Neither Gao Ming nor Number Two knew what had suddenly driven the shadow mad. The curse that had erupted moments earlier had evaporated a vast swath of the Fog Sea. If it had struck an actual person, there probably would not have been so much as a bone fragment left.
There was no getting back the phone he had used for so long. Even if the shadow returned it, Gao Ming would not dare use it. That thing had been tainted with more curses than he had seen in the first half of his life.
Whale Song echoed through the deep world. The clay sculptures of children on the island appeared, then crumbled, as though the humanity and malice within the shadow were fighting each other.
After a long while, Gao Ming's phone was crushed between the two forces. In the end, the shadow never answered the call, nor did he say a single word to the person on the other end.
His eyes were filled with all sorts of complicated emotions, but hatred alone was absent. Even if he had killed those nine children back then and the Nether Fetus had become human, could he really have possessed everything that Haunted House Boss had?
What the shadow had been searching for had actually been beside him all along.
As he sifted through the clutter spat out of the whale's mouth, a battered sheet of drawing paper caught the shadow's eye. It depicted a bright, sunny day, with a young child posing for a photograph with his parents in front of the Haunted House. The child's shadow stood quietly behind a tree, watching everything with envy.
That was how the drawing had originally looked, but one part had later been altered. Someone had added a plump whale beside the shadow.