Chapter 193: Your Performance Is Very Similar to a Ghost
Chen Ge discovered the "ghost" under the crib, but that "ghost" hadn't realized it yet.
"Come on out, buddy."
Chen Ge pushed the crib aside with force, the wires beneath the baby doll's body pulled taut, revealing a scrawny man crouched under the bed, holding a remote control. He wore terrifying makeup, his body covered in fake blood.
"Let me ask you something—what props are hidden in this room?" Chen Ge felt a bit abrupt himself. "The security guard didn't tell me anything when I came in, and finding them on my own would be a hassle."
The "male ghost" under the crib didn't say a word; he turned and bolted out the door. This sudden move caught Chen Ge off guard.
"What's the rush?" To keep his heart rate steady, Chen Ge didn't give chase; he had been strolling along the whole way. "The baby grabbing clothes is a decent scare point, but there should be more to it. Probably the actor waits until I'm about to leave, then pops out suddenly."
Picking up the baby doll, he noted that the other person's makeup skills still fell short compared to his own.
"Xu Zhenzhen?" The thin blanket under the baby also bore that name. "Why her again?"
Chen Ge picked up all the nearby babies, and each doll had that name written underneath.
"Ever since I entered the haunted house, this name keeps appearing. Is it meant to plant a psychological suggestion?" He searched the nursery thoroughly and finally found a clue on a bedsheet.
It was a key-shaped pendant, with a piece of white paper pressed beneath it, reading: "For my daughter—Xu Zhenzhen."
"Taking a dead person's belongings makes people feel like they're being haunted by the deceased. This step is meant to reinforce the visitor's fear of Xu Zhenzhen." The key pendant was a necessary item to advance to the next stage; not taking it meant failing to clear the level, so it was the haunted house's open strategy.
Casually picking up the key pendant, Chen Ge looked at the paper, took out the pen inhabited by the spirit, and mimicked the handwriting, adding a few words on the back: "I'm back."
"Leaving them a little surprise."
The scare point in this room was easily seen through by Chen Ge. He headed for the door, and just as he stepped out of the nursery, a rolling sound came from the darkness ahead. Then, a disheveled woman with a blood-smeared face and a bulging belly pushed a cart full of babies, charging straight at Chen Ge at high speed!
The most terrifying part was that the woman had no legs.
Suddenly seeing this, Chen Ge's heart rate fluctuated slightly, but he quickly calmed down.
The woman's body was pressed against the left wall, and Chen Ge had already determined before entering the nursery that there was a hidden mechanism in that wall.
Rather than saying the woman was pushing the cart, it was more like most of her body was leaning on it, being dragged along.
The corridor was narrow, and the cart was fast. The "pregnant ghost" woman brushed past Chen Ge, her eyes filled with venomous hatred fixed on him, their faces only about twenty centimeters apart.
"So the scariest thing was outside the door. That's a clever design."
Visitors, nervous and searching the nursery for the key, finally find it and breathe a sigh of relief, only to be confronted by such a terrifying female ghost charging at them with no warning.
"No tracks on the floor—is the mechanism in the wall driving the cart?" Chen Ge followed the cart-pushing "female ghost" back, his steps light.
The "female ghost," having rushed to the end of the corridor, didn't realize someone was behind her. She enjoyed the scaring process, turning her body around to charge again.
But as she turned her head, she saw Chen Ge's face, full of curiosity, and her own face stiffened in shock.
"So you've been squatting on the cart the whole time. Pretty creative." The cart was electrically powered, with the woman acting as the driver. To ensure visitor safety and prevent collisions, Tian Teng Hospital connected the cart's lower half to the wall mechanism, limiting the braking distance to within ten centimeters.
"This scare point is unexpectedly clever. That look you gave me was really impactful—full of venom and hatred, almost like a real ghost." Chen Ge never hesitated to praise others.
Hearing Chen Ge's compliment, the "female ghost" didn't know how to respond. In her years on the job, this was the first time someone had praised her acting in a haunted house.
The usual visitors never paid attention to such things. She felt like a dancer in the dark, performing with all her might but unappreciated, and some visitors even lashed out at them.
Though she hated to admit it, she did feel a subtle sense of finding a kindred spirit in a sea of mediocrity.
"It's nothing..." Perhaps from playing a ghost for so long, her voice carried an involuntary hint of gloom.
"Really, that look was very ghost-like. You acted well."
Chen Ge took the key and moved on to the next scene. After he was far away, the actress suddenly felt something was off. "What does 'very ghost-like' mean? Like he's actually seen a ghost..."
Ahead of the nursery was a restroom with several hanging upside-down figures. Tian Teng Hospital's scare points were all this straightforward—visually frightening at first glance, so visitors to their haunted house kept screaming.
Chen Ge's haunted house, besides scenes similar to Tian Teng Hospital's style, had another unique type. Through atmosphere building, it accumulated small eerie and fearful points, finally releasing them all at once, giving visitors an extreme experience that made their souls tremble.
The restroom, diagnosis room, and doctor's prep room—these three rooms had no actors, relying only on mechanisms to scare. To be fair, Tian Teng Hospital was somewhat considerate of visitor emotions, using these three rooms as "recovery" checkpoints, giving visitors time to compose themselves.
For Chen Ge, ordinary mechanisms and bloody scenes were boring. He breezed through all three rooms, finding three more key pendants of different colors in the nooks and crannies.
Counting the two he'd found in the heart and the nursery, he now had five keys in the haunted house.
"Each key is a different color. Only one of them should be the real key." Chen Ge stowed all the keys and entered the fourth room.
Pushing open the door, the room was small, replicating a decor style from over a decade ago.
Yellowed paint coated the walls, a chandelier swayed, a "corpse" lay slumped over a worn-out desk, plastic knives and a few bloodstained case sheets littered the floor.
Bloody handprints covered the ceiling, messy footprints stained the floor, and the room looked chaotic, as if a group of ghosts had paid a visit.
"Looks familiar. Isn't that corpse's build the same as the guy under the crib?" Chen Ge walked over to the desk and suddenly spotted something interesting.
On the bookshelf behind the desk sat an old-fashioned tape recorder, long out of production.