“He is a literal representation of ‘as drunk as a pile of mud’.” Chen Ge stared at the slowly approaching monster. He pressed on the recorder and called Xu Yin’s name. To his surprise, Xu Yin did not show up, but the whole apartment started to bleed, and small cracks appeared on the wall. After communicating with Xu Yin, Chen Ge found that he was stopped by some unknown force. He was trying to break through it, but he needed some time.

  “When I entered the door behind the underground morgue, I ran into the same situation, but this place is no match at all for Doctor Gao’s underground morgue.” Placing the recorder back in his bag, Chen Ge took out the hammer and stood in the corridor. “There is no need to run and hide.”


  The scary-looking hammer grated on the peeling wall. When the monster got close enough, he aimed right at the monster’s arm. The bottle that grew out of the arm shattered, the glass shards flew everywhere, and some embedded into the monster’s body.

  “Can we communicate?”


  The monster could not feel pain. Even though his arm was broken, he moved faster. After he got close to Chen Ge, he reached out his other arm to grab Chen Ge’s head, trying to slam into Chen Ge.

  “Looks like the thing is not sentient.”


  Holding the hammer with both hands, Chen Ge swung it vertically on the monster’s chin. The already malformed head was almost blown off the rest of its body. It was attached to the neck by a thin layer of flesh. The smell of alcohol thickened. After the monster was injured, it became uglier and more aggressive. While Chen Ge was contemplating how to deal with this monster, he felt a chill coming from behind him. He turned his head slowly.

  The rental doors on the side had been opened, and several twisted looking monsters appeared silently behind Chen Ge. They were very close to him!

  “The original tenants behind the door will not make any sound no matter what happens. They can hear me, but I can’t hear them.” He thought about it and realized that was exactly what Jiang Ming was experiencing. He was deaf, so no matter what other people said, he could not hear them, but if he made any sound, the people around him would react to him immediately. “So, I am taking Jiang Ming’s perspective in this world?”


  This was the first time that Chen Ge had encountered such a strange world behind the door. He felt troubled. The enemies could approach him silently, and they were hard to kill, but if he made the smallest sound, the enemies could hear him.

  “I’ll deal with this one before me first.” After the drunkard was injured, his face had become as red as blood, and thick capillaries had puffed up on his face. He became more violent. The arm attached to the bottle waved around, and Chen Ge realized that the arm would join itself to whatever it came in contact with.

  “The world behind the door is weaved from Jiang Ming’s memory, so this man should be an important character in his memory. A violent drunkard that exploded when resisted and would grab anything nearby to start attacking.” Chen Ge looked at the drunkard and stared into that ugly face. “This is such a horrible human being!”


  Raising the hammer, Chen Ge aimed it heavily at the monster’s head. The hammer sank into the monster’s shoulder, and he gave him another kick. Chen Ge gave no chance for the monster to react. He hit him repeatedly. “If he can still stand up after this, I’ll have to consider something else.”


  The drunkard collapsed on the ground. His face became redder like it was about to explode, and his body was still expanding. “If this drunkard is the boy’s father, then in the young boy’s memory, his father was someone unbeatable and unshakeable.”


  Chen Ge turned back to look. The neighbors all looked strange with twisted appearances. Their ears and mouths were comically enormous. Depending on the boy’s memory of them, each of them had a special trait that separated them apart from the rest. One reeked of cheap perfume, while another had short limbs and a round belly. These neighbors were distinct from each other, but their reaction when they saw Chen Ge fight with the drunkard was surprisingly similar. They stood at their doors, peeling their ears to listen and whispering to each other. They would only turn Chen Ge’s way when Chen Ge made some noise. If Chen Ge kept quiet, they appeared too lazy to give him any attention.

  “I wonder if these neighbors can be killed.” Being stared at by the group of monsters, Chen Ge felt pressure. The scariest part about the scenario was that he could not hear the sound of these monsters approaching. He could turn around to a wall of faces looking at him. “I can’t hear their voices. This world is too quiet for me.”


  The drunkard was most likely Jiang Ming’s biological father. He was very hard to kill, but the neighbors might be different. Chen Ge’s plan was to first kill the drunkard and then massacre the rest of the neighbors before he could explore the rest of the place in peace. The plan was simple and direct.

  He raised the hammer and entered the room that was closest to him. Inside was a middle-aged man wearing a tank top. His limbs appeared to have atrophied; they were at least half the size of normal limbs. In contrast, his belly was bulging, filled with fat. There was a thin, wiry old woman in the room as well. The old woman wandered around the room as if possessed, cleaning this and that. There were several plastic tubes that were stuck into her body, and the tubes were joined to some medicine bottles that were collected in a dirty corner of the room.

  A kipper[1]?

  The memory world of Jiang Ming was different from a real adult world. It was absurd and strange. Chen Ge could not be sure that he had read this situation correctly. The neighbors were monsters born out of his twisted memory, so Chen Ge did not need to hold back. The hammer slammed heavily. The injured middle-aged man crawled into the room. He grabbed the plastic tubes that were originally placed in the medicine bottles and started to suck. The old woman who bustled in the room shrank before Chen Ge’s eyes. After a while, the man stood up again. He waved his short limbs as if taunting Chen Ge.

  These things can’t be killed, or at least, the hammer is not strong enough to kill them.

  The drunkard had almost fully recovered, and he was becoming more aggressive than before. Chen Ge hammered the man several more times before he leaped over the drunkard and headed to the second floor. After learning from his previous lesson, this time, he moved quietly and did not make any noise.

  I’ll hide for now.

  Chen Ge entered the toilet on the second floor. He sneaked into it and contacted Xu Yin through the recorder. After communicating, Chen Ge found out that this world behind the door was very unstable. It required the power of five Red Specters to tear down the boy’s memory, and then he would be able to escape. However, Chen Ge would not do that unless necessary because the ruination of the memory might cause irreparable damage to the boy.

  [1] Kipper is an acronym for “kids in parents’ pockets eroding retirement savings”.