Because
"Is this the Ghost School's will recognizing him?" The Painter's gaze made Chen Ge feel as though he had plunged into an icy sea, yet a warmth radiated from the students around him—a strange sensation, like being enveloped in warm blood. It wasn't unpleasant.
"If a living person like me earns the Ghost School's will's recognition, the chaos that follows would be unimaginable. But there's no better option right now."
Chen Ge turned his head, forcing himself to stop looking at the Painter. The icy feeling on his back slowly faded.
"He didn't notice anything, did he?" After running more than ten meters, Chen Ge glanced out the window again. What sent a chill down his spine was that the Painter's pitch-black eyes were still fixed on the direction he stood in—though the Painter wasn't looking at him. He was staring at his shadow.
The mirror surfaces in the sky had been almost entirely consumed by the blood-colored storm, yet the Painter still hadn't lifted his brush. It seemed he could only paint ghosts, and the man within the blood storm was not a ghost.
He had never told anyone this—not even Chang Wenyu.
The mirror surfaces were growing increasingly unstable. The fact that the Painter could hold off three opponents at once wasn't just due to his own formidable strength—the more critical reason was that he had been borrowing the Ghost School's will. He continuously dismantled the mirrors above his head that symbolized the Ghost School's will, obtaining power that pushed him to the very limit of the Red-clothed tier.
"This is getting troublesome." The Painter wrapped the "canvas" he had torn from his own body in blood threads, then dragged his already twisted frame toward the center of the storm.
The man inside the blood mist still didn't know the full situation. Seeing the Painter approach, he assaulted the mirror surfaces with even greater frenzy.
In truth, this monster was far more terrifying than anyone had guessed. He had simply been holding back, and to avoid being seen by the Painter, he had kept himself hidden within the blood mist all along.
Greedy, yet cautious—always putting his own survival first. It was probably precisely this temperament that allowed him to survive on the outskirts of the Blood City.
The blood storm swept through like knives, slicing into the Painter's body, but the Painter paid it no mind. His pitch-black eyes were locked on a specific point within the storm.
Everyone who met those eyes found them terrifying, and the man at the center of the storm was no exception.
In a single exchange, the Painter had destroyed Goodwill. The Painter's unique ability had delivered too great a shock to that man. As the Painter closed in, he finally stopped concealing his true strength.
An arm covered in black blood vessels extended from the heart of the storm. The skin on this arm looked no different from a living person's, but the black veins running along it filled everyone who saw them with dread.
Black blood flowed through his body—part human, part ghost. That arm gave every observer a sense of familiarity, as though they had once glimpsed it in a nightmare long ago, only the specific details had since slipped from memory.
The man at the center of the storm initially revealed only one arm. As that hand kept reaching outward, more of his arm and shoulder emerged—and with them came the hospital gown he wore.
Rather than saying it was worn on his body, it was more accurate to say the gown had grown into his flesh, making it impossible for him to ever take it off for all eternity.
If one looked closely, the hospital gown this man wore bore a strong resemblance to the one the "doctor" from the school infirmary had once worn. They had likely escaped from the same place—one had fled into the Blood City, while the other had hidden himself inside the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School.
Chen Ge had been watching the commotion outside the teaching building as well. The moment the hospital gown came into view, a sharp, unsettling dread surged through his heart.