The blood rain in the sky had stopped. In a world wrapped by black hair, that single crystal-clear teardrop stood out.
Zhang Ya had not uttered a single word from start to finish. Compared to communication, she preferred to prove herself through action.
The sky full of black hair began to contract. The teardrop had nowhere to escape and was finally seized in Zhang Ya's palm.
Wailing and screams emanated from within the teardrop. Besides the hospital gown's own voice, there were others—seemingly his family members. This drop of tears contained so many things.
Listening to the sounds inside the teardrop, Zhang Ya's pale fingers slowly tightened, as if she meant to crush it.
As she made that motion, the crying within the Blood City grew clearer. Something was rapidly approaching.
"Don't kill him! He is that man's tear—a facet of memory, a part of his humanity!" Chang Wenyu's voice issued from the three-headed evil spirit's mouths, but Zhang Ya paid no heed whatsoever. When her five fingers unclenched again, the teardrop had vanished, and on the hem of her black-and-red skirt there now appeared a teardrop pattern.
The black hair continued to close in. After dealing with the hospital gown, Zhang Ya fixed her gaze on the door beneath her feet.
She reached toward the three-headed evil spirit on the door. The moment her hand touched it, her pale arm felt as though it were being scorched by raging flames, or as if a flower were rapidly withering.
Pain was something Zhang Ya had long grown accustomed to. She did not care about it in the slightest, her willpower terrifyingly resolute.
Soon, the cracks on the door appeared on Zhang Ya's arm as well. Every ghostly figure on her black-and-red outer garment let out a roar, and streaks of black-red bloodlines climbed along Zhang Ya's arm toward the gate of the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School.
The gate seemed to know Zhang Ya was helping it and cooperated with everything it had. Inside the Ghost School, only Chang Wenyu's unwilling roars remained.
"This gate can move on its own—it possesses its own consciousness and can lure lost living people! It has already crossed the line! If you help it, you'll be implicated too!"
No matter what Chang Wenyu said, Zhang Ya remained unmoved. Ever since she had experienced death, she no longer cared about what anyone else had to say.
Under the combined efforts of Zhang Ya and the gate, the three-headed evil spirit pattern gradually lost its vitality. The crimson single eye was plucked away by Zhang Ya!
The pattern did not disappear—Zhang Ya apparently did not have the ability to fully purge it. She merely put it into a temporary slumber.
The gate of the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School stopped splitting and began to slowly heal on its own. Zhang Ya took Chang Wenyu's single eye and stood before the gate for a long while.
Her aura fluctuated between strong and weak. Maintaining the countless strands of black hair was quite taxing for her. The ocean of black hair surrounding the Ghost School was shrinking bit by bit, gradually protecting only the area around the teaching building.
The black hair isolated the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School from the Blood City. The students inside the school could only hear the eerie crying from beyond, but could not see what lay outside.
Having weathered catastrophe, the gate had finally become much more obedient. It stopped before Zhang Ya, seemingly waiting for her to push it open.
From the Painter's earlier words, it could be inferred that Zhang Ya had been forcefully awakened this time. She bore injuries and was in a very special state.
She possessed strength above the Red-clothed level, yet could not fully control it.
If she could push open the gate of the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School and become its new Gate Opener, then with the Ghost School's will supporting her, she would not only be able to stabilize her condition but potentially advance even further.
After all, within the scenario beyond the gate they had opened, a Gate Opener could exert a multiplied level of power.
Staring at the crack-covered door, Zhang Ya pressed her hand against it—but she did not push.
Her gaze shifted away from the door. Zhang Ya looked toward the interior of the Ghost School, as though searching for a particular figure.
Becoming the Gate Opener would indeed bring the Ghost School's will to her aid and grant tremendous power, but it also meant losing certain things.
A Gate Opener could not leave the scenario beyond their own gate for long and had to bear the sins behind the door.
Her pale, slender fingers slowly withdrew. The crying from beyond the Ghost School's perimeter was drawing near, and fresh blood seeped through the gaps in the black hair wrapping the school. In the end, Zhang Ya did not push open the gate of the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School. Instead, she enveloped the gate in black hair and walked out of the school.
"Zhang Ya!"
On the sports field, Chen Ge put away his Black Phone. Before he could even check the messages on it, he noticed Zhang Ya heading out of the Ghost School.
The black hair parted to reveal Zhang Ya's ever-more-beautiful face. She looked at Chen Ge with a faint smile, then passed through the hair-shrouded Ghost School and walked toward the Blood City.
"She wants to face that monster from the Blood City alone?"
Behind the curtain of black hair, Chen Ge could not tell what was happening outside the school. Although Zhang Ya had been the Red-clothed ghost who had followed him the longest, the longer he knew her, the more secrets he discovered about her.
He left Chang Wenyu's school uniform where it was and chose not to follow the other students back into the teaching building. Instead, he waited on the sports field.
With no one else around, Chen Ge swiped through the Black Phone's screen. After Zhang Ya had plucked out Chang Wenyu's single eye, the Black Phone had vibrated again, indicating a new message.
He opened the latest message, and what appeared surprised him.
"Lucky Ghost Patron! Congratulations on unlocking a new exclusive employee page!"
Another exclusive employee page?
Chen Ge was somewhat puzzled. Among all the employees he currently had, only Zhang Ya possessed an exclusive page. "Did Xu Yin or the Headless Woman break through some kind of restriction?"
Flipping through the phone, when Chen Ge saw the newly appeared exclusive page, he was genuinely astonished.
Zhang Ya's exclusive page had a blood-red background, while this new page's background was grey, covered with countless dark black strands of hair.
In the center of the hair stood a wild, frenzied girl. She ignored all rules, covered in wounds, her single eye harboring something approaching a pathological hunger.
"A single eye? Chang Wenyu? Why does she have her own exclusive page on the Black Phone? And it's grey?"
Touching Chang Wenyu's exclusive page, the phone displayed only a single line—Severed soul, still existing.
"Could it be because Chang Wenyu tampered with the Black Phone privately? Is this the Black Phone's retaliation? Any ghost that has come into contact with the Black Phone must either become one of us or have their soul obliterated?" Chen Ge opened the other messages on the Black Phone in order.
After he had entered the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School, the four-star trial mission on the Black Phone had been triggered.
Cross-referencing the timeline, every time he had encountered danger, there had actually been a prompt on the Black Phone. The only pity was that Chang Wenyu had swapped the phone, and he had not seen those messages.
Scrolling all the way down, Chen Ge still could not find any mission-completion notification. Growing irritable, he kept glancing toward the outside of the Ghost School.
In just a few short minutes, the black hair enveloping the Ghost School receded like a tide, slowly vanishing.
Along with the black hair, the wailing outside the Ghost School disappeared as well.
Blood mist drifted back into the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School, and within the thick fog, a woman's silhouette could faintly be made out.
A black-and-red skirt trailed along the ground, surrounded by evil spirits, her body wreathed in wailing and screaming.
"Zhang Ya!"
The irritation in Chen Ge's heart vanished in an instant. He ran toward the woman in the fog, but when he was still several meters away, a strand of black hair stopped him.
For some reason, Zhang Ya would not let Chen Ge come closer.
"Are you all right? Let's go home right now."
Hearing Chen Ge's voice, Zhang Ya's lips moved slightly, as though she wanted to say something to him, but in the end the words never came.
Her aura had weakened considerably. The black hair behind her slowly parted to reveal the hidden door.
Zhang Ya looked at Xu Yin, seemingly wanting him to push open that door, but Xu Yin shook his head.
No one knew what Zhang Ya and the gate of the Medium-Sensitive Ghost School had just gone through. All Chen Ge knew was that both Zhang Ya and that gate were now utterly exhausted.