"Whatever you say. You're the one in Red Dress, so I'll listen to you." Chen Ge walked forward without a care.
"Hey! What are you still trying to do? I'm going back!" Men Nan was stomping his feet in frustration. He had a nagging feeling that Chen Ge's reason for bringing him back wasn't as simple as it seemed — in his memory, Chen Ge wasn't the type to do something like this.
"Since I'm already here, aren't you going to invite me in for a look?" Chen Ge stopped with an air of genuine surprise, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"You..." Men Nan had no idea what to say to Chen Ge. He was the first living person who had ever actively asked to step inside a door. "At midnight, the door can be opened for exactly one minute. You're only allowed to stay inside for one minute. If you go over that, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to leave."
"Only one minute?" Chen Ge didn't want to make things too difficult for Men Nan. "Fine. There'll be other chances anyway. Go back and fix your window — I won't keep you."
"Then... I'm leaving?" Men Nan's eyes were full of doubt. He couldn't quite believe that Chen Ge would be this considerate.
"Go ahead. You've helped me plenty of times. If you ever run into something you can't handle on your own, come find me anytime."
"That won't happen. As long as I don't get mixed up with you, I won't run into any problems," Men Nan muttered under his breath.
"That's not necessarily true. That shadow we killed before — it was an avatar of something above Red Dress. If we don't destroy the original body, that entity will eventually come knocking at your door."
"Above Red Dress?" Men Nan's face turned even paler. His eyes widened — in his view, the shadow had already been the most terrifying monster imaginable. He never expected that thing to have a true body behind it.
"The original body of that monster is called the Nether Embryo. It's made of curses and resentment, and it's extremely vindictive. Be careful on your own." With that, Chen Ge turned and left.
Stepping out of the Third Ward, Chen Ge flipped through his comic notebook, thinking about what tasks he still had left to complete.
"I'm a man who keeps his promises. I still haven't fulfilled what I agreed to do for the suicide hotline operator Zhang Wenyu — I help complete the last wishes of the deceased, and for each one I finish, he helps me once." Chen Ge had limited manpower, and finding the Nether Embryo across the entirety of Jiujiang would be incredibly difficult. But Zhang Wenyu was different. The suicide hotline operator had taken on the burdens of every suicide victim after his own death. He needed to help all of them fulfill their final wishes before he could be freed, and in return, the accumulated obsessions clinging to him granted him a share of power all his own.
Zhang Wenyu was an anomaly among the Red Dresses. Just how strong he was, even Chen Ge wasn't sure.
Chen Ge simply felt that his ability was perfectly suited for tracking people down.
"I've already helped the person with Big Bear Fat Tiger Syndrome complete his wish. Per our agreement, I can now call on him for one favor." Chen Ge was nothing if not decisive — he pulled out his phone directly and dialed the suicide hotline operator's number from memory.
Three busy signals later, the call went through, but there was no sound on the other end.
"I'll help you complete the wishes of the suicide victims as soon as I can. But right now I've run into something rather troublesome, and I need your help." Getting straight to the point, Chen Ge stated his purpose.
"What do you want me to do?" Zhang Wenyu's hoarse voice came through the phone.
"Find an infant who hasn't been born yet. I've seen his face — I'll send you his portrait in a moment." Chen Ge asked Yan Danian to draw the baby's face from the shadow's chest. That should be what the Nether Embryo looked like.
"Even if I know what he looks like, he hasn't been born yet. How am I supposed to know which one is him?"