Chapter 0943: Fingertip Touch

After closing his eyes, darkness blanketed everything — but it wasn't the kind of darkness that spoke of despair and loneliness. Instead, it felt as though he'd been placed inside a vast bubble that could contain every fantasy imaginable.

Memories and reality intertwined like dreams. With each step forward, the hard shell of the real world cracked open.

Chen Ge was beginning to understand why every nightmare-tier daily task required him to close his eyes to complete.

What he needed to walk into was another world. What he needed to see was the obsession hidden in the shadow of reality.

He counted the stairs silently in his head, and with his hand trailing along the wall, he quickly reached the second floor.

His fingertips could feel the dust on the wall. His nose could pick up a faint musty smell. His ears echoed with the sound of his own footsteps. At this moment, the insurmountable barrier of sight was stripped away, and the world became slightly different.

"White Tiger shows no abnormalities, which means I haven't encountered danger yet. The first and fourth floors both have lights installed — the real trouble starts above the fourth floor."

Walking upstairs blindfolded wasn't too difficult for Chen Ge. His mind could reconstruct the layout of the stairwell, and his body was already accustomed to the height of the steps. All he needed to do now was concentrate, not let anything distract him, and slowly make his way to the rooftop.

"I should be on the second floor now."

He shifted his weight and was about to head toward the third floor when he suddenly heard a heated argument erupting from one of the apartments on the second-floor hallway.

"All you do is drink every single day! Has your family ever given a damn about me or the child? From the day I got pregnant until now, not a single word from any of you! Every checkup, I've paid for out of my own pocket, and I'm sick and tired of your mother's face!"

"Feeling sorry for yourself? Then get lost! If you hadn't gone out without locking the door, Da Bao wouldn't have gone missing!"

"Oh, so now it's my fault? You wanted to leave in the middle of the night, and I was pregnant with Er Bao — did someone eat your heart?"

"Stop making trouble! I'll say it one more time — that day I was going to work!"

The floor's soundproofing was actually decent, but the couple was arguing so viciously that it barely mattered. From the sound of things, they even got physical toward the end.

After roughly ten seconds, Chen Ge heard a door open. Someone stepped out of the apartment. Based on the footsteps, the person was wearing leather shoes — it had to be the man.

The argument continued. The man cursed under his breath while slamming the door shut with a heavy thud.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway, and a strong smell of alcohol closed in on Chen Ge. The man entered the stairwell and suddenly stopped yelling, as though he'd been startled by Chen Ge standing there in the corridor.

The footsteps paused for a moment, then headed downstairs. Within seconds, they faded away.

"How much did that guy drink?"

The surroundings fell silent once more, but the smell of alcohol hadn't entirely dissipated.

Chen Ge continued upward, silently counting the stairs. When he reached the third floor, something suddenly struck him as odd.

"Why can I still smell alcohol?"

"If that man already left, the smell should have completely cleared by now — unless he's behind me!"

A mental image surfaced in Chen Ge's mind: himself, blindfolded, walking ahead, with a psychologically disturbed, grotesque-faced drunkard trailing behind.

"People under immense stress do indeed seek pleasure by bullying the weak." Chen Ge didn't turn around. If the person was just a bad human, that would be one thing — but what worried him was a different possibility entirely.

"On my way here, the driver mentioned that someone had recently died in this building. The victim had been drunk when it happened, so the thing following me might not be human."

His nose could clearly detect the smell of alcohol, yet his ears heard nothing at all.

"I've only just reached the third floor and I'm already running into problems. There are still over a dozen floors to go..."

Fear itself could be overcome. What was hard to overcome was the unknown. And right now, Chen Ge was caught in exactly that kind of dilemma.

This nightmare daily task was far more difficult than he'd imagined. He'd only made it to the third floor. If he abandoned the task now and fled, he should be fine.