Chapter 41: Hold Your Breath
"Lucky favored one of the vengeful spirits, your courage is astonishing. This nightmare task is both a trial and a reward!"
"Below is a game called 'Hold Your Breath,' which can cross the boundary between life and death, allowing you to see the deceased."
"Task requirements: Enter the bathroom alone at 3:30 AM, lock the bathroom door and turn off the light, light a candle nearby, then lie down in the bathtub and hold your breath."
"From 3:30 AM to 3:44 AM is when the night is darkest, also the pivot point of yin and yang transition in a day. What you need to do is hold your breath at 3:44 AM, sink to the bottom of the tub, and silently chant the name of the person you most want to see."
"When time slips into the crack between night and dawn, you will be able to see them at the edge of life and death."
"Successfully seeing the person you miss means the task is complete. If you never see them, the task automatically succeeds after holding your breath for sixty seconds."
After reading the task information on the black phone, Chen Ge's emotions were complicated.
Compared to the first nightmare-level task, this one seemed much simpler. Closing your eyes for thirty minutes in a terrifying environment required strong mental fortitude and extraordinary courage, but holding your breath for sixty seconds—most people could do that.
Yet precisely because most people could do it, he felt uneasy. This was, after all, a nightmare-level task; there had to be some unknown risk hidden within.
"Same setting as the last nightmare task—both in the bathroom. The difference is that this time I have to lie in the bathtub and hold my breath for sixty seconds." He carefully thought through the entire process. Counting preparation time, it was only about ten-odd minutes. What terrifying thing could happen in such a short span?
Chen Ge was tempted, not just because the task seemed simpler, but because of one line in the description—it could cross life and death, allowing him to see a deceased loved one.
The more critical the moment, the calmer Chen Ge became. He sat in the chair, pondering a certain possibility.
His parents had disappeared in an abandoned hospital on the outskirts, leaving behind the black phone and a cloth doll. When he was about to give up on the horror house, he activated the black phone.
Later, during the first nightmare task, the cloth doll became the key item to stop the monster in the mirror from breaking out. What was worth pondering was that both the cloth doll and the black phone were his parents' belongings—could these two things have been deliberately left behind?
If everything was truly arranged by them, then this second nightmare task was worth examining closely.
"Could they be trying to meet me this way, to reveal more information?" Of course, this was just Chen Ge's speculation. In truth, whether or not the nightmare tasks were set up by his parents, he would still do them.
Crossing life and death to see the person he longed for—this was a chance for Chen Ge to confirm whether his parents still existed in this world.
If he didn't see them, it meant his parents were merely missing and still alive.
If he did see them, it would prove his first guess—that his parents left the black phone to tell him something, perhaps hiding their true last words within it.
"It seems I have no choice." Chen Ge glanced at his watch. It was 2:55 AM, thirty-five minutes until the task started. "I wasted too much time smashing the mirror on the third floor. This is going to be tricky."
The task required lying in a bathtub and holding his breath, but the only room in the entire horror house with a bathtub was in the Midnight Escape scenario.
At the end of the employee passage was a room with a bathtub. When he scared Hu Shan and the others earlier, Chen Ge had used that passage to enter and exit the scene.
"Thirty-five minutes left. Going out to find a hotel with a bathtub now is out of the question. I'll have to face the monster in the mirror head-on." Having made his choice, Chen Ge didn't hesitate. He stuffed all four cloth dolls into his pockets, ran out of the horror house, sneaked into the park's employee cafeteria in the dead of night, and grabbed two kitchen knives.
"These knives haven't butchered pigs or sheep, but I've seen the chef kill chickens and fish with them, so they should count as having taken life." He brought the knives to his nose and sniffed. There was no aura of slaughter, only a strong smell of green peppers that made his eyes water.
Back at the horror house, Chen Ge picked up an iron bucket, planning to get water from the restroom, but then he remembered the content on the phone: "This task is called 'Hold Your Breath.' It says to lie in the bathtub, but it doesn't require filling it with water. I guess just holding my breath is enough."
The front door of the Midnight Escape scene was locked. Chen Ge entered through the employee passage and stood alone in the bathroom as the black phone's task required.
The mirror in this room had long been shattered by Chen Ge. Now, fragments littered the floor, crunching under his feet.
"I made quite a racket earlier. The monster in the mirror must know I'm here, but it doesn't matter. I just need to survive that one minute of holding my breath."
To Chen Ge, this task, though eerie, didn't seem too dangerous.
He locked the bathroom door, placed the cloth doll his parents had left him behind the door, and then set the four dolls carrying the lingering thoughts of the victims around the bathtub.
"Everyone, I'm counting on you. No matter what, buy me that one minute!"
Just like last time, he opened his phone's camera and set it at a suitable angle to record. But since the room was too dark, the screen was almost pitch black, barely showing a silhouette.
With three minutes left, Chen Ge took everything out of his pockets and placed it on the sink. Following the black phone's instructions, he lit a candle beside the bathtub.
The flickering flame became the only light source in the room, reflecting off the mirror shards on the floor. Each fragment held an image of Chen Ge.
He took off his shirt and walked to the bathtub.
The tub looked shallow, but because of the dim light, he couldn't see the bottom at a glance.
He reached his hand into the tub. Though there was no water, a chill crept up his fingers and spread through his body, making him shiver. "This task is really unsettling."
After a final check of the time, Chen Ge sat down in the bathtub, holding the two kitchen knives.
As he entered, he felt a hint of coldness, as if something had spilled out, flowing over the mirror fragments.
"So cold..."
Chen Ge felt the heat in his body draining rapidly, even his heartbeat slowing.
Drops of water dripped from the edge of the sink, the only sound in the room.
"One minute. If I can just get through this minute, I'll get the reward and verify my guess!"
Chen Ge adjusted his breathing, waiting for 3:44 AM to arrive.