Chapter 1004 – Waking up from a nightmare
”A snail? The old lady just reminded me to be careful of snails, how come Jiang Ming took out a snail’s shell?”
Chen Ge was a bit confused, but he knew that the old man definitely wouldn’t try to harm Jiang Ming.
Carefully putting the snail shell back into his pocket, Jiang Ming held Chen Ge’s hand and walked out of the old man’s hut.
The boy led Chen Ge around the shared apartment building, they went to the window sill on the roof, the storage room where the briquettes were piled up, the garbage compartment, and as long as they found a snail Jiang Ming would be very happy.
Chen Ge wasn’t sure why Jiang Ming was working so hard to find snails, he just looked at Jiang Ming’s seriousness and couldn’t bear to interrupt.
Silently accompanying Jiang Ming, they ran all over the apartment and only found four snails, Jiang Ming put them all into his pocket, then held Chen Ge’s hand and ran towards the first floor.
As long as they didn’t make any noise, those strange neighbors wouldn’t come over, and Jiang Ming’s father didn’t show up again after being beaten by the old lady.
”Are you going home?”
Jiang Ming nodded happily as he led Chen Ge to stand outside the rented house with the wooden sign and reached out to tug on the lamp cord.
After the lights inside the house flickered a few times, the door of the rental house was opened, and a slender, pale-skinned woman appeared behind the door.
When she saw that Jiang Ming had returned safely, she wore a gentle smile on her face. Immediately after she saw Chen Ge, her eyes flashed with a hint of panic, as if she was scared because of the stranger’s arrival.
The woman gestured sign language with Chen Ge, and she seemed to be deaf and mute as well.
Chen Ge couldn’t understand the complicated sign language and could only keep smiling to make himself appear more approachable.
The door to the rental house slowly opened, Jiang Ming was very excited and ran over to the woman, and as if he was showing off, he took out one of the snails from his pocket.
The woman stroked the boy’s head with a gentle smile on her face, quietly watching Jiang Ming’s happy appearance.
”This should be Jiang Ming’s mother.”
Entering the house, Chen Ge closed the door.
Looking at the harmonious picture in front of him, Chen Ge couldn’t blend in at all, the woman’s face was like an ordinary person’s, but her body was covered in patches.
Looking at her from afar, Jiang Ming’s mother looked like a rag doll, the only parts of her body that didn’t have any patches on them were the hands that needed to be worked on and her face, the rest of her body was sewn and patched up, her skin was like a tattered coat.
Chen Ge didn’t dare to imagine what had happened to the woman to make her appear in such an image in the child’s memory.
The woman gesticulated with her hands as if she was praising Jiang Ming, but the joyful atmosphere in the room quickly disappeared.
The light at the doorway came back on, and both the ragdoll mom and the young Jiang Ming looked toward the door, and finally Jiang Ming’s mom walked over to the door and opened the door to the rental house.
The pungent odor of alcohol rushed into his nostrils as the grim-faced drunk appeared in the doorway.
With his rotting body pressed against the doorframe and his arms long with the bottle pointing at Chen Ge, the drunk glared fiercely at the rag doll woman.
The woman gestured sign language, but the drunkard had long since lost the patience to watch and pushed it away.
Seeing the drunkard come in, Jiang Ming took out the snails from his pocket and jogged to the front of the drunkard.
He held the snails in both hands, wanting to show them to the drunkard, but before he could extend his hand, the drunkard slapped Jiang Ming’s arm to the side.
The snail shell fell to the ground, and the snail that Jiang Ming had worked so hard to find was trampled on.
The drunkard stared at the shattered snail on the ground, his face turned red, a vein bulged out, and he seemed to become even more furious.
With nowhere to vent that anger, he overturned the small table in the living room, the water bottle on the table almost hit Jiang Ming, luckily the rag doll woman blocked it.
The hot water spilled to the ground, and part of it splashed onto the drunkard, his whole body turned red, and he directly grabbed the rag doll woman’s hair and pressed her down.
The woman’s first reaction after falling was to wave her hand towards Jiang Ming, telling him to hurry and hide inside the house.
The drunken man dragged the woman’s legs, and the arm that grew with the bottle kept falling.
The boy stood in the messy living room, he didn’t know what he had done wrong, the snail on the floor was trampled and the rag doll mother was pressed down.
His shoulders were shaking with fear, he didn’t know who to turn to, he looked at his agonized mother, he wanted to help the woman, but there was nothing he could do, he couldn’t even speak.
”Don’t be afraid.”
Chen Ge gently patted Jiang Ming’s trembling shoulder, “Let me help you.”
Chen Ge kicked at the drunkard, and when the drunkard and the ragdoll woman separated, he swung his skull-crushing hammer at the drunkard’s shoulder.
”Boom!”
The drunkard impacted on the door of the rental house, Chen Ge did not give the other party a chance and chose to continue his attack.
”Jiang Ming, look clearly, he’s not invincible, he’s just a weak coward, you don’t even need to fear him!”
The smashed down drunkard’s body was recovering quickly, his arms growing with the furniture in the room, his expression growing more and more ferocious.
”I’ll lure him to the inner room, when the door opens, you guys hurry and escape!”
In order to buy time for Jiang Ming and the rag doll woman, Chen Ge could only knock down the drunkard over and over again.
Every time he was smashed down, the drunkard’s appearance became even more terrifying, his body expanding, his back pressed against the wallpaper, and he slowly became one with the entire room.
In Jiang Ming’s memories, the words home and father were closely linked together, so it didn’t surprise Chen Ge that this would happen, the only thing that worried him was that Jiang Ming and the ragdoll woman hadn’t escaped the room.
Cracks appeared on the walls, the ceiling began to fall off in large chunks, the floor was shaking, and the light behind the door flickered a few times before suddenly going out.
The light disappeared and a strong stench wafted out of the dimly lit room from above.
The cracks in the roof grew wider and wider, the drunken man’s body, which had swollen several times, touched the ceiling, and just then the entire roof of the rental house collapsed.
The stench hit his nose and the thing that had crushed the home appeared!
With a threaded hard shell and a slimy body, a giant blood-red snail crawled above this home.
A steady stream of negativity infused into the drunkard’s body, and the giant snail’s slightly smaller tentacles cracked open underneath, and inside was a dense mass of uncountable teeth.
With its huge body sticking out of its shell, the blood-colored snail bit at Chen Ge.
”A snail? Why is there such a horrible thing in Jiang Ming’s dream?”
Chen Ge guarded Jiang Ming as he backed away, the entire world behind the door completely changed after the snail appeared, the walls began to continuously ooze blood outwards, and the apartment building seemed like it would collapse at any moment.
”Go upstairs and find that old granny!” Chen Ge brought Jiang Ming and the rag doll woman towards the upper floors, and those neighbors who were similar to monsters became crazy under the influence of the bloody snail.
This world brought Chen Ge only a feeling of absurdity at first, like a very young child holding a paintbrush and sketching with his hands, but since the appearance of the Scarlet Snail, this world started to become bloody and cruel, getting closer and closer to the real world behind the door.
After the three of them arrived at the room where the old man lived, Chen Ge knocked hard on the door.
”Granny, I’ve come to take you and Jiang Ming away! I know the way to escape!”
The door to the room opened in response, and the old woman stood in the doorway with her crutches, she saw the crazy neighbors and the bloody snails that were crawling this way.
”Your obsession is not yet dispersed, you have something to hold on to, you shouldn’t stay here, come with us.” Chen Ge already had a decision, he took out the comic book.
The old man was a little hesitant, she opened her mouth to say a few words, but Chen Ge couldn’t hear her at all.
”I’ll take that as a yes.” Chen Ge turned around and shielded the old lady and Jiang Ming’s mother and son behind him, he stared at the blood-colored snail that was slowly crawling this way, “This snail is the culprit that crushed Jiang Ming’s entire family, and it is also the embodiment of all the negativity and calamities in Jiang Ming’s mind, if we can take out this thing, Jiang Ming might not be confused anymore.”
Pressing the repeater switch, Chen Ge softly shouted, “Xu Yin!”
Blood-red lines spread rapidly in all directions with Chen Ge at the center, the Scarlet Snail sensed the threat, and all of its crazed, monstrous neighbors ran towards the area.
”Five red coats can be enough to ruin this incomplete scene, so the extra red coats will be used to maintain the basic framework of this scene.”
Flipping through the anime picture book, more and more blood-colored lines emerged, and they carried an astonishing aggressiveness, spreading to the entire scene in a very short time.
The blood-red snail had stopped advancing, it felt threatened, but Chen Ge’s hand flipping the anime picture book hadn’t stopped yet.
More and more blood-colored lines were almost spreading all over the world behind Jiang Ming’s door, and finally, at a certain moment, the tipping point was broken, and the thick smell of blood came rushing in like a sea of blood pouring in!
One figure after another began to emerge around Chen Ge, red clothes like blood, without him having to say anything more, those red clothes were like sharks that had smelled the fishy smell and pounced on the bloody snail.
Several red coats joined hands, and the snail’s hard shell was broken, at which point Chen Ge saw an extremely terrifying scene.
In the deepest part of the snail’s hard shell, there was a baby’s face with tightly closed eyes!
That face was exactly the same as the face he had seen on the shadow in Liwan Town, it was the appearance of the Underworld Fetus as an infant!
”Underworld Fetus?”
The baby’s eyes slowly opened, and there was pure evil in his eyes.
A sharp laugh rang out, the body in the snail’s hard shell instantly exploded, that baby’s face turned into a blood stain, and only a wooden toy remained on the ground.
”It seems that the Underworld Fetus didn’t attach itself to Jiang Ming.”
Although the Underworld Fetus was not found, at least one option was ruled out.
Chen Ge walked over to the snail’s corpse and picked up the toy on the ground.
He still had an impression of this toy, it was given to him by his father when he was very young, but he suddenly couldn’t find it on a certain day.
”Was it taken by the shadow?”
After the snail exploded, the world behind Jiang Ming’s door began to shake violently, and a single monstrous neighbor slowly dissipated as the foundation of this world was shaken.
Chen Ge let the other red coats temporarily stabilize the shaking world as he walked over to the old lady and Jiang Ming, “It’s time to say goodbye to all this pain, I’ll take you away.”
Flipping open the comic book, Chen Ge wanted to include the old lady and Jiang Ming in it, but Jiang Ming grabbed the rag doll woman’s hand and was unwilling to let go.
This woman who survived in her memories gently pushed Jiang Ming away as she tenderly waved her hand at him, her body slowly becoming illusory and finally disappearing.
”After leaving here, I’ll take you to find her in reality, she must especially miss you too.”
Closing the comic book, Chen Ge held Jiang Ming’s hand and returned to the first floor accompanied by several red clothes.
The scene collapsed and they opened the locked iron door.
As Chen Ge stepped out of that door, Jiang Ming, who was lying on the bed in reality, opened his eyes, and he sat up from the bed just in time to see Chen Ge, who was still in the leg-lifting position beside the bed.
The door behind him completely collapsed, and Chen Ge held his backpack in a single hand, quietly looking at Jiang Ming.
Jiang Ming, who was sitting on the bed, didn’t cry or make a scene, and he seemed to recognize Chen Ge.
”What just happened, you can consider it a dream.” Only after Chen Ge finished speaking did he realize that Jiang Ming couldn’t hear him at all, he took out a paper and pen and wrote down the two words for mom, “Be good and sleep, I’ll take you to her tomorrow.”
Just in case Jiang Ming didn’t recognize the words, Chen Ge gestured and wrote at the same time.
It took a while before Jiang Ming understood, and a happy smile appeared on his face.
”Have a good rest, good night.”
Touching the boy’s head, Chen Ge flipped open the comic book to release that old lady, “Granny, can you hear my voice now?”
The old lady’s gaze stayed on Jiang Ming, her body almost transparent.
”There’s a question I’ve always been curious about, why is there such a scary snail in Jiang Ming’s world behind the door? Does he have a psychological shadow over snails? Could it be that he was teased by others with snails when he was a child?” Chen Ge had many hypotheses, but none of them were valid.
”That snail doesn’t mean a real snail.” There was a hint of heartache in the old man’s voice: “Jiang Ming’s mother was congenitally deaf and mute, and her family disliked her from a young age, and when she grew up her family married her off to Jiang Ming’s father for a little bit of dowry money.”
”Then Jiang Ming was born, and although he wasn’t congenitally deaf, he had a hearing defect. The doctor suggested a cochlear implant surgery, but the cheapest cochlear implant costs tens of thousands of dollars, and the more expensive ones hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
”The doctor said that the sooner the surgery is done, the better, but Jiang Ming’s mother can’t afford it, and his father can’t even count on it.”
”Ever since Jiang Ming’s father realized that Jiang Ming also had problems with his ears, his attitude towards mother and son changed greatly, and he even wanted to abandon Jiang Ming, but fortunately every time, Jiang Ming’s mother stopped him.”
”And then you’ve seen what happened after that, Jiang Ming’s mother learned water embroidery from me and saved up money to try to give Jiang Ming cochlear implant surgery, and his father liked to gamble and drink, and stole the money that Jiang Ming’s mother had saved up, and finally just robbed them in the open.”
”Jiang Ming grew up in such an environment. He was too young to know what cochlear surgery was, and probably in his world a snail represented the hope of being able to hear. He tried his best to find the snail, he longed to be able to hear other people’s voices, but at the same time there was an inescapable fact that his family was crushed by that snail.”
After listening to the old lady’s words, Chen Ge truly understood the world in this child’s eyes, the absurdity was filled with bloody reality.
”Granny, do you know where this child’s parents live?”
”What do you want?”
”I’m going to teach the child’s father how to behave, plus I want to help the child’s mother.” Chen Ge took out his wallet from his pocket, “I also want Jiang Ming to be able to hear voices in the future if conditions allow.”
”You want to fund this child’s surgery?”
”Why? Don’t look at my plain clothes, I’m actually an entrepreneur.”
Chen Ge finished pulling open the backpack zipper and stuffed the skull crushing hammer diagonally into the bag.