"Be careful — watch the shrine on his back."
The same kind of shrine he'd seen in the Virtual Future Amusement Park had appeared again.
"Above Red-clothed lies an evil god — setting up a shrine makes sense. But why does every shrine contain a clay figurine?"
The figurines all looked like they'd been made by the same person. The workmanship was incredibly crude, as if a child had squeezed them together at random — you could barely make out a humanoid shape.
"Shrines, clay figurines — who on earth set all this up? They seem to have a particular fondness for children. Could there really be ghosts out there that eat kids?"
While Chen Ge was lost in thought, the man kneeling on the ground spotted him.
The hand that had been carving names stopped. The man slowly twisted his head around, revealing a face devoid of any features.
It was like a blank sheet of paper — nothing but pale emptiness.
On a rainy night, in a lonely tower, inside a room covered floor to ceiling with carved names, a faceless monster crouched with a shrine strapped to its back. If
A blank face — no expression to read, no way to guess what it was thinking, no way to predict what it would do.
The monster had no ears, so Chen Ge didn't know if it could hear a word he said.
It had no mouth either, making even the most basic communication impossible.
After a brief pause, the monster on the ground suddenly pressed both palms against the floor and lunged toward Chen Ge on all fours.
"Xu Yin!"
Not that Chen Ge even needed to shout — Xu Yin had already stepped in front of him. He leaned forward, dark reddish-black veins surfacing on the back of his hand, and pressed a single palm against the monster's head.
His fingertips pierced the creature's face like blades. The skin split open, but no blood flowed out.
Black threads slithered from the wounds on the monster's face, coiling toward Xu Yin's pallid hand.
"A curse?"
Every thin thread was etched with screaming faces — identical to what Chen Ge had seen during his fight with the Shadow back in Liwan Town.
"So beneath that paper-white face hides such a vicious curse. As expected — the most evil souls often hide behind the purest exteriors."
Xu Yin wasn't particularly skilled at dealing with curses, but Chen Ge had a Red-culled on hand who specialized in exactly that. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the Red High Heels, setting them gently on the ground. "You seem to feed on curses — give this one a try. See if this guy suits your taste."
Leaving the headless female ghost at his side, Chen Ge gave the monster no chance to struggle. He unleashed Xu Yin, the Red High Heels, and the Stench all at once.
Three Red-clothed attacked together, and the faceless monster was instantly suppressed. Countless scarlet threads spread out like a spider's web — or like a thousand razor-edged blades — pinning the creature to the ground. One wrong move and its body would be torn apart.
But the monster refused to submit. It seemed to have no self-awareness, felt no pain or sorrow. Wounds multiplied across its body by the second, yet it still dared to strike back against all three Red-clothed.
"This thing isn't Red-clothed, but it's surprisingly stubborn. It's like it's been implanted with some kind of command — it has to protect the shrine." Chen Ge had dealt with enough ghosts to recognize the problem at a glance. "Leave him for now — take down the shrine. And be careful not to damage the clay figurine inside."
The moment the target shifted from the monster to the shrine, something abnormal happened. Every name carved into the walls of the house began oozing blood. In a matter of seconds, the entire second floor — walls and floor alike — was dyed crimson.