Then, Xu Yin slowly appeared behind Chen Ge, and the man and ghost charged at the old lady at the same time.
The wrinkles on her face squeezed together. When the old lady saw Chen Ge leave Room 304 and enter a place where the light could not reach, her dry lips curled into a smile.
However, before she could smile, before Chen Ge could, a man in a half red shirt suddenly charged out!
"So painful!"
Blood leaked out from the wounds all over his body. The man crawled on all fours like a beast, and his expression was hysterical!
The old lady's smile froze on her face. Her body moved at a speed that did not match her age. She morphed into a black shadow and ran down the stairs.
"Didn't you ask me to come with you?"
The hammer slammed heavily on the spot where the old lady's ghost had been standing, and the sound echoed through the whole building.
"Today, none of you will escape!" Xu Yin and Chen Ge chased after the old lady.
The staircase was filled with footsteps, and the stairs seemed endless. This was the first time the old lady realized how long the staircase was. This was probably the scariest night she had ever had.
The exit of the staircase was right before her eyes. The shadow ran like her life depended on it. She was just a normal ghost, so when she saw Xu Yin in a half red shirt, she was spooked.
"Stop right there!"
Chen Ge shouted from behind. Xu Yin was only slightly faster than the shadow. Just as the shadow was about to escape the staircase, he grabbed one of the shadow's arms.
The shadow's whole body shook. Without hesitation, she cut off the arm and ran out of the building without looking back, disappearing into the darkness.
"Looks like I need to train my body in the future. I'm too slow." Chen Ge sighed with regret. When he turned to look at Xu Yin, he realized that the broken arm of the shadow had disappeared, and the blood stains on Xu Yin's body seemed to have increased.
"If Xu Yin can become a Red Specter, that's not bad." Chen Ge looked at the dark residential area. "Since I've run into him, I can't just sit back and do nothing. After I find the drawer, I'll go help the old man end his obsession."
After calling Xu Yin, Chen Ge returned to the third floor and called the intermediary again.
The other party did not pick up, so he sent a few more messages to the other party, asking if the other party was there. He wanted to 'thank' the other party in person for the reminder.
"Why didn't you answer my calls?"
Chen Ge walked into Room 304 with the phone in his left hand and the hammer in his right.
"I've checked the living room and the bedroom by the door. The drawer should be in the last room. These ghosts are trying to stop me, as if they're afraid that I'll enter that place. "
The last room was locked, but to Chen Ge, it was just a matter of a hammer strike.
"The bedroom door is locked from the inside. The gambler who lost his hand is hiding inside?"
Breaking down the door, and after half the night, Chen Ge finally entered the last room.
The bedroom was small. The large bookcase and work table took up half of the space, and the remaining half was taken up by a rusted small fridge and a tattered mat.
"The edges of the mat are worn down. Looks like the owner uses this mat often. Isn't there a bed outside? Why does he insist on staying in this room? Is he afraid of ghosts? "
The atmosphere inside the room was completely different from outside. There was nothing out of place, and the drawers and dresser were not nailed shut by the door.
"The work table and dresser are clean like they've been cleaned every day." Chen Ge looked at the neat bookcase and miscellaneous items, and a strange thought appeared in his mind. "It feels like a ghost is helping to clean the place. Are the ghosts in this room obsessed with cleanliness?"
He opened the bookcase, and it was filled with books related to comic drawing.
"The Art of Drawing a Popular Comic, How to Draw a Popular World, Anatomy of the Human Body … These books don't match the previous tenants. Could it be that there was a fourth tenant?"
Chen Ge replaced the book and found a pile of useless manuscripts under the cupboard.
The strange thing was, the scraps had been rubbed, and some had been torn, but they had been pieced back together and pasted back together with tape.
"All the scraps have been preserved?" Chen Ge picked up the stack of scraps and glanced at them.
The characters on the white paper were strange. It was clear that the artist was trying his best to make the characters cuter and more popular, but the actual effect was horrible.
The artist was definitely not a professional artist. Most of the characters he drew had facial paralysis, and a few of them had a more lifeless gaze, and their expressions were rather scary.
It was obvious that the artist was working hard to draw a manga that would be popular, but his sense of beauty seemed to be naturally different from the general public. Even when he was copying someone else's work, he was able to draw a popular and beautiful girl like a female corpse.
"To be able to draw so scary every single one of his drawings is a kind of talent."
Chen Ge put down the scraps and found a thin yellow notebook in the corner of the bookcase. He flipped through it. The notebook recorded the weekly expenses and the payment that the owner received from his drawings.
Reading the content of the book, the expression on Chen Ge's face turned strange.
Technically, the artist was also a tenant of Room 304, but he was sharing the room with someone else, so he only rented this small bedroom.
He lived a hard life, and he was a comic lover. However, after flipping through the notebook, the artist had lived in this small room for three years, and his income from drawing was only 1,200 RMB.
Of that, 1,000 RMB came from his only fan, the landlady, and the remaining 200 RMB came from him drawing for people under the bridge. In the end, he drew people like they were dead, and he was chased for a long time. After the police came to mediate, the person who beat him up compensated him.
He was purely relying on his savings from his previous job. He kept his living expenses within 400 RMB every month. His belief was that as long as he did not die, he would eventually make a name for himself.
That was a good saying, but the cruel thing was, until his death, his comics were not accepted by the public.
At the back of the notebook was a folded newspaper. Hidden between the pages was a story about a middle-aged man who saved a drowning child and drowned himself in the process.
The article did not even mention the middle-aged man's name.
"This is different from what the ghosts said. Just how many tenants has Room 304 had?" Chen Ge replaced all the scraps and walked to the desk. "It's facing away from the living room. This should be the desk that the black phone mentioned."
Many drawing tools were arranged neatly on the table like they were waiting for their owner to return to use them.
Chen Ge's eyes slowly moved. He looked at the three drawers next to the table. He reached out to pull open the first drawer. It was filled with paints and brushes.
"This shouldn't be it." Chen Ge opened the second drawer, and it was filled with the rejection letters that the middle-aged man had received. They filled the whole drawer, and the artist had kept all of them.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
