My House of Horrors

Only when a person was at their most despaired and most helpless would they be able to open the ‘door’. When the fire was burning, the boy was trapped inside the warped car window, and what he saw was his injured mother and the people who ran away from them.

Fire burned his body, and as his flesh and blood melted into the car door, he finally managed to open the door that he was stuck in. His lower body was left inside the car, but his upper body was burnt into the car door.

Chen Ge couldn’t imagine a pain like that, so no matter what the boy had done, Chen Ge did not think that he was in a position to judge him. No one was born a monster; even if they looked different from a normal human being, their heart was made of flesh and blood.

Crawling amid the jungle of human bodies, the gap on the boy’s body slowly recovered.

“The shadow wants to build a door in Li Wan City to release something from behind the door. Before he met me, the madman came up with many experiments to test out human nature and push innocent people to their breaking point. Then he used them to open the door, but even until they died, none of them were able to open the door. His plan kept failing until he eventually turned his target to me. He wanted to capture me and detain me in Li Wan City to help him complete his plan.”

The boy’s tone dropped. “Naturally, I wouldn’t agree, so I wanted to kill him.”

This was a cruel character. He would kill whoever that dared target him.

“But from the current situation, it appears that you’ve failed.” Chen Ge easily rained on the boy’s parade. He was reminding the boy that things had changed, and the shadow was their common enemy.

“You’re right, he’s extremely hard to kill.” After saying that, the boy studied Chen Ge. “He grows ever stronger, but as long as I am inside this tunnel, I’ll be able to protect myself and my mother.”

Blood leaked out from the boy’s torso. “I can drag anything that enter the tunnel into the door, and there I can do many things that I wouldn’t be able to do outside the tunnel.”

The door-pusher’s power would multiply when they were inside the door, so the boy’s ability to pull people into his door was incredibly powerful if used right.

“So, you pulled me into your door earlier?”

“Yes, that place is a nightmare that I’ve weaved. Time is frozen on that day, but there is a weakness to this power—it can only be used inside this tunnel. Once I leave the tunnel, the door can’t be opened anymore.” The gap on the boy’s torso was like a mouth, and it looked scary. “Sometimes, I even wonder, was it me who opened the door, or did the door assume who I was?”

The boy’s situation was very unique. This was Chen Ge’s first time encountering something like this as well.

“You’ve fought the shadow before. Did you notice if he has any weakness?”

“If I knew that, do you think I’d still be here talking with you?” The appendages shook agitatedly, and the boy looked quite mad. “The madman was stronger every time he came. I tried many methods, but I could not kill him. Then I planned to trap him inside the world behind the door, but eventually, he found out the pattern of the tunnel behind the door and almost escaped on his own…”

The boy caught himself because he realized that he had accidentally revealed that there was a pattern to the tunnel behind the door.

“And then?” Chen Ge pretended not to have heard him and urged him to continue.

“He failed, but I won’t be able to use the same trick next time.” The boy leaned his body to the side to expose a large gash on the spider body. “I just fought him some time back. He was strangely desperate like a maddened dog.”

“Where did he go after that fight?” Chen Ge wanted to know if the shadow returned to possess Jia Ming after leaving the tunnel.

“How would I know?” The boy started to evade the question. With the interrogation from Chen Ge, he had finally revealed three things to him. Whenever the shadow came here, his form would change. The boy suspected that the shadow had the ability to change his appearance and size. There was a child’s shadow hiding inside the shadow—no matter the appearance that he took on, the child’s shadow had never changed. The last was something that the boy himself could not confirm. He sensed a presence similar to Chen Ge in the shadow, and that was why he had wanted to kill Chen Ge earlier.

Memorizing these three points, after confirming that he was unable to get more information from the boy, Chen Ge turned to the woman.

“What are doing?” Before he said anything, the boy weaved through the ‘forest’ to stand between Chen Ge and his mother.

“After you leave the tunnel, you won’t be able to open the door inside your body, and your power will drop drastically, so I wish to ask her to help me fight the shadow. After all, the more we have, the greater the chance of winning.”

Chen Ge said that so naturally that the boy felt stumped. “Letting you go and telling you so many things is already the limit of my kindness, but you still want to take my mommy with you?”

“If we don’t deal with the shadow, when he returns to the tunnel, both you and your mother will die,” Chen Ge said plainly. The boy’s mind was filled with resentment and vengeance, so the normal persuasion that Chen Ge used on other ghosts would be pointless. Thus, Chen Ge changed his angle and decided to go around this the most straightforward way—to convince the boy with the facts.

“I will not force you to make the choice, but I hope that you’ll really take into consideration your mother and your current situation.” With pain in his voice, Chen Ge empathized with their pain. “I believe you are unwilling to experience that deep despair again, right?”

“Impossible, she will die if she leaves this tunnel. They will all die.” The appendages slashed the dead bodies hanging from the ceiling. The pained souls wailed, but their spirits were wound inside the spider web—they were unable to escape. The boy could be quite scary if he wanted to.

“Instead of waiting for death, I still think it’s better to grasp your fate with your hands.” Chen Ge walked past the boy to address the woman. “Your child wants to protect you, and you also want to protect your child; neither of you can suffer the pain of loss again. I understand that, so no matter the choice either of you make, I will accept it.”

The dangling bodies swayed as they cried out in pain. This continued for several minutes until the woman smiled at Chen Ge and walked toward her boy.

Like a loving mother, she reached out to hug the boy’s head. The boy’s eyes, which were filled with hatred, suddenly softened, and his large appendages were pulled together. The scary lines on the spider body also stopped bleeding.

The woman whispered something into the boy’s ear before letting go and walking out of the tunnel.

Chen Ge did not pry because he said that he would accept any decision that they made. Catching up to the woman, the expression on Chen Ge’s face finally softened.

This three-star scenario should be successful after bringing away the mother of the strongest monster with me, but the completion rate will probably be really low. I should come back if I have the chance to give the mother and son their deserved reunion. For now, I should focus on dealing with the shadow.