My House of Horrors

Perhaps the fainting of ten visitors caused too big a scare. Throughout the whole morning, there was no one else who dared challenge the nameless town again. Everyone stuck obediently to low-level scenarios.

The visitors around the Haunted House gradually calmed down. Chen Ge felt that perhaps one day, the visitors would get used to seeing a few fainted people around the Haunted House entrance.

At 2 pm, a few people who proclaimed that they were from Nightmare Academy sought out Chen Ge. They hauled their colleagues back in their cars. One of them was a pair of twins who personally came to apologize to Chen Ge. Chen Ge very graciously accepted their apology and promised that he would visit them if there was a chance in the future.

After the people from Nightmare Academy left, the students from Jiujiang Medical University came. Most of them were Wang Dan’s friends. Once they heard that their friend had fainted again, they all went to look after class was over.

“It’s not a big problem—he’ll soon wake up.” Chen Ge came to this conclusion after inspecting Wang Dan’s body. Actually, Wang Dan had already woken up a long time ago. As a senior visitor, his ability to suffer these mental scares was far better than the other visitors. Knowing that Chen Ge was kindly giving him the chance to save his face, Wang Dan soon ‘woke’ up.

“Wang Dan, you’ve finally woken up!”

“Did you really dare to challenge a 3.5 scenario? You have my admiration!”

The students from the university surrounded Wang Dan, and they did not think that fainting at Chen Ge’s Haunted House was something shameful. In fact, they felt as if they were missing out if they did not faint at Chen Ge’s place, like something was missing from their university life.

“Not all is lost.” Wang Dan forced a smile on his pale face. He lay in the middle of the crowd and looked surprisingly like a valiant soldier. “I’ve found the key to this 3.5 scenario!”

Wang Dan struggled to turn to Chen Ge. He raised his hand. “Boss Chen, next time, I will succeed!”

“The scenario is built for you all to experience and clear, so naturally, I will always welcome your return.” Chen Ge liked spending time with the students—it made him feel younger. Wang Dan and his girlfriend were taken away by the other students. After they disappeared from Chen Ge’s view, they surrounded Wang Dan again.

“Wang Dan, what does a 3.5 scenario look like from the inside? How scary is it?”

“I don’t think I need to explain how scary it is if all ten visitors fainted from their tour.” Wang Dan was still quite weak, and his legs felt like noodles. “The new scenario is a small town, but the scale is huge. I believe it can fit twenty people for one visitation. The place is filled with traps, and the scariest thing is, as time moves forward, the small town itself changes.”

“The town changes on its own?” Yang Chen took out his notebook and started to write. “The difficulty will continue to increase?”

“Yes! Fog rolls out on the streets, the telephone signal will be jammed, and more actors will appear to fill up the streets.”

“In other words, to clear this new scenario, we need to move fast and find as many clues as we can before the difficulty rises.” Yang Chen jotted down everything that Wang Dan said in the notebook; this was precious information that Wang Dan had risked his ‘life’ for.

“Yes, other than that, I gained some very important information during this visit.” Wang Dan thought about it. “Regarding the exit, I found three clues. They are respectively the fridge at the corner of the kitchen, the morgue at the end of the hospital, and the armoire in the room. So, if we try this again, we only need to focus on the fridge, armoire, and morgue.”

“Okay, is there anything else that we need to pay attention to?”

“There’s one more. I’m not so sure about it, but I believe it’s true.” Wang Dan hesitated. “Considering the size of the scenario and the possibility of accidents, Boss Chen set up a safe zone inside the scenario. It is at the center of the town, a hotel.”

“A safe zone?”

“Yes, the hotel owner is a middle-aged man. Now that I think about it, he didn’t have the presence of the other workers, so he shouldn’t have been lying to me.” Wang Dan provided another crucial tip.

“This info is too important; it can be a life saver.” Yang Chen noted this down and circled it in red like all the other important information.

Chen Ge watched the students walk away before turning to the remaining visitors. “This man in the trench coat has broken the law. I should wait for the police to come get him.”

There were too many visitors around for him to call the police. Chen Ge waited until 5 pm when the theme park was about to close and called Lee Sanbao and told him everything. During that period, a few other visitors gradually woke up. Zhang Feng’s situation was rather bad, but he recovered quite a bit after Chen Ge sent him to the underground morgue. Feeling ashamed of himself, he slithered away without saying a word.

Shinozaki and his assistant acted strangely though. After they woke up, they sat next to the Haunted House like they were waiting for Chen Ge. At 6:40 pm, after sending the last batch of visitors away, when Chen Ge prepared to close the door, Shinozaki and his assistant ran over.

“Boss Chen!” Shinozaki limped over. His hair was ruffled, and his expression was anxious, looking not even a bit like a master.

“How can I help you?” Chen Ge had quite a good impression of Shinozaki.

“I found this comic page inside your Haunted House.” Shinozaki took out a manuscript page from his pocket. When he fainted, he held the page tightly in his hand. “Can I please meet the author? I admire him greatly, and I have something important to discuss with him.”

“You wish to meet him?” Chen Ge knew full well that it was Yan Danian who drew that manuscript.

“Yes! I wish to collaborate with him to share his work with the world. Such a genius shouldn’t be hiding inside a Haunted House!” Shinozaki was excited. It had been so many years since he had come across a piece of work that could affect him so deeply. Every page was artful, and they contained a unique kind of emotion. They painted a real world through the lens of the weird and supernatural.

“Follow me, the artist has a strange temperament, and I can’t guarantee whether he will meet you or not.” Chen Ge asked Tong Tong to contact Yan Danian and led Shinozaki and his assistant back underground.

After getting Yan Danian’s permission, he decided to arrange this meeting. “The author is inside this bedroom. He doesn’t like strangers, so why don’t you converse through the curtains?”

Shinozaki was a known comic artist and knew everything within the industry. Even his assistant was a famed professional. They had their own studio and a mature operating system.

Chen Ge stayed to observe initially, but after he confirmed Shinozaki’s sincerity in working with Yan Danian and his genuine wish to help Yan Danian share his work with the world, he stood up and left.

This was the moment that Yan Danian was able to grasp his lifelong dream, so Chen Ge naturally would not stay to disturb it. Guarding outside the room, about half an hour later, Chen Ge’s black phone suddenly vibrated. He opened it with some curiosity and saw that there was an update to the employee tab.

For Yan Danian, the special power that was a question now turned into a gray term. It was still not useable, but Chen Ge could read its details.

“Wishes Do Come True: The Lesser Red Specter’s Strongest Power! The wish in your heart will come into fruition. Usable once every week. Each usage will cause the pages in the comic to decrease by one permanently!

“My life is a comic; every page is my memory. Promises that I cannot hold will be torn down, tossed into the sky, morphing into wind…”