Chapter 177: Remember It
Her delicate face looked exceptionally pale against the bloodstained garment, black hair flowing. Zhang Ya stood before Chen Ge, their faces less than thirty centimeters apart.
An icy, bone-piercing aura penetrated his skin. Chen Ge's lips turned purple, his body feeling as if it had fallen into an ice cave. The man who feared nothing and no one now felt a flicker of retreat. He wanted to step back, but his body refused to obey.
That weeping fruit seemed like a flowing river of ice, freezing every one of his blood vessels.
Wailing vengeful spirits stirred within him, yin energy coiling from the inside around his pounding heart, as if icy hands had seized it.
Chen Ge was nearly suffocating. The fruit of a vengeful ghost was not so easily consumed.
Zhang Ya slowly drew closer, exuding a cold, eerie aura, finally stopping right before Chen Ge's eyes.
It was a face devoid of warmth, breathtakingly beautiful, so stunning that Chen Ge's hair stood on end.
His throat couldn't produce a sound. The fruit had already melted, and Chen Ge felt a vengeful spirit rampaging inside him. Staring at Zhang Ya, who was only five or six centimeters away, his calves began to tremble involuntarily.
"This isn't what I imagined! Someone stop her!"
Perhaps Chen Ge's title as the favored one of vengeful ghosts came into play. The monster with one eye gouged out by the spirit board crawled toward him, seething with rage.
Its elongated body slithered like a giant python. Its withered hands grabbed Chen Ge's shoulders, its lower body arching as if ready to leap onto him.
Pain shot through both shoulders. Looking at the monster's grotesque face, Chen Ge shot it a grateful glance.
Grateful?
Maybe because its dignity as a monster had been trampled, the suspended head went completely mad. It had no intention of antagonizing Zhang Ya and chose another direction, lunging for Chen Ge's neck.
The twisted, deranged head opened its mouth wide, charging to within half a meter of Chen Ge before stopping.
Not because it didn't want to continue its attack, but because bloodstained strands of hair from the darkness had coiled around its body.
The monster let out a roar, glaring venomously at Zhang Ya. It didn't want to provoke her, but that didn't mean it feared her.
The three monsters communicated and attacked simultaneously from three directions.
Chen Ge didn't know what Zhang Ya intended to do. He only saw her expression darken as her black hair pierced the monsters' bodies. Her slender arm grabbed one monster's head and slammed it heavily against the wall.
"Ah!"
It was the second time that night the monster had screamed in agony. The first was when Chen Ge had gouged out its eye with the spirit board.
"So brutal." After Zhang Ya started fighting the monsters, Chen Ge felt the chill on him lessen significantly. He quickly pulled back.
The cries of the vengeful spirit inside him had faded. As the fruit continued to melt, icy sensations flowed into his pupils. His vision improved once more, and he could see things in the darkness with increasing clarity.
The three monsters tangled with Zhang Ya. In her red dress, burning with resentment and fury, she seemed intent on tearing them apart and devouring them whole.
After more than ten minutes, the corridor turned into a one-sided massacre. Wounds appeared on the monsters' bodies.
These lanky monsters were strongest when their lower halves were connected to a living person. Their strength diminished after leaping from a living person's shoulders. Even with a numerical advantage now, they couldn't overcome Zhang Ya.
"Such a gap in strength?" The lanky monster was the most terrifying ghost Chen Ge had ever encountered. He had thought its power might match Zhang Ya's, but he had underestimated her.
"Having a dedicated page in the black phone really sets her apart." Chen Ge quietly retreated, gripping the butcher knife tightly, never letting his guard down.
The West Suburb Private Academy was at most a three-star horror scene, possibly even just two stars. Zhang Ya, as a vengeful ghost from that academy, could slaughter the lanky monster from a three-star horror scene. This could only mean one thing: the Third Psychiatric Ward must harbor something even more terrifying than the lanky monster.
"The Third Ward is a three-star horror scene. The black phone's rating must have its reasons. This hospital likely has red-dress-level ghosts, maybe more than one."
The more Chen Ge thought about it, the more uneasy he felt. That door opened in the ward every night. After so many years, the entire ward should have long turned into a ghost realm. "Did all the ghosts leave, or did something devour them after they came out of the door?"
He glanced around. The blood threads that had appeared in the first-floor corridor walls were now emerging on the fourth floor, silently spreading toward Zhang Ya's position.
"Not good." Chen Ge's body had recovered. The fruit Zhang Ya had given him was made from a vengeful spirit. When he first ate it, his body went cold and immobile. Once it fully melted, the spirit was perfectly absorbed by his yin pupils. Zhang Ya hadn't intended to harm him this way.
"There's something else in the Third Ward! Maybe the real monster is the building itself!" Chen Ge ran forward with the butcher knife. Before he could take a few steps, his phone rang with Dr. Gao's voice.
"Chen Ge! I found Men Nan!" The call had never been disconnected. Dr. Gao, hearing the commotion on Chen Ge's end, realized the danger and rushed to the hospital at full speed.
"Good. Put him on." Chen Ge stopped. Men Nan was the center of this whole affair, the first to see the door, and the key to closing it.
"I'm Men Nan. Thanks for last time—"
"Skip the pleasantries. I know there's a childhood personality hidden inside you. You should have a way to awaken him." The situation was tense. With Zhang Ya's appearance, something extremely terrifying in the Third Ward was stirring.
"Are you misunderstanding something? How would I know there's another personality hidden in me?"
"He's inside you!" Chen Ge's voice grew louder. "You were born in a psychiatric hospital. Your infancy was spent there. I don't know how that affected your growth, and you might be trying to avoid it, but some things don't disappear just because you ignore them!"
"What are you talking about?" Men Nan's voice didn't sound like a lie. "Fine, even if I grew up in a psychiatric hospital, who remembers their infancy?"
"Infant neural systems develop rapidly. Changes in physiological structure make memories unstable. Few people can recall memories from infancy." Dr. Gao interjected objectively. "But those memories aren't lost—they're implicit in the mind. Awakening them might awaken that childhood personality."
"Awakening memories?" Chen Ge rummaged through his pocket, pulled out the photo he'd found in the director's office, and sent it to Dr. Gao. "Men Nan, look at this photo. This is the ward your mother once stayed in! Think about Room Three of the Third Ward, and think about the door that stood between you and your mother!"