Prison Gate

The Nail Man Zhang Chen had sliced apart slowly sank into the floor beneath his feet. The shaking of the house nearly knocked Zhang Chen to the ground. Two minutes later, the tremors gradually weakened.

"Creak, creak, creak." Every nail in the room began to move. One, two... a total of twenty Nail Men grew out of the floor, walls, and ceiling.

"H-How am I supposed to deal with this?!" Zhang Chen looked at the many Nail Men before him. "One was already enough, and now there are twenty at once. Even if I risk my life to kill all twenty, what if another twenty come?"

Zhang Chen could not think of a solution, nor did he have time to think. The twenty Nail Men moved, the nails on their hands extending half a meter and taking on the same appearance as Zhang Chen's. They charged at him together. At the same time, the nails in the room began growing from the floor and walls, leaving Zhang Chen surrounded on both sides.

With nowhere to retreat, Zhang Chen crossed his hands in front of him and prepared to fight. The three closest Nail Men arrived, attacking from his left, right, and above.

"Above first." With a thought, Zhang Chen dragged the Nail Man overhead straight down and slammed it heavily onto the floor. With a flick of his right hand, five sharp nails sliced the fallen Nail Man open from its head all the way down to its stomach, splitting it in two. It was unquestionably dead.

The Nail Men on either side had already reached him. Zhang Chen twisted aside and dodged the claw strike from the left. Facing the attack from the right, he neither retreated nor evaded. Opening his mouth, he swallowed the Nail Man before it could pull back its hand.

A notification sounded.

Consumed an extremely minute fragment of an evil ghost's remains. Saturation gained: 1%. No skill acquired. Current saturation: 96%.

"Huh? Only a 1% increase. Still, it's useful." Zhang Chen was somewhat surprised. The Nail Man's strength seemed disproportionate to the energy he received.

After swallowing it, Zhang Chen turned around. The sharp nails of the Nail Man on his left were already before him. He could only barely step back. With a slash, the clothing beneath Zhang Chen's neck was cut open, drawing a little blood.

Before it could withdraw its hand, Zhang Chen grabbed its missed right wrist with his left hand. With a swipe of his right claws, he cut it cleanly in half at the waist and swallowed it in one bite.

Consumed an extremely minute fragment of an evil ghost's remains. Saturation gained: 1%. No skill acquired. Current saturation: 97%.

However, in a corner Zhang Chen had no time to notice, three more Nail Men slowly emerged from the wall.

Cold sweat ran down Zhang Chen's left temple. He had just killed three, yet another seven had reached him.

"This can't go on. Think, Zhang Chen, hurry and think! What do I do? What do I do?" Zhang Chen's mind spun rapidly, but before he could think further, several streaks of red light were already closing in.

Behind him was a mass of long, sharp nails, like a forest of thorns. Retreat was impossible.

Telekinesis activated. Zhang Chen immediately spread his telekinesis over the four Nail Men closest to him on his left and in front of him, restraining their movements at once. He was just about to turn right and face the attacks of the other three Nail Men.

Suddenly, a buzz rang in his ears. These Nail Men were not something ordinary people could compare with. Restraining four in a row, on top of his previous use of telekinesis, made Zhang Chen's head spin. Yet the three flashes of cold light before him were already close.

"Damn it, I can't dodge them." Zhang Chen used all his strength just to barely evade the first attack. But the next two strikes landed directly on his body. The second claw left a full centimeter-deep gash across Zhang Chen's chest, while the third pierced into the left side of his abdomen.

"Pfft!" Zhang Chen spat out a mouthful of blood.

The dizziness, coupled with the tearing pain in his abdomen, left Zhang Chen unable to stand. Raising his head, he watched the dozens of Nail Men approaching him while the Nail Man before him raised both claws toward his throat.

"I'm sorry... you... Wang Yizhi." Zhang Chen knew he was doomed. His final gaze fell on Wang Yizhi, lying quietly on the operating table. Tears streamed from his eyes.

However, just as the sharp nails touched Zhang Chen's neck, the Nail Man suddenly stopped moving. Then, starting from its fingertips, it slowly turned into dust. Before long, its entire body had become powder and fallen to the ground.

"What's going on?" Zhang Chen had felt his neck was about to be pierced, but there had been no follow-up attack. Opening his eyes and looking at the Nail Man that had turned to dust, Zhang Chen was deeply shocked. Then he saw a familiar figure.

Standing not far from Zhang Chen was the Faceless Man who had watched him outside the bank a few days ago and warned him of danger two days earlier.

The Faceless Man's appearance was clearly an unexpected variable. The dozens of Nail Men all turned their attention to him at once, instantly abandoning Zhang Chen.

"Yaaah!" The Nail Men made sounds for the first time, their cries shrill, as though they hated the Faceless Man to the bone.

"Little brother, I can hold out for no more than three minutes. You need to think of a way within those three minutes, or there will be no escape from ruin." A voice entered Zhang Chen's mind directly.

Zhang Chen looked at the motionless Faceless Man, his heart filled with gratitude. But the first thing he needed to do now was get up from the floor. Five nail holes had been punched through the left side of his abdomen, blood spilling out, though the dizziness had eased considerably. He simply could not use telekinesis again.

"Ah!" Zhang Chen looked at Wang Yizhi lying on the operating table with her eyes shut and began supporting himself as he slowly stood up. "I still have to take you traveling."

After getting to his feet, although blood was still flowing from his abdomen, he felt much better. He swept his gaze over the situation around him and was stunned. Zhang Chen discovered that although he had killed three Nail Men earlier, there were still exactly twenty of them now—not one more, not one less. If he had truly kept killing mindlessly, he would still have died in the end.

Furthermore, Zhang Chen noticed that every Nail Man that approached the Faceless Man gradually disintegrated. Each time one vanished, a small part of the Faceless Man's body disappeared as well. At this rate, even lasting three minutes would be a problem.

"Damn it, think! This thing's true body has to be here somewhere, but where could it be hiding? Inside the walls? Under the floor? Or is one of these twenty Nail Men the real body? No, that's too risky." Zhang Chen scanned the entire room, which was filled everywhere with nails of different lengths and thicknesses.

"Wait. If I were it, where would I hide my true body? Sis said this guy was cremated after he died, so what remained should have been a pile of ashes. Could ashes be disguised as nails?" Zhang Chen stared at the nails filling the room, and a bold idea formed in his mind.

"I'll gamble one more time. I refuse to believe my luck is that bad." Zhang Chen began moving, though his wound made him slow.

"If it's disguised as a nail, then it must be far away from us. It's there."

Zhang Chen looked toward a corner of the room farthest from him. Sure enough, the nails there were much longer than those elsewhere.

After sweeping aside the nails blocking his path with his claws, Zhang Chen drew closer and closer to the corner.

At that moment, the Nail Men constantly attacking the Faceless Man noticed Zhang Chen's movements. Eight of them rushed toward him at once. Yet before they had taken even two steps, their bodies disintegrated.

Zhang Chen looked gratefully at the Faceless Man, but his condition was dire. Half his body and his left foot had already disappeared. There was probably little time left.

Covering the wound at his waist, Zhang Chen finally reached the corner. Within the cluster of long, sharp nails, he saw a white pointed object, paler in color and somewhat different in shape from the surrounding nails.

"I won the bet. Haha, that's it." The nails on Zhang Chen's right hand extended again, this time reaching nearly a meter long, and he swung them toward the white pointed object. Then a sudden change occurred. The nails around the white object moved like living creatures, abruptly extending and shooting toward Zhang Chen.

The moment Zhang Chen sensed the change, he crossed his hands and cut apart the incoming nails. Even so, one of them pierced straight through his left shoulder blade.

Zhang Chen's left arm instantly drooped, unable to move. Moreover, the severed nails began growing rapidly again and were about to reach his eyes.

"Roar!" Zhang Chen used all his strength to open his mouth, swallowing every nail fired at him and biting them apart. Every use of his mouth's ability placed an enormous burden on his body. That last use tore open the wound in his lower left abdomen even further, and the pain made Zhang Chen spit out another mouthful of blood.

Holding on entirely through willpower, Zhang Chen did not wait for the severed nails to continue growing. He grabbed the white pointed object and yanked it out, then staggered back two steps, leaving the Nail Growth zone.

When he turned around, the Faceless Man had been reduced to only a head. After seeing the object in Zhang Chen's hand, he immediately stopped resisting and was torn to pieces by four Nail Men.

"Ah!" A hellish roar echoed through the entire basement. The twenty Nail Men surged madly toward Zhang Chen, while the nails behind him grew at lightning speed, seeking to pierce his body.

Zhang Chen could no longer use his mouth's devouring ability, but his bite strength remained. Half a year ago, he had already been able to bite through an iron pipe in a single bite. Now, he was far stronger than before.

Zhang Chen placed the white pointed object in his mouth and bit down hard. With a crack, the entire white object shattered.

"Eeeah!" Wails rose from the mouths of the twenty Nail Men. All the nails in the basement began turning into fragments and gathering toward the center of the basement. Before long, a young man in his twenties, about 1.7 meters tall with messy hair, stood there. A faint bullet hole could still be seen in his forehead.

There was no need to say who this man was. He was the infamous serial killer—Yang Zi from back then. Yang Zi's eyes were filled with unwillingness as he glared fixedly at Zhang Chen, still intending to come over and kill the defenseless Zhang Chen. But at that moment, behind Yang Zi, a blood-red gate appeared out of thin air as though space itself had twisted.

After the gate opened, hundreds of black hands suddenly reached out from within, wrapping tightly around Yang Zi and dragging him into the gate.

Yang Zi struggled desperately, but it was like trying to shake a tree with an ant's strength. Amid his unwilling screams, his entire body was dragged inside.

At that moment, a thin red beam suddenly shot out from within the gate and landed on Zhang Chen. The wounds on his body began healing at a visible rate. After he had recovered, Zhang Chen suddenly felt a trace of burning heat on the right side of his chest, but it vanished in an instant. Then the gate slammed shut and disappeared into the void.

On a rooftop two streets away from the white house, the hawk-nosed police officer wore an expression of disbelief. He muttered, "A mid-level evil ghost actually managed to summon the Prison Gate. Looks like this guy was far crueler than the information gathered by the police station suggested. Who knows how many people he slaughtered? Even many high-level things can't summon the Prison Gate."

"I didn't expect this kid to have some skill. He picked up a huge advantage. This time, the favor I owed Puhu can be considered repaid." With that, the police officer did not linger and left.