Chapter 176: The Final Trump Card
Chen Ge kept dodging passively, narrowly escaping danger at every turn, until the monster cornered him. It seemed he had no way out.
"Wait! I agree to play your game!"
Facing death, Chen Ge "gave in." He put his phone into his pocket and looked at the elongated head. "We'll play by your rules."
Chen Ge's sudden shift in attitude caught the deformed face off guard, stirring suspicion, but the monster behind him appeared thrilled.
"If you want to play, drop the knife first." This was the first time Chen Ge heard a complete sentence from the deformed face. The man's voice was peculiar, as if his throat had undergone surgery, sounding sharp and grating.
"If I win the game, you have to guarantee I can leave safely."
Chen Ge's eyes were filled with distrust. Seeing that look, the deformed face felt a bit more at ease. "Leave through the door. Drop the knife. Once you win the game, I'll tell you the way out."
This game was rigged for the player to lose. If Chen Ge actually played it, a nightmare of life in a mental hospital awaited him.
"Fine, I agree. What do I need to do next?" Chen Ge tossed the butcher knife in front of him, the handle pointing toward himself, and shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Just stand still." The deformed face took a step forward, closing the distance between them to within two meters. "From the moment I finish saying this, no matter what you hear or see, you cannot speak a word. Otherwise, you lose."
He stared at Chen Ge, the monster on his back still stretching out, its ordinary face hanging upside down before Chen Ge's eyes.
"Still not talking? Let's make it more intense." The deformed face sat down, bent over, and the monster's body crawled completely out from his back.
The monster stood over three meters tall, with legs less than a meter long. Its head and feet were normal, but its midsection looked like it was stitched together from multiple people.
"What the hell is this thing?"
The monster's upper body was too long, its lower half unstable. After leaving the deformed face's body, it wobbled toward Chen Ge.
Only two meters apart, the monster's upper body hovered in front of Chen Ge while its lower half slowly approached.
As if afraid Chen Ge might back out, the monster's withered hands gripped his shoulders to prevent escape.
Having such a creature so close made Chen Ge tense. He rehearsed his planned moves in his mind several times, his eyes fixed on the monster's legs.
When those legs stepped level with the butcher knife, Chen Ge's hand shot out of his pocket. He still had something that could one hundred percent harm ghosts and monsters!
The sharp pen tip stabbed into the monster's eye socket. With the force of the thrust, the pen shaft, wrapped in five or six layers of transparent tape, shattered.
"Ah!"
Half the pen buried itself in the monster's eye socket. Its body writhed like a snake, clearly in significant pain.
Back at Haiming Apartment, Chen Ge had accidentally used Xiao Xiao to strike the Mirror Ghost, tearing a piece of flesh from it. That was when he realized that ghosts themselves were the most direct and effective weapons against other ghosts.
Using the pen that housed the Pen Spirit was something he had planned long ago. As the monster thrashed in pain, Chen Ge yanked out the ballpoint pen and lunged forward.
He struck first, seizing the initiative. By the time the deformed face reacted, Chen Ge had already grabbed the knife in front of him.
When he dropped the knife, he had planned everything. The handle faced him, and in the dark corridor, the deformed face could hardly notice such details.
Gripping the knife in a reverse hold, Chen Ge swung at the monster's weakest point—its legs.
His nerves had been taut all night, and every ounce of negative emotion poured out in that moment.
With each slash, the monster's body diminished slightly.
"The butcher knife is too weak to finish this thing off. Once it recovers, the situation will still be against me." Chen Ge quickly calmed down. "The knife can't kill the monster, but it can take out the person carrying it."
Hefting the butcher knife, he turned to look at the deformed face standing two meters away.
"What kind of look is that?" The deformed face's asymmetrical cheeks twisted into an ugly expression. He felt history was about to repeat itself.
"It's you!" As Chen Ge charged with the knife, the deformed face spun and bolted for the stairs in one fluid motion.
The deformed face fled for his life, Chen Ge chased with murderous intent, and the monster with its eye stabbed out by the Pen Spirit crawled behind like a snake, moving fast.
A strange balance formed among the three, racing from the first floor to the fourth.
Entering the fourth-floor corridor, Chen Ge slowed slightly. The deformed face seemed to be deliberately leading him this way.
On the other floors, the deformed face hadn't turned, clearly heading straight for the fourth.
"Is he trying to escape through that iron door to another ward? No way—he only seems able to control the monster inside the Third Ward." Chen Ge knew that the Third Ward was a special place for these psychopaths in every sense. They wouldn't willingly leave.
Slowing down again, just before reaching the exit of the Third Ward, the deformed face finally stopped. He screamed, his face contorted.
At his shout, two men crawled out of nearby wards, both injured—Xu Tong and the patient with phantom limb syndrome.
If it were just the three of them, Chen Ge wouldn't be too scared.
The key was that Xu Tong and the other patient also had monsters slowly emerging from their backs.
"Every patient in the Third Ward is possessed by a monster? Their relationship is far more harmonious than Zhang Peng's with the Mirror Ghost. That's not a good sign." The Third Ward had nine patients. Excluding Wang Shenglong, Chen Ge might have to face eight similar monsters tonight, or even something more terrifying.
Slender bodies crawled out from the patients' backs, and Chen Ge was surrounded by three monsters.
"Don't be afraid. Soon, you'll be just like us." The deformed face dragged the other two patients out of the Third Ward, locking the iron door between the Second and Third Wards, cutting off Chen Ge's escape.
Standing in the middle of the fourth-floor corridor, Chen Ge seemed to have no hope of turning the tables. Three monsters blocked every exit, closing in, not even leaving him a chance to kill himself.
"A three-star horror scenario is still a bit too much for me." Chen Ge leaned against the wall and pulled a weeping fruit from his inner pocket. "This is my final trump card. After I use it, no matter the outcome, I need to find a way out."
He bit into the weeping fruit, feeling an endless surge of resentment and icy cold spread through his body, as if someone were embracing him from behind.
Black hair lashed against the walls like waves. An aura of extreme evil awakened. Zhang Ya, clad in red, stepped out from Chen Ge's shadow!