Wei Ran was dead. He had chosen the wrong Trojan horse, directly triggering the lethal trap within the story.
The remaining participants felt little grief; instead, a deep, overwhelming fear consumed them. This was the true face of horror stories—riddled with traps, layer upon layer of deadly schemes.
Though this amusement park mission lasted only three short hours, the sense of crisis it brought to Chen Mo was far more intense than the previous two stories combined.
At that moment, Li Yan walked over to where the horse's head had fallen and picked up the object that had dropped to the ground. It was a gleaming necklace.
When he touched the necklace, no prompt appeared in his mind, indicating it wasn't a special item to counter supernatural forces. Still, its abrupt appearance here was clearly a deliberate arrangement by the story.
Just as he was about to tuck the necklace into his pocket, Li Yan looked up and suddenly noticed that the surroundings had undergone a dramatic transformation. Darkness peeled away like flakes of old plaster, and a blinding light stung his eyes. When he opened them again, the scene had shifted from night to day. The laughter of children filled his ears, the scent of popcorn wafted through the air, and this ghost-infested amusement park of the dead had inexplicably turned into a normal, bustling park teeming with visitors.
"What's happening?"
"Is this a dream, or an illusion?"
Though everything around him seemed perfectly ordinary, as a veteran who had survived three horror stories, Li Yan remained acutely aware that he was still trapped in the supernatural world created by the story. In this realm, anything bizarre could happen, and fabricating illusions was one of the most common tricks in the playbook.
The key was why this scene had appeared and what the story was trying to hint at.
With that thought, Li Yan's gaze swept the area carefully.
Just then, a figure came into view, walking toward him.
It was the little girl.
The girl with the red balloon, holding a woman's hand, approached with a cheerful smile on her face. She passed right through Li Yan's body and headed toward the swing set behind him.
A look of realization dawned on Li Yan's face.
"It seems this is a scene from the past."
"That gleaming necklace must be the trigger for this scene. The key to unraveling the story's secrets is likely hidden in these past events."
Li Yan turned around. By now, the little girl was sitting on a swing, and the woman, who appeared to be her mother, was leaning down, saying something to her.
Because of the distance, Li Yan couldn't hear what was being said. Then he saw the girl nod, flashing a sweet smile.
The woman then left the girl and walked into the crowd. A moment later, she reappeared, holding a pink ice cream cone.
The little girl jumped off the swing and ran over joyfully.
Watching the girl's retreating figure, Li Yan's face took on a contemplative expression. As heartwarming as this scene was, in a horror story, it was merely the tip of the iceberg. The truly terrifying things were hidden beneath the surface.
The little girl had now thrown herself into the woman's arms, eagerly devouring the ice cream. Suddenly, she seemed to spot something and pointed excitedly into the distance. In the direction she pointed stood a towering, colorful Ferris wheel that reached into the clouds.
The mother hesitated for a moment, seemingly unable to resist her daughter's pleading and fussing, and eventually took the girl's hand, leading her toward the Ferris wheel.
As they passed by, Li Yan suddenly noticed that the smile on the woman's face had vanished in an instant, replaced by a complex expression tinged with a hint of gloom.
As the mother and daughter walked away, the sky around them eerily darkened again. The cheerful visitors gradually disappeared, and the amusement park reverted to its original, sinister, and terrifying state.
"Li Yan? Li Yan?"
Hearing his name called, Li Yan looked up and met Chen Mo's gaze.
"I'm fine."
"I just seemed to see some illusions."
Li Yan then recounted everything that had happened after he touched the necklace, telling the group in full detail.
Instinctively, the mother's reaction gave off a bad feeling, but unfortunately, the vision had ended there.
"You mean that woman took the little girl to the Ferris wheel?" Bai Yin interjected. "Then maybe we should go take a look too. We might find some clues."
"What do you mean? You want to take on the second mission?" Wei Ran's death had intensified Gao Jie's fear. "Didn't we say completing the first mission was enough? And Li Yan, you also said that the closer you get to the truth, the higher the danger. Is it really necessary?"
By the end, his body was trembling uncontrollably.
Like Chen Mo, Gao Jie and Wei Ran were experiencing a mandatory mission's horror story for the first time, and Wei Ran's death had shattered whatever courage he had left.
At the end of the day, they were just ordinary people. How many could truly remain calm in the face of death?
"Completing the four rides is, of course, our main goal in this story," Li Yan said. "But now it seems that even if we don't actively seek it out, the story will offer clues related to the amusement park's events. Understanding the truth might actually help us avoid some deadly traps."
"Of course, while ensuring we complete mission one, I don't advocate delving too deep into the core of the secret. The truth often comes with terrifying danger!"
"In these real horror stories, sometimes knowing less means living longer."
With a tone that carried a hint of reflection, Li Yan turned and walked toward another source of immense light.
There, a towering Ferris wheel stood. From this angle, the little girl in the vision had taken this very path to reach it.
To everyone's surprise, there was no long line of ghost visitors in front of the Ferris wheel. It seemed that once participants had overcome the challenge of cutting in line among the ghosts, that obstacle wouldn't reappear in the story.
Still, the group didn't immediately board the ride. Instead, they stood aside and observed for a while.
Soon, they noticed that each cabin on this Ferris wheel could only hold two people. With Wei Ran's death, the number of participants had become odd. One of them would have to ride alone in a cabin, meaning they'd be isolated.
Needless to say, in the typical tropes of horror stories, isolated characters faced the greatest danger. The "isolated kill" was practically a cliché in horror films.
And in this Ferris wheel ride, each cabin was meant for two. That meant the isolated person wouldn't just be alone—they'd have to share a cabin with a ghost.
"What do we do? In that situation, we'd definitely be killed by the ghost! Li Yan, think of something!"
"Hey, you're the fat guy, Liu Bo, right? How about we team up?"
Liu Bo had already been shaken by the grim scenario. When Gao Jie suddenly called his name, he flinched. Honestly, Liu Bo didn't want to deal with this duo, who had been mocking him the whole way. But considering that Chen Mo and Li Yan were clearly a pair, and the short-haired girl Bai Yin didn't seem to like him either, he reluctantly shuffled closer to Gao Jie to avoid the worst outcome—sharing a cabin with a ghost.
"Wait, look..."
At that moment, Chen Mo raised his hand, pointing at the "visitors" lining up for the Ferris wheel.
Strangely, even though each cabin could hold two people, only one visitor entered at a time. If you looked closely, you could see that each cabin already contained a vague, dark shadow curled up in a corner.
"It seems we don't need to worry about that at all," Chen Mo said with a bitter smile. "Every cabin here already has a ghost inside. This Ferris wheel ride is designed so that each of us must share a sealed cabin with a ghost for the full twenty minutes."