentence began repeating — A person without a shadow won't live long.
"This child knows something, but she won't say it." Chen Ge stood up.
Hearing him call Xiao Bu a child, Fan Cong beside him was startled again — though on second thought, this Red-clothed Ghost really was just a kid.
"What do we do now?"
Chen Ge turned to Fan Cong, who could only manage a bitter smile. "Don't ask me. The line you just said — that's usually the one I say to you."
Everything Fan Cong knew about the game he had already shared with Chen Ge. Now they needed him to call the shots.
"Those humanoid stains are a huge problem. Compared to ghosts, they're more like evil thoughts deliberately extracted from people — composed entirely of pure malice, with not a shred of humanity left."
Such things had no value for absorption. Even a ghost would be assimilated upon contact with them, which was why Chen Ge wasn't willing to risk his employees.
"Vengeful Ghosts can contain and digest them. The more powerful the Vengeful Ghost, the more curses it can digest. If that's what you're worried about, I can clear a path for you." The blood on the wall formed a line of text — Xiao Bu had proposed a solution. "Small amounts of curses can be suppressed. It's only when the curses exceed a limit that assimilation occurs."
"You call them curses?" For some reason, Chen Ge thought of the four-star scenario on the Black Phone — the Cursed Hospital.
"After a person dies, the thoughts they leave behind can become several different things — Obsessions, Curses, Strange Things, and so on. Those stains are curses, made up of misfortune and malice."
"What happens if you absorb too many curses and get assimilated?" Chen Ge asked.
"You become a new curse. The more terrifying the Vengeful Ghost, the more unsolvable the curse it forms." The blood on the wall kept shifting. Xiao Bu never spoke — she communicated with Chen Ge exclusively through this method.
"Can curses be controlled? From what you're saying, these curses will destroy everything they see. They can't be controlled at all — so how does the Shadow command them?"
"I don't know. Maybe the Shadow has his own method, or maybe the Shadow itself is a curse." The blood characters on the wall delivered yet another surprise to Chen Ge.
"The Shadow itself could be a curse?" Chen Ge considered this and decided it was plausible. His parents wouldn't have lost their own shadows for no reason. Presumably, he had been afflicted by some kind of curse as a child, and his parents had transferred that curse into his shadow.
He kept these thoughts to himself, though. It was enough that he understood.
"If the Shadow is a curse, then it's easy to understand why he chose Liwan Town. He wants to tap into the deep-seated malice and curses buried beneath this small town." The curse was the Shadow's trump card — that was the problem sitting right in front of Chen Ge.
"You don't need to worry too much. Even a curse itself can't control what it does, so the Shadow's control is more like a simple switch. He can't fine-tune it down to commanding individual actions. Like I said, curses are brimming with malice — they attack everything they see until they've turned it all into curses. There are plenty of strange and bizarre things in Liwan Town. They can help us shoulder some of the pressure. As long as we escape before they've all become curses, we'll be fine."
Chen Ge gazed at the blood characters on the wall, and his expression gradually softened. Xiao Bu had told him this much — which meant the distance between them had narrowed considerably.
"Alright. Let's leave here first, check the situation outside, and then decide what to do next."
Inside the room, Fan Cong watched Chen Ge and Xiao Bu, his fat trembling uncontrollably.
He knew in his heart that Chen Ge was on his side, but he simply couldn't stop himself from being terrified. The scene before him was just too eerie.
A man wielding a weapon of murder stood beside a limbless Red-clothed Vengeful Ghost. The ghost was silent. The man stared at the blood characters continuously appearing on the wall, his face soft with gentleness.
"Ugh… I really just want to go home…"
Under Chen Ge's guidance, the group made their way to the elevator. "There are so many rooms down here — did any of you miss anything?"
Glancing at those sealed-off doors, Chen Ge smiled. "Xiao Bu, you've been here a long time. Do you have any neighbors? We could bring them along."
Xiao Bu shook her head. She still wasn't used to Chen Ge's excessive enthusiasm.
He pressed the elevator control button, and when the doors opened, Fan Cong clamped a hand over his mouth and nose.
The old elevator was covered in bloodstains and hack marks. The people who had gone up just moments ago had completely vanished.