Chapter 0300 – Painter

　　After saying that, Xu Yin slowly appeared from behind Chen Ge, and one person and one ghost simultaneously rushed towards that old woman.

　　The wrinkles on her face squeezed together, and after the old woman watched Chen Ge leave from room 304 and enter a place where the light did not shine, her dried lips curled up to the sides.

　　But before she could reveal her smile, ahead of Chen Ge, a man half dressed in red suddenly rushed out!

　　”It hurts!”

　　Blood erupted from wounds all over his body, and the man seemed to be on all fours like a wild animal, with a face of hysteria!

　　The old man’s smile froze on his face as his body turned into a black shadow and ran towards the stairs at a speed that was completely incompatible with his age.

　　”Didn’t you ask me to come with you!”

　　The skull-crushing hammer smashed heavily on the place where the old man’s ghost had just stood, and the sound spread throughout the entire building.

　　”Today, none of you will be able to escape!” Xu Yin and Chen Ge chased after them one after the other.

　　The hallway was filled with the sound of footsteps, a set of steps that seemed to never end, for the first time, the old woman realized that this hallway was so long, and this should be the most frightening night she had ever spent.

　　The exit of the building was right in front of her, the black shadow played with her life and ran wildly, she was just an ordinary ghost, as soon as she saw Xu Yin, who was half dressed in red, she was directly stunned.

　　”Stop!”

　　Chen Ge shouted from behind, Xu Yin’s speed was only a little faster than the black shadow, and he grabbed one of the black shadow’s arms when the black shadow was about to escape from the building.

　　The black shadow’s whole body shook, and without the slightest hesitation, he disconnected his arm and ran outside the building without looking back, disappearing into the darkness.

　　”Looks like I have to work out in the future to be fit, running is too slow.” Chen Ge was quite sorry, when he looked at Xu Yin, he realized that the black shadow’s severed arm had disappeared, and the blood on Xu Yin’s body seemed to have become a bit more.

　　”It wouldn’t be bad if Xu Yin could become a red coat.” Chen Ge looked slyly at the dark neighborhood, “Since I’ve come across it, I can’t just sit back and do nothing, and when I find the drawer, I’ll go and help that old man get rid of his obsession.”

　　Calling Xu Yin, Chen Ge returned to the third floor, he dialed the agent’s number again.

　　The other party did not answer, he sent a few messages to the other party, asking if the other party was there, he wanted to “thank” the other party for the reminder in person.

　　”Why didn’t you answer my call?”

　　Chen Ge held his cell phone in his left hand and dragged the skull crushing hammer with his right hand into room 304.

　　”The living room and the bedroom at the entrance have been checked, and the drawer should be in that last room. These ghosts and monsters are blocking it a hundred times and seem to be afraid of me entering there.”

　　That last room was locked, but it was only a matter of a hammer to Chen Ge.

　　”The bedroom door was locked from the inside, and the gambler who lost only his hand is hiding in there?”

　　Smashing the door open, after tossing and turning for half the night, Chen Ge finally entered among the last room.

　　The bedroom was small, with a huge bookcase and work desk occupying one-half of the area, and the remaining one-half of the space was occupied by a small rusty refrigerator and a tattered cooler.

　　”The edges of the cooler are frayed, it looks like the owner of the house used this mat a lot, and isn’t there a bed outside? Why does he have to stay in this house? Could it be that he’s afraid of ghosts?”

　　The atmosphere of this room was completely different from the outside, nothing unusual could be sensed, and all the drawers and closets were not nailed shut by the door panels.

　　”The work desk and cabinets are spotless, like someone is cleaning them every day.” Chen Ge looked at the neatly organized bookshelves and various sundries, and a very strange thought suddenly surfaced in his heart, “It feels as if the ghosts and monsters are helping with the cleaning, do the ghosts in this house have a cleanliness fetish?”

　　Opening the bookcase, inside were various books related to manga drawing.

　　”Popular Manga Sketching Techniques,” “How to Draw Popular Worlds,” “Human Body Structure in Detail.”…… These books don’t quite fit the previous tenants, could it be that there was a fourth tenant living in the house?”

　　Chen Ge put the books back in their original places and found another pile of scrap manuscripts under the cabinet.

　　Strangely enough, traces of rubbing clearly existed on these scrap manuscripts, and others had been torn to shreds, yet they had been put back together again and taped up with a little bit of tape.

　　”All the scrap manuscripts have been preserved?” Chen Ge took the thick scrap drafts in his hands and casually glanced at them.

　　The characters on the white paper were a bit bizarre, and one could feel that the artist was trying hard to make the characters cuter and more popular, but the actual drawing was very bad.

　　This painter definitely wasn’t a professional learning painting, most of the characters he drew were face-palmed, with a few less dull gazes and some creepy expressions.

　　It could be seen that the artist was trying hard to learn and wanted to draw popular comics, but his aesthetics seemed to be inherently different from the masses, and even if he was copying someone else’s work, he could still draw the popular beauty queen with the feeling of a female corpse.

　　”Being able to draw every drawing so horribly is considered a talent.”

　　Chen Ge put down the scrap manuscript and saw a thin yellow leather notebook in the corner of the cabinet, casually flipping through a few pages, the book recorded the weekly expenses, as well as every payment that the owner of the house received through his paintings.

　　After reading the contents of the notebook, the expression on Chen Ge’s face became odd.

　　Technically speaking, the cartoonist was also considered a tenant of room 304, only that he was sharing the room with someone else and only rented this tiny bedroom.

　　He was living on a tight budget and was a comic book fan himself, but after looking through the notebook, the cartoonist had lived in the hut for three years and had only earned twelve hundred dollars through his drawings.

　　One thousand dollars of that was funded by the only fan, the landlord’s old lady, and the remaining two hundred was paid to him by the assailant after the police came over to coordinate after he ran under an overpass to draw for someone and ended up drawing a living person as if they were dead, and was chased and beaten up for a long distance.

　　He relies purely on his savings from his previous job for love, keeping his food and shelter under four hundred dollars a month, and he sticks to the philosophy that as long as you don’t die, you’ll always come out on top.

　　That’s a good point, but somewhat cruelly, until his death, his comics were never accepted.

　　At the very back of the notebook was a folded up newspaper, and in the newspaper’s crevices was a story about a middle-aged man who had saved a child from falling into the water and drowned himself.

　　The report was limited in length, and the middle-aged man’s name wasn’t even mentioned on it.

　　”This isn’t quite the same as what those ghosts said, how many tenants did 304 have?” Chen Ge put all the scrap manuscripts back in their original places, then walked over to the work desk, “With your back to the living room, the work desk mentioned in the black cell phone should be this one.”

　　There were many painting tools neatly placed on the desktop, as if they were waiting for his owner to come back and use them at any time.

　　Chen Ge’s gaze slowly moved as he looked at the three drawers next to the work desk, lifting his hand to pull open the first drawer, which contained brushes and paints.

　　”It shouldn’t be this one.” Chen Ge opened the second drawer again, inside were the letters of return that the middle-aged man had received, a whole drawer stuffed with them, all of which had been kept by the painter.

　　Then Chen Ge grabbed the third drawer, he pulled hard, but the drawer did not move.