"Rare," Gong Zhe said, taking another drag before flicking the cigarette away. "Just obtained a Door, yet your perception is so keen."

"But this might not be a good thing for you," Gong Zhe said. "You must learn to control your desires, lest you be controlled by what lies beyond the Door."

"Otherwise...that asylum will be your final destination. Of course, if you're slightly luckier, you might be killed directly by your former comrades."

"So this is...the benefit of entering a nightmare?" An Xuan pulled back his sleeve, revealing the Door on his hand, now even more alluring.

He could even feel his blood starting to boil when facing Gong Zhe.

His eyes gradually reddened, and a strange sound constantly whispered in his ears, like an irresistible bewitchment.

An unusual desire arose in his heart. He wanted to dissect the middle-aged man before him, to dig out the Door within his body.

Then claim it as his own.

But slowly, the last vestiges of reason prevailed. An Xuan's face slowly returned to normal. He gasped for breath, as if he had just returned from the gates of hell.

But his description wasn't wrong.

If he lost control, Gong Zhe would indeed snap his neck without hesitation.

After all, if he was completely out of control, it would be unrealistic and unnecessary to try to restrain him. Even if he was sent to the asylum, they would be deemed extremely dangerous.

And immediately executed in secret.

Lethal injection.

The pain suffered in that kind of death would be even more real and intense.

He thought that even if An Xuan could choose, he wouldn't want to go there.

"What...exactly is a Door?"

"It's a contract," Gong Zhe emphasized. "A blood contract."

"A blood contract?"

Gong Zhe smiled, the scar near his twitching mouth moving with it, making him look very unfriendly. "Do you remember how you got the Door on your body?"

An Xuan frowned. There seemed to be a vague memory in his mind, but it wasn't very clear.

It felt like finding a thread in a tangled ball of yarn.

"It's..." A light flashed in An Xuan's eyes. "It was a blank sheet of paper. Someone told us to cut open our left hands and imprint them on the paper."

"That blank sheet of paper was alive! It sucked away the blood on it, and then..." An Xuan clutched his head, fragments of images appearing in his mind, sometimes clear, sometimes broken.

"No, no, it was all a dream." An Xuan closed his eyes tightly, his expression pained. "It's all a dream, just a dream. I never...experienced any of that."

Gong Zhe didn't urge him.

The young man before him was a pretty good guy, very similar to the one he'd met before.

But this young man was clearly more proper, after all, he came from the Night Watchers, unlike the other one, whose bottom line was a mystery, and was very sly.

He believed that this young man named An Xuan could figure it out himself.

Some facts, although cruel, still had to be accepted.

Since he was already preparing to cooperate, he still hoped that his partner would be smarter, and have a more thorough understanding of the reality of this world.

After a long while, An Xuan gradually calmed down. He held onto the back of the front seat, his face covered with hideous blood streaks. "It's brainwashing..."

"The images in my mind are traces left behind by incomplete brainwashing. They...they used our bodies to do something sinister." He gritted his teeth. "It was those guys from the Execution Department..."

"That blank sheet of paper...is the blood contract you're talking about!"

Gong Zhe didn't answer directly. The question was meaningless now. He believed that the young man behind him had guessed most of it.

"Each blank sheet of paper is a contract, a contract between you and the Door that the paper represents, or more precisely, a contract with what lies beyond that Door."

"Once a contract is made, it can never be changed. You will gain the power of what lies behind the Door, and in return, you must endure the curse that what lies behind the Door inflicts upon you."

"The curse will gradually deepen over time, or as you use the Door more often. The curse cannot be lifted, but there are ways to prolong the time before it erupts."

An Xuan raised his head, his eyes filled with countless blood streaks. "By...absorbing other people's Doors, right?"

"That's the principle," Gong Zhe said approvingly. "But we don't usually call it absorbing, we call it seizing. And for those who control Doors, we generally call them...Disciples."

"Disciples?" An Xuan's pupils contracted violently upon hearing the name. "Crimson?"

People in Crimson were used to calling themselves Disciples.

"That's right." Gong Zhe nodded. "They all possess Doors, which is why the Execution Department of the Night Watchers wants to transform you."

"If you want to fight devils, you must first become a devil yourself."

"I don't know if there are gods in this world, but please believe me, even if there are, they can't deal with what's behind the Doors."

"Because behind the Doors, there are not only ghosts, but also some...existences you can't even comprehend. You can call them...anomalies."

"Only mutated Doors can produce anomalies. Similarly, anomalies are more difficult to predict than ghosts, because ghosts are transformed from dead people, but anomalies are not. They arise in countless strange ways."

"I'd rather you understand them as a kind of...will, a will generated by nightmares."

"Will cannot be predicted or resisted by human power. What can resist will is only another, greater and stronger will."

"And will cannot be destroyed, only erased, which is what the Disciples call...inheritance," Gong Zhe said in one breath.

"Only mutated Doors can produce anomalies, and anomalies can be inherited?" An Xuan's eyes looked strange. "Through inheriting Doors?"

"Smart."

"How do Doors mutate?" Gong Zhe's words had opened up a new world for An Xuan, and he eagerly wanted to extract all the information he knew about Doors.

"Two ways," Gong Zhe said, seeming to be in a good mood as well. "The first is more direct, seize it from a Disciple who possesses a mutated Door."

"But that's difficult. The power that a Disciple with an ordinary Door can control is difficult to resist a Disciple with a mutated Door, but it's not entirely impossible."

"The power of ghosts cannot defeat the power of anomalies." An Xuan nodded. "Can I understand it that way?"

"Not accurate, but it sounds direct," Gong Zhe commented.

"Then...what about the second way?" An Xuan asked again.

"The second way is more troublesome. You need to enter a mutated Door and then crack it," Gong Zhe said. "Then you will be considered to have gained the recognition of this mutated Door."

"Become the new master of this mutated Door?"

"No." Gong Zhe's face suddenly became serious. "It seems you haven't understood the situation we're facing."

"No one can truly control a Door, not even the most ordinary one." Gong Zhe turned around, his gaze towards An Xuan so calm that it frightened the latter.

"We are all slaves to the Doors, prisoners of the nightmares."