Chapter 192: Did I Forget to Put on Makeup Today?
"The security guard took the actor from the iron cabinet and left?" Standing at the entrance of the dissection room, Chen Ge looked back at the path he had come from, his pupils slowly contracting. The dim environment didn't affect him much. "I didn't hear the sound of the wall moving, so they must have just hidden themselves."
Closing the door to the dissection room, a bit of rust flaked off the door panel. The props in the Tian Teng Ghost House looked like they had seen some years.
Touching the rust on the floor, Chen Ge recalled the various equipment inside the dissection room. "It doesn't look like it was intentionally aged; it seems like it was directly moved out of an abandoned hospital."
Some haunted houses, in order to maximize the authenticity of their scenes, buy discarded equipment at low prices and reprocess it. For example, the surgical bed and ECG monitor Chen Ge had just seen in the dissection room.
He noticed this because there was a string of numbers on an inconspicuous spot on the back of the ECG monitor—2-2-1-15.
This number was the hospital's internal classification code for medical equipment, indicating medical equipment, functional testing devices, and the 15th ECG monitor.
Different hospitals might have different codes, but they were generally similar.
"Residual thoughts usually attach to the object that caused death or the one closest to it at the time of death. If all the props in the haunted house are real items taken from the hospital, then they might have brought out things with residual thoughts attached."
Chen Ge was only speculating; he had no evidence, nor could he rule out that this was a scenario designed by Tian Teng Hospital, especially since he was challenging the highest difficulty.
Next to the dissection room was another ward, filled with white cloth hanging down, its purpose unclear. Chen Ge wasn't interested in going in to experience it and walked straight ahead.
The corridor lights emitted a dim green glow, and at the end was a closed iron door with a large lock hanging on it.
"It looks like I need to find the key to move on to the next stage." With the path blocked and the dissection room already searched, Chen Ge had no choice but to turn back and enter the room full of white cloth.
The white cloth hung from the ceiling, splattered with large patches of blood, looking like a murder scene.
Casually lifting a thick piece of white cloth, the light inside was even dimmer, and the scene arranged was somewhat unsettling.
The missing organs and severed limbs from the mannequins in the dissection room were haphazardly piled here, mixed in with a few mannequin heads.
"This is pretty intense." Chen Ge was the first customer to challenge the place since it opened. The artificial blood on the floor hadn't dried yet, and stepping on it left a sticky feeling under his shoes, which was very unpleasant.
"This room is adjacent to the dissection room. The TV in the security booth said this hospital was involved in organ trafficking, so this must be the site of the illegal transactions."
Tian Teng Hospital had hired a Japanese team to design the place. In pursuit of visual impact, they would go to great lengths without any scruples. If it were domestic staff, they would never design such a scene.
Walking over to the pile of severed limbs and organs, Chen Ge glanced over it and paused slightly. He noticed something unusual but didn't show it.
"The female mannequin on the dissection room's surgical bed is missing a heart. While the other mannequins are also missing some organs and limbs, none are as important as the heart. I just glanced over this pile of organs and didn't see a heart. It seems the key is likely hidden inside the heart."
Where had the girl mannequin's heart gone?
Looking at the large pile of organ and limb models, Chen Ge had a guess. He bent down to search through the pile.
As his body slowly lowered, a mannequin head hidden among the organs suddenly opened its eyes and screamed as it stood up!
The face was twisted with scars, eyes dripping with artificial blood, hair stuck to the neck.
Organs and limbs rolled off as she stood up, but she only got halfway before someone pressed down on her head!
"Don't mess around."
Chen Ge pushed the "female ghost" back down. His eyesight was excellent, and the dim environment was like water to a fish. He had noticed this unusual head as soon as he entered.
Since the number of organs and limbs was limited, the person hiding inside to play the ghost was a petite girl. Pressed down by Chen Ge's hand, she suddenly didn't know what to do.
A head pat from a visitor? There didn't seem to be any similar emergency measures in the ghost house actor's manual!
The female ghost just sat back down on the ground, hands at a loss, with Chen Ge's big hand pressing on her head, even forgetting her next line.
"Heart, heart... where's the heart?" They say a man looks handsome when he's focused, but when the "female ghost" saw Chen Ge muttering about the heart and seriously searching through the pile of organs, she shivered, feeling like something strange had infiltrated their ghost house.
"Found it."
Chen Ge opened the heart model hidden behind the girl, revealing a uniquely shaped key inside.
Taking the key, Chen Ge left without stopping, leaving the bewildered "female ghost" behind.
She watched Chen Ge's back, opening her mouth several times to speak but failing.
After he left, she silently lay back down, gathered the scattered organs around her, and buried herself again.
"Did I forget to put on makeup today?"
Opening the door in the middle of the corridor, the scene ahead became even more eerie. Limited by the space, Tian Teng Hospital's design focused more on details, with each scare point placed close together.
Passing through the iron door, the green corridor lights flickered, and faint white figures seemed to drift along the hallway.
"The corridor width has been reduced by half a meter; there should be mechanisms in the walls." Chen Ge knocked on the wall. "Right, the wall on the left is hollow."
After walking a short distance, Chen Ge saw the third room, filled with cribs containing newborn mannequins.
"Nursery?" Chen Ge looked in from the doorway, and just as he was about to enter, the sound of a child crying came from inside.
"Stop crying, let uncle see where you are."
There was more than one speaker installed in the room, so the sound was erratic.
"Every room in Tian Teng Hospital has a purpose. The dissection room provided the clue about the heart, the white cloth room hid the heart, and the heart was the key to opening the door to the next stage. So, there should be something I need in this room too."
Chen Ge walked to the middle of the room and suddenly felt something tugging at the hem of his clothes. Turning his head, he saw a baby in the crib beside him reaching out to grab his clothes.
The baby's face was full of malice, with meticulously applied makeup.
"The doll's arms don't use ball joints. This kind of integrated structure suggests the arms might be hollow, likely containing mechanical wiring." Chen Ge looked around. "The timing was precise enough to grab my clothes just as I passed by. The person controlling the baby can't be far away. The probability of remote control via surveillance is low. Thinking this way, they should be hiding under the crib."