1107 The Ghost Fetus“ Last Choice 2 in 1
The ghost fetus had never experienced bliss, so it did not understand what real bliss felt like. It only knew how to be envious of other people, but it forgot to look around itself. When the faceless doctor started to launch an attack on Jin Hwa Apartments Block A, the rag doll dragged its broken body to try and stop him. It did not even understand why it would do something like that. It appeared like its body was acting on instinct. The rag doll was missing an arm, so it was at a disadvantage. Currently, the faceless doctor had the upper hand. The rag doll’s condition worsened, and the wounds on its body increased. Its body and limbs were shredded multiple times, but the rag doll forced them to be stay together via the black curse threads.
When the faceless doctor saw the rag doll come after him voluntarily, he confirmed the suspicion in his mind. The faces on his red coat all revealed a sinister and wicked smile.
“Four, you still have something that you care about, huh? Looks like the director was not wrong. You are only close to Patient 0001, but there is still a gulf between you and him.”
The mad faceless doctor kept using his words to disrupt the rag doll. Normally, these words would not have any influence on a Demon G.o.d, but if the words were laced with curses, it would be a completely different story. Every single word could be a trap. When a person or a Specter started to doubt themself, they would easily fall for the trap. The basis of all the Specters was their obsession. If their own obsession was shaken, it would be an attack directly on their soul.
All the faces on the faceless doctor’s coat showed horrible and disgusting expressions. The doctor moved even faster as more and more curses gathered around him. Earlier he was probably holding back because he was cautious about Zhang Ya and the Past.
“When I capture the woman inside Block A, I will bring her back to the hospital. She will be given the treatment that you have gone through. I believe that even after you have successfully reborn, you will come back to find her, right?”
The mouths tore open, and the shrill voice travelled very far down the distance. Even Chen Ge and the Past, who was floating above everyone, were able to hear the doctor clearly.
Xiang Nuan, who was embedded inside the Past’s head shuddered his shoulders. Something seemed to return to his blurry eyes. The arms that were bound by endless broken carca.s.ses and memories started to tighten. It appeared like the boy wanted to gain control over the Past. Compared to the Past, whose size had blocked out the sky, Xiang Nuan’s body was so small that it was negligible, but at this moment, he wanted to use his small body to control that ginormous monster.
The faceless doctor was already very close to Jin Hwa Apartments Block A. Using Wen Qing as a threat, he slowly approached the tallest building as he delivered fatal blows on the rag doll. This monster from the cursed hospital was extremely greedy. On one hand, he wanted to take control of Wen Qing, but he did not want to lose this precious opportunity to deal heavy damage to the rag doll either. He appeared to be envious of this body that the ghost fetus had occupied.
The rag doll alone was obviously too weak to stop the faceless doctor. Xiang Nuan wanted to control the Past, but that appeared to be beyond the boy’s power. Everything the Past was tasked to do was swallow everything and everyone inside Jiu Hong Apartments and Jin Hwa Apartments. The Past that was made from endless memories and materials sourced from the black fog did not want to ruin that plan just for the sake of Wen Qing.
The faceless doctor was rapidly approaching Jin Hwa Apartments Block A, and Zhang Ya was also hurrying toward that building while protecting Chen Ge. Unlike the faceless doctor, Chen Ge did not plan to use Wen Qing as leverage against the ghost fetus. He merely wanted to protect his own employees at that moment. Everyone had something that they wanted to protect; it was no exception for Chen Ge, even though he was normally the party being protected.
With Zhang Ya acting as his guardian, Chen Ge managed to get into Jin Hwa Apartments Block A before the faceless doctor. With the rag doll’s arm placed safely inside the building, the building was safe from the black fog’s influence. Basically, the place had not changed compared to the last time Chen Ge left it. Chen Ge entered the building easily and without any trouble, but just as Zhang Ya was prepared to enter the building, the rag doll’s broken body that was not far away let out a shrill scream, one that appeared like it would have pulled harshly on its vocal chords.
After making that sound, the rag doll’s movement slowed down. Its power was gradually slipping, but strangely enough, when the Past in the sky heard the rag doll’s scream, its giant body started to slowly turn. As the rag doll’s weakened, the light in Xiang Nuan’s eyes appeared to return; the blankness in his eyes was being chased away.
The Past slowed down the speed of strengthening the prison. The period between each heartbeat was getting longer and longer. It instead turned its focus on Zhang Ya as if the moment Zhang Ya dared step into Jin Hwa Apartments’ Block A, he would not hesitate to start attacking like crazy. Zhang Ya did not dare act too recklessly, but she kept her eyes on Chen Ge, who had entered the building.
There was no black fog inside Block A, but he could still feel the heartbeat that came from underground clearly. Chen Ge carried his backpack, and his fingers were tightly gripping his chest. The literal heart-wrenching feeling was hard to describe. It was as if his heart was trying to jump out of his physical body.
“Calm down, I have to calm down!” Cold sweat soaked his forehead. Chen Ge tried to remember where he had heard Wen Qing’s voice coming from. “Wen Qing appears to have been placed on the top floor. The sound of the heartbeat came from underground. The top floor is furthest away from the ground, so she would be least affected if she was placed there! The ghost fetus must have considered that before he decided to fetch Wen Qing and place her on the top floor!”
Rus.h.i.+ng into the stairwell, Chen Ge stumbled and climbed his way up to the top floor. The heartbeat kept interrupting him, and his fingers that covered his heart were already white from the force. Using both his legs and hands, Chen Ge gasped hungrily for air as he climbed on all fours up the steps. When he reached the fifth floor, the influence of the heartbeat on his body had weakened conspicuously.
“It’s working!” The condition of the workers inside the comic was turning for the better as well, but Chen Ge did not dare let his guard down because the sound of the heartbeat coming from the underground was getting louder and louder as well. If it could not be stopped from its core, then it would be pointless even to run and hide at the top floor. The ghost fetus had spent decades preparing this trap. From the very beginning, the plan was to swallow everyone. It would not have left behind a blind spot that would allow a person to hide for safety.
When it was making the plan, it had nothing but hatred for everything. The ghost fetus himself must have been as surprised as everyone else that when his plan was put into motion, he would have someone that he cared about who got mixed into the plan. Chen Ge climbed upward, higher into the building. He was glad that he had taken the pains to clear away all the mad people inside the building earlier, or else they would have been a great impediment to him at this moment.
Without wasting any time, Chen Ge climbed to the seventh floor. Right at that moment, a giant boom came from outside the building. The building shook violently, and Chen Ge almost lost his balance and rolled down the stairs. Looking through the window, Chen Ge saw that Zhang Ya had gotten into another fight with the Past, but this time, Zhang Ya did not face it head on. Instead, she perfectly utilized the agility and dexterity that the Past did not possess to avoid most of the damage. Without Chen Ge holding her back, it was very difficult for the Past to really injure Zhang Ya.
The several parties had gotten into a stalemate again, but this was extremely beneficial to the ghost fetus. It would be able to accomplish its final goal. All the people and Specters, including the two Demon G.o.ds, would become nutrients for its rebirth. With three Demon G.o.ds as the foundation, if the ghost fetus successfully reborn, even if his body had some deficiencies, he would an extremely scary presence, so scary in fact that he might even be capable of breaking the limitation between life and death.
Everything was still moving in the direction as the ghost fetus was hoping, but his plan that appeared thorough actually had many loopholes. When all these loopholes were gathered together, it would knock one of the steps of the plan way out of place.
The rag doll, whose energy was rapidly depleting, was still trying its best to stop the faceless doctor, but without its arm, heart, and under the influence of Chen Ge, it had ultimately failed. The body that was a macramé of trash was broken up and reconstructed again and again. The rag doll was very familiar with this process. Since it had become the item of possession for the shadow, it had been repeating this process day in and day out.
For other people, this pain would literally tear at the heart, but shattering its bones was an everyday event for the rag doll. It would never give up because of pain. It told itself that it would never feel pain because it was just a mere rag doll. With each reconstruction, no matter what happened, it would try its best to regain and reform its body. That was until this day when the cursed threads inside its body were all severed and the curse that bound its body together was replaced by the curse from another Demon G.o.d.
The injuries on its body could not be healed anymore. The b.u.t.ton that was sewn on its face started to slip, and it slid down the side of the building and landed on the ground. This body that had been reconstructed who knew how many times finally crumbled on this day. Its head was eviscerated by the most familiar curse. It looked at the smiles on the faceless doctor and then glanced at the dried avian bodies inside its right arm. Its gaze gradually moved until they landed on Jin Hwa Apartments Block A.
The mouth that was sewn together wished to open. The black rain fell steadily on its face. The rag doll’s head eventually rolled and stopped next to the b.u.t.ton. When the rag doll was defeated by the faceless doctor, Jin Hwa Apartments’ Block A started to vibrate violently. Endless black fog rushed into it. The arm that guarded the building until now had lost its use.
The black fog seeped into the building. When Chen Ge saw the black fog enter the building, he knew what had happened outside the building. The rag doll that had once been occupied by the ghost fetus had been destroyed. The body that had borne witness to the pain that the ghost fetus had suffered was torn apart by the faceless doctor. The trash that was previously stuffed inside the rag doll littered the ground.
“It cannot be used anymore? Did it give everything that it had to the Past before it died?” Even though the faceless doctor had managed to ‘kill’ the rag doll, he did not look too happy about it. “Patient 0004 was willing to give everything that he had to the monster inside the black fog and did not keep a shred of power for himself. Does he have such confidence that the plan this time will be successful?”
The faceless doctor failed to find the thing that he wanted among the rag doll’s broken body. Before this, he appeared to have this belief that the ghost fetus would leave some insurance for himself. As long as there was something of the ghost fetus left inside the rag doll, then the rag doll could still be reconstructed, but apparently the faceless doctor had guessed wrong. The angered faceless doctor turned his focus to Jin Hwa Apartments Block A, which was almost toppled over.
“The person that Patient 0004 cares about is still in there. If I can capture her, then I can still find a way to escape. I can use her as a medium to place horrible curses on the ghost fetus to seek a way out from this tragedy.”
The faceless doctor did not plan to get into any fight with the Past. He took a glance at Zhang Ya, and his gaze darkened.
“With her drawing the Past’s attention, this is quite a good development for me.”
Of course, the faceless doctor was not going lose this precious opportunity. After the faceless doctor killed the rag doll, he rushed toward Jin Hwa Apartments’ Block A without any hesitation.
With the rag doll dead, no one was able to stop the faceless doctor anymore. As he was getting closer and closer to Block A, Chen Ge, who was about to reach the top floor, screamed loudly at Zhang Ya, “Lead the monster over to the doctor! You have to find a way to destroy the heart that is hidden underground!”
Zhang Ya understood him perfectly. Actually, before Zhang Ya pulled the Past’s focus to the doctor, the Past had already moved its attention to the faceless doctor. All Zhang Ya needed to do was astutely move aside for the Past to pa.s.s. Hearing this, the faceless doctor really wanted to tear out Chen Ge’s mouth, but there was no other way out of this. However, fortunately for the faceless doctor, he had already discovered Wen Qing, and he was very close to her!
After the rag doll’s death, Xiang Nuan, who was encased in the Past’s head, was slowly recovering his consciousness. Spirit started to return to his eyes. At that moment, the Past’s giant body was lying between Zhang Ya and the faceless doctor. Due to the size of its body, it would need to take some time even if it just wanted to twist its body around. The faceless doctor was getting closer and closer to Wen Qing while Zhang Ya listened to Chen Ge’s suggestion. The b.l.o.o.d.y sea leaked underground. The black hair pushed the ground open like waves, and she soon found the source of the heartbeat.
The Past’s sh.e.l.l that it could not shake off was buried in the ground. On the spot where the sh.e.l.l was joined to the ground sat a blood red heart that was beating. That was the heart that the ghost fetus possessed when he became a Red Specter. It was a blackened heart. Part of it was heavily s.h.i.+elded by the sh.e.l.l. It was an a.n.a.logy of it being heavily bound by the painful past, and it could not shake it off no matter how hard it tried.
The remaining part was wreathed in a cage of fresh blood vessels. It was joined to the Past’s upper body, and from the top of the heart extended multiple blood vessels. The blood vessels were joined to all the buildings and the ground of the entire residential area. With every beat of the heart, the blood vessels would ingest the monsters and Specters that had been killed inside the residential area. The more the ghosts that it consumed, the bigger the red part of the heart became. Currently, the heart was enormous.
The ghost fetus had turned all the ghosts that he had consumed into energy to help him shake off the sh.e.l.l. Based on the normal speed, he would need to consume a lot of Specters and require a lot of time before he could use this method to turn his heart fully red. But to counteract this, the more the monsters from inside the black fog he consumed, the bigger the Past would become. The heart would grow bigger, and so would the black part. It was as if the events that had happened today would eventually become a part of the past.
Zhang Ya had found the source of the heartbeat. The city in the red sea under her feet was becoming clear. She seemed to be ready to destroy this heart directly.
According to the ghost fetus’ original plan, the rag doll was supposed to hold off the monster from the cursed hospital while the Past would be tasked with killing Zhang Ya. After he had obtained Chen Ge’s body, he would be invincible. Then, he would gather all his power to slowly torture the monster from the cursed hospital to death. It was a flawless plan, but unfortunately, the plan had strayed wildly from its path.
With the rag doll dead, the Past was stuck between Zhang Ya and the faceless doctor. It was placed in a difficult position. Zhang Ya was about to destroy the Past’s heart, and the faceless doctor was about to get his hands on Wen Qing. The faceless doctor would not hesitate to implant a Demon G.o.d’s curse on this innocent woman. The Past had to make a choice between its own heart and Wen Qing!
‘I’ die, or ‘she’ dies.
After a short hesitation by the large Past, it turned its focus to bite at Zhang Ya, but as it made that decision, Xiang Nuan, who was embedded in its head, started to cry tears of blood!
Both of his arms struggled free from the Past’s giant body like the wings of a free bird as they extended to the spot where Wen Qing was!
“Trash desires to have a life like a normal human being. It is chasing something that even it itself cannot explain clearly. Based on its description, I personally believe it is looking for the feeling of bliss.
“Trash wishes to obtain bliss, but it does not understand what bliss is. To cure its illness, I will have to first teach it the meaning of bliss.
“The lack of bliss, or misery, is a kind of disease. Misery is like a cut that’s left on one’s heart. All the happiness will leak out from this opening, and bliss is the bandage that will close this wound.
“Using my perspective to explain bliss, Trash was able to understand the concept very quickly.
“It looked for a long time, but it failed to find bliss. To help it understand the concept further, I persuaded it to create misery and, from the contrast, try to observe what bliss actually is.
“Trash chose a bird. Under my tutelage, it broke off the bird’s wing. The blood splattered all over the bird’s feathers. The bird was wailing in despair. That is the sound of misery.
“Under the watchful care of Trash, the bird’s wound slowly recovered. But it had lost the ability to fly in the sky. I told Trash that was the price for bliss.
“To obtain bliss, one has to give up something. It is a very fair exchange.”