Translator: Lonelytree Editor: Millman97
When Chen Ge spent time thinking, the situation of the battle had changed tremendously. The commotion grew louder and louder. The shadow started to show lethargy while being attacked by both Zhang Ya and Doctor Gao.
The body, which was made from curses, had no shape and no form. Being touched by normal Specters would not harm the shadow. In fact, the contact would cause great injury to the Specters themselves. With that alone, the shadow could have taken down any Red Specter, but unfortunately, he ran into Doctor Gao and Zhang Ya.
These two Greater Red Specters could take on a large number of curses. It was one thing for them to be immensely powerful—their special powers seemed to be a natural weakness for the shadow. Doctor Gao’s confinement and Zhang Ya’s binding proved advantageous when dealing with the shadow. They blocked off his escape, and that cornered him into fighting back against the two.
The battle between Red Specters was extremely horrifying. Tearing down the other party’s resentment to feed themselves, this was a scene that a normal human being would have trouble imagining. However, it was something that could not have been more common for Specters.
The shadow was covered in curses, but the two Greater Red Specters did not care about that. The many things that Doctor Gao was bearing had pushed the man over the brink of insanity. While Zhang Ya looked normal, after the battle, the shadow realized that this woman’s madness was no less than the two chairpersons of the ghost stories society.
The dark black body was shattered again and again. Black blood leaked out from the baby’s face. Everyone present could hear a strange voice. It felt like the blood red sky above them was crying, or perhaps it was this land that was corrupted by nightmares weeping.
Tears and laughter, they saw a child holding a knife standing in an alley slowly being flooded by the heavy rain. The neck was embraced by a rope. The head was pressed into the bed. Tears mixed together with rain. The child screamed and cried for help. He cried and cried until the corners of his lips turned up into a smile.
Submerged into the inky way, burned in the fire, sharp knife cuts in fleshless body, and buried inside a ready hole. Unable to breathe, unable to feel the sun on his face, all that he could reach with his hand were the many different ugly scars.
“Why do you want to kill me? What have I done wrong?”
The shadow’s body was dissipating. The remaining curses transformed into blood capillaries and poked into the baby’s heart.
Shape and form gradually etched onto the baby’s previously featureless face. The soft bones were squeezed into strange shapes while the body filled up with curses and resentment. The baby opened its eyes, staring at Chen Ge, who was shielded by black hair.
The heart in its chest beat, and the sky started to rain blood. Chen Ge’s image was burned into the baby’s retina as the baby’s heartbeat heavily. Gasping greedily for air, the baby was looking less and less like a monster made from curses and more like a living human being.
It had possessed its own baby, but the internal organs were still beating to their own rhythm. Its body felt like it was about to collapse from within, but under such circumstances, its lips still moved into the smile. The eyes turned more and more unrecognizable, replacing the original cunning and defeat with evil and resentment.
“These are not the shadow’s eyes!” Narrowing his eyes, Chen Ge looked at his own reflection in the baby’s gaze through the gap in the hair. It was a self that he could barely recognize, but he was sure that it was a version of himself!
“I have died for you so many times—it is about time for you to die on my behalf.” The blood capillaries erupted, and the shadow’s body completely crumbled. The malformed ghost baby crawled out from the chest. As the blood rained down around it, it charged toward Chen Ge, moving ten times faster than before.
The layers of black hair were pulled apart, and even with the shackles binding it, the speed of the ghost baby did not slow down. Its body was gradually worn down, but the image of Chen Ge in its eyes grew clearer and clearer. The curses morphed into black lines and surged into its eyes, binding tightly around Chen Ge in his eyes. The distance between them was great, but Chen Ge found himself unable to move. He felt like something had immobilized him.
“How did it do this without any contact? What kind of power is this? A type of curse?” The ghost baby drained the shadow dry, and it seemed to be using its own power now. The black lines around the Chen Ge in the eyes started to burn. Black flames seared Chen Ge in its eyes, and the Chen Ge in reality felt the same pain. It was as if millions of ants were crawling all over Chen Ge, inside and outside his skin. They bit on his skin, inch by inch, leaving behind a burning sensation.
“All the good that you represent will become nutrients for despair. I will await you at the lowest part of the abyss…” The baby’s lips tore apart. It gazed deeply at Chen Ge. “My shadow.”
BANG!
Black hair blocked Chen Ge’s view as it wound protectively around him. Black hairs crawled into Chen Ge’s body. They consumed the curses little by little—this was the power of gluttony. The ghost baby was using the power of the ghost fetus. Even for a Red Specter, this kind of curse was hard to stomach, and the ghost baby used it on a living human.
“He just said that I am his shadow, right?” Chen Ge was still unable to control his body, but Zhang Ya was slowly consuming the curse. With a superhuman constitution, Chen Ge did not collapse. Through the gap, he opened the eyes to stare at the ghost baby.
Shackles and black hair wound around its body, and the ghost baby stopped three meters away from Chen Ge. Zhang Ya’s arm poked through the baby’s eyes while Doctor Gao grabbed hold of the baby’s heart.
“Just a little bit more, huh?” The spine-chilling voice slipped out from the cracked lips. The ghost baby laughed in the blood rain. The rising and falling of its chest became more violent as its body started to balloon. “Chen Ge, I will remember this day. As repayment, I will make you remember every single day in the future.”
The ghost baby moved its head away, it turned to look toward somewhere in Eastern Jiujiang. The bones were stretched open, and this one-time use body expanded once more! Strange, black symbols appeared on the ghost baby’s skin, which seemed to be the most initial curse.
“Be careful!” Chen Ge’s warning still came a bit too late. The black lines pushed out from inside the body. The black symbol wasted the body away, and the ghost baby’s body exploded from the inside!
He felt like his eardrums were about to shatter. For a moment after that, everything was quiet, and his mind was blank. All Chen Ge could feel was his body falling backward before plummeting downward. Lastly, he was held in midair by something.
When Chen Ge opened his eyes again, he realized that he was hanging outside the ninth floor of the building in a cradle of black hair.
“Zhang Ya?” The black hair was still around, but the ones above the 10th floor started to show the symbol of the curse.
“Was she the one who flung me down?” The blood rain had stopped. With the ghost apartment at the center, the echoes of ghostly screams started around them. The commotion that they had created was so huge that it had attracted the attention of all the Specters around Li Wan City.
“These screams do not seem to fear the shadow. Just how scary is the world behind the door?”
Blood fog covered everything. Even with the Yin Yang Vision, Chen Ge could not see these monsters—he could only hear them. The black hair pulled him upward. When Chen Ge returned to the roof, he was shocked by the scene that he saw.
When the ghost baby’s body exploded, neither Zhang Ya nor Doctor Gao retreated. The two Greater Red Specters made the same choice then—they chose to attack the baby in unison!
Neither of them put up any defense. Half of the black hair and shackles were ruined, and the worse thing was, the ghost baby’s symbol started to surface on Zhang Ya and Doctor Gao’s bodies. These symbols swam all through their bodies like fish, and it would take a lot of effort to remove them.
They were in a horrible state. Doctor Gao was missing an arm. The curse and negative emotions could no longer be suppressed, and the faces of the innocent were weeping endlessly.
Zhang Ya’s body, which was facing the shadow, was imprinted with the curse, and what made her angry the most was that it appeared like her face had been injured as well. Doctor Gao possessed the special power of suppression and transmutation while Zhang Ya had the power of gluttony. Even though they were both seriously injured, neither of them prepared to retreat. They were both holding on, ready for another battle.
“Why are they so nervous about another battle?” Chen Ge looked to the middle of the roof. Doctor Gao’s arm, which had been holding the ghost baby’s heart earlier, was deposited there. It was almost dissolved by the curse, and the greater part of the arm had disintegrated into black blood, but the ghost baby’s heart was nowhere to be seen.
“Was it blown up in the explosion?”
After looking around, Chen Ge realized that Doctor Gao’s other remaining arm was holding half of a blood red heart. This heart was only twenty percent the size of a normal heart, and it was covered in the black pattern.
“The heart of a Red Specter was blood red in color. Even though this heart is small, it has a constitutional difference to a Red Specter’s heart. The feeling I get from those black patterns is very dangerous, like a few more glances at them will cause bad things to happen to me.”
Doctor Gao was holding half the heart, and the other half was possessed by Zhang Ya—both of them wanted what the other was holding. Without any word, Chen Ge silently moved backward. He looked through his backpack and summoned the rest of his employees.
“Perhaps I can have a logical discussion with Doctor Gao. He is a clear-minded man, so I believe that he will be able to look at the big picture.” When the ghost baby’s body exploded, Bai Qiulin and the woman in the tunnel had both hidden inside the comic. The curse seemed to only work on living humans and Specters. It did not have much of an effect on inanimate objects.
Chen Ge actually wanted to ask if the woman from the tunnel felt comfortable living inside Ya Danian’s comic or not, but considering that Zhang Ya was next to him, Chen Ge astutely clamped his mouth shut.
The two parties maintained the standstill on the roof. The power scale was kept at a sensitive balance, and a new battle was about to start.
After about ten seconds, a loud explosion came from the direction of Li Wan City. Everyone turned to see a wave of redness crashing toward Ming Yang Residence. In the thick red fog, Li Wan City’s real owner, Xiao Bu, was rushing toward the ghost apartment with Men Nan and Ol’ Zhou in tow.
Xiao Bu was not a normal Red Specter. The door in Li Wan City had gotten out of control, and its influence was no longer limited to a single building but had spread to the entire town. As the door-pusher, Xiao Bu’s power was growing. Exactly how powerful she was, Chen Ge had no clue either, but she was certainly no weaker than the gluttony woman at the hotel.
If it was a normal Red Specter, it would have been fine, but with another Greater Red Specter allying with Chen Ge, the tip of the scale had been upset. As the two chairpersons of the ghost stories society turned to capture Xiao Bu in their sight, they turned to glance at each other, and then they made their move in the same instant.
“Get moving! I have many things I wish to ask him!” As Chen Ge screamed his order, Doctor Gao jumped down from the roof. The shackles pierced into the building, and he dangled downward before disappearing into the blood fog with half of the heart.
Doctor Gao had made his escape with such clarity that it surprised Chen Ge. He had no idea how a madman would come to such a clear decision so suddenly. Perhaps a trigger inside his heart had been activated, or at this moment, all the ‘despair’ in Doctor Gao came to this choice in unison.
“He left just like that. I still have many things about the door at the Haunted House to ask him.” Chen Ge did not mind that Doctor Gao had gone insane. He would spend time and effort to help him, but it did appear like Doctor Gao wanted his help.
After Doctor Gao left, the black hair on the roof disappeared quickly, and Zhang Ya strode wordlessly to Chen Ge. Her hair blocked half of her face. Just as Chen Ge thought that she was about to say something, Zhang Ya’s eyes swept the woman from the tunnel and then reached into the comic to grab the headless woman.
Ignoring Yan Danian, who was cowering in the corner of the comic, Zhang Ya slipped a single strand of her hair around the headless woman’s wrist. Then she leaned against Chen Ge’s back and disappeared into his shadow. Looking at the trail that Zhang Ya had just walked over, there was a long line of black blood; she seemed to be heavily injured.
“During the previous fight with the ghost stories society, before she went into her slumber, Zhang Ya handed me a doll that helped me block a fatal blow.
“This time, she curled her hair around the headless woman’s wrist. Forcing her into submission is probably something to the same effect.
“Does this mean that Zhang Ya is going into another hibernation? Is it because she is too heavily injured, or does she need time to slowly digest half of the ghost baby’s heart?”
Chen Ge was familiar with Zhang Ya’s personality. When her gaze fell on the woman from the tunnel earlier, she had probably been planning to turn her into a doll. However, in her current condition, Zhang Ya did not have one hundred percent faith that the transformation would be successful, so she chose the second-best option and weaved her warning into the similarly injured headless woman.
“Doctor Gao’s situation is worse than Zhang Ya’s, but I still need to be careful. They are both the strongest Red Specters, and now, they possess the heart of the existence stronger than a Red Specter. If Doctor Gao succeeds, one night, he might just appear from behind the door at the Haunted House.”
Currently, Doctor Gao was unable to control his negative emotions and curses, but it did not mean that he would not bring them under control after he broke through the limitation and became something stronger than a Red Specter. Once Doctor Gao regained his sanity, he would be a very formidable enemy.
“The greatest power combined with the highest intelligence, what should I do? Perhaps I should have Gao Ru Xue move to live with me at the Haunted House. Assign her a room next to the toilet?”
“Boss!” Ol’ Zhou arrived to interrupt Chen Ge’s murmuring.
“Sorry for all the trouble.” Chen Ge meant that from the bottom of his heart. He wanted to give Ol’ Zhou a hug, but he phased through the man’s body. Then he understood why. “I’m glad that all of you are okay.”
After a brief conversation with Ol’ Zhou and promising Men Nan that he would send him back to Third Sick Hall to fix his window, he placed them inside the comic.
“Xiao Bu, the shadow has been killed already. You are free now, but you mustn’t lower your guard. The shadow’s main body, the ghost fetus, is about to be born, and there is a chance that he will return.” Chen Ge’s hint could not have been clearer. Xiao Bu did not give Chen Ge a direct answer. The sound of water dripping came from the staircase. A woman in a red raincoat arrived holding Xiao Bu’s remaining limbs and carrying Tong Tong in her arms. She tried to peel a part of her sewn lips open, wanting to say something to Chen Ge.
“Have you found your child?” Chen Ge understood that the woman in the raincoat had entered the ghost apartment to find her child. He had also seen that the building was filled with children whose memory had been sucked out by the shadow.
The woman in the red raincoat shook her head. She placed the limbs not far away from Xiao Bu and turned to leave.
The water from her raincoat slid onto the ground to form this sentence. “I will stay here until the day I find him. Then, I will find you.”
“I know that you wish to thank me, but how come this promise sounds so creepy in words?” Chen Ge did not stop the woman. He had plenty of other things to do at the moment.
Translator: Lonelytree Editor: Millman97
Do Not Read – Major Spoilers – Bugged Chapter, Released Early
Due to a bug in the system, this chapter, Chapter 677, was released early. We thought that we had come up with a solution, but unfortunately, that did not work. So, until we catch up to where this chapter should have been released, read on at your own risk.
One of Xiao Bu’s hands was ingested fully by the shadow, while the other remained with the smiling man. While the big battle was happening, the smiling man had already disappeared, probably escaping during the commotion.
“Xiao Bu, now that you have regained most of your body, can you take control of the door?” Chen Ge was worried that the door in Li Wan City would continue to expand. Xiao Bu shook her head, and the blood gathered to form her reply.
“The door has gone completely out of control; the only thing I can do is to slow down the expansion speed. To have full control over it, I will need to find my entire body.”
“Then, can you open the door to send us out of here?” Xiao Bu was, at the very least, the door-pusher, and Chen Ge believed that she would be able to do something like that.
The blood flowed, and a new sentence appeared on the ground. “Yes, but I can only keep the door open for one minute per day. The door has been under the shadow’s control for too long. I need some time to refamiliarize myself with it.”
“One minute is more than enough.” Chen Ge knew that Xiao Bu was unable to leave this place with him. Just like Men Nan, she needed to stay behind the door to guard it. Understanding that, Chen Ge did not force Xiao Bu to leave with him.
Probably because she had seen through Chen Ge’s thoughts, the blood on the ground shifted again. “You’ve killed your own shadow, and based on the agreement, I should be your new shadow—I will never forget that. After I gain full control over the ‘door’, I will find you.”
Xiao Bu’s eyes wandered between Chen Ge and the shadow behind him; it was unclear what she was thinking.
“Okay.” Killing the shadow and then having Xiao Bu become Chen Ge’s shadow was Chen Ge’s parent’s plan, but the actual development was far beyond everyone’s expectations. Compared to the more easily controlled Xiao Bu, Zhang Ya was like another extreme. To make her into his shadow, no one could tell what would happen in the future.
“Right, there is one more thing that I wish to ask you.” Chen Ge was suddenly reminded of the question. “The ghost stories society hid one third of its treasures in Li Wan City. Do you know where they might be?”
Xiao Bu shook her head again, and Chen Ge did no press. Be it the shadow or Doctor Gao, they were both wily old foxes, so they certainly would have found a secret place to hide those things.
“Doctor Gao’s arrival might have something to do with that. That madman is extremely scary, and I fear he might return. You stay in Li Wan City, and the woman in the red raincoat stays at the ghost apartment. Both of you are my friends, and the friend of my friend is my friend, so if you run into any danger, I hope you two will look out for each other, or you can come to Western Jiujiang’s New Century Park to find me.”
After dealing with Xiao Bu, Chen Ge started to inspect his remaining employees.
When facing off against the shadow, the employees in the backpack had all volunteered their help. Now, everyone was injured, but thankfully, other than Xu Yin, no one else had been ‘infected’ by the curse.
“Ol’ Bai, thank you for your help earlier.” Bai Qiulin was a gambler who had finally seen the light. He had a heart that burned brighter than the icy exterior that he put on. Facing Chen Ge’s words of appreciation, he appeared rather flustered. Thinking back to his life of more than two decades, this was the first time that he had heard a word of thank from other, and actually, it felt nice to be needed by others.
“I just happened to be around.” Bai Qiulin pushed his hands into his pocket like speaking one more word would claim his life.
“No matter what, if not for you this time, every one of us would have been harmed.” Xu Yin had blocked the shadow, and Bai Qiulin had grabbed Chen Ge and the backpack to escape. They had split up their work nicely, and if there was a problem with any section, the one standing there would either have been the shadow or Doctor Gao.
This type of high-intensity battle was beneficial to Bai Qiulin. The redness around his heart had started to spread, and he could unleash around thirty percent of Xiong Qing’s power. The corner of his shirt and pants started to color with blood stains—Bai Qiulin was steadily heading toward becoming a Red Specter.
Compared to Xu Yin, his progress was a lot easier. He possessed Xiong Qing’s heart, so he did not need to find a breakthrough. By consuming more baleful Specters, eventually, he would turn into a Red Specter.
Actually, after doing some inventory, Chen Ge had gained a lot from this mission. Xu Yin had officially become a Red Specter, and Bai Qiulin had evolved into a Half Red Specter. Zhang Ya had consumed the heart of the glutton woman, and she also had in her possession half the heart of something that appeared to be greater than Red Specter. When she reawakened, she would be even scarier.
The power of his employees had improved, and Chen Ge had even gained a new batch of employees. A bunch of lingering spirits and baleful specters with special powers and a Red Specter who was ‘converted’ by Zhang Ya—the headless woman.
The key point was that Chen Ge had gained the friendship of Xiao Bu and the woman in the red raincoat. The Haunted House might welcome two new Red Specters in the future.
“If I see my Haunted House as a mission scenario, then its current level should be around three-star and four-star, perhaps closer to four-star than three-star.” After checking up on his ‘ghost’ employees, Chen Ge ran to find the living employees.
To expand the Haunted House, overreliance on ghosts would not work; he needed a few living employees as well. The mixing of living and dead employees would definitely bring the visitors a wonderful experience.
Chen Ge found Scissors, the drunkard, the doctor, and the unconscious Lee Zheng on the first floor.
“Where’s Jia Ming?” Chen Ge was cautious about that young man who had been possessed by the shadow for multiple years. He certainly knew a lot of the shadow’s secrets.
“When you were fighting, he dragged the police officer and started to run madly down the stairs. We saw how strangely he was acting, so we followed him downstairs.”
When the shadow summoned back his full strength to nurture the ghost baby, Scissors and the drunkard had regained their freedom, but there were black lines that represented the curse remaining on their bodies.
Chen Ge picked up the handcuff around Lee Zheng’s wrist. Thankfully, he had cuffed himself together with Jia Ming to prevent the latter’s escape. Otherwise, with Jia Ming’s personality, he would not have dragged Lee Zheng to escape unless it was necessary.
“That man got the key and ran. He sure moves fast.” Jia Ming and the student known Bei Ye had escaped. Chen Ge felt like there was a need to detain them because they knew too many things that they should not. He might have thought that way, but of course, Chen Ge would not voice that in front of others. He used his Yin Yang Vision to examine them and realized that their condition did not look that good.
There were black lines moving in their eyes—it appeared like they were cursed.
Scissors and the drunkard’s situation was better. They had consumed the blood vessels prepared for Red Specters at the hotel, and their bodies had undergone some unique changes. Chen Ge could sense that their body temperature had dropped to a lower temperature than normal.
The doctor’s condition though was less than optimistic. Due to the curse mixed together with the poison that he had drunk earlier, his muscles had started to atrophy. Even though he could still walk, it appeared like he had aged at least a decade overnight.
“In a way, we have survived a tragedy together. You know many things about me, and I know about the secret in your heart. Currently, you guys are cursed, and I can’t let you wander about just like that. How about this? You can stay with me for now, and I’ll send you back to your home after I help you cure your body of the curse and after you feel better.” The responsible Chen Ge suggested an option for everyone.
“There’s no need for you to take on the responsibility like that. It was our choice to enter Li Wan City. Furthermore, if not for you, we would have died already. You’ve saved us so many times, and we cannot repay you for what you’ve done—how could we trouble you anymore?” The drunkard had woken up from the alcohol a long time ago; his mind could not have been clearer.
“If you do not remove the curse, your lives will constantly be in danger. We’ve been through too many things together, and I cannot stand by, watching you being tormented by the pain and illness.” Chen Ge already collected all of his employees. He patted his backpack.
“We’ve been saved multiple times by you, and now you’re asking us to occupy your home; it really does not sound right,” Scissors said. “How about this? If you need any help from us, we will stop at nothing to help you! Do not say no, this is the only thing we can do.”
“Yes, you’re going to help us remove the shadow’s curse. You’re going to save our lives again!” The drunkard and the doctor both turned to Chen Ge.
“I operate a Haunted House, and as you must have noticed by now, I have the most ‘professional’ of ‘actors’ in my team. I don’t need any more help.” Chen Ge appeared rather troubled.
“But we cannot just occupy your kindness without doing anything in return! At least give us some job that is within our ability!”
Since they had already said that, it felt wrong for Chen Ge to deny their insistence. He could only ‘force’ himself to accept. “Okay, but first thing’s first, you are not going to help me for free. I will provide all of you with the standard payment. After all, you need to look after your family, and you’ll need money to survive. This is the only requirement I have; I hope that you won’t reject it.”
Hearing that from Chen Ge, the few felt a warmth suffusing through their hearts. Their appreciation toward Chen Ge was as sincere as it could be.
“Boss Chen is such a saint!”
