According to Ghost Cave, the Fierce Ghost really had tracked them through the internet, killing the people who claimed the Black Envelope one by one.
Gao Tian's temples throbbed. What was he supposed to do now? Dig a baseball bat out of his closet and fight the Shattered Face to the death at the window?
No.
The other ghosts in the Chat Group had also claimed the Black Envelope. Why weren't they worried about the Fierce Ghost tracking them through the internet?
Gao Tian suddenly remembered something Ghost Cave had said.
Ghosts cannot be killed. Only the living can be killed.
Even if the Fierce Ghost came for them, Ghost Cave wouldn't care. They were already ghosts.
Ghost Cave was using this method to flush out the only living person in the Chat Group and eliminate him.
This extinguished Gao Tian's thoughts of a desperate last stand. Ghosts couldn't be killed. No matter how hard he struggled, it was impossible to kill something that was already dead.
Gao Tian's hands and feet went icy cold, and even his thoughts seemed to slow to a crawl. He stepped back to the window and checked the alley again. Had he been under so much study pressure lately that his eyes were playing tricks on him?The scene before his eyes thoroughly shattered his last shred of hope.
The spot where the red-eyed person had been standing was completely empty. Not a single shadow remained.
Where did the red-eyed person go?
If there had been a tree, a car, or a bench in that spot, Gao Tian could have consoled himself that he had just seen things, mistaking a shadow for a person.
But there was nothing. How was that possible?
There was only one possibility: the red-eyed person had left the alley and made its move.
Knowing he couldn't delay any longer, Gao Tian sprinted to his bedroom and dug a baseball bat out of a pile of clothes. He threw on a jacket and stuffed all his loose change into his pockets.
Just as he was looking for his keys, a rapid knocking sounded outside the glass window of the Study—bang, bang, bang. It sounded like someone was standing outside, banging on the window and signaling for Gao Tian to let them in.
Gao Tian stood frozen in the hallway between the Study and the bedroom, trapped and unable to move.
This was the Third Floor. There were no air conditioning units or other footholds outside the window. It was absolutely impossible for an ordinary person to stand at this height.
Gao Tian slowly turned his head toward the Study. Pressed against the window was a large, deathly pale face with blood-red eyes and a sharp nose flattened against the glass. It was the exact same red-eyed person from the alley. Now, it had teleported to his window, repeatedly slapping the glass to signal Gao Tian to open up and let it in—so it could kill him.
The red-eyed person possessed immense strength. Every slap on the window rattled the entire wall with a low rumble. Gao Tian could clearly sense that this thing could easily shatter the glass and climb inside, but it chose not to. It was playing with him. It wanted to slowly torture him and savor the terror of a dying man.
Just as the two were locked in a stalemate, the sound of a window opening echoed from upstairs. An angry female voice shrieked into the quiet apartment complex:
"What time is it? You're still banging away! Kids have to go to school tomorrow, and adults have to go to work!"
Gao Tian recognized the voice. It was Auntie Wang from the fourth floor, famous for her combativeness and loud voice; she had once single-handedly scolded seven young property management workers into retreating. The red-eyed person banging on the window had disturbed Auntie Wang, prompting her to open her window and blindly hurl a torrent of abuse into the night.
This sudden interlude broke the intense staring contest between Gao Tian and the figure outside the window.
Outside, the red-eyed person also heard the window opening upstairs. Its blood-red eyes seemed to blink playfully at him before its entire pale body slithered silently up the wall toward the fourth floor like a snake.
Outside the window of the Third Floor, the red-eyed person temporarily vanished.
Less than a dozen seconds later, Gao Tian heard a scream of shock and terror from the fourth floor. "What is that..." Then, dead silence fell. Whether it was Auntie Wang's furious roars or the banging on the outer wall, everything vanished without a trace.
Gao Tian knew that merely by opening her window, Auntie Wang had drawn the red-eyed person's attention and brought a fatal disaster down on her entire family. They were likely doomed, but this had bought Gao Tian a few dozen seconds of precious escape time.
Without hesitating, Gao Tian locked the Study door from the hallway. That way, if the red-eyed person returned to the Third Floor window for him, it would waste a bit more time getting through. Immediately after, he pushed open his front door and fled his home.
The downward stairwell was pitch-black. Gao Tian descended the steps without daring to make a single sound, terrified of attracting the attention of some unknown entity. As he pressed forward in the dark, he couldn't tell if it was just his imagination, but he constantly felt a deathly pale face was lurking around every corner, waiting for him to walk right into a trap.
A few minutes later, Gao Tian successfully reached the ground floor of the Apartment.
The moment he stepped out of the Apartment, he heard a glass window shatter on the Third Floor above him. He looked up to see a massive shadow, twisted like a gecko, slithering along the wall to the Third Floor and slipping inside the window.
Gao Tian let out a breath, unsure if he was feeling relief or lingering terror. He sprinted away from the Apartment and hailed a taxi by the side of the road. After getting in, his first words to the driver were:
"Take me to the nearest police station.
"Drive fast. I'll pay you double the fare."
Seeing him panting heavily, the driver, a middle-aged man, asked:
"What's wrong, young man? You look terrible.
"Do you want a sip of water?"
Gao Tian thought about it. His experiences over the past month had simply been too bizarre—so bizarre that he couldn't possibly explain them in a few short sentences.
Even if he clearly explained the whole sequence of events—that he had accidentally joined a Chat Group full of ghosts, and because he claimed a ghost's Black Envelope, a Fierce Ghost was now demanding his life—the driver's first reaction would probably be to floor the gas and drop him off at a psychiatric ward instead of a police station.
A thousand words reached his lips, but only one sentence came out:
"Let's not talk about it for now. Let's just go."
Cruising down the road, Gao Tian frequently glanced back from the rear seat to see if the red-eyed person from the complex was chasing him. After confirming there wasn't a single figure behind them, only a few scattered cars, he finally breathed a slight sigh of relief.
Just what exactly was that thing?
Gao Tian gradually recovered some of his composure and tried to recall the various details of what had happened before and after he fled the Apartment.
There was one detail he couldn't ignore.
When he first encountered the red-eyed person, its face had been like a large, bare jade plate. Aside from two murky, blood-colored dots serving as eyes, it had no facial features or defining traits whatsoever.
But when the red-eyed person climbed up to the window for their second meeting, there was a small detail: the red-eyed person had pressed a sharp nose against the glass...
The red-eyed person had grown a nose.
What did this mean?
Gao Tian didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. He subconsciously pulled out his mobile phone, glancing at the powered-off black screen as a makeshift mirror.
Gao Tian's nose was also sharp.
Could the nose the red-eyed person had grown be imitating his own?
Right at that moment, the taxi began to slow down, and the driver's voice rang out from the front seat:
"Um, the police station is right across the street.
"It's actually a bit hard to make a U-turn right here. Can I drop you off here so you can walk over yourself?
"It's just a short walk. You should be fine, right?"
Gao Tian was just about to say that was fine. He looked up across the street at the blue-and-white safe haven; by all rights, it should have brought him a sense of security.
But Gao Tian saw a figure standing behind the glass doors, staring blankly at him.
It was a deathly pale face, one he was incredibly familiar with, complete with two blood-red eyeballs and a sharp nose. It now also had lips as thin as knife blades, slightly curled into a V-shape, smiling in his direction.
The red-eyed person was standing right behind the glass doors of the police station, waiting for him. Moreover, its deathly pale face had not only grown a nose, but also a set of lips.
It seemed that every time Gao Tian made eye contact with it, it gained a new facial feature.
Gao Tian's expression changed drastically, and he altered his mind once again:
"Driver, get out of here immediately!
"As fast as you can, get on the highway! Get as far away from this place as possible!"
Looking at his jumpy passenger in the rearview mirror, the driver had no idea what was going on. To his eyes, the police station across the street was completely empty. Let alone a red-eyed person standing in the doorway, he couldn't even see a single police officer. He couldn't begin to understand what the passenger in the back seat was so terrified of; he just assumed Gao Tian was a little mentally deranged.
However, the driver didn't care, as long as the fare was settled in the end. The passenger asked to take the highway, which meant he'd make a little extra money. He had no reason to refuse the ride.
The driver simply slammed on the gas and sped away from the police station.
Speeding along the elevated highway, Gao Tian slowly began to piece together the characteristics of this red-eyed person from the back seat.
This thing slaughtered people like flies. After it slipped through the window into Auntie Wang's home, her family of four hadn't even managed to cry out for help, let alone fight back.
Its tracking abilities were extraordinarily strong. Simply clicking on that Black Envelope meant the red-eyed person would relentlessly hunt him until he was dead. Even if he got into a taxi and fled to the ends of the earth, there was no escaping it.
Furthermore, in the process of chasing him, the red-eyed person had grown a nose and lips, and they closely resembled Gao Tian's own facial features.
Gao Tian didn't know if, given enough time to continue evolving like this, the red-eyed person would eventually grow a face completely identical to his own.
Why was it doing this? To kill him, and then live in the human world under the identity of "Gao Tian"?
The more he thought about it, the more despairing he felt. No matter how hard Gao Tian racked his brains in the back seat, he couldn't think of any way out.
Right now, the only thing that could bring him a sense of security was this taxi speeding down the empty road.
As long as he was sitting in the taxi, Gao Tian was temporarily safe. No matter how fast the red-eyed person was, it couldn't possibly outrun a car.
However, Gao Tian couldn't possibly sit in the car for the rest of his life.
He would have to get out eventually.
Right at that moment, the two-way radio on the driver's dashboard crackled to life—