"Don't either of you move from here. If anyone falls later, remember to catch them."
Chen Ge set the bag containing the white cat on the ground, then gripped the Skull Crushing Hammer and charged toward the seventh floor.
"Be careful!"
No matter how the drunkard shouted, Chen Ge didn't slow his pace.
Saving people was just a side task. From the moment he had entered Liwan Town, Chen Ge had never intended to let the Shadow go.
Someone with such a mysterious background and so many entangled connections to him — only by capturing him could Chen Ge find peace of mind.
"I'll definitely be able to get a lot of information about my parents out of the Shadow's mouth."
When he had first entered Liwan Town, Chen Ge had already anticipated this moment. He had just planned to let the High Heels and the Smiling Man do the scouting for him. Who could have guessed that the unexpected appearance of Dr. Gao would throw everything out of control.
"All in all, the situation is still very much in my favor."
Outside the building, Dr. Gao had been lured away by Xu Yin, giving Chen Ge a rare opportunity.
"That monster upstairs is waiting for you — don't go up!" This time it was Scissors who spoke. He wasn't in good shape; pale bloodstains had surfaced across his skin, as if every capillary beneath the surface had burst.
"He's waiting for me, and I'm looking for him!" Chen Ge dragged the Skull Crushing Hammer along, but his speed only increased. Behind him, the white cat scrambled out of the bag and followed with remarkable agility.
Those children on the seventh floor were clearly using Scissors and the others as bait to lure Chen Ge in. They controlled their movements and, the moment Chen Ge got close, let go and fled.
"Give me your hand!" Chen Ge pulled Scissors and the drunkard to safety. Neither of them was bound by rope, but judging by their condition, they looked as though they were suffering a severe allergic reaction to something — wracked with pain, barely able to stand.
"Can you walk on your own?" Chen Ge helped the doctor over to the side as well. The poison in the doctor's system hadn't worn off yet.
"Don't bother with us. The Shadow didn't kill us — he just wants to use us to slow you down. That guy will stop at nothing to get what he wants," the doctor said weakly.
"You can speak in complete sentences now. Looks like your condition has improved." Chen Ge was about to ask the doctor what had happened to them at Fancong's apartment complex when a faint chill brushed against his neck.
He turned to look. The Tattooed Man's head was poking out from the eighth floor — his face covered in blood, his eyes wide open, the tattoo of a human head on his arm completely torn away.
Several expressionless children surrounded the Tattooed Man. They held paintbrushes in their hands, dipping them in his blood to draw pictures beside him.
"He's dead?"
Those children were even more terrifying and numb than the ones on the lower floors. Their attitude toward their "toys" was all the more disturbing.
"If the Tattooed Man is dead, and the higher up you go the worse things get, then could something have happened to Men Nan and Old Zhou already?"
Chen Ge felt a pang of worry. For the first time he realized that these ghosts who had been by his side all this time meant so much to him. He had long since come to think of them as family and comrades.
The Tattooed Man's body was pushed off by several children, tumbling past Chen Ge's field of vision. A life ended just like that. This was the world beyond the door.
In this world woven from despair and nightmares, life and hope were the most fragile things of all.
Watching the Tattooed Man's body fall, the children seemed to consider their task complete. They scattered in every direction, leaving behind only the pictures they had drawn in his blood in the corridor.
As those children departed, the sound of children laughing drifted down from the tenth floor. Those kids no longer had the look of numbness on their faces — they were happy. But what they were doing made Chen Ge clench his teeth.
The phone ghost, Tongtong, had been grabbed by several children. His body had been twisted and deformed, his phone snatched away, and the messages his mother had sent him deleted.
Raised under the Shadow's care, those children could no longer be considered children at all. They loathed beauty and believed that family bonds and love were the most disgusting things in the world. Chen Ge even suspected that the Shadow wanted to mold every last one of them into monsters just like himself.
Every employee at the Haunted House had their own story, but the one who had touched Chen Ge the most was Tongtong. Taking care of this child wasn't just about leveraging his special ability — it was also a promise to his mother.
Tongtong didn't cry or fuss. He had long grown accustomed to all of this, whether it had been during his lifetime or when he was in the hands of Han Bao'er from the Strange Talk Association.
But the quieter he was, the more it twisted Chen Ge's heart to see.
Those children knew that Tongtong had caught Chen Ge's attention. Clutching the little ghost, they fled upward, clearly trying to lure Chen Ge to the rooftop.
"Chen Ge! Don't go up there!" Li Zheng forcibly dragged Jia Ming up the stairs. "There are people badly injured here. Let's get them out first. When I entered Liwan Town, I notified the rest of the unit — backup should be arriving soon."
"There won't be any backup. You and Jia Ming take them downstairs. Make sure you stay far from this building." Chen Ge furrowed his brow slightly, communicated with his comic album, flipped open a particular page, then quickly returned to normal — the whole process taking only a fraction of a second.
"You're not coming with us? What are you going to do?" Li Zheng tried his best to stop Chen Ge.
"I'm not good at educating children, so I have no choice but to treat those who bully them as adults. And if they're adults, that makes things much simpler." Chen Ge hefted the Skull Crushing Hammer and murmured a name under his breath.
In the narrow corridor, a thick, bloody smell wafted through the air. A pair of grotesquely twisted arms materialized beside Chen Ge, gently resting on his shoulders.
"Catch them. Bring them back. We'll educate them slowly."
The head slanting against his shoulder slowly rose. The body, grotesquely deformed from being crushed by a vehicle, had already returned to its normal form as the head lifted.
The red-clothed female ghost Chen Ge had brought out of the White Dragon Cave Tunnel was awakened. She seemed curious about the world outside the tunnel, and this mist of blood stimulated her body, filling her with the urge to kill everything in sight.
Xu Yin had lured Dr. Gao away, and Bai Qiulin was too weak to handle any emergencies. To guarantee his own safety, Chen Ge had played one of his trump cards — the tunnel's female ghost.
With a red-clothed ghost charging ahead, he could move without restraint.
No matter the time or place, a red-clothed ghost was an existence of absolute terror.
The children inside the building saw the red-clothed ghost appear and instinctively began to scatter.
Those brats who had been clutching Tongtong dropped their smiles as well. Just as if completing a mission, they seemed determined to lure Chen Ge to the rooftop.
"The rooftop is dangerous! Don't go!" Li Zheng shouted anxiously from behind. It seemed he had learned some information from Jia Ming.