The Shadow retreated, fleeing toward the outskirts of Liwan Town. Dr. Gao had absorbed all the curses, and his condition was far from stable.
Blood mist scattered in every direction. The red dress on Xiao Bu grew ever more vivid. She tilted her head, studying Chen Ge, as if her luck might improve just by staying near this person.
"Hurry! Move!"
Chen Ge gripped two large bags and sprinted at full speed. Poor Fan Cong, already overweight, was now running for his life as well.
"Wait for me!" Fan Cong clutched his chest. He felt that fate was sometimes truly absurd — the last time he had run this hard was in Chen Ge's haunted house, and now, for his second brush with death, he was fleeing alongside Chen Ge himself.
"Don't stop! I'll find you a vehicle!" Chen Ge ran along the road for what felt like forever but saw nothing he could use for transport. In the end, he had no choice but to turn to Xiao Bu beside him. "When the doctor catches up, take Fan Cong and find somewhere to hide. I'll draw him away, but don't stray too far from me — we still need your power to take down the Shadow."
Chen Ge had already covered a great distance before Dr. Gao, whose body was half-dissolving, finally moved.
Chains shot through the blood mist, scraping against surrounding buildings with a piercing shriek.
"Chen Ge…"
Blood-red eyes locked onto the retreating figures of Chen Ge and the Shadow. Perhaps even he wondered why those two silhouettes looked so eerily alike.
Nearly every curse Liwan Town had accumulated over the years had poured into Dr. Gao's body. Dark, reddish-black blood flowed ceaselessly from him, laced with black and gray impurities. If you got close enough, you could hear something wailing inside those impurities.
Seeing Dr. Gao in this state, a chill ran down Chen Ge's spine. "The Shadow's trump card really is terrifying. If Dr. Gao hadn't shown up, all those curses would have fallen on me and every one of my employees. Even if we managed to kill the Shadow, I'd probably lose more than half my staff."
Each fierce ghost could only digest so many curses. Beyond that limit, the ghost itself would become a new curse. And while processing curses, their suppressed negative emotions could be triggered as well, making it impossible for them to receive visitors in the haunted house.
Without his actors, Chen Ge would have to shut down every underground scene in the haunted house.
If the haunted house couldn't operate normally, New Century Amusement Park would inevitably be affected. At this critical juncture — with Virtual Future Amusement Park about to open — it could become the final straw that crushed New Century.
Everything might seem to be slowly improving on the surface, but only Chen Ge knew how difficult things truly were. One misstep, and all his previous efforts would be wasted.
"The Shadow voluntarily retreated and headed for the Nether Building. That means Tong Tong and the others took something the Shadow deeply cared about. That's good news for me."
Anything that caused the Shadow trouble was, in Chen Ge's eyes, a good thing.
Behind him, Dr. Gao was closing in. Yet the doctor's behavior was strange — Chen Ge couldn't figure out why Dr. Gao was fixated on chasing him specifically. "Back when he killed himself, didn't we settle everything? I even promised to help look after Gao Ruxue."
Dr. Gao had already lost his reason, and now, tangled in curses as well, Chen Ge certainly wasn't going to stop and try to talk to him.
"Forget it — I'll lure everyone to the Nether Building. Even if a real fight breaks out, I'll destroy that building. I can't let the Shadow's plan succeed."
Under Chen Ge's lead, both Dr. Gao and Xiao Bu moved toward the Nether Building. When the Shadow saw this, he nearly died of rage.
He knew Chen Ge was in Liwan Town, but he hadn't expected that the person Dr. Gao was truly after was Chen Ge himself.
Sensing a wave of intense malice, Chen Ge looked into the distance. The Shadow was on another street not far from him.
Chen Ge pointed behind himself and made a gesture toward the Shadow. "That's right — I'm the one who led him here."
The Shadow's teeth ached with fury, but he knew Chen Ge was protected by a Red Dress ghost and couldn't be eliminated quickly. Rather than letting it eat at him, he simply averted his gaze and accelerated toward the Nether Building.
"So Tong Tong and the others really did cause the Shadow a major headache." Chen Ge signaled for Xiao Bu and Fan Cong to stick together, then charged forward at full speed, pursuing the Shadow.
Before long, a bizarre scene unfolded on the streets of Liwan Town.
The mastermind Shadow was being chased by a living man carrying two bags. Behind them trailed a Red Dress maniac. At the very back, a panting fat man and a little girl missing both arms and legs struggled to keep up.
The Shadow was consumed with worry about the Nether Building and had no attention left for Chen Ge. It almost looked like Chen Ge was actively chasing him all over town.
The Nether Building was located within the Mingyang Residential Complex, just outside Liwan Town. When Chen Ge reached the town's edge, he could clearly feel the blood mist growing denser.
"The blood mist outside the town seems different from the mist inside. There's something extra in it." He focused his senses. From the west, someone appeared to be calling Chen Ge's name. New Century Amusement Park was roughly in that direction.
The Shadow gave Chen Ge no more time to think. He crossed the empty road and plunged straight into the complex.
The blood mist concealed his figure, and just like that, the Shadow vanished from Chen Ge's sight.
The Shadow was gone, but Dr. Gao was still chasing him. Chen Ge had to find a way to divert the doctor's attention.
He glanced back. One of Dr. Gao's eyes had turned black-red, with countless dark threads and blood vessels intertwining before dissolving into a stream of blackish-gray blood.
"Dr. Gao is getting worse and worse. Xiao Bu once said that fierce ghosts who take on excessive curses will be assimilated. The more powerful the ghost, the more terrifying the curse it becomes! If Dr. Gao is assimilated, what kind of curse will this ghost — the closest thing to existing beyond the Red Dress tier — turn into?"
"There's no more time!" Chen Ge shoved his hand into his bag and shouted Yan Danian's name. "Can you sense where Old Zhou is? Hurry!"
Old Zhou had lived inside Yan Danian's comic book for many years, and the two shared a close bond. Chen Ge was simply taking a chance when he called out Yan Danian's name.
The oppressive aura of a Red Dress ghost was suffocating. Sensing the urgency, the comic book inside the bag began flipping its own pages. Then a ballpoint pen wrapped in layers of clear tape sketched a picture on a blank page.
Old Zhou and Men Nan were hiding in a room. The window beside them offered a clear view of the bus station outside Liwan Town.
"That angle?" Chen Ge lifted his head and scanned the four buildings of the Mingyang Residential Complex before charging toward the leftmost one. He had entered that building before, back when he was with Team Leader Yan, and from a window in one of its rooms he had once spotted the bus station.
At this critical moment, the Pen Spirit and Yan Danian cooperated, providing Chen Ge with an essential clue.
He summoned Xu Yin and dashed straight into the stairwell.
"Old Zhou! Men Nan!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, but the moment he opened his mouth, he realized something was wrong — the stairwell before him looked nothing like what he had seen in reality.
In reality, the Mingyang Residential Complex was an unfinished construction project. It didn't even have windows installed, and the floors were bare, untreated cement.
But what appeared before Chen Ge now was pristine flooring, freshly painted walls, and even light fixtures installed in the hallway.
"The door Xiao Bu opened was in Liwan Town — she can't influence things here. So the Mingyang Residential Complex definitely wasn't woven from her memories. Then why is it so different from reality?" If Dr. Gao hadn't been hot on his heels, Chen Ge would never have set foot in such an eerie place.