The man in the blood fog had never expected his most valued subordinate to be killed in a single exchange.
He recalled what Chang Wenyu had said — the Painter possessed a terrifying special ability. At a certain cost, he could paint people or ghosts he had seen into his canvases, stripping them of everything they were.
This ability had severe restrictions, but Chang Wenyu had never told him what those restrictions were. She only said the Painter could use the ability three times within a given period, meaning he could paint at most three targets.
"Shan hasn't been annihilated. She's just had something stripped from her." The man in the blood fog examined the goat-headed woman's condition. He understood very well that when a Red-coat was annihilated, they left absolutely no trace behind in this world. But Shan's body had been preserved.
"If Chang Wenyu wasn't lying, and the Painter can only use this ability three times in a short window, then there's nothing to fear." The man set Shan's body down. "Chang Wenyu burned one use of his ability to stall him, and just now Shan cost him another painting. That leaves him with a single use."
The thick blood fog obscured all vision. The leading man had remained hidden within it the entire time, his true face still unrevealed. "A fearsome ability, but against an absolute disparity in numbers, it's meaningless. The moment he finishes the third painting will be the moment he's annihilated."
The blood fog shrouding Evil slowly parted, and the leading man had essentially delivered Evil straight to the Painter's doorstep. In his view, trading one of Evil's lives for one of the Painter's paintings was well worth it.
"Once I push open that door without a master and ascend beyond Red-coat, I'll find what you've lost and bring you back to life atop your own corpses."
These words seemed addressed to Evil. The pig-like monstrosity went berserk the instant the man finished speaking and charged at the Painter.
Blood fog churned. Black liquid dripped from Evil's mouth, and the creature reeked from head to toe. Unlike Shan, there was nothing at all endearing about this monster.
"The Painter's special ability is formidable, but his main body isn't particularly strong. Evil is the perfect counter for him. If only Shan were still here — with her support, good and evil fused together, they could hold off even something beyond Red-coat for a time." The man in the blood fog could manipulate the thick mist of the world behind the door. Regardless of anything else, this single ability alone was mysterious enough. "A pity. He must have seen the problem too, which is why he didn't hesitate to waste a painting just to cripple Shan."
The thick mist gathered around him. The man stood like the eye of a storm, summoning all the blood fog in his surroundings before finally entering the ghost school.
Black thorns paved the road beneath his feet. The man and Evil approached the teaching building from two different directions.
The man in the blood fog deliberately avoided the Painter, but what he hadn't expected was for the Painter — whose form had undergone a dramatic transformation — to shift his position and plant himself directly between the man and Evil.
"You want to fight us both at the same time?" The man in the blood fog was powerful. He had yet to reveal his face, and both his identity and strength remained a mystery. Had it not been for the Painter's terrifying ability, this battle might have ended long ago.
The Painter wasted no words. His actions said everything. The sky-reaching arms on his back, stimulated by the surge of negative emotions, bulged with dark veins. The aura emanating from the Painter's body was growing stronger by the second.
He intended to absorb the ghost school's collective will, drinking in all the unease and despair, converting the negative emotions of every student in the school into his own weapons.
Human emotions harbored an extraordinary power. Obsessions were born from them, and doors appeared because of them.
"A Red-coat can only endure so much calamity. Without the door's approval, you can't bear the weight of all the negative emotions accumulated throughout this entire school. You'll lose your reason. You'll be torn apart from within." The man in the blood fog waved his arm again, and additional figures began to materialize along the outer perimeter of the ghost school. "That city is crawling with countless ghosts — twisted, maddened, and hungry for this school. Even if you can hold me and Evil off, so what? The moment you're pinned down, the school's will inside will be devoured. Every second you're held up, countless fragments of that will dissipate. As the will fades, you'll only grow weaker."
The man in the blood fog had no desire to fight, but the Painter gave him no chance to speak further.
Crash!
A massive section of the blood-red mirror overhead shattered. One of the Painter's arms seized a fragment of the broken mirror and drove it straight into Evil.
The blood-red mirror turned into countless wailing spirits the instant it was torn free. They became a blade in the Painter's hand, condensing into a streak of crimson light as it swung.
The mirror shard sliced through Evil's body, cutting through the pig-face mask the creature wore, and tearing open the enormous mouth on its side. But just as the shard was about to burst out from the other end of that gaping maw, a soft click echoed from within.
Countless fine, needle-like teeth clamped down on the mirror. Black liquid dripped onto its surface, and the mirror — composed of students' memories — shattered instantly. The phantom remnants of those children screamed as they were swallowed by the giant mouth.
"Greed is a form of evil. It can devour many things. The more it eats, the stronger it becomes."
The massive mouth healed at incredible speed. It had swallowed the mirror whole and clamped down on the Painter's arm as well.
"You want to swallow me too?"
The mirrors in the sky had long since fractured beyond repair. The buildings within had grown spectral and insubstantial, though four locations remained largely intact.
At this moment, the Painter deliberately extended one of his arms toward one of those locations — the waste transfer station situated between the eastern and western campuses.
"True evil isn't the ugliness of the body or the flaws of human nature. It's a purposeless purity. Pure evil is like the black on my palette — it has no deeper intentions. It's cold, it's wicked, and all of it, every last bit, is simply because it is black."
The arm on the Painter's back seized the waste transfer station within the mirror. The four-limbed monster smashed through the door of the transfer station's final room, then fled in panic.
The mirror shattered. With one anchor point destroyed, all the sin accumulated across both campuses poured into the Painter's body. His face twisted into a grimace as he used himself as a conduit, shoving every last curse and transgression into Evil's maw.
The sinful souls shrieked. They had never imagined that the end of their brief journey would be a stench-ridden, gaping mouth.
Screams, pleas, curses, imprecations — no language, no word could make the Painter waver.
"I am the Painter. I need white, and I need black. As long as I can complete the final painting, it doesn't matter what colors I use."
Evil's body swelled grotesquely. The Painter's expression grew increasingly distorted, the calm on his face slowly dissolving.
The evil thoughts packed into that last room of the waste transfer station had all been locked there by his own hand. They were refuse that could never be put to use — the darkest, most terrifying facets of human nature.
"You want to eat? Then I'll let you eat until you burst!"