Chapter 12: The Spinning Wheel
Having studied human anatomy for years, Gao Ruxue spent more time with corpses than with her roommates. She wasn’t good at socializing; she understood the dead better than the living.
“The makeup on our haunted house actors is very special, combined with the complex environment inside the haunted house and your own psychological suggestions, that’s why you had illusions.” Embalming and Black Friday were things that couldn’t be exposed to outsiders, and Chen Ge would never reveal them.
He glossed over it, not delving deeper into the topic: “If you two have nothing else, I’ll get back to work.”
After bidding farewell to the forensic medicine students, he had Xu Wan tidy up the props in the horror scene and ran alone into the main control room.
Only Chen Ge knew the truth behind He Shan being scared unconscious. The monster hiding in the mirror hadn’t left; it was still lurking inside the haunted house.
“Keeping it around is ultimately a隐患.” This was his first time accepting a nightmare-level task, and he never imagined it would lead to such consequences.
Turning off the haunted house’s background music, Chen Ge pulled up the surveillance footage, repeatedly watching the video of He Shan entering the West Wing room, playing it frame by frame, and soon made a discovery.
At 9:24:11, He Shan entered the West Wing room, terrified out of his wits, charging around recklessly.
At 24:14, he reached the inner room and saw the bronze mirror for the first time. At that moment, a very eerie scene appeared on the surveillance.
The originally panicked He Shan actually calmed down after seeing the bronze mirror, as if time had stopped. He stood motionless in front of the mirror.
In the surveillance video, the numbers representing time kept changing. At 24:17, He Shan suddenly raised his left hand and walked toward the mirror on his own.
It looked as if someone was holding his hand, trying to forcibly pull him into the mirror!
At 24:20, Xu Wan, wearing a wedding dress, caught up from behind. By then, half of He Shan’s body was pressed against the mirror. From the surveillance, it was clearly visible that something in the mirror flashed by, and then He Shan collapsed to the ground.
“Was it Xiao Wan’s arrival that disrupted the mirror monster’s plan?” Chen Ge watched the video repeatedly. So much had happened in just ten seconds. He rubbed his temples, unable to think of a good solution for now.
“It seems I’ll have to cover all the mirrors in the haunted house first, and once I figure out a way to deal with this monster, I’ll uproot it completely.”
He slipped into the prop room, grabbed a few black cloths, and entered the horror scene.
“Boss, why are you here? I can handle this.” Xu Wan saw Chen Ge from a distance through the gate. She was stuffing scattered paper figures and paper money back into the coffin.
“I’m here to tell you something. All props related to mirrors in the haunted house are temporarily out of use. Also, when you’re playing the ghost, be careful not to get near mirrors.” Chen Ge held the black cloths and helped Xu Wan reassemble the scattered coffin props.
Xu Wan didn’t understand Chen Ge’s reasoning but didn’t ask further.
After rearranging the main room scene, Chen Ge entered the West Wing room alone.
White paper lanterns hung high, the room was dimly lit. He stood where He Shan had fainted, silently staring at the bronze mirror.
“A person living in the mirror? Could it be that there’s another world hidden inside the mirror?” Chen Ge touched the cold mirror surface, looking at his own reflection. After staring for a while, he felt something was off: “When I handed He Shan the bottled water earlier, he instinctively reached out with his right hand, meaning he wasn’t left-handed. But in the surveillance, he raised his left hand first. Why would he do something contrary to his habit? Was he already controlled by something in the mirror at that point, unable to help himself?”
Chen Ge pressed his left hand against the mirror, aligning it with his reflection: “After all, only everything in the mirror is the opposite of reality.”
Covering the mirror with a black cloth, Chen Ge sat in the haunted house and took out his black phone: “The one who tied the bell must untie it. The monster appeared because of the black phone, so to kill it, I’ll probably need the black phone’s help.”
Swiping the screen, he opened the haunted house icon. The app interface had changed slightly—the daily visitor count and monthly visitor count had each increased by two.
In the unlockable horror scenes section, a new trial task had appeared. Clicking on it, a prompt indicated that completing the trial task would unlock the corresponding horror scene.
“This game is designed very fairly. Completing tasks earns rewards, and the reward’s value depends on the task’s difficulty. If I want to develop the haunted house quickly and deal with the filth in the mirror, I need to complete as many tasks as possible.”
Daily tasks could only be done one per day, so Chen Ge naturally turned his attention to the trial task.
“Midnight Escape Trial Task: A dangerous mental patient has moved into a dilapidated apartment building. He’s holding scissors and a hammer, pacing outside your door.”
“Task Location: West Suburb Peace Apartments.”
“Task Requirements: Arrive at the task location before 23:00 today, find the killer, and survive until dawn.”
“Task Hint: He hides among the crowd, under a kind exterior, wrapped around a heart full of scars.”
“Accept the task? Note: The trial task only exists for twenty-four hours. If not accepted within that time, it will be considered abandoned, and this scene will never be unlockable.”
Chen Ge was initially hesitant, but after seeing the last line, he decisively chose to accept.
“What’s meant to come will come. Now that the haunted house is just starting to pick up, I need to seize every opportunity to run it better.”
After accepting the task, he continued scrolling. The horror spinning wheel at the very bottom had somehow activated.
Curious, Chen Ge tapped on the spinning wheel interface, and a line of text appeared on the screen:
“Life and death are fated, wealth and honor are in heaven’s hands. Here, there are spiritual fruits that extend life, and vengeful ghosts full of resentment.”
“First collection of visitor screams activates the spinning wheel, granting one free spin (visitor screams must exceed 70 decibels to be collected; after accumulating 100, one spin chance is earned).”
“A hundred screams for one spin chance?” Chen Ge held the phone, his expression odd: “This spinning wheel is way too unfair. The conditions are hard enough to meet, and the outcome is uncertain. If I actually spin a vengeful ghost, that would be a real joke.”
He looked at the remaining spins on the wheel, his heart itching. It felt like the urge a person with OCD gets when seeing a message notification on their phone, wanting to tap it regardless of whether it’s spam.
“Trying it once shouldn’t cause any problems, right?” Chen Ge comforted himself, lightly touching the screen with his finger. The spinning wheel on the display immediately began to turn.
“As long as it’s not a vengeful ghost, anything else is fine!”