Shards of mirror crashed down like a torrential rain. Above was a fractured sky. Around him hung dense crimson mist. Beneath his feet, black thorns twisted in grotesque shapes.
The entire Ghost School served as the backdrop, and before him sprawled a blood-red city.
Every scene that could only exist in nightmares had become reality in the world beyond the door. The word "apocalypse" was no longer enough to describe the horrors of the Haunted Ghost School—perhaps this was simply another hell.
Evil's body had been burst open, and countless evil spirits poured from his belly, swirling around the Ghost School. They spat curses upon Evil's ruined remains, venomously cursing everything they could see.
The paradise the Painter had painstakingly constructed had now utterly collapsed. The sins buried deep within the trash transfer station had reclaimed their freedom. The darkest things buried in people's hearts had escaped—they howled, they raged, they performed all manner of extreme acts to show every bystander just how dark human nature could become.
These were the things the Painter had once struggled so hard to conceal. Now he had released them with his own hands. They lashed out at every ghost around them indiscriminately—whether it was a student within the Ghost School or an outsider.
Though all these filthy things from the trash transfer station were merely venting, at this critical juncture, they had taken a tremendous amount of pressure off the Painter's shoulders.
The monsters from the blood-red city were pressing in fiercely, but the most dangerous wave of assault had already been neutralized by the Painter. He had used his own unique ability to destroy Good, then leveraged the negative emotions the Ghost School had accumulated over so many years to cripple Evil. Now only one enemy remained.
His arm was fused to the blood-red mirror surface. The Painter held the recognition of half the students' will within the Ghost School—a crucial reason he had been able to hold on until now.
As long as he didn't step outside the Ghost School, the Painter could wield truly terrifying power. Chang Wenyu could do the same, and the Painter knew this well. That was why he had attempted to kill her the moment she appeared.
The world beyond the door was treacherous at every step. The slightest mistake could result in the annihilation of one's soul. The man in the crimson mist had precisely underestimated the Painter, and it had cost him his advantage.
Good and Evil were both lost, yet the man in the crimson mist showed no intention of retreating. In his eyes, this was an opportunity that could not be allowed to slip away.
The fact that he had managed to travel from that city to the Ghost School's vicinity in such a short time proved he only lived in the outermost fringes of that city. There had to be monsters in the city's depths countless times more terrifying than him.
If he couldn't take the Ghost School quickly, and the monsters at the city's center were alerted, this door would inevitably be seized by other "people."
The storm of crimson mist closed in slowly. Covered in wounds, the Painter stared silently at the heart of the storm. His eyes began to change—blood-red veins threaded through his pupils, pulling them apart. His jet-black irises slowly melted away until nothing remained but a fathomless, abyssal blackness in both eye sockets.
"You think if you hide, I can't see you?"
The Painter's image appeared on every shard of mirror falling from the sky. His pitch-black eyes locked onto a single direction with piercing intensity.
The storm arrived, but the Painter neither dodged nor retreated. He didn't know what the enemy's ability was, didn't know how the attack would come.
Under these circumstances, the best defense was relentless offense—keeping the opponent in constant danger of death so they could never make use of their power.
The Painter had abandoned nearly all defense. He kept searching for an opening, but the man in the crimson mist left no openings whatsoever. The mirror shards plummeting from the sky couldn't even come close to him.
If you can't see them, you can't draw them. That was perhaps one of the Painter's greatest weaknesses.