"Clatter!"
The phone slipped from his fingertips and hit the floor. Faintly, he could still hear the voice on the other end.
"Youliang's phone won't pick up—what happened to you two in there?"
"Xiao Zhu? Can you hear me?"
"Zhu Jianing? Are you alright? Say something!"
Zhu Jianing could certainly hear him. It was just that right now, he couldn't utter a single word.
His eyes rolled back in his head as he slammed into the partition with a clang, his body twitching faintly. No matter how he tried, he couldn't get back on his feet.
"I warned you people not to take photos or record videos in the haunted house, but you just wouldn't listen." Chen Ge pulled off his mask and stuffed it into his pocket. He looked down at Zhu Jianing, sprawled on the ground, and thought that liability waivers truly were one of mankind's great inventions.
His method of scaring people was quite different from other haunted houses. In a normal haunted house, actors dressed as ghosts would hide in the visitors' blind spots and suddenly leap out with a shriek.
Chen Ge's approach was far more unique. He would build the atmosphere to its absolute peak, and then simply wait for the visitors to seek out the scares on their own. The entire process was silent and undetectable—impossible to guard against.
Being terrified when you already had a psychological expectation was exactly what happened to Zhu Jianing right now. Unable to release his fear, it felt as though a massive chunk of ice was lodged in his throat, leaving him breathless, chilled to the bone.
Chen Ge emerged from the third stall, switched off the phone on the floor, tucked it into Zhu Jianing's pocket, then dragged him out of the bathroom and dumped him in the hallway.
"Why's he still twitching? He's breathing, so he should be fine." Chen Ge pinched the philtrum beneath Zhu Jianing's nose, and only stopped once his pupils returned to normal. "Can you hear me? Where did the guy who came in with you run off to?"
After a long stretch of silence, Chen Ge had no choice but to leave him there for the time being. "Don't wander around, or you might run into a real ghost."
Afraid that he might scare the other person into an even worse state, Chen Ge took off the Skull-Crushing Doctor's coat and carried it in his hand.
"This guy came running out of the girls' dormitory. His companion should have headed the same direction." Chen Ge sprinted toward one of the fork paths, but after checking every single room, he couldn't find Fei Youliang anywhere.
"Where did he go?" Chen Ge stopped in the room where the Pen Spirit had been. The clear tape bundle holding the pen had burst open again, the pen lying on the floor.
"No signs of a struggle in the room. Where could that bespectacled guy have gone?" Chen Ge stepped out of the girls' dormitory and stood at the center of the fork. "Could he have gone that way?"
The other side of the fork led toward the deep well and the school offices. The ground was uneven. After passing several office partitions, Chen Ge finally found Fei Youliang.
This fellow was in even worse shape than Zhu Jianing. Foam clung to the corners of his mouth, his glasses were shattered, and more disturbingly, he had collapsed right next to the deep well at the end of the hallway. One of his hands was draped over the well's edge, as though he had nearly been dragged inside.
"What did this guy encounter? Looks like he didn't just mess with the Pen Spirit!" There were no surveillance cameras in the haunted house, so Chen Ge had no idea what had actually happened to Fei Youliang.
Looking at his wretched state, Chen Ge very humanely performed chest compressions on him.
"This man's symptoms are about the same as He Shan's. Best to get him out first."
It took considerable effort, but Chen Ge finally dragged the two of them to the exit.