Chapter 688 - Lose the Head! [2 in 1]

Running alone to the third-floor basement, standing inside an enclosed room that looked like a crime scene, being in the company of a strange woman covered in blood—anyone would feel fear being placed in that situation. Wei Jinyuan scratched the back of his neck like it was his habit to do so. His back was soaking wet, and his Adam’s apple quivered as cold sweat slithered down his face.

He had been searching for the actors employed at Chen Ge’s Haunted House to find out what the secret behind its popularity was, but now that he had run into the real actor, he felt weirdly unsettled and uneasy. For a reason that he could not explain, the woman was standing several meters away from him, but his heart was shaking like a leaf.

“Is this the influence of the environment, or is it the make-up?” His heart skipped endlessly like a frantic rabbit. He needed a full minute before Wei Jinyuan felt more like himself again. Throughout this process, the woman in the red dress just stood at the corner of the wall, showing no intention of getting closer to him.

“This is similar to the black shadow I met in the corridor—they do not actively go and scare the visitors, and they do not plan to hide. Is it because of the actor’s overconfidence, or are they worried about something else? Is it because they are afraid that they might be too scary for the normal visitors, so they use this kind of method to ‘stun and frighten’ the visitors?” Wei Jinyuan’s brain was thrown for a loop as he slowly nudged his feet forward. The hairs on his body were standing on end, and every cell in his body screamed for him to leave. Every single step that he took required a large amount of courage.

“Hey, are you one of the actors at this Haunted House?” His voice was shaking involuntarily. Wei Jinyuan kept cheering for himself internally, reminding himself that there was no reason for him to be afraid. This was merely a female actor hired by Chen Ge. Perhaps after she took off the make-up, she would be a cute little girl.

The woman in the red dress did not answer. She had her hands crossed before her chest and showed her back to Wei Jinyuan. Her head was leaning weakly against the wall, and she maintained this strange posture.

“You’re not going to answer, huh? Fine, I’ll come and see what you’re really up to!” Walking into the blood-stained room, the carpet underneath his feet rustled with each step. It was a distance of several meters, but Wei Jinyuan took more than ten seconds to traverse the distance. He stopped next to the woman, and he poked his head forward to look at her.

Her dress was dripping with blood, and the resentment was heavy. With just one glance, the female ghost sent tremors down his spine. He noticed that her hands were placed before her chest, and they looked like they were holding something…

“The clue couldn’t be in your grasp, could it?” Wei Jinyuan’s eyes widened. “The boss really is such an immoral character to have placed the clue somewhere like this.”

If the clue was in the woman’s grasp, then the visitor would have to get close to her to obtain the clue. If the visitor was too afraid to get any closer, then he would be forever trapped inside the scenario, or he would have to surrender and go and find other clues.

“Thankfully, it was me who ran into you. I am the bravest of the bunch, and this is not going to scare me.” Wei Jinyuan summoned his courage and reached out to grab the few pages of paper that the woman was holding in her arms. When he was about to reach back, the woman’s head that leaned against the wall slowly turned. Her body maintained the same posture. In fact, her neck did not even move. It was merely her head that was turning and turning…

A pale white face that was drained of blood. The features could be called beautiful but the two dark hollows were the eyes should be were quite scary. The female ghost did not seem to understand what Wei Jinyuan was doing. The resentment in her eyes was boiling, but as her gaze landed on the strand of black hair around her wrist, she calmed down once more.

“You’re even wearing pure black contact lenses? If I was not working at the Haunted House and thus privy to these make-up skills, I probably would have been scared by you.” Wei Jinyuan pulled the pages away from the woman. He shone the flashlight on the paper. “The basic rules for Haunted House workers? Do not have any physical contact with visitors? Do not harm the visitors? If you come after any fainted visitors, send them to the underground morgue immediately?”

Wei Jinyuan looked over the pieces of paper again and again. The question mark in his mind grew. “What is this? Where is the clue?”

He raised his head to look at the woman in the red dress. She still kept her strange posture. Her body was half a meter away from the wall, and only her head leaned against it. Her eyes were focused on the papers that he was holding as if she was waiting for Wei Jinyuan to return them to her.

“Is this everything?” Wei Jinyuan held the pieces of paper. “You are one of the actors here, right? Is there a secret that I should understand from these words?”

The woman had no idea what Wei Jinyuan was talking about, but there was one thing that was certain—her patience was slowly being worn down by this man. The red dress started to flow with blood, and the thin scent of blood suffused through the bedroom.

“Oh, ho! There’s a second transformation as well?” Wei Jinyuan studied the blood that dripped down the woman’s dress, and he observed in forced calmness, “There are blood bags hidden inside the dress, aren’t there? But you are being too unprofessional. The requirement for a Haunted House actor is fast, quick, and accurate. With how slow you’re moving, the visitors will have time to prepare for this not so sudden transformation.”

Wei Jinyuan actually had no concrete idea how the woman managed to do something like this. His endless rambling was merely to cover up the uncertainty that crawled through his heart.

“Looks like finding the clue alone is not enough—we’ll have to solve the puzzle in it.” The back of Wei Jinyuan’s neck was becoming increasingly itchy, like there was something on his neck that was shivering. He could even feel a small force from behind him trying to pull him away, like some mysterious force was urging him to leave this place immediately.

“Is this some kind of mind trick? But what is theory behind it? Before we came, I saw on the internet that many visitors claim the boss is a master at psychology. Looks like I have fallen into his trap without even realizing it myself.” Wei Jinyuan held the phone in one hand, the light from the phone shining on him and the woman next to him, while his other hand held the few pieces of paper. “Where did I go wrong? This place is not even that scary, but how come my heart is racing so fast?”

Being cast in the light, her own sheet of worker rules had been taken away, and trails of blood vessels started to form on the woman’s face—she felt like she was being humiliated. The scent of blood in the air thickened, and the sticky blood slid down her dress, causing a dripping sound as it landed on the ground.

Wei Jinyuan was still caught in his thoughts. He felt like he had walked himself into a trap. “Since entering the Haunted House, there’s been nothing but empty rooms. There was no set-up and definitely nothing scary. There was not even blood. How did a Haunted House like this manage to make me feel fear? What kind of thing is behind this kind of indescribable feeling of suffocation? I seem to smell the blood in the air, but is this some kind of illusion, or has he managed to play some mind trick on me when I was not paying attention?”

There was no answer to any of the questions; everything was wreathed in mystery. Wei Jinyuan scratched his neck, and his brows creased. “The environment is too complicated, and it speaks of an unspeakable horror. The clues given are impossible to understand.”

When he was still thinking, a pale hand reached out to grab the papers from him.

“What are you doing?” Wei Jinyuan turned his head to look. His lips were left hanging open, and the expression froze on his face. The woman who was standing next to the wall had moved further into the room, but her head had disappeared!

There was a rough cut around the neck, and the gaping wound was dripping with blood. This scene smashed Wei Jinyuan’s brain like a heavy blow from a hammer. He felt as if he had been struck by lightning, and electricity surged through his capillaries!

“Where is the head?” He could confirm that the actor standing in the room with him was a living woman. That exquisite face, the fresh expressions, even the condescension-filled gaze that felt like she was looking at garbage was not something that could be replicated by a mannequin. However, the head of the living human disappeared in the blink of an eye!

“Give me back my stuff.” A woman’s voice came from behind his shoulder. Wei Jinyuan’s neck turned stiffly around, and soon, he was greeted with an impossible scene. The woman’s head was linked by blood vessels, and it was floating just above his shoulder. When the four eyes met, Wei Jinyuan felt like his heart had stopped beating, and all the blood inside his body rushed to his brain at the same time.

“Help!” he screamed at the top of his lung. With one hand on the phone and the other on the worker’s rule sheets, he charged out of the bedroom at the fastest speed he had ever accomplished in his life!

“Give me, give me!” Resentment circulated around her body, and the Specter was out for blood. The blood dripped onto the ground, and the woman in the red dress followed Wei Jinyuan out of the room. The blood mixed with the black hair. The woman hugged her head and chased after Wei Jinyuan.

Running down the dim corridor, Wei Jinyuan did not have the luxury to analyze anymore. There was only a simple thought in his mind.

Run!

He did not check where he was running; he simply rushed down the corridor that was before him!

After who knew how long, he stopped to gasp for air. The vibrating phone in his hand snapped him out of it slightly. With his heart almost jumping out of his chest, Wei Jinyuan turned to look at the phone. The caller ID said that it was another call from Lee Jiu. Like a drowning person being given a lifeboat, he grabbed onto it and hit the accept button madly!

“Jinyuan, I need to talk about the same thing as before. We found another map piece, and after we joined them together, we realized that you and Cold Guy are heading toward an extremely dangerous location…”

Before Lee Jiu finished, he was cut off by Wei Jinyuan. “Jiu! Please come save me! Save me!”

“Slow down, what is going on?” Wei Jinyuan also wished to slow down, but once he turned around, he saw the woman in the red dress running toward him. The head was cradled in her arms, and the head guided the body as she charged down the corridor to capture her prey!

“Come over here now! There’s a mad woman here! She has no head! Do you understand that!” Wei Jinyuan screamed into the phone, and his face was distorted from pure fear.

“She has no head? Is she some kind of special effect? Clarify yourself, you are not making sense. Do not lose your head, calm down.”

“It’s not me who has lost my head! It’s her! Yes, she has lost her head!”

Wei Jinyuan’s voice travelled down the dark corridor.

And then the call was ended.

…

“That’s strange.” On the other end of the line, Lee Jiu stood where he was, holding the phone. Wei Jinyuan’s ear-splitting scream from before had been heard by Lee Jiu and everyone else through the phone.

“What’s wrong with Xiao Jin?” Through the terms he used, it sounded like the streamer was close to the employees from Nightmare Academy. However, there was not much concern in his question, more of an open curiosity. “Xiao Jin is not really that easily scared. To be able to scare him until he screamed like this, it shows that there is more than meets the eye at this Haunted House.”

“We should be more careful. I don’t think I heard Jinyuan correctly earlier, but I believe he mentioned a headless female ghost.” Lee Jiu felt quite embarrassed that his colleague was being scared to such a state. “Regardless, we should not pay him too much attention. Wei Jinyuan is on the design team, and he does not enter the Haunted House often, so he is actually the most easily-scared among all of us.”

“This condescension is going to be your downfall.” Wang Dan also heard Wei Jinyuan’s cry for help earlier. His words were actually more cutting than he meant. “I advise you listen to me and stop using your phone inside the Haunted House. Then we shall take the same route back. There is no way we are clearing this scenario with a bunch of rule-breakers.”

“If you talk so much big talk, why don’t you go off on your own and stop following us so shamelessly?” Wang Dan’s advice fell on deaf ears. In fact, the streamer challenged him rudely. After the incident with Wei Jinyuan, he felt weirdly uneasy.

Wang Dan did not take up the argument. He shrugged and uttered in a voice reserved only for himself, “If I leave, who is going to help collect your bodies?”

“Stop arguing, I have to admit that there is something praiseworthy about this Haunted House if it is able to scare Jinyuan to such a state. Now that we have found two pieces of the map, I believe we will be able to escape soon enough.” Lee Jiu was responsible for the prop and item design at Nightmare Academy. He had been in the business for five years already, and with his experience, he could discern the mechanism set up inside the Haunted House with a glance. It was because of his experience that he had been able to find the clues hidden by Chen Ge in Li Wan City easily.

The scenario could be very difficult, but there had to be a chance for the visitors to win. That was the only way that the visitors would think that the experience was fun. And the clues were the chances provided by Chen Ge to the visitors. With the map, they could avoid the extremely dangerous locations like the woman in the red dress in the third-floor basement.

The man who had been so confident earlier only needed a few minutes to be transformed into a sniffling baby. That had placed an invisible pressure on the other visitors.

“Come on, let’s keep moving and see if we can come up with anything else.” Lee Jiu put his phone away and studied the two pieces of the map.

“It feels like this place is a trial of patience. The actors will wait until we put our guard down and start to get agitated, then they jump out to scare us. That is probably how they got Xiao Jin.” The streamer looked at his watch and then exchanged a look with Lee Jiu. Lee Jiu got the message and nodded. Then he said, “After entering the next building, we should temporarily split up. We are moving too slowly at the moment. After we’ve searched the entire building, we should meet up at the entrance.”

Without waiting for the other people’s response, Lee Jiu and the streamer strode into the building in front of them.

“Wait, I think we should stick together.” The student Zhang Feng suggested, but Lee Jiu and the streamer walked away from him like they could not even hear him.

“We should join them,” Wang Dan said lightly. He had a feeling that there was an ulterior motive behind Lee Jiu and the host’s visit to the Haunted House.

“Are you sure?” Zhang Feng had not been that afraid in the beginning, but after hearing Wei Jinyuan’s voice from the phone call earlier, he was feeling quite panicky. “This building before us looks like a small hospital. They always place the scariest stuff inside the hospital at the Haunted Houses, don’t they?”

“Are you scared?” Wang Dan barely glanced at Zhang Feng as he headed into Li Wan Hospital.

“Who’s scared? Are you looking down on me? Let me tell you, a Haunted House can never be scarier and more exciting than bungee jumping.”

Zhang Feng glanced at the wooden board that announced the building to be Li Wan Private Hospital. He suppressed the anxiety in his heart and followed Wang Dan and his girlfriend into the building.