Even Gao Jie couldn’t complete this project. To be honest, Li Yan didn’t hold much hope for this unremarkable, chubby guy. But surprisingly, when the elevator doors opened, the fat man stood inside with a bewildered look on his face.
The ghost in the enclosed space had vanished, clearly proving that the fat man had passed this stage’s challenge.
“How… how did you deceive the ghost?”
Li Yan and Bai Yin both wore strange expressions, especially Li Yan. Based on his experience from so many horror stories, this timid and cowardly fat man didn’t possess any qualities to withstand a ghost’s test. Yet Wei Ran and Gao Jie had died, while he somehow completed the task.
“Deceive the ghost?” The fat man’s face immediately showed deep confusion.
“Then how did you answer its question? Why didn’t the ghost attack you?”
“I don’t know either.” The fat man scratched his head, looking clueless. “I said my cause of death was the same as its, and then this ghost just vanished out of nowhere.”
“No way, that works?!” Li Yan exchanged a glance with Chen Mo, both wearing looks of disbelief.
“You passed just like that?”
Hard to believe as it was, since the fat man stood there, it proved that such an answer was accepted by the ghost. Strictly speaking, this response didn’t trigger the ghost’s killing rule—answering with the same cause of death essentially meant admitting to being inside the amusement park.
“So the answer was this simple…”
After a moment’s thought, Bai Yin’s face showed a look of realization. Whether it was luck or bluffing, when you thought about it, this answer was indeed the simplest and safest way to deal with the ghost!
“Damn, fat man, you’re something!”
“Such a simple answer, and none of us thought of it!”
Patting the fat man’s shoulder, Li Yan joked a bit. Chen Mo and Bai Yin laughed, and this little interlude slightly eased the heavy pressure weighing on everyone’s hearts.
Then, Chen Mo told the others about touching the story item in the elevator and the scene he saw afterward.
“So, we now know that the little girl appearing repeatedly in the hallucinations wasn’t missing but abandoned in the amusement park?”
“I think so.” Chen Mo nodded. “But I believe something else must have happened afterward to create such a powerful curse here, turning the entire theme park into a world of the dead. I think the next ride will give us new clues.”
“The next ride…”
“The drop tower and the mirror maze—which one should we go to first?”
“The drop tower…” Muttering to himself, Chen Mo looked up. About a few dozen meters away, a tall tower adorned with flashing lights stood under a massive beam. It was clearly another iconic ride in the amusement park. But what gave Chen Mo a bad feeling was that the word “highdive” surrounded by colored lights had the “v” light broken, turning it into “highdie”—meaning death from above!
“Forget it, let’s go to the mirror maze first.” Chen Mo didn’t share this ominous discovery with anyone and instead turned to look at another ride bathed in light.
“By the way, has anyone here played a mirror maze before?”
Standing at the entrance of the mirror maze, which was filled with psychedelic colors, Li Yan didn’t rush to hand in his ticket but turned back to ask this question.
“I have.” Hearing Li Yan’s question, Bai Yin immediately replied.
A mirror maze, as the name suggests, is a maze made of countless flat mirrors arranged at specific angles. When visitors enter the passage, their bodies are reflected multiple times, creating countless images, making it hard to tell which is a reflection and which is a real path. According to Bai Yin, such mirror mazes had become quite popular in malls and amusement parks in recent years, and she had played them with classmates more than once.
“In a mirror maze, a visitor’s figure passes through mirrors and glass countless times, reflecting and refracting. Finding the real exit among countless images isn’t easy. But there’s a trick to navigating mazes, like always following one wall. Even if you hit a dead end, sticking to it will eventually lead you to the exit. The downside is that it can’t solve nested mazes, like those that loop back to the start.”
“Anyway, that’s all I know.”
After Bai Yin’s explanation, the others nodded. Ultimately, her analysis applied only to ordinary mazes. Right now, they were in a supernatural world where anything bizarre could happen. No one had any confidence that Bai Yin’s method would work!
“Since we all understand how to navigate the mirror maze, let’s begin.”
“Also, be careful with the mirrors themselves. So many of them feel ominous.”
With that, Li Yan was the first to hand his ticket to the attendant at the entrance and stepped into the dark, eerie corridor ahead…
Countless specks of light flickered in the darkness, undoubtedly reflections from the many mirrors. Li Yan then noticed his own figure mirrored on the smooth surfaces around him, stretching infinitely in all directions within this dim, vast room.
Every move he made was mirrored by his infinite reflections, and while he knew it was normal mirror physics, it still felt strange and unsettling.
Standing in this dark and terrifying mirror maze, Li Yan didn’t rush to solve it. Instead, he carefully examined the mirrors around him. In appearance and touch, they seemed like ordinary mirrors.
After a while, Li Yan noticed something else odd.
He had been in the mirror maze for at least five minutes, yet he hadn’t heard any sounds behind him. He remembered that when he handed in his ticket, Chen Mo was just a few meters away. Logically, Chen Mo should have followed him into the maze, but somehow, with just that slight delay, Chen Mo had vanished eerily.
It wasn’t just Li Yan. Chen Mo, who entered the maze right after, realized the same thing at almost the same time.
Whether it was Li Yan ahead or Bai Yin behind, they had all vanished, leaving him completely alone.
“Just as I suspected…”
Like Li Yan, Chen Mo reached out and touched a mirror in front of him.
“It seems that once we enter the mirror maze, we participants are randomly teleported to different spots inside. We have to find the exit on our own!”