My House of Horrors

“Okay, don’t worry.” Gu Feiyu did not understand why Chen Ge wanted to block off the exit if he was just going to scare people. He grumbled internally, Is this to give the visitors a sense of despair?

After sending Chen Ge off, the honest Xiao Gu closed the wooden boards and hauled the props to cover it up.

…

The group of visitors chose the left path, and they walked for some time until they reached another junction. “This is the second junction. The road on the left leads to a deep well, and the end of the right corridor is three empty rooms.”

Yang Chen looked at his notebook. It had a detailed explanation of all the scenarios. To be able to record everything so clearly, it showed how deep the despair his seniors had experienced was, such that they could still remember everything so clearly after they returned to school.

“The three rooms have their own number, and in the ceiling of the one of the rooms’ bathroom is a female body. According to the record, there’s a nametag inside her pocket.”

Listening to Yang Chen’s description, Lee Xue and Wang Dan frowned. Just the sound of it made them refuse to go forward.

“Leave this nametag to us.” Kong Xiangming, who had been silent, suddenly spoke. Wei Wu wanted to say something but was stopped by Kong Xiangming with a look.

“Okay, shall we wait outside the room for you? According to the notebook, when the visitors are inside the room, there might be mannequin dolls that come to interrupt.”

“There’s no need. Didn’t you say we’re running low on time? You can go on to the other path. We’ll meet up later.” Kong Xiangming left right away. Wei Wu followed behind him, and the two did not share a word as they walked away.

“Ol’ Yang, let us go.” Wang Dan pointed down the other corridor. He whispered, “It’s good that we’re splitting up; this means we don’t need to worry about them.”

Even though the notebook said not to split up, this was a unique situation. The two visitors were most likely actors. Yang Chen nodded. The three of them jogged to the deep well. As recorded in the notebook, there were two nametags inside the well.

“Two nametags. The seniors are right; this well is very dangerous.” Lee Xue took out a ball of string from her purse and then removed the hair clip she was wearing to tie to the end of the string. “Thankfully, we came prepared.”

“The boss wouldn’t expect this as well.” This was the first time the students had felt happy inside the Haunted House; it was as if they had just scored a psychological victory. Lee Xue dropped the makeshift fishing line into the well and very easily hooked one of the nametags. She pulled it up slowly, and when the nametag left the well, the three sighed in relief like they had just won the Super Bowl.

“Well done!” When Lee Xue dropped the fishing line into the well again, she realized that the well seemed to have gotten deeper. She tried several times before finally hooking the other nametag, but when she tried to pull it up, something scary happened.

The sand parted to reveal a dead person’s face. Half of the nametag was exposed out of the sand while the other half was in the dead person’s mouth.

“F*ck me!”

“What the hell‽”

The three students gasped. For the first time, they felt how malicious the adult world could be.

“Xiao Xue, try to yank harder. See if you can pull the nametag out.”

The girl pulled on the string. The sand moved, and the dead body started to surface.

She tried this several times until the string snapped. The nametag was still at the bottom of the well, and the girl’s hair clip now rested next to the mannequin’s lips.

“No, this won’t work. The boss is not even giving us a chance!” Lee Xue looked at her hair clip, and she felt the sting of regret.

“You two stay here, I’ll go grab the hair clip and the nametag.” Wang Dan put his hands on the wall of the well. “It’s just a mannequin that looks like a dead body, right? We’ve seen real dead bodies.”

“But have you seen one that can move?” Chen Yang stopped Wang Dan. “This well has been marked by the seniors as extremely dangerous. It’s just one nametag. Without this, we can still clear the scenario by searching for other nametags. Don’t be blinded by the small benefit before us.”

“You’re right.” Wang Dan was a rash person, but he was not dumb. “Should we ask the two actors to go down the well for us?”

“If they’re real actors, they won’t go down the well; if they’re normal visitors, that’s not a moral thing to do,” Lee Xue argued.

“We still have time. We haven’t seen the couple on our way here, so they probably went to the other side; we should go meet up with them first.” Yang Chen looked at the map. “There’s a connecting passageway next to the deep well. The scenario on the other side will be the female dorm.”

Yang Chen followed the map, but the female dorm did not appear. Instead, there was another junction.

“The map is wrong?”

Yang Chen turned the map around to look. “How can there be a new route here? Have we triggered a hidden scenario? Is this some new trick by Boss Chen?”

The three students looked at one another. The map that they had been relying on now lost its purpose.

“No wonder there are so few nametags in the previous scenarios, looks like part of the nametags have been moved into this hidden scenario.” Yang Chen tore out a page from the notebook and drew some lines on it. “Come on, let’s go take a look. Even if we cannot clear it today, at least we can complete the map for our friends.”

The three students thus became the first batch of visitors who entered Western Jiujiang’s Private Academy. After turning the corner, the architectural style of the building changed. There were no longer charred marks on the walls, but the place looked more realistic.

“Ol’ Yang, do you smell something bad?” Wang Dan stopped at the entrance with his hands over his nose. “It’s a very weird smell like something gone bad.”

…

Kong Xiangming stood outside the Room of Three scenario silently.

“Why did we purposely avoid the three students to come here?” Wei Wu was confused.

“Look at this place, doesn’t it look like Hai Ming Apartments?” Kong Xiangming pulled the door open. The place reminded him a lot of Hai Ming Apartments.

“You’re right, how can things be so coincidental?” Wei Wu was surprised. “We just went to Hai Ming Apartments several days ago to capture that runner, and today we see the building replicated here.”

“He would have needed time to build something this scale. Looks like the boss discovered the secret at Hai Ming Apartments a long time ago,” Kong Xiangming speculated. “I believe he might have seen the person that escaped from behind the door.”