“Come behind my door?”

Every word on the phone screen dripped with hatred. The sight of it would chill one’s spine like one’s hand would eaten the next second. There were thirteen blood cities in the world covered by black mist. Gao Ming suspected the mysterious boss was connected to one of them. It was why he wanted to communicate with him. Then, he frowned. To be frank, if a person saw a bloody message on their phone, they would not accept the sender’s invitation.

“It looks like the boss values you.” The woman poked her head forward with curiosity. The stitches on her neck were about to snap.

“Where is his door?”

“It’s inside the toilet of a theme park in Jiujiang,” The woman scratched her neck awkwardly, “The boss loves to promote his haunted house. However, since he purposely mentioned the door, I suspect he has something important to tell you.”

“That’s too far away. I don’t have the time.” Gao Ming was very cautious. After all, he was not an ally of the mysterious boss. Their positions were different, and that would cause a difference in their ways of thinking. What was moral to Gao Ming might be immoral to others.

Once Gao Ming rejected the invitation, the bloody numbers in the phone turned into shadows. There was a crackling static. The mysterious boss appeared to forcibly send his voice over from the world behind the door. Even the most powerful Dream Ghost couldn’t do that.

“Be careful… Doctor Gao…”

Intermittent voices seemed to come from the gap of the abyss. All the red on Gao Ming’s phone turned into the picture of a strange blood door.

“Be careful around Doctor Gao? I’m a psychiatrist at a heavy crime prison, and he wants me to be careful around this Doctor Gao?” Gao Ming felt there was another possibility. “Or, is there a person called Doctor Gao who is extremely dangerous, and I have to be careful of him?”

The call ended as the blood receded. It was hard to tell what the boss was planning.

“I believe it’s the latter.” The woman appeared to be reminded of someone scary. She almost snapped the cigarette and quickly changed the subject, “The blood door pattern on your phone is the invitation from the horror story society. The boss must really like you to send it to you.”

“How can he possibly like me without even meeting me?” Gao Ming touched the phone screen. The door pattern slowly opened and became a little boy. To be precise, the boy wore a red shirt and had a lower body that was connected to a giant spider. A blood door with strange patterns was stuck in his body.

Gao Ming’s pupils trembled. He had seen this spider boy before. When he tried to escape from Han Hai’s tunnel, he encountered a few monsters who tried to stop him. The spider was one of them!

Thinking back, compared to the others, the spider boy didn’t make things too difficult for Gao Ming. He only attacked symbolically. He didn’t harm anyone.

“Is tunnel being watched by the ghosts from the other blood cities in turn?” Gao Ming felt like he was in the Truman World. Han Hai was a stage being watched by many parties. He was supposed to be an unimportant side character, but through many deaths, he had become the main character.

“Your boss showed me this spider. Is he trying to tell me he has been helping me since then?” Gao Ming remembered that it was a red chain that yanked him out of the tunnel before he lost consciousness. The chain was covered in sin and resentment. It looked like the weapon of a Red Spectre.

“Most likely.” The woman blinked. She glanced at the phone that was returning to normal. She pronounced loudly, “Our boss is clever and can divine many things. There are so many clever ghosts working for him. You won’t go wrong if you follow his words.”

“Why do you feel like you’re saying that for him and not me? Plus, your descriptions don’t fit a Red Spectre. From how I see it, Red Spectres are experts at tearing everything apart. Since they are overly strong, they rarely get the chance to use their brains.” Gao Ming was being very kind. Most Red Spectres couldn’t even be communicated with.

The woman was stumped. She didn’t know if Gao Ming was praising her or mocking her. He was too cunning.

“If there’s a chance, I have to meet your boss, but not now.” Gao Ming entered the main topic. “Why did you move to the intelligent city? Has your divining boss acquired some information?”

“It’s for a case of missing visitor.” The woman thought for a while as she toyed with the stitches tattoo. “A lot of people came from Xin Lu to visit Jiujiang New Century Theme Park. One of them mysteriously disappeared on the way back to Xin Lu. The boss swore to find that person.”

“Your Haunted House’s job scope is wide.” Gao Ming didn’t think the haunted house had this ‘post-sale service’. They would help to locate you if you were lost.

“After he came back to Xin Lu, he went to Shanghai Mental Hospital Haunted House. As our investigation deepened, we discovered a lot of visitors started to act strangely after they visited Shanghai Mental Hospital. We initially thought it was Xin Lu’s ghosts that didn’t follow the rules, but we realised someone was controlling them.” The woman arranged the picture frames on the counter. “The boss wanted to come here in person, but there was a conflict that occurred deep inside the black mist. The Demon Gods exploded. They wanted to destroy a blood city.”

The woman was a lot friendlier to Gao Ming after she noted her boss’ attitude towards him. However, her honesty unsettled Gao Ming.

Han Hai was butchered due to some reason. That was accomplished by the cooperation between twelve other blood cities. This mysterious boss wanted to stop those who wanted to annihilate a city on his own. That was crazy.

“Does this mean you don’t have a grasp on the situation in Xin Lu?” Gao Ming was disappointed.

“Why would we want to do that?” The woman turned the question back to Gao Ming, “We only need to know the location of the ghosts and anomalies at Xin Lu. If they went overboard, we’d stop them.”

The way of thinking for Red Spectre was different from that of normal people. However, Gao Ming gleaned an important piece of news from the woman’s statement, “Do you know the location of all the anomalies at Xin Lu?”

“I can’t say all but most,” The woman waved for Gao Ming to join her in the sensory centre. Inside an employee breakroom, Gao Ming saw a bloody Xin Lu Map. A few spots were tagged with pins. “Xin Lu’s anomalies are gathered around these locations. Most of them are related to a company called Immortal Pharma. You might not believe this, but that company has been continuously hauling ghosts out of the inner world to shove them into the brains of the living. They are so proud of this, thinking that they have mastered the technology to achieve immortality.”