Novel Full “Ghost fetus…” Two similar faces stared at the mirror at the same time. They managed to see the other version of themselves inside each other’s eyes. Chen Ge’s body shook harder and harder; his whole body was going numb. He was losing control from head to toe. It was as if someone had trampled so viciously on his heart several times that simple breathing became an arduous task for him.
On the blurry mirror, the child with the hollowed eyes strangled the other child by his neck. His hands that closed around the neck slowly gathered strength. The eyes that were filled with sin and despair appeared to have some other emotions flowing through them as well. They appeared like sadness and at the same time like pain.
“Chen Ge!” Both Xiao Sun and Wen Qing finally noticed the strange way Chen Ge was acting. They both rushed into the bathroom to try to support Chen Ge, but the latter’s condition did not appear to get any better. Every nerve on his body was pulled taut, and every muscle in his body was shaking. The blood was roiling madly in his capillaries as many different scary and cruel images flashes across his mind. He had no memory of these images that just appeared. In other words, they left no impression on him. He would forget about them after they had left his mind.
He could not recall the exact circumstances behind any of these images, but he could see clearly that there were two children inside each picture. These were the ghost fetus’ memories, or rather, Chen Ge and the ghost fetus’ shared memories.
“M-mirror…” As he gritted his teeth, Chen Ge’s mind was a huge blank. He could not control his body at all. It was as if he had lost control of his body at that very moment. The body no longer belonged to him. The hands that gripped the edge of the sink slowly let go. Chen Ge’s body tipped dangerously backward. He looked at the faces of the two children in the mirror, and the very last image surfaced in his mind.
In the dark city, three red doors were pushed open at the same time!
Pa!
The mirror shattered into smithereens, and the pieces cut Chen Ge’s cheeks. The mirror flew everywhere as Chen Ge’s body landed heavily to the ground. He slowly returned to normal. The mirror on the wall had been shattered, and the two children’s faces were no longer visible on the surface of the blurry mirror anymore.
“Chen Ge!” Putting down the wooden chair she was holding, after Wen Qing shattered the mirror, she squatted down beside Chen Ge. “Are you feeling better?”
“All I can say is that I am still alive.” Chen Ge was lying on the ground. Weakened was no longer the correct word to describe his condition. He could now sense quite clearly that someone was trying to take over his body. “I am also one of the nine chosen children by the ghost fetus. The thing that the ghost fetus wants from me should be my physical body.”
When he was helping the other children, he did not feel a sensation as strong as this. But now that it was his turn, he finally understood how painful and helpless this feeling of having something so crucial to your existence forcibly taken away from you was. The building was still quivering, and strange noises kept echoing around the residential area. The black fog had rolled up to the top floor. The situation had reached the most dangerous hour.
“Let me help you up.” Xiao Sun carried Chen Ge to the bed. Wen Qing went over to help Chen Ge pick up the backpack that he had dropped on the ground, but just as she was about to touch the backpack, her body was pulled back any an invisible and dragged away from the backpack. Both Xiao Sun and Chen Ge saw this rather clearly.
“What’s inside your bag?” Xiao Sun tried to grab the backpack. He was just trying to help Chen Ge by returning the backpack to him, but as his hand touched the backpack, trails of fresh blood climbed onto his arms like they were ready to consume his body and soul.
“Stop what you’re doing! Do not act rashly!” Chen Ge used the last ounce of energy he had in his body to scream. “Give the bag to me.”
Xiao Sun was startled and scared. Of course, he let go of the backpack and did not dare get near it anymore. He quickly moved the backpack and Doctor Skull Cracker’s Hammer to Chen Ge’s side.
“Brother, I think your bag is bleeding.” Xiao Sun did not dare ask too many questions. He stood quietly and obediently beside the bed. His hands gripped the headboard to prevent himself from falling. There were forces fighting inside the residential area. Something appeared to slam into the building repeatedly. The shaking was so hard that if the people inside the building did not hold onto something, they would fall easily.
“How come I feel like this place is going to collapse at any moment, and why haven’t either of you said anything about it?” Xiao Sun looked at Wen Qing, whose face was pale like a sheet of paper, and Chen Ge, who was collapsed like a dead man on the bed. Who would have thought that he would one day become the leader of this group? “Looks like I will have to do something, or we will all die!”
Chen Ge ignored Xiao Sun. He used all the energy that he had to place his hand on the backpack. When the tip of his finger touched the backpack, his heart also slowly calmed down. A shade of red curled around his arm. Chen Ge could feel the energy of his body recovering, but at the same time, his body temperature continued to drop.
“One of the Red Specters is helping me?” The ghost fetus wanted to take over Chen Ge’s body. Chen Ge alone would not be able to stop that. He was too weak to fight against the ghost fetus, but the equation would not be the same if his employees were added into the mix. Even though the Red Specters were still limited by the rules behind the door so that they could not unleash their full potential, the ghost fetus was not at its peak. Its body was split and hidden in many different places. While he needed to maintain the stability behind the door, he had to deal with the intrusion of the other outsiders.
He slowly regained control of his body and his senses. Chen Ge realized that as more cracks appeared on the building, the limitation of the world behind the door on his employees became weaker and weaker. There were two sides to a coin. After losing the rag doll’s head, the black fog started to seep into Jiu Hong Apartments Block 2. But at the same time, without the suppression from the rag doll’s head, the restriction on Chen Ge’s employees also was weakening by the minute.
His hand reached into the backpack. Chen Ge pressed on the play button on the recorder. The tape turned, but the sound of the static did not come. He then reached for the blood-soaked comic. He flipped through the pages. When he reached the page where Xiao Bu was, he got the response that he wanted. Blood vessels reached out to curl around his hand. The page pictured the sight of a dancing and flitting blood spirit. The picture that was supposed to be so scary was surprisingly heartwarming.
“It is Xiao Bu who is helping me.”
Xiao Bu was incredibly strong, but she still managed to help Chen Ge without fully breaking through the limitation placed on her by the rules of the world behind the door. This had surprised Chen Ge somewhat.
“My parents once made a deal with Xiao Bu to have her become my shadow. Is that because they had noticed some kind of special power in Xiao Bu?”
Based on Chen Ge’s parents’ plan, it should be Xiao Bu accompanying Chen Ge at this moment, but things very often did not go according to plan. No one would have expected the appearance of Zhang Ya. Putting away the comic, Chen Ge turned to inspect the other objects inside the backpack. Zhang Ya’s bedtime story was still the same. The ballpoint pen and the other small objects had not changed either.
“Wait, it appears like one thing is missing…”
There was no change to Chen Ge’s expression as his hand continued to reach deeper into the backpack. At the innermost part of the backpack, Chen Ge’s hand found the pair of red high heels. The heels were sticky and wet like they had just been taken out from a pool of blood water. The red high heels appeared to be have almost broken through the limitation placed on her by the rules behind the door already‽
Resisting the excitement in his heart, Chen Ge did not utter a word. He maintained the same posture and did not even take an extra glance into the backpack. The red high heels were hidden underneath all the other objects. She was working her way to break down the barrier around her silently like she was trying to do while avoiding the intrusive gaze of a certain someone.
The ghost fetus’ main persona was hidden behind Xiang Nuan’s door. In other words, this world behind the door was shared between Xiang Nuan and the ghost fetus. With the influence of a Demon God, the restriction placed on the other Red Specters was incredibly high, but one ‘person’ was the sole exception. The red high heels had consumed all the curses that had been left behind in the ghost fetus’ previous doors. In terms of manipulation and understanding of curses, the red high heels was the closest existence to the ghost fetus, and she could be considered the Red Specter that knew how the ghost fetus operated best.
Perhaps she had discovered the presence of the ghost fetus, so she did not want to expose herself. The red high heels hid herself at the deepest part of the backpack. Chen Ge understood her intention immediately. Internally, he was rather shocked, but his expression did not betray that. This human and ghost duo did not need to communicate in words to complete a perfect exchange of mind.
Taking a slow breath, Chen Ge leaned against the wall, and he started to consider the situation that he was in. After seeing the child earlier, many memories that did not belong to Chen Ge crowded his mind. Most of the images had flashed in the blink of an eye. He could not capture a close look, much less take a more detailed look at them. However, the very last image did leave behind a very deep impression on Chen Ge.
“Why would these three blood doors keep appearing in my memory?” Chen Ge made some calculations in his mind. There was a door at Jiang Yuan Apartments. That was probably the first door to appear in the whole of Jiujiang. The door was probably pushed open by Chen Ge when he was very young, so that was the first door. The second door was the black iron door that was pushed open by the ghost fetus at the cursed hospital. It radiated the heavy cocktail of disinfectant, so it should be inside the cursed hospital. The ghost fetus was once Chen Ge’s shadow, so the door that it opened could technically be counted as one that was opened by Chen Ge as well. The third door was directly related to Chen Ge, and that was the door inside the bathroom at his haunted house.
These three doors had always been following Chen Ge. The door that appeared the most normal could very well be the scariest one. After all, it had once given Doctor Gao the fright of his life.
The quivering of the building became more obvious, but Chen Ge and Wen Qing did not appear to notice it at all. They were both caught up in their own thoughts. Only Xiao Sun was anxious like an ant on top of a boiling pan. This tenant behind the door was ironically acting most like a normal person.
“Should we consider leaving this place? When there is an earthquake, we should be hiding outside in an open space. I have not heard of advice that tells us to move higher up the building before.”
Seeing no one had given him any response, Xiao Sun sidled up to Wen Qing and asked, “Are you sure it’s wise for us to keep on hiding here?”
Wen Qing did not answer him immediately. She instead glanced at Chen Ge on the bed. “We will wait for him to recover slightly first. It is too dangerous to leave this place now.”
Xiao Sun still had something else to add, but at that moment, the iron door from the living room suddenly gave off a strange sound. The sound was very hard to describe. It sounded like a very large centipede had just crawled over it. The consistent footfalls landed on the metallic door, and the sound was enough to make one’s head go numb.
“Stay far away from the door!” Chen Ge now had trouble even breathing. Before his employees awakened, the best solution was to stay inside the room. The sound that came from the front door became clearer and more intense. Both Xiao Sun and Wen Qing moved away from it. No one dared speak inside the room. It became incredibly quiet. Everyone held their breath. The rustling sound kept moving around the iron door until it stopped right outside the iron door like it had finally decided on something.
“It appears to have discovered us.” Xiao Sun held his hand over his mouth. His eyes were overflowing with fear. The unknown was always the scariest. A thin layer of black fog leaked from the gaps into the room. It was extremely chaotic outside the building, but the building corridor was curiously quiet.
“Has it left?” Xiao Sun held the wall and was about to head toward the living room when the doorknob started to violent shake.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Something kept hammering itself against the black iron door. A large amount of black fog was leaking into the room!
“The windows on the top floor are all sealed up behind a wall of cement. This whole floor is fully enclosed. The only exit is the living room door.” Chen Ge’s mind was spinning wildly. The conclusion was that they were currently stuck inside this room.
“Chen Ge! What should we do now?”
“Don’t just ask me for answers! I am already in this state. What else do you expect me to do?” Chen Ge said with a bitter smile on his face, but his eyes were scarily calm. He held the backpack, and his hands were holding the red high heels inside the back. The red high heels inside the bag was covered in blood, and they dyed Chen Ge’s hand red, but the man did not seem to mind it at all.
In fact, upon closer inspection, one would realize that the black pattern on the red high heels was crawling onto Chen Ge’s body. The black treads were not harming him; they were looking for something inside his body. The backpack blocked all of this from view. No one inside the room realized what Chen Ge was doing. The doorknob kept wiggling as the thing slammed continuously into the door. The rustling sound became more and more obvious.
Half a minute later, the black iron door was knocked out of shape. The gap between the door and the frame became larger as a result. Black fog spread inside the room. Chen Ge, Wen Qing, and Xiao Sun helplessly watched as the iron door was pried open slowly. The gaping hole revealed faces that were covered in scars. They were connected together like a large centipede. They were all squeezed into the gap as they tried their best to enter the room.
“The door and the windows are all blocked! This is the end! This is the end!” Xiao Sun threw himself into motion at the most crucial moment. He moved everything that he could grab to block the door. “Why don’t the two of you think of something to do‽”
He moved all the furniture within reach to block the door. Xiao Sun tried his best, but at the end of the day, he did not have the experience and mental stability that Chen Ge possessed. When he encountered the human heads at close distance, his legs started to shake, and his strength left his body. The rustling noise came again. This time, Xiao Sun clearly saw that the sound originated from the human heads. Their orifices had black threads that dangled out of them. It was these threads that bound them together, and similarly, they used these threads to crawl on the ceiling and the wall.
“If the defense cannot be held, I need both you and Wen Qing to go hide in the bedroom. When the monster starts to attack me, the two you will run away from the living room door.” Chen Ge wanted to use himself as bait. At the same time, he wanted to use this opportunity to ascertain something.
“No!” Wen Qing and Xiao Sun said at the same time. Neither was willing to abandon Chen Ge and run away on their own.
“Just follow my instructions, or we are all going to die!” Just as Chen Ge said that, the closet that blocked the door was toppled over, and the black iron door was cracked open!
“Get out of the way!” Wen Qing and Xiao Sun retreated to the side. The monster that was made from multiple human heads crawled into the room and wiggled on the ceiling.
“Go! Now!” Black fog rolled into the living room. The way out was revealed to them. Neither Wen Qing nor Xiao Sun moved. But the next moment, Wen Qing was dragged along. The invisible force practically pulled Wen Qing out into the corridor.
“Xiao Sun, look after her! I cannot run anymore! Do not let me die for no reason!” Chen Ge shouted at the top of his lungs. He was trying to pull the monster’s attention to himself. Xiao Sun very desperately wanted to stay to help Chen Ge, but when he saw the monster in person, his legs became wet noodles. Just the sight of the thing caused him to lose his breath. He teetered backward, and his instinct pushed him away from the monster.
“Go! What are you waiting for!”
After Xiao Sun and Wen Qing left, Chen Ge sighed in relief. He sat up on the edge of the bed as he lifted his head to look up at the strange monster. But his lips were saying things that were completely unrelated to the monster.
“After Wen Qing left, the power that the red high heels fear has disappeared. The invisible child that no one can see, is it the ghost fetus or Xiang Nuan? Or have they combined into one? Can they not be separated from one another before the ghost fetus finds a new body?”