The gate of the Ghost School had finally appeared. It was the only real entity in the Dream Paradise, the true core of the mirror world.
When the illusion shattered, when the paradise the Painter had constructed crumbled and the dreams dissolved, only this gate remained in the vast Eastern and Western campuses.
It looked utterly unremarkable—nothing like the doors in the other scenes. There was no bloodstain on it, just an ordinary door like any you might find in reality.
"Look! There's something behind the door!"
Someone in the crowd shouted, and every pair of eyes turned toward what lay beyond.
A blood-red silhouette was reflected on the cracked door panel. Behind the door, a woman was hiding.
She was not tall, dressed in plain clothes. The only jarring detail was the crimson stain over her heart—she had a bleeding heart.
"Chang Wenyu? She's been hiding by that gate this whole time?"
The most dangerous place was the safest. No one had guessed that Chang Wenyu had concealed herself by the gate in advance—not even the Painter. Everyone was stunned.
But the one most shocked of all was the man in the blood mist. After all his painstaking efforts to locate the gate, just as his hand was about to touch it, he discovered that someone else had been standing right beside it.
A bad feeling crept through him. It seemed as though everything he had done had merely paved the way for someone else.
Chang Wenyu appeared to have foreseen that things would turn out exactly this way. She showed not a trace of panic. When the blood-mist man's hand was about to reach the door, she stepped in front of it.
"Chang Wenyu!"
The man in the blood mist roared, but his arm—now a mass of dark blood—could not reach the gate.
Clutching her bleeding heart, Chang Wenyu wore a pale, mocking smile. Strange characters began surfacing across the surface of her outer garment. As those characters vanished, students throughout the Ghost School collapsed one after another, as though every last drop of strength had been drained from them.
"From the very beginning, this gate never truly considered the people inside the Ghost School. It lured bewildered souls from reality in here, all to strengthen itself and banish its own loneliness. How is that any different from the devil? It's actually worse—at least the devil exploits human greed and desire. But this gate exploits the cowardice and despair buried at the bottom of people's hearts." Chang Wenyu had come prepared. The fact that she could contend with the Painter inside the Ghost School proved she was no easy adversary.
"It dangled hope like bait, making people believe this place was a harbor where they could escape reality. But once they actually arrived, they discovered it was merely a deeper layer of hell—no salvation, no hope, not even the possibility of escape." Chang Wenyu stared at the broken gate before her. "Why should such a door be allowed to exist?"
She seemed to be asking the Painter, or perhaps holding a conversation with the gate itself.
"I know exactly where the gate is, yet it never appeared before me. Had I not been driven into a corner, I never would have seen it." The smile slowly faded from Chang Wenyu's face. She stood guard before the gate, the characters on her back seeping into its fractured surface. The door, already covered in cracks, trembled faintly, as though emitting a mournful cry.
"Painter, there's something you still don't know. Ever since I left the Ghost School last time, I was no longer recognized by its will. But have you ever wondered—after I lost the Ghost School's recognition, why were there still so many people inside willing to help me?" Chang Wenyu kept pressing the Painter, while the man in the blood mist was caught in between, assailed from both sides. He was the one most desperate at this moment.
The Painter did not answer Chang Wenyu's question. He simply kept launching attacks at the man in the blood mist.
"You already know the answer—you're just running from it. Not every student in this school wants to stay. They should have their own choice. When you can't choose your life, no matter where you go, it's just swapping one cage for another." Chang Wenyu shielded the gate. She wanted to destroy it; the man in the blood mist wanted to claim it; and the Painter wanted only to kill.
The three of them, with their conflicting goals, became locked in a tangled battle.
The one who suffered most was the blood-mist man, pinned between two fronts. He could neither advance nor retreat. He wanted to give up, yet he couldn't stomach it—the gate was right there, practically within reach.
Some people saw the Ghost School as a harbor that sheltered them. Others saw it as a cage from which there was no escape. Some fought desperately to change the school, transforming ugliness into beauty. And others wanted to destroy everything ugly, so it could never harm another soul.
"Chen Ge, this is a perfect opportunity. Let's leave through the passage on the sports field." Ying Hong didn't care at all who won between the Painter and Chang Wenyu. She only wanted out. For the vast majority of students in this school, the Ghost School held no good memories.
"It is indeed a fine opportunity." The opportunity Chen Ge spoke of was nothing like the one Ying Hong meant. His nerve was iron; his eyes stared quietly at the sky above. "Let them fight. Those top-tier Red-clothed ghosts we can only look up to right now—they'll come crashing down eventually. And when that happens, it'll be our turn to act."
"You want to make a move on them?" Ying Hong broke into a cold sweat at Chen Ge's words. Whether it was the man in the blood mist, the Painter, or Chang Wenyu, any one of them could effortlessly annihilate an ordinary Red-clothed ghost. They had already touched the threshold beyond Red-clothed, and with the Ghost School's will behind them, they could wield power approaching that of beings beyond the Red-clothed realm.
"Don't let them intimidate you. Look carefully—the Painter and Chang Wenyu have deep conflicts, yet right now they're joining forces against the blood-mist man. When he faced the Painter alone, he still held the advantage. But with both the Painter and Chang Wenyu attacking him together, his defeat is only a matter of time."
"The blood-mist man's fate will be one of two things—either he flees the Ghost School, or he gets devoured by the Painter and Chang Wenyu. And the critical point is that the Painter and Chang Wenyu themselves have an irreconcilable conflict. Once the blood-mist man is out of the picture, the two of them will inevitably turn on each other." Chen Ge saw through it all. "Chang Wenyu wants to destroy the Ghost School's gate. The Painter wants to use that gate to rebuild his paradise here. Neither of them will let this chance slip by."
"A starved camel is still bigger than a horse. I really think we'd be better off not getting involved. Being able to escape is already lucky enough." It wasn't just Ying Hong—Han Song and several other Ghost School students also had no desire to confront the Painter or Chang Wenyu. The haunted house employees, however, said nothing, seemingly brimming with confidence in Chen Ge.
"The Painter's most terrifying asset is his special ability. The reason Chang Wenyu has stayed hidden all this time was to drain his power. In a life-or-death struggle between them, both sides will inevitably exhaust every trump card they have. Once a victor emerges, all we'll be facing is an empty shell."