The lure of home

Fear had four stages, and the scenes visible at each stage were different.

In the first stage, where Gao Ming had been earlier, what he saw was no different from reality. The deeper he sank into fear, the more absurd and horrifying the scenes became.

To save the other members of the Investigation team, Gao Ming had willingly let himself feel fear. At last, he reached the depths of the shadows and saw what his teammates were seeing.

The deformed parents had fused into a terrifying monster. Gao Ming did not know whether the child in 405 had imagined it or the investigators had conjured it under some form of psychological suggestion.

As a game designer, he could be certain that Omen-level games contained no actual Ghosts. The terrifying monster before him was most likely a manifestation of fear.

The game "Phobia" had a rule: when a group fell into a particular fear and reached a shared understanding of it, the thing they feared could become real.

Fighting a monster born from fear like this required absolute reason and courage.

At the slightest display of fear, the monster would seize on that weakness and gain all the terrifying abilities the players imagined it possessed.

When facing fear, the players really had only one enemy: themselves.

That was precisely why Gao Ming, after giving himself ample psychological reinforcement, had chosen to confront the monster with the most brutal violence possible.

"Don't be afraid!"

Gao Ming wanted to break the other investigators' cycle of fear so they would stop feeding the monster. Words alone could hardly convince them, so he chose action.

The parents whom the child saw as volatile, dangerous, and full of aggression now had Gao Ming strangling their necks.

He ignored the blade in the woman's hand and the man's frenzied blows. Like a reef in the ocean, he could not be shaken.

"For a Psychological Counselor, fear is the most familiar emotion, and the one that most needs to be controlled. Only by grasping fear can you enter the darkness deep within the human heart."

The chain formed from Zhao Xi's memories and obsession dug into flesh. The man's neck had already been deformed, but Gao Ming showed no intention of stopping. His body seemed embedded in the monster, and now it was the monster that kept trying to dislodge him.

"Selfish, violent, blaming society for every mistake, filled with vicious resentment, even taking your anger out on your own child—you don't deserve to be parents." Gao Ming pulled both hands backward, veins bulging along his arms. "No one will still fear you once they see what you really are."

Gao Ming seemed to be speaking both to the monster and to Zhu Miaomiao.

The atmosphere of fear inside the building abruptly dissipated. Once the rookie investigators left, the monster visibly shrank, and Zhu Miaomiao felt her body gradually recovering.

She tightened her grip on the Fire Axe. Having rushed into burning buildings to save people many times, she slowly overcame her fear of Ghosts.

Just as clarity returned to her eyes, she saw a barbed blood vessel extending from beneath the monster's huge, bloated body. Its tip was embedded in her head.

Zhu Miaomiao swung the Fire Axe, trying to sever the vessel, but physical attacks did nothing.

She simply ignored it, raised her axe, and charged at the monster.

Once she truly overcame her fear, the blood vessel withered on its own and fell to the ground.

Having lost its last "supplier" of fear, the deformed male-and-female monster screamed. Gao Ming's chain strangled it into two pieces, and it finally dissolved into countless red droplets of blood that the chain absorbed.

"Thank you for coming to save me." Having narrowly escaped death, Zhu Miaomiao thanked Gao Ming with utmost sincerity. The moment this young man appeared before her would likely remain etched in her heart forever.

"Where are the others?" Gao Ming lowered his sleeves and looked around. He had completely left reality behind and entered the deepest shadows of fear, yet he could see no teammates other than Zhu Miaomiao.

"They seem to have escaped the building."

"They left this building?" Realizing something was wrong, Gao Ming turned and ran downstairs. "Stay close to me."

"Team Leader Bai Qiao is with them. They should be fine, shouldn't they?" Picking up the Fire Axe, Zhu Miaomiao followed Gao Ming downstairs without hesitation. She trusted him completely.

After they killed the deformed parents manifested from fear, the shadows shrouding Building 4 began to fade. This game was different from the others. It seemed to be actively rejecting Gao Ming, trying to send him and Zhu Miaomiao out.

This abnormal situation only heightened Gao Ming's concern. Without pausing for a moment, he raced down the stairs.

Reaching the ground floor, Gao Ming kicked open the stairwell door. Shadows and black fog shrouded the street outside. What appeared before him was an utterly twisted world.

As the investigators infected with the phobia scattered and fled, the game "Phobia" seemed to have spread. The area covered by the shadows was growing.

"Stay here." Gao Ming tried entering the street, moving through the shadows. "Minlong Street ends at Lijing Street. The Lijing Apartments, where I live, are right there. Does this Shadow World correspond exactly to reality? Is the Shadow World another reality? A bizarre reality that's already gone mad?"

Gao Ming had read some articles about parallel worlds, but the current situation could not be explained so simply. Mysteries appeared one after another. He not only had to deal with disasters, but also run desperately forward in pursuit of the truth.

Walking slowly along the street, Gao Ming spotted a tattered Investigation Bureau uniform on the ground.

He picked up the uniform and noticed a child with deathly pale skin peeking out from a nearby street corner, half his face visible.

The child waved at Gao Ming in apparent fear, warning him not to come closer.

"Is this child the source of 'Phobia'?"

A source that could move freely gave Gao Ming a headache. He was not confident he could catch the boy in the Shadow World.

"I know you've always lived in a very oppressive environment, constantly on edge, afraid to put a foot wrong. If you want a lovely, warm, harmonious new family, you can come to me. I have lots of parents, and they're all very nice." With his sleeves covering the chain, Gao Ming took the ugly Cloth Doll from inside his clothes. "I live on the fourth floor of Building 4 in the Lijing Apartments. You're welcome to visit anytime."

Holding the Cloth Doll by one arm, Gao Ming smiled and gently waved it. "Everyone there is really nice. There's an old man who bravely helps others, a young guy in a raincoat who does cosplay, a middle-aged man who loves extreme sports, and more cake than you could ever eat, and..."

Before Gao Ming could finish, the boy vanished. The surrounding shadows rapidly receded.

Rather than saying Gao Ming had cleared the game, it would be more accurate to say the game had kicked him out.

"This Omen-level game seems to have changed because of that little boy's appearance." Not a trace of friendliness remained on Gao Ming's face. "Could the boy from 405 be a player rather than a Ghost? After becoming the first to clear the game, did he choose to stay in it and live in the Shadow World?"

A faint light appeared at the end of the street. Zhu Miaomiao braved the rain to reach Gao Ming's side. "It looks like we survived the Anomaly Event! But I haven't seen anyone else!"

"Isn't it written in your Anomaly Event response Investigation Rules? If you leave the site of an event without permission, you can easily get lost." Gao Ming let the rain fall on him. The other Investigation Bureau members were trapped in the Shadow World. They should all still be alive, but they would have to struggle to survive there.

"Lishan is the most densely populated and chaotic part of the Old City District, and it also has the highest frequency of Anomaly Events. If I turn the Lishan Housing Complex in the Shadow World into a stronghold for the living, I should be able to save quite a few people in the great disaster to come."

Standing between the two worlds, Gao Ming gazed at the vast, sinister complex of dilapidated buildings. "Making this happen will come at an enormous cost, but if something is right, you should stick with it. Damn, Qin Tian really is a good judge of character. I'm too much of a fucking bleeding heart."

(End of chapter)