Chen Ge wanted to warn the middle-aged man, but it was already too late. The meowing of the cats became louder, and he hurried to hide in the stairwell.
The elevator stopped on this floor. There was no sound of footsteps or breathing.
Moments later, there was the sound of knocking coming from the corridor.
The sound seemed to come out of nowhere. There was no sign of it.
"The middle-aged man might tell him about me." The knocking was loud, but no one answered the door. Chen Ge was standing on the stairs. Even though he had lost his sight, he was very calm. In that situation, he did not run away but chose to stay.
Ying Chen still did not know about him, so the situation was temporarily in his favor.
After knocking for a long time, the front door finally opened, and the middle-aged man's voice came from the corridor.
"Ying Chen? Why are you looking for me? Is it because you want me to pay the rent? " There was a trace of impatience in the middle-aged man's voice. He did not take Chen Ge's warning seriously.
"My little brother, Ying Tong, sneaked out from home to play. He has not returned home yet. When I was going up the stairs, I heard people moving around here, so I came over to ask if you have seen my little brother." Ying Chen's voice sounded very young. His image behind the door appeared to be younger than in real life.
The world behind the door was woven from the memory of the door pusher. From that, one could conclude that the younger voice of Ying Chen was the one that Ying Tong had the deepest impression of.
In other words, Ying Chen had probably done something to Ying Tong a long time ago, and that incident had become the deepest shadow in Ying Tong's heart. He could not stop thinking about his older brother's voice.
"If you are blind, you should pay more attention to your surroundings. You are the one who did not close the door, and now that something has happened, you come to ask someone else for help?" The middle-aged man had a bad personality. That was evident from his attitude toward Chen Ge.
"I am so sorry. These are some date cakes sent by my relative from my hometown. I hope you will accept them. If you see my little brother, please tell me. His eyes are not that good, and I am afraid that something might happen to him."
"Date cakes? Why is the color so red? Is it colored? "
"It is all natural, and the texture is especially smooth. You should give it a try. If you like it, I have more at home." Ying Chen was very friendly. His performance was just like the middle-aged man had described him to be. He looked like a weakling who was too good for his own good.
"The taste is not bad, completely different from the ones I buy on the street. Okay, if I see your brother, I will inform you immediately." The middle-aged man chewed on something, and as he chewed, he closed the front door.
"The middle-aged man did not expose my existence, but the problem is, Ying Chen did not enter his home. Ying Chen should be standing at his door right now."
The sound of the elevator door opening came from the corridor. Chen Ge was about to leave, but at that moment, he heard another meow. The meow came from the middle of the corridor.
"Ying Chen did not get into the elevator!"
Sticking close to the wall, Chen Ge immediately walked down the stairs. He did not dare to make a sound. Being blind meant that he could not walk fast. If he made a sound, he would definitely be caught.
He had no way of determining Ying Chen's location. He only knew that the cat's meowing kept coming, and the madman was heading toward the staircase.
"Hey!" The door in the corridor opened again, and the middle-aged man's voice came from the door. "Why are there so many letters inside this bag of jujube cakes?"
"They were written for me by my relative. I'm sorry, but I forgot to take them out." Ying Chen's voice appeared above Chen Ge's head. He had already entered the staircase, but he was on the fourth floor, and Chen Ge had just reached the third floor.
Chen Ge was so scared that he broke out in a cold sweat. He held his breath and stood where he was.
"I will take the letters with me. If you see my brother, remember to tell me."
The cats stopped meowing. When Ying Chen's voice came again, he had already left the staircase and walked to the middle-aged man's side.
"Okay." Not long after the middle-aged man said this, he added, "Why do you keep looking at my house? Do you suspect that your brother is in my house? "
"Of course not. I just …"
The voice in the staircase suddenly disappeared, and then there was the sound of something heavy falling to the ground.
"Ying Chen has made his move on the middle-aged man?" Chen Ge gritted his teeth. The man had made his move without saying a word. His way of doing things was very decisive. This kind of enemy was very scary.
"I need to leave this building as soon as possible. Before I recover my sight, I'd better stay as far away from this place as I can." Chen Ge had no idea about Ying Chen's power, and he had no idea what this world was like. The world that he could perceive through his sense of hearing, smell, and touch was not complete.
Not daring to stay where he was, Chen Ge picked up his speed and headed down the stairs.
"The middle-aged man should be dead for sure. If Ying Chen can mistake him for me, that will be perfect. But with Ying Chen's intelligence, he will definitely suspect me. I need to prepare for the worst."
Holding the wall, Chen Ge walked down the stairs. He silently calculated the number of floors in his heart.
"Assuming Ying Chen's family lives on the seventh floor, I should be on the first floor by now."
There would be a corner between two floors, so he could not be wrong. But when Chen Ge took his first step down the stairs, he was not stepping on flat ground but a staircase!
"Does Ying Chen's family have a basement?" Chen Ge tried to think back, and he came to a very bad conclusion. He remembered very clearly that the building that Ying Chen's family lived in did not have a basement.
"The world behind this door is not the same as the real world! Sh * t! "
Ying Chen had not discovered Chen Ge. Other than relying on the cats' meowing, another important reason was that he had been here before, and he had a basic map of the place in his mind.
By comparing the map in his mind, he was not completely lost.
But now, he realized that the map in his mind was different from this world behind the door. The fear of the unknown was instantly magnified.
"Should I continue to move down the stairs, or should I knock on the door to ask for help from the tenants inside the building? There is no basement in the real world, but this staircase continues to extend downwards. I wonder where it will lead to? "
He should have reached the first floor already, but the stairs did not finish. In a situation where there was no basement, Chen Ge had no idea what had gone wrong.
"Could this place be separated into seven floors above ground and seven floors below ground? Just like the inside and outside of the door? The people on the seventh floor above ground are normal, but the seventh floor below ground is filled with blood and ghosts? "
Standing in the staircase, Chen Ge walked down a few more steps. He did not feel any discomfort, and he did not feel anything different. The environment around him did not appear to have changed at all.
"It shouldn't be the seventh floor above ground or the seventh floor below ground. Then, is there a possibility that this is a staircase that has no end?
"The lowest floor of the building is connected to the top floor of the building, and the top floor of the building is connected to the lowest floor of the building. For a blind person, repeating the action of going down the stairs in the dark will create a very special feeling of despair in their heart. It is like there is no end to everything, and they are just struggling in vain."
A normal person would not have such an experience, but Chen Ge was different. Not long ago, he had completed a nightmare mission at Jiang Yuan Apartments, and he had been blindfolded to experience what it felt like to go up the stairs blindfolded.
Darkness, loneliness, and the unknown, everything would ferment at the bottom of one's heart. It would give birth to a demon that represented fear, and in the end, it would consume one's self.
"I cannot continue to move down the stairs. This world behind the door is different from the real world. I need to be more careful."
Chen Ge retreated to what he thought was the 'first floor'. Touching the wall, he moved down the corridor. He ran all over the floor, and he discovered something very despairing.
"There is no exit. There is no way out."
Despair grew in his heart. Chen Ge realized that he had still underestimated the difficulty of this world behind the door.
"Am I experiencing what Ying Tong once experienced? The residential area has an exit, but for him, this building is completely sealed off. This building is his entire world, and there is no way out. "
Biting on the tip of his tongue, Chen Ge used the pain to force himself to calm down.
"Looks like the hope of solving this situation lies on Ying Tong. He is the door pusher of this world, so he should know the way to open his eyes. I have to find Ying Tong before Ying Chen finds me!"
Without any clues, without any help, inside a sealed building, a blind person had to find another blind person while being chased by a crazed murderer. This was a mission of such difficulty that Chen Ge had not encountered before.
"From now on, I have to memorize every step that I have taken, every position, and every direction that I am facing."
The real world was different from the world behind the door. There was no way to compare them, so Chen Ge wanted to draw a new map in his mind.
This was very difficult to do, but to increase his chance of survival, Chen Ge had no choice but to do so.
Since he could not see, he had to memorize all the routes that he had taken.
As long as he was familiar with the terrain, he could run and even set up traps to kill Ying Chen.
Hiding was never Chen Ge's style. He wanted to make use of everything around him to deal with the danger once and for all.
Even though he had lost his sight, if Ying Chen treated him like a normal blind person and toyed with him like a cat playing with a mouse, he would be at a great disadvantage.
"The middle-aged man that I ran into earlier had something similar to livor mortis on his body. His body temperature was very low, so he was definitely not a living person. From this perspective, could all the tenants in this building be dead people?
"Some of their deaths probably have something to do with Ying Chen, and some of their deaths might be related to the ghost fetus.
"In their eyes, Ying Chen is a good person. Now, I need to figure out a way to change Ying Chen's image in their eyes. It would be best if I can win their trust and help."
The cats did not call. Ying Chen was very far away from where he was. Chen Ge walked to the corner of the 'first floor' and knocked lightly on the door that was closest to the stairwell.
In the dark and quiet world, the monotonous knocking on the door kept repeating. Even Chen Ge felt chills run down his spine. It felt like someone was watching him from the dark.
"Is there no one?"
Chen Ge moved to the next door. He knocked for a long time, but no one opened the door. There was not even the slightest sound coming from inside the house.
He knocked on five doors, but none of them opened. Chen Ge was getting more and more agitated.
"After Ying Chen deals with the dead bodies, he might continue to wander down the stairwell to look for Ying Tong. If he hears the knocking, he will definitely come to investigate. Now is my best chance."
His movements picked up. Chen Ge knocked on the seventh door when the iron door on the other side of the stairwell was suddenly pushed open.
"Are you looking for someone? Why do you keep knocking on the door? "A woman's voice came from behind Chen Ge, and it gave him quite a fright.
After adjusting himself, Chen Ge turned around. "Yes, I am looking for a child. His name is Ying Tong."
"Ying Tong?"
"It is the child who lives on the seventh floor. He is blind in both eyes …"
"I know him, but the question is, why are you looking for him? This is not the seventh floor, is it? " The woman was conversing with Chen Ge when a child's scream of pain suddenly came from the room behind her. The scream was similar to the voice that Chen Ge remembered from Ying Tong.
He could not confirm whether the child inside the woman's room was Ying Tong or not because he had only heard Ying Tong say one thing when he was outside the door.
The sound of footsteps came. The woman walked back to her room, and Chen Ge followed behind her.
The woman seemed to be in a hurry. After she entered the room, she did not close the door. Chen Ge stumbled as he followed behind her.
"Why is it this kind of stench again?"
The woman's room was similar to the middle-aged man's room. The stench of many different things floated in the air, and it was very pungent.
The child's crying and screaming kept coming from inside the room. Chen Ge was afraid that the commotion would attract Ying Chen's attention, so he moved to the front door and closed it behind him.
"Why are you acting up again? Weren't you fine earlier? What did you see? "The woman's voice was anxious. She started to rummage through the room to look for something.
Even though Chen Ge thought the child's voice was similar to Ying Tong's, he heard the woman say, "What did you see?"
Ying Tong was blind, but the child inside the woman's room was not blind.
"Stay here and do not move. I will go and find some medicine for you!"
The footsteps came from inside the room, heading toward the door. Chen Ge wanted to move aside, but he did not expect that the moment he moved, he would run into the woman.
"I am so sorry, I did not mean to." In the darkness, Chen Ge wanted to go and help the woman. In his panic, he grabbed the woman's arm.
The woman's arm was very thin, and it was unnaturally twisted.
Chen Ge's hand was soon flung away by the woman. She seemed to be angry, and even the tone of her voice had changed. "We will talk about your problem later. I need to go upstairs to borrow some medicine."
The front door was pushed open. The woman walked out, and then the door was closed again.
"Medicine?"
The child's crying and screaming slowly dwindled, and the room became quiet.
"The woman's body is twisted, just like the mannequins in Ying Tong's bedroom. Other than that, her body temperature is very low …"
Ten minutes later, the front door was pushed open again, and the woman with the twisted arm walked into the room.
Chen Ge heard the sound of water being poured and swallowing. After the child's crying completely stopped, he nudged deeper into the room. "Do you mind if I ask what kind of illness the child is suffering from? Don't think too much into it. I am actually a doctor. "
"A normal doctor will not be able to cure his illness." The woman walked out from the room. She walked to stand before Chen Ge. "Have you heard of acrophobia?"
"Is it a type of phobia?"
"More or less. Whenever the child sees something sharp, his illness will act up. He will panic, despair, cry, and make a ruckus. He will always fantasize about someone stabbing his eyes with something sharp."
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
