My House of Horrors

1132 Destiny, Jiujiang Medical University 2 in 1

The person that he had been relying on was the actual culprit. Ma Feng’s trembling hands had trouble even holding the death certificate firmly. The words kept shaking in his eyes. It was a piece of paper as light as a feather, but in his hands, it felt as heavy as a mountain. It directly crushed Ma Feng’s heart. He had been trying so hard to escape from death, but in reality, death had been holding his arm and dragging him along. He had been trying to run away from ghost, but a ghost had been closely following beside him, unwilling to part with him.

This unexpected twist cut off the breath in Ma Feng’s lungs. He turned slowly to look at Xiao Sun, who was leaning at the door, looking outside, and his mental support at that moment shattered into withering powder. The blood in his veins appeared to have frozen as Ma Feng’s world collapsed. The world spun, and he collapsed heavily to the ground. Before he drifted out of consciousness he could still hear the consistent voice calling him.

“Brother Ma, Brother Ma, Brother Ma…” Xiao Sun tried his best to shake Ma Feng’s body, but Ma Feng gave him no response at all. Perhaps Brother Ma had lost all hope in this world. “We are already safe now! Big brother! We have gone through so much to finally arrive at a safe room. Why would you choose this important moment to faint?” Xiao Sun had a bitter smile on his face. He could be certain that this room was one hundred percent safe, and no other haunted house ghosts would be hiding in this room because this was his own room before he died.

“So, what am I supposed to do now? This does not feel like a normal fainting. At least it is not one that I can resuscitate him from normally. Should I take him to the underground morgue to be checked by the group of doctors? But I am not familiar with them, and that old doctor always looks so stern.”

With a human life on the line, Xiao Sun did not dare hesitate too long. He picked up Ma Feng and prepared to walk out from his room. But before he took any steps, the phone in Ma Feng’s pocket suddenly rang. Xiao Sun reached into Ma Feng’s pocket and took out the phone. He glanced at the caller ID; the caller who was calling was Qin Guang.

“Hmm, this name is rather familiar. I believe he is that famous streamer. He entered the haunted house alongside Ma Feng.” Xiao Sun was about to answer the phone when he suddenly hesitated. “I could use Ma Feng’s phone to answer this call, but how am I supposed to explain that Ma Feng is currently unavailable to talk to him? I cannot explain why Ma Feng is currently unconscious. This will create an easy misunderstanding that it was me who knocked Ma Feng out. Even though I am actually a worker here, I am not going to take the blame for the deeds that I did not do.”

Xiao Sun not only did not knock Ma Feng out, he even resuscitated the unconscious Ma Feng multiple times. No matter what, he was not willing to shoulder this blame. After giving it some thought, Xiao Sun decided to end the call and then send a message to Qin Guang. “I am currently hiding inside a room. There are people wandering outside the door. I am not available to answer your call now.”

Moments later, Qin Guang replied with the following message. “I am now with the students from the medical university. Where are you guys now? This haunted house is very unsafe. We have a feeling that this place is really haunted.”

Seeing Qin Guang’s reply, Xiao Sun’s brow hiked up so high. “We have been exposed? Who has been so unprofessional? If the visitors find out the haunted house is really haunted, then who would dare come here again? This is such a trouble-filled day! I have to find a way to salvage this situation!”

He held onto the phone and stood contemplatively for a long time before he eventually sent another message to Qin Guang. “Me and my teammate have found a hidden pathway and entered the hidden scenario. What about you guys?”

“We are also inside the hidden scenario! The medical students found me and saved me. They found the hidden pathway inside a sub scenario that had the heart as the theme, and now, I am currently hiding with them inside an apartment building in the hidden scenario.”

Xiao Sun stared at the words on the phone screen. He really did not expect Qin Guang and the remaining visitors to have also entered the hidden scenario. “Can you tell me exactly where you are now? Are there any unique and conspicuous buildings near you guys?”

“The entrance of the building marks this place as Jiu Hong Apartments Block 2. The whole building is abandoned. Instead of rental rooms, it is filled with hospital rooms. It is extremely scary.”

“You guys, stay where you are. I will head over to meet up with the rest of you as soon as I can.”

After Xiao Sun finished sending that message, he immediately ran out from the room, but when he was halfway out the building, he ran back again.

“It is too unsafe to leave Ma Feng in the room like this. His condition is a bit different from everyone else’s. I’d better bring him along with me. When I run into the other employees, I can hand Ma Feng directly to them and have them take him to the doctors for me.” Xiao Sun’s idea was good. He carried Ma Feng out of his own room, but the strange thing was, even though the haunted house, especially the hidden scenario, had an exorbitant number of ghosts and monsters, Xiao Sun failed to encounter a single one of them. It was as if they were purposely trying to avoid him.

“This Ma Feng truly is one hell of a lot of trouble. No one is willing to come too close to him.”

…

Inside the hidden scenario’s Jiu Hong Apartments Block 2, He San, Zuo Han, and Mr. Wang were standing together. They surrounded Qin Guang, who held the phone in the middle.

“Look closely at the messages that Ma Feng sent. Does this sound like the tone of Ma Feng? Even a person like myself who has not known Ma Feng for that long can see the problem, and you’re still dumbly asking me why.” Zuo Han shook his head. “The person who’s holding the phone is no longer Ma Feng.”

“But this is definitely Ma Feng’s phone number!” Qin Guang still did not quite believe it.

“How could you be so stubborn even when the reality is placed right before you? Then, how about you explain why he insisted on sending messages with you when he could have easily answered the phone and talked to you?”

“Perhaps it is like he said, it is not that convenient for him to talk now?”

“Wrong. It is because that employee who is very good at mimicking voices is not with Ma Feng yet. When that actor arrives, he will use Ma Feng’s voice to misdirect you.” Zuo Han waved his hands. “Stop dreaming of the impossible. A large batch of haunted house employees already know our location. If you do not want to be scared until you faint, you’d better stick close to us and leave this place immediately.”

“But what if that really is Director Ma and he comes over here and can’t find the rest of us?” Qin Guang was slightly worried about Ma Feng’s ire.

“I will tell you this one last time. We are allowing you to come with us out of kindness. In fact, you were begging us to take you along, so stop giving us so many complaints and so much trouble.” Zuo Han shoved a rag doll’s head toward Qin Guang. “Take this and do not lose it.”

“Do I really have to take this with me?” Qin Guang held the rag doll’s head with both hands, and the unwillingness was plainly written on his place.

“Do you know how much trouble we went through to find the rag doll’s head? Naturally, we have to take it with us at all times.” He San did not have any affection toward Qin Guang’s group. If not for the fact that Zuo Han found Qin Guang somewhat useful, he would definitely not have taken Qin Guang with them.

“We not only have to bring it with us; we need to treat it with sufficient respect.” Zuo Han’s voice had always been direct and cold. When he was assessing a problem or a situation, he could accomplish the impossible where he would not factor in personal feelings. Even if those other visitors had once mocked and chided him, as long as he believed he could get some use out of them, he would forgo the past and take the person in with them. The core of his thinking was, as long as the person was useful to him and could improve his current situation, then they were someone worth keeping around. After clearing the Coffin Village scenario, Zuo Han had a deep-seated sense of fear toward any items that they were tasked with finding inside the haunted house. He also knew that around the end of the visitation, all the monsters inside the scenario would go on a rampage, and they would first target the person who held the quest items.

The reason he kept Qin Guang around, to put it more plainly, was because he wanted to make Qin Guang’s ‘death’ more valuable. Walking to the entrance of Jiu Hong Apartments Block 2, Zuo Han signaled for Qin Guang to walk ahead.

“The rag doll head that you are holding is a kind of protective talisman. As long as you are holding it, you will not be attacked by the monsters in the black fog.”

Whether it could protect the bearers from the attacks of the monsters in the black fog or not, Zuo Han did not know, but he had indeed done an experiment with it. The rag doll’s head truly could disperse the black fog. Qin Guang walked at the front of the group with some skepticism. But strangely enough, he did notice the black fog moving away from him.

The black fog appears to be afraid of the rag doll’s head. Why would a phenomenon like that be the case? This scenario is called ghost fetus. Could the rag doll be the ghost fetus itself? Zuo Han started to analyze the scenario using his past experience. The haunted house boss is a master of psychology. The way he knows how to utilize and evoke the fear in people’s hearts is masterful. I cannot use a normal person’s perspective to try to predict and assess Boss Chen’s way of thinking.

Zuo Han touched the tip of his nose while he kept his gaze glued to the head of the rag doll.

The quest for this tour is to find all the body parts of the rag doll. If the rag doll really is the ghost fetus, if we do manage to find all the body parts of the rag doll, doesn’t that mean the visitors will have voluntarily collected and summoned the scariest monster inside this scenario?

When he reached this conclusion, Zuo Han felt a chill run up the back of his spine. Boss Chen wants the visitors to personally release the demon in this scenario with their own hands!

He had known that it was impossible to clear the scenario from the very beginning. The thought of what he assumed Boss Chen intended to do chilled him to his core. The fear that this scenario brought him had far surpassed the fear that he had experienced in the other scenarios. And the worst thing was, he knew full well that this was not even the scariest part of the ghost fetus yet. They were in for a bigger and scarier surprise.

The difficulty of a four-star scenario is truly out of this world. This time, I will treat this as a scouting journey. I already know the location of one of the hidden pathways. That is a great discovery already. It will make the next visit so much easier.

Zuo Han and the other visitors walked out from Jiu Hong Apartments Block 2. With the rag doll’s head as protection, they were not attacked by the strange things floating in the black fog and successfully reached the entrance of Block 1.

“Block 2 is filled with strange sickrooms as if the whole building is meant to house some mad individuals. Is it possible that this whole residential area is a private mental asylum?”

The background story of the ghost fetus was very obscure. Zuo Han could only conduct his analysis through the clues that he had found. Jiu Hong Apartments Block 2 actually had many clues hidden inside, but the thing that confused Zuo Han was that the clues they had found could not be linked into a complete and reasonable chain of events.

This was not entirely Zuo Han’s fault. To not expose the secrets between the ghost fetus and the cursed hospital, Chen Ge had purposely taken away some of the important clues that were originally present inside the replicated scenario. What the visitors could see were the things that Chen Ge allowed them to see. But just through these scraps of clues, Zuo Han and Mr. Wang still managed to hypothesize certain things.

Assuming that Jiu Hong Apartments Block 2 is a mental asylum, it housed some very strange patients, but even stranger than that is the fact that the doctors there did not seem like they wanted to treat their patients at all. If anything, there was evidence that they had been trying to aggravate their conditions, pushing them deeper into the abyss of madness and despair. The hidden scenario is the core of this scenario. The appearance of this private mental asylum at this place proves that this locale is very important to the ghost fetus. Our main character of this scenario perhaps completed its final transformation here.

If the rag doll is the ghost fetus, then finding all of its missing parts will be akin to summoning it. In that case, the difficulty of the scenario will increase to an impossible level. That is definitely not the best way to solve this scenario!

Zuo Han’s eyes subconsciously glanced toward the rag doll’s head, and he noticed that the eyeball inside the head appeared to be looking back at him as well. His heart suddenly started to race. Zuo Han managed to discern a trace of melancholy and loneliness in the rag doll’s eyes.

Finding all the parts of the rag doll and bringing it out of the scenario is certainly a suicidal mission. The real way to clear this mission is perhaps to reform the rag doll and help it achieve salvation.

Zuo Han’s brain was spinning wildly, and many thoughts were colliding in his mind.

Mr. Wang valued Zuo Han greatly, so he moved over to ask softly, “What are you thinking about?”

Zuo Han silently whispered his own analysis to his lecturer. The latter listened to everything and kept silent for a long time. The only thing he did was slow down his pace, until they were further away from Qin Guang. Then, Mr. Wang whispered back, “Zuo Han, do you know what my biggest impression of this tour is?”

“What is it?”

“The sense of authenticity.” Mr. Wang’s expression turned very serious. “Everything feels so real. I have been a part of the investigations of many heavy crimes. The feeling that this place gives me is similar to when I was at actual crime scenes.”

“You suspect there has been an actual murder committed here?” Zuo Han was very clever. Once Mr. Wang voiced his opinion, he was able to grasp his lecturer’s thoughts almost immediately.

“Correct, and there must have been more than one murder.” Mr. Wang took a deep breath. “The set decoration of this place and the words left behind by the innocent victims, they are all dripping with a bloody sense of authenticity. This is something that you would not have experienced unless you have been to the front line before.”

“But if there have been so many murders committed here, Boss Chen’s haunted house would have been closed a long time ago. From how I see it, he should have copied the murders that he had helped solve perfectly inside his haunted house, and with some amazing artistic skill, he has achieved this current environment that we are in.”

“Hopefully, I am only overthinking it.” Mr. Wang walked at the back of the group. He rarely had the chance to engage with his students in this kind of situation.

“Sir, if you are really that interested in this place, we can come over for another visit in the future.” Zuo Han wanted to lighten the atmosphere. He was afraid that Mr. Wang might be reminded of the bad things from the past.

“I am afraid there won’t be a chance for that anymore. Soon, I will need to go to Xin Hai.”

“You still cannot let go of that case?”

“Zuo Han, do you know what the most important thing for a forensic doctor is?”

“Find clues to help decide the cause of death from the science of pathology and provide law enforcement with the most effective support through the construction of a strong evidence chain.”

“You are right and also wrong.” Mr. Wang pointed lightly at his heart, but he did not elaborate. Zuo Han did not press for details either, but he did memorize the words ‘Xin Hai’. If possible, he wanted to give his lecturer a hand. The remaining four visitors entered Jiu Hong Apartments Block 1. The dark corridors were permeated with a light stench. Every house had a bowl of white rice before the door, and a pair of chopsticks were stuck vertically inside the bowls of rice.

“Before we explore this scenario, I need to warn all of you. We are two thirds into the visitation hour. Soon, the scenario will welcome its third stage, and all the ghosts in this scenario will go berserk, so we’d better be mentally prepared for it.”

After saying that, Zuo Han led the others into the building. Soon after they had gone in, the blood rain rinsed the outside of the building. In the black fog, many red shadows started to appear.

The visitors inside the building had not realized those anomalies. Qin Guang, who was hugging the rag doll’s head, was walking at the front of the group. After he realized that the head could chase away the black fog, he had been treating it as a treasure, hugging it tightly against his chest.

This time, I am quite lucky to have run into a group of experienced players who are willing to take me with them, but I wonder how things are over there with CEO Ma.

He opened one door after another, and no accidents happened. That caused Qin Guang’s courage to grow. When he came to the third floor, a strange noise came from the first floor. It sounded like someone had accidentally kicked over the bowls of rice that were left in front of the rooms.