Chapter 743: Face

The Woman in Red moved so fast that she had already entered the bedroom before I could react.

Her blood-red dress brushed against the tip of my nose. She held her umbrella open inside the room, its massive canopy covering us both.

The umbrella ribs were heavily rusted. Long black braids hung down in front of her, and she crouched in a half-squat, facing me with a head entirely overgrown with black hair—if it could even be called a face.

A chilling aura seeped into my body. The woman and I were only a few centimeters apart. My Judging Eye could see clearly that beneath the fine strands of hair, she had no facial features at all; it looked like a pitch-black, bottomless cavern.

The air seemed to freeze. The only sound left in the room was my heavy panting.

She was far too close. I wanted to back away, but the canopy above felt like the entire night sky; no matter how I moved, I couldn't escape the darkness.

The woman had no eyes, yet I could vaguely feel something peering at me from between the strands of her hair. We were so close that her hair almost brushed against the Good and Evil Asura Mask.

If an ordinary person saw this scene, they would likely faint from terror. But after getting over my initial shock, I slowly calmed down.

The sudden appearance of the Woman in Red had caught me off guard, but I had survived many broadcasts by now. My psychological resilience was excellent. I adjusted in a very short time, my eyes locked dead upon her from behind the mask.

The hand wearing the Ghost Ring slowly clenched into a fist, ready to strike back at any moment. I was fully prepared for a fight.

Whether she was human or a ghost, I wasn't going to just sit there and wait for death.

The face replaced by long black braids was less than a centimeter away from mine. She simply held the umbrella, making no further move.

'What does she want? Are the legends of Jinghai City actually true?' A rainy night, a black umbrella, a red dress, long braids—it all perfectly matched the story the restaurant owner had told. Any second now, the woman in front of me would probably speak and ask to borrow my face...

The scene I imagined never happened. She had no facial features, so I couldn't even guess what she was doing.

After a long time, the Woman in Red finally raised her hand. Her emaciated fingers, curved like fishhooks, reached for my face.

'Does she want to take off my mask?' The fingers drew closer, reaching straight for my eye sockets. I didn't dare let her continue. I pressed down on the Ghost Ring and directly summoned all my ghosts at once!

The appearance of the Filthy Ghost and the Desire Ghost didn't cause much of a reaction, but when the Fate Ghost stepped out from my shadow, the Woman in Red seemed to sense danger. She moved the umbrella away from my head and backed up to the bedroom door.

'This woman is definitely not human!' My Judging Eye saw it clearly. She had no face, but she wasn't entirely like a normal ghost either. At the very least, I had never seen a ghost that had misplaced its own face.

A blood-red dress represented resentment. Only a vicious ghost with the deepest grudges would manifest such attire. By that logic, the strength of the female ghost with the black umbrella should have been similar to the pregnant ghost I encountered during the hearse broadcast, but the feeling she gave me was far stronger.

An action the Fate Ghost took after appearing only solidified my view. Even though the Fate Ghost, bearing the brands of ten giant ghosts, hadn't fully recovered yet, its level of strength was much higher than before.

The first thing it did upon appearing wasn't to attack the Woman in Red, but to guard my side. Its black hair flooded the bedroom like a tide, yet it absolutely refused to approach the floor beneath the Woman in Red's feet.

'Stronger than the Fate Ghost?' Out of all the ghosts I had ever seen, only the Ghost Mother could overpower the Fate Ghost. The main reason for this was that the Fate Ghost's primary purpose wasn't combat, but taking the fall for its master's life. Yet even so, the strength of the Faceless Woman in Red startled me.

'Wait, this female ghost's aura is nowhere near that of the Ghost Mother or the Fate Ghost, and I don't feel any heavy malevolent yin energy from her either. There must be another reason my ghosts are afraid to approach.' When I first entered the building and encountered the obsession, I summoned ghosts to lure it away, but the Filthy Ghost and the Seductive Ghost were so terrified they didn't dare move. This proved that obsessions naturally suppressed ghosts.

I still couldn't figure out the exact reason for this. It might be because obsessions fed on memories and emotions, while most ghosts were formed from a combination of lingering memories and Yin energy. If an obsession devoured their final shreds of memory, they would lose the very foundation of their existence and likely dissipate on the spot.

'Could it be that this Faceless Woman in Red isn't a ghost, but an obsession?' Inside the Red Building, I had seen two types of obsessions: one covered in bite marks, and another with its internal organs growing on the outside. Based on my deductions, an obsession's appearance was tied to what it had experienced in life.

The emaciated obsession covered in bite marks represented the residents who were eaten in the Pig Cage Apartments, while the obese obsession with its internal organs on the outside represented those who did the eating.

For an ordinary person to eat their own kind, the mental strain they endured wouldn't be any less than that of being eaten. Forming an obsession was entirely normal.

The imagery behind those two obsessions mostly made sense, but what about the Woman in Red in front of me? If she was an obsession as well, what did having no face symbolize?

With the Fate Ghost's black hair covering the entire bedroom, I felt a bit more confident. I climbed up from the floor and stomped my numb feet.

"The girl who lived on the top floor of Unit 4 is very special. Her photos are made of a different material than the others, so they were likely brought in from outside the Red Building. As for who brought them in, the answer is incredibly obvious." The situation in the room felt off, but fortunately, my deductions had reached their final stage.

"The girl's photos were brought into the Red Building by the owner of this apartment. The red X's on them indicate that she was probably murdered. This perfectly explains why the owner moved into the Red Building, specifically chose the room the girl used to live in, and risked their life spending so much time mapping out such a detailed character relationship chart."

"He had a deep connection with the girl who originally lived here. He entered the Red Building to track down her killer!"

"After secretly observing for over three months, this person has narrowed the suspect list down to three. If he's just an ordinary person, managing all this is far from simple. It's astonishing, really."

I seemed to be talking to myself, but in reality, I had said those words on purpose. I was testing the Faceless Woman in Red's reaction. I didn't know what her relationship was with the girl who originally lived on the top floor, nor did I know why she had suddenly appeared outside this rental apartment, which was why I voiced my deductions. First, it stated my stance and proved I was different from the Red Building Tenants. Second, I had a lingering doubt—if the owner of this rental apartment was an ordinary person, how did they survive in a place like the Red Building? Who was protecting them from the shadows?

My gaze remained fixed on the Faceless Woman in Red. This monstrosity, neither human nor ghost, was very likely the apartment owner's protective umbrella.

I had heard about the Woman in Red from the Old Granny. She was an entity that even the Red Building Tenants feared. If an ordinary person could gain her protection, surviving in the Red Building wouldn't be impossible.

Taking a deep breath, I pondered for a moment before taking a step toward the Woman in Red. "Can you understand what I'm saying? Where did the person who lived in this room go?"

The Woman in Red had a very bizarre reaction upon hearing my voice. She raised her black umbrella, waved her hand at me, and then walked out backward.

'Is she telling me to follow her out?'

I recalled the other ghosts into the Ghost Ring, bringing only the Fate Ghost with me as I walked out of the apartment.

The pitch-black hallway stretched on endlessly. Within the deep darkness, a Woman in Red holding an umbrella led the way.

I kept my distance from her, ultimately watching her walk into the elevator with my own eyes.

The two stain-covered elevator doors repeatedly opened and closed. After the Faceless Woman went inside, she never came back out. Unsure of what she was up to, I cautiously followed her.

By the time I reached the elevator, my Judging Eye swept the interior—it was completely empty. There was nothing inside.

"Where did she go? I clearly saw her walk into the elevator..." Halfway through speaking, I suddenly noticed an anomaly. The large pile of trash in the center of the elevator had shifted. The bloodstained toilet paper and spoiled paint had been kicked into a corner, leaving only that adult-fist-sized pottery jar in the middle.

'Is this pottery jar what she wanted me to see?' I had opened the jar before, so I knew there was a heart riddled with holes inside. But precisely because I knew, I didn't dare act rashly. 'Does that heart belong to the Woman in Red?'

Old questions remained unanswered, and new ones kept surfacing.

Assuming the heart in the pottery jar belonged to the Woman in Red, why would Zhu Li and the others place it in the elevator in the dead of night and send it to the top floor? Where were the Red Building Tenants hiding now? Were they doing this to appease the Faceless Woman's wrath?

The Faceless Woman in Red could very well be the girl who originally lived on the top floor. They had similar figures, and both liked to keep their hair long. The only difference was the absence of that face, which had always worn a smile.

'What did this girl experience in the Red Building while she was alive? To think she would actually fuse with an obsession after death, turning into a monstrosity like this.'

Most of the Red Building Tenants were controlled by the obsession, and the Woman in Red must have been the same while she was alive. Yet bizarrely, she didn't become part of the Pig Cage Apartments' obsession of the wrongfully dead after perishing; instead, she formed an entirely new, terrifying obsession of her own!

Everyone harbored an obsession in their heart. It was just that after experiencing certain exceptional events, that inner obsession would be magnified infinitely, reaching a point where neither time nor the passing years could erase it.

'Two different severed hands, neatly sliced off. A heart riddled with holes, pickled inside a clay jar.' I had no idea what the Woman in Red had gone through in the final moments of her life. I silently stared at the clay jar in the center of the elevator, my mind recalling the commission call I received at the very beginning of the broadcast.

'Even if the "client" for this broadcast isn't the Woman in Red herself, they must be heavily connected to her.' I had the Fate Ghost stand guard outside while I stepped into the elevator and cradled the pottery jar in my palms.

At that exact moment, the Live Show Phone's screen suddenly lit up on its own. I swiped the screen and found a new message in the inbox.

"Optional Task 2: Retrieve 'my' shattered face. Task completion rewards an additional 5 points, one Live Broadcast Immunity, and one phone call for help."