The aura emanating from the woman behind the gate was completely different from every other top-tier Red Clothes. It was a kind of ultimate evil. When your gaze landed on her, you'd be involuntarily drawn in, then slowly sink into a spiral of losing yourself.
She was dangerous. Everyone who saw her knew it. Yet no one fled—their bodies lost control the instant they laid eyes on her.
"Zhang Ya…"
Sitting on the Ghost School's cold floor, his fingers stained with thick, sticky blood, Chen Ge felt something strange stir in his heart—as if what was reflected in his eyes wasn't a Red Clothes ghost, but some kind of aggregate of human emotions.
She was right there in his eyes, so real, yet impossible to touch.
This strange feeling wasn't exclusive to Chen Ge. The other three top-tier Red Clothes of the Ghost School had also reacted abnormally. Their unconscious responses didn't resemble encountering a kindred spirit at all—they were more like shallow-water fish that had just run into a leviathan rising from the deep sea.
"I just remembered a legend related to the Ghost School."
"In this school, there is a name that must never be spoken. Everything related to her is taboo."
"Some say she is the door-pusher. Others say she killed the door-pusher."
The Painter gazed at his final painting, in which a confused, diminutive ghost was looking around in every direction.
"One wrong move. This painting was supposed to be for her." The black arms behind the Painter's back detached from his body as he voluntarily stripped the Ghost School's will from himself.
"You're giving up?" The man in the blood mist was on the verge of tears. Most of his body had already assimilated into the blood mist—he'd paid a heavy price, yet gained nothing.
"The school's will is afraid. If I don't strip it away, I'll be affected too." The Painter's voice remained calm. No one could read his mind.
"Affected? Can even a top-tier Red Clothes feel fear?"
"I don't know, and I don't want to know." Covered in wounds, the Painter lifted his head to look at the Ghost School's gate. "The blood-red world behind the gate is a bottomless abyss. We live behind the gate. I always thought I was part of the abyss, but now I've realized—we are all gazing into the abyss."
Black blood seeped from his body drop by drop. To kill Good and Evil, the Painter had used his special ability and borne the sins accumulated behind the gate over countless years. He stared at the woman beyond the gate, his nails digging into his own flesh.
"Why did you come back?"
The door, nearly split in half, was pressed down by the woman's hand. The three-headed demon carved into the doorboard seemed to come alive—its sole remaining eye blazing blood-red—as chain after chain surged from the demon and coiled around the woman's arm.
"Now!"
The Hospital Gown in the blood mist detonated his body until only a head remained. Knowing he had only one chance to strike, he held nothing back. The blood mist around the Ghost School boiled in its entirety, and even a vast amount of mist from the outer perimeter of the blood-colored city was siphoned into him.
At the same time, faint weeping echoed from deep within the blood-colored city. The Hospital Gown's expression turned grim, but he clenched his teeth and endured, forcing himself not to pay attention.
Two of the three top-tier Red Clothes had joined forces to attack the woman. In the end, only the Painter remained standing alone in the center of the Ghost School.
He raised his arm, his fingertips drenched in heart's blood. He wanted to paint, yet his arm simply would not move.
"Why did you come back!"
Black hair fell away, revealing a small portion of the woman's face. Her black-red eyes were like stars reflected in a sea of blood.
Chang Wenyu and the Hospital Gown's attacks were already upon her, yet she stared straight at the Painter.