Chapter 026: The Organ Embedded in the Door

It was during this movement that Li Tianque sensed something amiss.

He realized that there was something very odd about this “person.” He was hiding behind the kitchen door, but given the current angle of the door, only a very slim person could possibly conceal themselves there.

Yet the figure who had just escaped and was now hiding was clearly not that thin.

Looking more closely, Li Tianque discovered the truth: this figure wasn’t merely hiding—they had become fused with the kitchen door.

On the surface of the door were several fragments of clothing and bits that resembled arms, as if a person had been embedded right into the door itself!

Seeing this, Li Tianque understood at once what kind of ghostly thing he was facing.

There could be no doubt: he had encountered once again one of those death phantoms!

Li Tianque’s heart skipped a beat. Though he had already come across such phantoms twice before, the sight still made his nerves fray.

These creatures were simply too bizarre, and seeing them display the deceased’s state so vividly was something no one could bear to look at directly.

What on earth were they?

These death phantoms seemed to foreshadow the cause of death, yet they also felt like sentient beings with a will of their own, making them utterly unfathomable.

What made Li Tianque’s blood run cold was the fact that he was the only living person in this room; so whose phantom was it that he was seeing now?

Mustering his courage, Li Tianque slowly approached the apparition.

He did not do this out of recklessness, but rather because his previous experiences had taught him that, terrifying as these phantoms appeared, they never directly harmed him.

In fact, they seemed somewhat afraid of him.

Li Tianque dashed toward the kitchen, and to his astonishment, the phantom retreated at an equally rapid pace, passing straight through the wall and flying outside the building.

Witnessing this, Li Tianque suddenly recalled the state of the phantoms he had seen before and immediately formed a hypothesis:

These phantoms always maintained a fixed distance from their original bodies!

That would explain why, when he saw little Dong’s phantom jump from upstairs, it was actually because Dong himself was climbing the stairs at the time.

When he saw the apparition slowly appear and rise while riding the elevator, it was also because the phantom remained at a fixed distance from Dong.

The same applied the second time, when he saw Wu Xiaonan’s phantom. When Wu Xiaonan and Hu Jiangsheng approached, her phantom retreated outside.

Back then, he had thought the apparition had vanished, but in truth, it had simply moved outside due to the distance.

This realization filled Li Tianque with even greater dread.

Because he knew all too well: if his hypothesis was correct, then the phantom that kept fleeing from him could very well be his own phantom. In other words...

He was the next to die?

At this thought, Li Tianque rushed to the window, flung it open, and looked outside.

Sure enough, the phantom was floating in midair, its vacant eyes fixed in his direction.

From a distance, he could see the phantom’s head was tilted at an odd angle, its posture strange and stiff, with no trace of blood, but its body rigid.

It wore the very same floral shirt that Li Tianque had left hanging out to dry. The height, the hairstyle—everything matched him exactly!

My God! This really is my own phantom!

Li Tianque felt his heart leap into his throat. He had never imagined something like this would finally befall him. Was he really about to meet an untimely end?

No! No! I don’t want to die—not yet! I absolutely must not die!

With these thoughts, Li Tianque dashed back to his bedroom, leapt onto the balcony, and prepared to grab the floral shirt from the clothesline and throw it away.

But just as he was about to do so, he suddenly froze.

He had noticed that a tile on the balcony was loose. If he’d hurriedly reached for the shirt, he might have stepped right onto it.

If all of this happened, he would have slipped from that spot, and his neck would have been caught by the wire used for hanging socks below—possibly strangling him to death.

The image flashed through his mind like an electric shock. He stopped at once, his body swaying, and quickly grabbed the edge of the windowsill to steady himself.

In the living room, the phantom had drawn closer, its shape blurring in the light, its empty gaze locked on him.

Li Tianque glanced at it, his heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst from his chest.

Lowering his head, he pried up the loose tile and threw it aside, then stepped carefully onto the balcony and took down the floral shirt.

Next, he grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the shirt to shreds, tossing every piece into the trash.

By destroying the shirt he wore, the phantom’s appearance would become different from his own—perhaps that would stop it!

So Li Tianque hoped.

But disappointment followed. The floral shirt vanished from the apparition, only to be replaced by another garment.

Now Li Tianque truly felt desperate. Was he supposed to destroy every piece of clothing he owned?

But even that would likely be useless. Simply erasing the clothes from the phantom seemed utterly incapable of averting his fate. What could he possibly do to save his own life?

Help...

Would anyone save me...

When fear reaches its absolute limit, it can turn into rage.

Li Tianque had reached the pinnacle of terror—and now, he was no longer afraid. He glared menacingly at the phantom, gnashing his teeth.

“I don’t care what you are—just you wait! I’ll make you disappear if it’s the last thing I do!”

The phantom’s face remained expressionless, its lifeless eyes still fixed on Li Tianque. Now it wore the white shirt he currently had on.

Li Tianque stared in horror, his throat trembling.

He was both terrified and furious.

He had already shredded five or six of his shirts, yet he was still powerless to stop this dreadful apparition from appearing.

No matter what he changed, the phantom would not be altered; it simply hovered there, as if it had always been a decoration suspended in the air.

What now?

What could he possibly do?

Was he truly doomed to die, with no hope of escape?

Li Tianque finally broke down completely. He studied the death phantom before him—now bare-chested—and saw that its eyes bulged wide, the eyeballs protruding, as if it were a goldfish being squeezed by an invisible hand.

Bubbles rose painfully from its mouth; its body was soaked and dripping with water or some other liquid, as though it had just crawled from a pool.

This time, the phantom had turned into the drowned dead.