After a person dies, their obsession can only persist if it is anchored to a particular object. Zhang Ya's anchor was that cursed love letter.
By burning the love letter on the rooftop, Chen Ge had intended to sever Zhang Ya's painful past once and for all. He had already found a new anchor for her.
Together for a lifetime, inseparable as body and shadow — from the moment that love letter burned, he became Zhang Ya's anchor.
Her black hair poured forth like a vast ocean, surging without restraint, swallowing the entire building.
The Shadow clutching Xu Yin's neck froze completely. The legs connecting him to Chen Ge were torn apart with brutal force, and shards of curse flew like black snowflakes withering against the blood-red night.
"You made a vengeful ghost your shadow?" The Shadow seethed with fury that had nowhere to go, his body twisting and distorting ceaselessly. "This isn't how it should be — none of this is what I planned!"
From the four buildings of Mingyang Residential Complex, the piercing cries of children rang out simultaneously. One by one, diminutive dark figures climbed out through the windows, each scurrying toward a specific room in their own building.
Before long, in the western building, a gaunt shadow emerged from a room, dragging behind it a snow-white arm — an arm that belonged to Xiao Bu.
It perched itself on the edge of the building and clamped its jaws around the arm. Then something that made every scalp tingle happened.
Countless shadows throughout the entire building began tearing at that arm. With every bite, another pitch-black tooth mark appeared on the flesh, and the Shadow's presence grew ever stronger.
"You are my shadow — I will make you my shadow!"
Mingyang Residential Complex sat outside of Liwan Town, yet now the blood fog of Liwan Town was being drawn in, surging toward the complex like a tidal wave.
"Not enough — still not enough!"
The Shadow turned his gaze toward the other buildings, but what he saw there only deepened his disappointment.
In the southern building, a grotesque figure whose face was frozen in a permanent grin carried Xiao Bu's dismembered remains to the rooftop. Cracks split open across its entire body, each one resembling a wide, laughing mouth.
In the northern building, something like a rain of blood was falling. A deranged woman in a red raincoat, her mouth sewn shut, was fiercely guarding Xiao Bu's severed limbs while slaughtering everything in her path.
"Boss!" Old Zhou's voice called up from below. The Shadow and Chen Ge both turned to look.
Down at the base of their building, Men Nan — barely reaching Old Zhou's knees — was carrying the nearly faded Old Zhou on his back. Clutched in his hands were Xiao Bu's head and the remaining arm, and they were fleeing at breakneck speed toward Liwan Town.
Xiao Bu's limbs and head were the key to the Shadow's control over Liwan Town. In order to control the runaway door and to fashion Xiao Bu into a marionette he could manipulate at will, the Shadow had poured enormous effort into Xiao Bu. But now, all of it had been undone by Chen Ge.
The Shadow had managed to seize only a single arm. His current control over Liwan Town was now inferior even to Xiao Bu's.
"Why are you all helping him?!" the Shadow snarled. "He lives in the sunlight, bathed in hope, surrounded by laughter — while I am the one who bears every curse and every ounce of malice!"
Unable to draw forth the blood fog of Liwan Town, all those diminutive dark figures rushed instead into the Shadow's body. He stared at Chen Ge, his eyes brimming with venom.
Chen Ge did not answer the Shadow's accusations. His hand reached through the black hair beside him. "I have never been bathed in hope, nor have I ever lived only in the sunlight, let alone been surrounded by laughter. I was simply fortunate enough to meet a group of wonderful people."
The black hair blocked Chen Ge's line of sight. That blood-red garment, crimson to the extreme, drifted past him. A few slender fingers caught a flake of black snow that was about to land on his shoulder.
The five fingers clenched tight. The Shadow's curse didn't even have time to scream before it crumbled into ash.
Zhang Ya stepped in front of Chen Ge. She tilted her head, gazing at Xu Yin whose neck was still clamped in the Shadow's grip.
"You want to save him?" The Shadow seized Xu Yin's head in one hand, but before he could utter a second word, his own skull was seized by a pale hand.
Without the slightest pause, the black hair crashed down like a flood tide. Zhang Ya, gripping the Shadow's head, drove it into the ground.