Chapter 1057 - Aichmophobia [2 in 1] (1/2)

Chen Ge wished to go to warn the middle-aged man, but it was already too late. The cats’ meowing grew louder and louder. He hurriedly went to hide in the nearby stairwell. The elevator stopped on this floor. There were no footsteps or the even sound of breathing. Moments later, there came the sound of knocking on the door. The knocking appeared to happen out of thin air. There was no precursor to it at all. It was like the person teleported to the middle-aged man’s house and tapped on his door.

“The middle-aged man might reveal my presence to him.”

The knocking was incredibly loud, but it did not seem that no one came to open the door. Chen Ge was currently standing on the steps. Even without his power of sight, he was exceptionally calm. In those circumstances, he had chosen not to run but to stay and observe. Ying Chen did not know the situation that he was in, so the situation was temporarily still beneficial to him. The knocking continued for quite some time before the door finally opened. The middle-aged man’s voice came from down the corridor.

“Ying Chen? Why have you come to knock on my door? Is it because it’s time to pay the building maintenance fee again?” There was a trace of barely hidden annoyance in the middle-aged man’s tone. It was clear that he did not take Chen Ge’s warning to heart.

“My younger brother, Ying Tong, has sneaked out from home. He still has not come home yet, so I’m very worried. When I came up the stairs earlier, I heard there was someone moving on the floor, so I thought about coming here to ask. Have you seen my younger brother?” Ying Chen’s voice sounded incredibly young. He appeared to be much younger in this world behind the door compared to the real Ying Chen in real life.

The world behind the door was built based on the door pusher’s memory. In other words, a deduction could be made that this younger version of Ying Chen had left the deepest impression on Ying Tong. Therefore, Ying Chen had done something to Ying Tong when they were both very young, and that incident had been a traumatic experience for Ying Tong. It seared a part of his mind, and he would always remember his elder brother’s voice from when that incident happened.

“You have to be more careful since he is a blind kid. It is your fault that you did not close the door and watch over him carefully, and now that he is missing, why have you come to bother me?” The middle-aged man’s attitude could not have been worse. From the way he treated Chen Ge, one could see that he was not a friendly guy.

“I’m so sorry. Here are some date cakes that my relative from my hometown sent me. I hope you will accept them. If you happen to see my younger brother, would you please come and tell me? He has extremely poor eyesight, and I am so afraid that some accident might happen to him.”

“Date cakes? Why are they so red? Have they been stuffed with food dye?”

“No, they are made from pure natural ingredient, and the taste is exquisite. Please do give them a try. If you think they taste good, I still have some back at my home.” Ying Chen was very passionate. So far, he had acted as the middle-aged man had described him to be, a perfectly kind and innocent young man.

“The taste is indeed not bad, although it is quite different from the ones I bought from the street. Okay, if I ever see your little brother, I will be sure to notify you.” The middle-aged man spoke with his mouth full. It sounded like he was munching on something. Then, the door closed.

“The middle-aged man did not mention anything about me, but the problem is, Ying Chen did not enter his home, so he should be standing right outside his door right at this moment.” The sound of the elevator opening came from the corridor. Chen Ge planned to leave, but at that moment, he heard the meowing of the cats. The sound came from the middle of the corridor. “Ying Chen did not get on the elevator!”

He leaned against the wall, and Chen Ge hurried down the stairs. He did not dare make too loud a noise, but because he was blind, he was unable to move as fast as he wished. If he accidentally tripped or made any noise, he would certainly be captured by Ying Chen. For now, he was unable to predict where Ying Chen was. The cats kept on meowing, so that could only mean that the madman was coming toward the staircase.

“Hey!” The front door was opened again, and the middle-aged man’s voice came out from the corridor. “Why are there so many letters inside this bag of date cakes?”

“Those were addressed to me from my relative. I am so sorry. I forgot to take them out from the bag.” Ying Chen’s voice came from directly above Chen Ge. He had already entered the stairwell, but he was on the fourth floor, while Chen Ge had just slithered to the third floor. Chen Ge was covered in a sheen of cold sweat. He held his breath and froze where he was. “I will take the letters with me. Remember, if you see my little brother, please do come and tell me.”

The cats had stopped meowing. When Ying Chen’s voice began again, he had already left the staircase and walked to the middle-aged man’s door.

“Okay.” After saying that, the middle-aged man added not long after that, “Why do you keep trying to peer into my house? Are you suspecting that I am hiding your little brother?”

“It’s not that. I merely thought that…” The voices from the corridor suddenly stopped, but they were quickly followed by the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground.

“Ying Chen has made his move on the middle-aged man?” Chen Ge gritted his teeth. The man was swift and cruel with his actions. He did not hesitate for even a second. This kind of enemy was very scary and dangerous. “I have to leave this building as soon as I can. I’d better stay away from him before I recover my power of sight.” Chen Ge did not know what kind of power Ying Chen possessed, and he had no idea what kind of world this place was. His understanding and conception of the world was not complete just based on his senses of hearing, smell, and touch. He did not dare stay in the same place for too long. Chen Ge picked up his pace and hurried down the stairs.

“The middle-aged man is definitely a dead man. If Ying Chen mistakes him as the intruder, it’ll be perfect. But with Ying Chen’s intellect, he will have more suspicion. I must be prepared for the worst. It is not yet time to lower my guard.”

With his hands on the wall, Chen Ge walked down the stairs while counting in his mind the number of floors that he had already descended. “Assuming it’s like real life, Ying Chen’s family lives on the seventh floor, so I should have reached the ground floor now.”

There was a landing between the stairs connecting the two floors. It had been consistent so far as Chen Ge went down the building. But once Chen Ge moved to the assumed ground floor, he did not step on a level land, but instead, there were more stairs!

“Is there a basement in the building where Ying Chen’s family live?” Chen Ge rummaged through his mind, and he came to a horrifying conclusion. He remembered very clearly that the building that Ying Chen showed him definitely did not have a basement. “This world behind the door is not the same as the one in real life! Damn it!”

Chen Ge was unable to see anything. But Chen Ge had not been discovered by Ying Chen. Other than the help of the cats, there was another reason behind this, and that was because he had been to this building before, and there was a basic layout of its location formed in his mind. By comparing the map with the one in his mind, Chen Ge would not be completely lost. But now that he realized the map in his mind was not one hundred percent identical to this building behind the door, the fear that he had toward the unknown was instantly amplified.

“Should I continue to move down the stairs or knock on the doors of the tenants to ask for help? Another issue is that this building does not have a basement in its real life counterpart, but this staircase continues to move down, so one cannot help but wonder, where does this lead?”

He should have been on the ground floor, but the staircase kept on going. Chen Ge did not know wherein the problem lay. Why would there be an extra basement in this building behind the door?

“Could there be a reflection of the upper seven floors and lower seven floors? Just like how the world behind the door is the reflection of the world outside the door? The top seven floors are filled with normal tenants, but the lower seven floors are inhabited by Specters and ghosts?”

Standing in the stairwell, Chen Ge moved several steps down into the basement. He did not feel any discomfort or feel as if anything around him had changed. The surroundings appeared to have remained the same as well.

“This should not be a reflection of the seven floors aboveground, so is there a possibility that this is an endless loop, Penrose stairs so to speak? The ground floor of the building leads to the top floor of the building, and the top floor of the building is connected to the ground floor. For a blind person, repeating the action of going up and down the stairs will evoke an especially strong sense of despair in one’s mind. It will seem like there is no end, and one was just making a futile struggle.”

Normally, a person would not have this kind of experience, but it was different for Chen Ge. After all, not that long ago, he had done a nightmare mission at Jiang Yuan Apartments that required him to blindfold himself to get up the building. That had given him a taste of how a blind man would ascend the stairs of a building. Darkness, loneliness, and a fear of the unknown festered at the bottom of a person’s heart. They would combine to form a demon that represented fear, and the demon would slowly swallow one whole.

“I cannot keep going. This world behind the door is different from its layout in real life. This means that I need to be extra careful.” Chen Ge retreated to the place that he believed was the ‘ground floor’. With his hands on the wall, he moved down the corridor. He searched the whole floor and, he came to a very despairing conclusion.

“There is no exit. I cannot leave this place.”

Despair started to grow inside his heart. Chen Ge realized that he had seriously underestimated the difficulty of this world behind the door.

“Am I experiencing what Ying Tong once experienced? There is an exit to this building, but for him, the building is akin to his prison. Or rather, it’s as if the building is essentially his whole world. He is unable to escape from this place.”

Biting the tip of his tongue, Chen Ge used pain to force himself to calm down.

“Looks like, if there is any hope to break this endless cycle, it will be with Ying Tong. He is the door pusher of this door, so he should know how to ‘open one’s eyes’. Therefore, I need to find Ying Tong before Ying Chen manages to catch up to me!”