The rewards for a four-star trial mission were far more generous than those of a three-star mission. Chen Ge spent a good while reading through them, committing every last detail to memory.
"The Black Phone's description is pretty vague. I'll need to go back and check the specifics for myself."
His finger traced along the lines of text as he looked at the long list of newly unlocked scenes. Sincerely, he sighed, "The visitors are in for a treat. The kind of atmosphere a vengeful god creates—just a few dozen bucks to experience it. What an absolute steal."
The haunted house had been continuously upgrading toward becoming a Despair Paradise. Its overall horror kept ratcheting up, growing ever more realistic. Sometimes Chen Ge even felt as though he had stepped back through the door.
"Maybe once the haunted house finishes upgrading, it could blur the line between the two worlds—inside and outside the door—becoming a waystation between life and death."
Putting away the Black Phone, Chen Ge recovered a little strength. He looked around.
Red High Heels had returned to her usual appearance, bandages wound around her body, her gaze fixed on the enormous spider hanging upside down from the tunnel ceiling.
The tunnel ghost woman's son was coated in threads of silk and blood. The door inside him clearly could not be opened at will. Among all the red-robed spirits who had followed Chen Ge into the Black Fog World, the tunnel ghost woman's son had suffered the worst injuries.
"Leaving that Black Fog World costs that much?" Chen Ge tried to communicate with the tunnel ghost woman's son, but the other party had no interest in engaging with him—it was fully occupied purging the curses and black fog from its body.
"The Cursed Fetus has been dealt with, but I learned some bad news from the Faceless Doctor. The Cursed Hospital, which is even more terrifying than the Cursed Fetus, can now move in and out of Hanjiang freely. You're in terrible shape right now—if they come knocking, you wouldn't stand a chance. How about..." Chen Ge thought for a moment. "You come with me for now. Once your injuries have fully healed, you can come back."
The tunnel ghost woman's son hung from the ceiling, a vague sense of déjà vu stirring in him at Chen Ge's words.
"The dreams that had accumulated in the tunnel have mostly dissipated. It's far too unsafe here for you right now—this is when you're at your weakest." Chen Ge looked up at the giant spider. "You helped me take down the Cursed Fetus, and your injuries were caused because of me. Please give me a chance to make it up to you. I have a red-robed spirit in my haunted house who is exceptionally skilled at dispelling curses. She'll treat you, and once you've made a full recovery, there's no rush about coming back. When you arrive at my haunted house, I'll give you the best treatment possible. You might even make some wonderful memories."
Chen Ge's words were deeply earnest, and nothing about them sounded off. It was simply a straightforward tale of repaying a small kindness with an ocean of gratitude.
As if to help bolster Chen Ge's persuasiveness, Red High Heels reached out and pressed down on one of the spider's legs. In just over a dozen seconds, wisps of black fog began to seep out from the limb. The tunnel ghost woman son's condition visibly improved.
After much deliberation, the tunnel ghost woman's son decided to accept Chen Ge's offer to repay his kindness. Recovering on his own would simply take too long.
"This kid trusts me so completely. I can't let him down." Chen Ge watched as the giant spider climbed back onto his shoulders. "A door inside his body—what an incredible gift. Without him, I might never have made it out of the Black Fog World."
Chen Ge wanted to keep the tunnel ghost woman's son close. Compared to the cold, eerie White Dragon Tunnel, he figured his haunted house was the better option—at the very least, he could harvest a steady stream of negative emotions without hurting anyone.
"Right now, the only people who know about the tunnel ghost woman's son's talent are my employees. Everyone else has either been obliterated or left trapped in the Black Fog World forever. That means this card hasn't been exposed yet. It could come in incredibly handy when we go up against the Cursed Hospital down the road."
Shouldering his backpack, Chen Ge led the white cat out of the White Dragon Tunnel.
Sunlight washed over him, and the long-absent warmth finally let him set down the worry he'd been carrying.
"Did you go eating random things again while you were behind the door? Why do I feel like you've gotten fatter?"
…
At eight-fifty in the morning, Chen Ge returned to New Century Paradise. Crowds of visitors were already lined up outside the park, the vast majority of them there for Chen Ge's haunted house.
Watching the visitors pile up while the person holding the haunted house key remained nowhere to be found, Uncle Xu, Xu Wan, and the others were so anxious they were ready to call the police.
"Sorry about that—my phone died, and I left in a bit of a rush last night."
Chen Ge apologized while hurrying to unlock the haunted house's security door.
When he had left the previous night, he had taken every formidable ghost he could bring along. Right now, the haunted house held nothing but a handful of lingering obsessions.
"As long as you're okay."
Business aside, everyone—Uncle Xu included—was far more worried about Chen Ge. They had all noticed how poor his condition had been recently.
Stepping inside, Chen Ge first sent Xu Wan and the others to the makeup room. He then summoned Yan Danian and Old Zhou, handing them the manga binder so they could return all the employees to their respective posts.
Chen Ge was so busy he couldn't even spare a word for conversation. Nonstop, he applied makeup for the rest of the staff, rushing to get everything done, and finally managed to open on time.
The haunted house now boasted an enormous number of scenes, capable of hosting over a hundred visitors simultaneously.
As it had been open for longer and longer, a great many visitors had successfully cleared the three-star scenes. Now, all eyes were on the four-star scenes.
Online and offline—across forums, trending topics, and discussion groups—predictions ran rampant about who would be the first to clear a four-star scene.
The haunted house companion app that Chairman Luo had developed specifically for Chen Ge's operation had also blown up in popularity almost overnight. It had been downloaded not only by a large number of hardcore haunted house enthusiasts, but also by a massive contingent of "cloud" visitors.
These "cloud" visitors didn't dare step inside the haunted house themselves, but they absolutely loved watching other visitors take it on.
The app was packed with visitor accounts, and the bizarre, terrifying encounters they described had become a daily source of entertainment for those virtual guests.
Aside from visitor shares, Chen Ge's haunted house had also drawn in a flood of internet celebrities. Chen Ge turned none of them away, and he did his best to accommodate any reasonable filming requests.
The influencers gained attention from the haunted house, and the haunted house expanded its reputation through them—everyone got what they wanted.
Most importantly, Chen Ge didn't worry in the slightest about scene spoilers. His pace of unlocking new scenes far outstripped the visitors' rate of exploration—a feat unheard of in the entire haunted house industry.
Moreover, even if visitors watched guides and videos and showed up buzzing with excitement, they would discover that everything here was nothing like what they had imagined.
Atmosphere, horror, and real ghosts—these were things no video could capture.
If a video conveyed a horror level of ten, then the first-hand experience was a hundred—or even more. Plenty of visitors had been thoroughly tricked into walking right into that gap.
Chairman Luo's haunted house companion app exploded in popularity, so the Virtual Future Paradise on the other side rushed to mimic it with one of their own. They poured enormous resources into promoting it, but the results were dismal.
There were many reasons, but the single biggest factor was that Virtual Future Paradise's haunted house leaderboard was never opened to the public. They didn't want anyone to know that their haunted house had been smashed flat on the ground—not once, but a full two times.