What Chen Ge was saying was that he wished Red High Heels could also become a Vengeful God — the subtext being that he already had a Vengeful God by his side, so she'd better not cause any trouble.
He shut the shrine's door again. After only a few seconds, tiny beads of blood began seeping through from outside the shrine. What was even more unsettling was that the beads slid down the outer wall and converged into two separate streams of blood.
"Incompatible with each other? Something that can stand up to Red High Heels — is the owner of this shrine a Red Clothes?!"
Chen Ge straightened immediately. He was even starting to feel glad that he'd brought every Red Clothes from the haunted house, aside from Lao Bai.
"Virtual Future Amusement Park's problems are worse than I'd guessed. There's at least one Red Clothes in the haunted house — possibly more than one." Chen Ge stared at the shrine, his heart pounding fast.
Red High Heels' true strength exceeded both the Headless Female Ghost and Xu Yin, and she excelled at curses. But a Red Clothes connected to this shrine could actually hold its own against her — something Chen Ge had never anticipated.
"There shouldn't be just this one shrine in the Reincarnation haunted house. The other party's will is partially inscribed on the shrines being worshipped. What kind of Red Clothes is this, exactly?"
The blood droplets on the shrine's outer wall had not yet merged when a piercing scream suddenly came from the room farthest from Chen Ge.
The other visitors heard the cry and rushed over to check, but Chen Ge stayed where he was, guarding the shrine.
Hurried footsteps thundered down the corridor. Amid the chaos, Chen Ge suddenly felt an itch on his ear, as if a butterfly had landed on him.
Before he could reach up to scratch, a somewhat ethereal voice spoke right by his ear: "If a butterfly's wings are torn off, will it hurt?"
Chen Ge's senses far surpassed an ordinary person's, yet he detected nothing amiss. The voice seemed to materialize from thin air.
Keeping his position, Chen Ge was about to call out to Xu Yin when the voice spoke again, repeating the very same words.
The other party didn't seem to mean him any harm. After a brief pause, Chen Ge said: "A butterfly's wings are covered in blood vessels, tightly connected to its body. Of course tearing them off would hurt."
"Blood vessels? Like the red threads on Mama's body? Why would such beautiful wings have blood-red lines inside them too?" The child's voice held a mix of bewilderment and something chilling.
"When a butterfly emerges from its chrysalis, it hangs upside down — that's so the blood will flow through the wings under gravity, giving them the strength to unfold and let the butterfly break free." Chen Ge's voice was gentle, like a kindergarten teacher patiently explaining something new to a little one.
"So the reason butterfly wings are so beautiful is because of those red lines, right?" The child's voice was innocent.
"That's putting it too absolutely. A butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis also has to do with gravity — you can't exactly attribute the beauty of its wings to Newton." Chen Ge used his words to hold the child's attention while rolling his eyes, casting his peripheral vision toward his side.
"Come quick! Xiao Ling's gone missing!"
Before Chen Ge could even catch sight of the child's face, a police officer's shout rang out from the other end of the corridor.
He turned to look and found nothing beside him at all. The child's voice from moments ago might as well have been a hallucination.
"Almost got to see them." Chen Ge glared at the officer, then slowly rose to his feet. "Weren't they supposed to be in pairs? One goes missing — where's the other?"
"I was looking for clues with Xiao Ling in that room just now. She opened the wardrobe and screamed. When I looked over toward her, she was already gone." The youngest of the male officers spoke. The Xiao Ling he mentioned was the girl who had been leaning close to the shrine just earlier — she wasn't very old either.
"The wardrobe was right there next to you. A whole grown person vanishes in front of your eyes?" Chen Ge pressed down on one end of the wardrobe. "Could the two of you be putting on an act? I've heard some haunted houses like to have actors pose as visitors and go through the tour together."
The youngest officer's face was a bitter grimace. He wanted to ask Chen Ge who had started this whole thing first, but given the situation, he decided to play dumb. "I was rummaging through a pile of junk. I heard the wardrobe door open, and right after that I heard Xiao Ling scream. But when I turned back, the wardrobe door was closed and Xiao Ling was already gone."
"Could she be hiding inside the wardrobe?" Chen Ge yanked the wardrobe door open. To his surprise, there was another room behind it.