My House of Horrors

“Here!” His eyes focused on the pipe. Chen Ge raised the hammer and aimed it at a certain spot.

Bang!

The pipe cracked, and the water splashed onto his shirt. His eyes narrowed, and Chen Ge saw the strand of black hair that slipped through. “No matter what, you’re not running away tonight!”

He recalled Xu Yin and Bai Qiulin before running out of the school.

“Where is the main control panel for water and electricity?” Chen Ge jumped through the window. He grabbed the hammer and pressed on the woman’s shoulder with his other hand. The woman whom he had saved earlier was standing in the middle of the field while hugging the girl, preparing to leave. She did not expect Chen Ge to come out so soon. She was flustered, and she did not know what to say.

“I said, where is the main control panel for water and electricity?”

“There is none. We share the same circuit with the surrounding neighborhood, so the main control panel should be with them…” the woman answered incrementally, but Chen Ge grasped the gist of it. The school shared the same circuit with the neighboring residential area, so only by shutting off the power source at the residential area would he be able to trap the water ghost inside the pipe between the residential area and the school.

Of course, Chen Ge was not one hundred percent confident that it would work. The water ghost could have escaped into any of the resident’s house, and that was the thing that worried Chen Ge the most.

“Help me contact the manager of the residential area now and get him to temporarily turn off the control panel. Just say that the person who tried to kidnap the girl and injure your students and teachers is hiding inside the pipes.”

After giving that order, Chen Ge tossed the hammer inside his backpack. He tried to focus and removed all external noise, following the strange echoes inside the pipes.

The sound travelled further away from him. The water system in Jiujiang was complicated. If he was unable to limit the monster soon, then she was definitely going to escape.

“The culprit has gone inside the pipe? But how did he manage to do that?” The woman was stumped. Would anyone believe something like that? She was going to request further explanation from Chen Ge, but he had already charged out of the school.

The pipe was buried underground, so Chen Ge could only rely on his Ghost Ear to listen to the sound that the water ghost made as she travelled through the pipe. He tailed her closely, and at one point, he even thought about closing his eyes to stop all other external stimuli.

After two minutes, Chen Ge followed the sound to enter one of the residential areas that was behind the rehabilitative school. Once Chen Ge stepped into this area, he shivered. The temperature was much lower compared to outside. They were in the same area, but the difference in temperature was drastic.

Strange, why is there a feeling that is similar to the one I got when I stepped into the underground morgue?

Chen Ge’s body temperature was already lower than normal, and even he could feel the chill, which meant that this place was really suspicious.

The area was built somewhere that was not that vibrant in Eastern Jiujiang. Unlike other residential areas, this area did not have a fence to close in the buildings, but instead like a prison, it had a tall wall. The wall did not look pretty, and if anything, it gave off an oppressive feeling.

There were seven buildings inside the area. They were all around ten floors. They looked like they had been refurbished plenty of times, but probably due to the lack of everyday care, they looked like they were old and uncared for. This was something common in Eastern Jiujiang, and nothing really jumped out. However, once he stepped into the place, Chen Ge had a strange feeling in his heart.

It felt like someone was watching him from behind one of the windows. That feeling made cold sweat appear on his forehead.

“Wen Wen’s sister would not have chosen this place for no reason…” Chen Ge did not retreat. Unless this place was hiding a Red Specter, the other ghosts were not going to stop him.

The buildings close to the residential area had some lights on, but this place was completely dark. The more he walked into the area, the more oppressive the darkness became. Chen Ge focused on the sound in the pipe under his feet, and he followed the monster to reach the building that was at the deepest part of the residential area.

Even after completing so many Trial Missions, Chen Ge still hesitated before he entered this building. The building before him had signs of fire. Even though the walls had been repainted, once he got closer, he could smell that stench of burnt objects. Not only that, when Chen Ge looked closer, he realized that a huge fire had once ravaged this building. However, the building had not been abandoned. After some fixing and painting, it had been reopened to welcome new tenants.

“A building that was burned before?” Chen Ge was reminded of the other Trial Mission on the black phone—the three-star mission, Ghost Fire. “It shouldn’t be that coincidental. There are many buildings that have suffered from fires before.”

He took out the hammer from the backpack. The sound made by the water ghost weakened. She followed the pipe and entered the building before him.

“Why would she come into this building?” Chen Ge muttered. “The control panel shouldn’t have been closed already. She has the chance to escape to other pipes, so why did she decide to trap herself in this place?”

If this water ghost was really Wen Wen’s big sister, her life had been ended by her biological parent, so her resentment after death must have been incredibly deep. This kind of ghost would be highly vengeful.

“I’ve ruined her plan, so she must hate me a lot. The reason she lured me here could be that there is a stronger presence here, and she wants to borrow that thing’s hand to kill me.”

Chen Ge quickly understood the water ghost’s intention, but he was not afraid. “You want to borrow another person’s hand to kill me. Tonight, I shall capture that pair of hands that you want to borrow as well.”

Entering the corridor, the walls of the corridor were decorated with painful scrawls. There were many messages, like return the life of my child.

Walking down the corridor, the pipe kept making noise like there was something crawling inside it. Chen Ge summoned Xu Yin and Bai Qiulin to chase after it, and the sound eventually stopped on the thirteenth floor.

“She wants to lure me here?” Chen Ge was sensitive to everything including the number three. He looked at the three rooms on the thirteenth floor, but he could not confirm which room Wen Wen’s sister had escaped into.

“Try the rooms one by one? But it’ll be so bad to disturb people.” Holding the hammer in one hand, Chen Ge’s eyes darted between the doors of the three rooms.

…

The darkened sky was filled with blood vessels, and a pair of vengeful eyes was staring at the corner of the street. In this blood red city, there was a man in a blood red doctor’s coat. He held the head of his lover in one hand, and whenever he took one step, blood would ooze out of his coat. That was the reddest red that had ever been!

“Good versus evil and sin versus punishment, there is a dichotomy to everything in this world.” The man held up the head in his palm. “Then what is the opposite of human?”

Shadows slipped up and down the red street, and the man seemed to have gotten used to everything there. He looked at the burnt building at the end of the street, and his face was maddened.

“Should I hide there? After consuming more things, I should have the answer.” Blood pooled silently underneath his feet, and the man’s expression became more and more twisted. “I’m so hungry…”