Looking at the closed black iron door before him, Xiao Sun wore a complicated expression. He had never imagined things would turn out like this — all he'd done was casually lift a mirror.
"I hope the tourists won't get hurt." Xiao Sun was genuinely worried that the Red High Heels might accidentally kill someone. "I don't know if Brother Chen is even in the haunted house right now. Who should you go to in a situation like this? That actor brother, Wu Jinpeng — he seems like a decent guy. Maybe he can do something."
Xiao Sun was about to turn around and run out, but he hesitated, then spun back and grabbed the iron door handle. "Should I open the door? If those tourists are lucky enough, there might be a one-percent chance they can go back the way they came."
He was genuinely trying to help, wanting to leave the tourists a way out.
He removed the blood-veined chain from the iron door and wedged it into the gap so the door wouldn't close completely.
Boundless black mist surged through the crack and began to spill outward into the corridor!
Black threads of curse seeped into the building. Those who had hurt Ming Tai in his memories began to appear in another form — they manifested as eerie phantoms drifting through the fog.
These monsters had no physical bodies and couldn't cause real harm to people or malicious spirits, but they could draw out the deepest evils and fears lurking in one's heart.
The Red High Heels was using curses to recreate Ming Tai's past, wanting to gradually reconstruct the process by which Ming Tai had become a malevolent god. These phantom monsters were merely byproducts.
Once the iron door was opened, those phantoms from Ming Tai's memories bolted outward, merging with the black mist. Unless they chose to reveal themselves, they were nearly impossible to detect.
"Leave a little room, and there's always a chance to meet again. I've done my part," Xiao Sun said as he turned to leave, completely ignoring the sign beside the iron door that read "Please Close the Door Behind You."
He rushed out through the secret passage. The moment he returned to the room, he heard footsteps echoing in the hallway outside.
"Haunted house actors don't make noise — those have to be tourists!"
Faint black mist was drifting out through the entrance of the secret passage. Xiao Sun glanced around and realized he was in trouble.
If other tourists followed them into the passage, things were going to get really bad.
"Me being exposed is one thing, but sending everyone into a hidden scene within five minutes of the start? That's a catastrophe!" This was Xiao Sun's first time working as a haunted house actor — he had absolutely no experience. He was normally a pretty sharp person, but in the current crisis, he felt completely flustered. "I'll reset the mechanism first — can't let more tourists into the hidden scene. Once I find Brother Chen, I'll come back through here to look for those three tourists."
The footsteps in his ears grew closer and closer. Every sound in this scene was amplified, and Xiao Sun felt as though the footsteps were ringing directly inside his heart.
He shut the door painted with the bloody snail and gripped the edges of the mirror with both hands. "When I pushed the mirror up, it triggered the mechanism. To reset it, I probably need to push the mirror down."
He put his arms into it, gripping both sides of the mirror and pressing downward, but neither the mirror nor the door budged.
"What the hell?!"
The footsteps were closing in fast through the hallway. If Xiao Sun hadn't already turned into a ghost, he figured he'd be drenched in cold sweat by now.
He applied more and more force with both hands, eyes wild with anxiety. "It's over, it's over — how do you even close this thing?!"
He shook the mirror wildly up and down. More and more bloodstains and droplets appeared on its surface, and within the glass, a confused human face began to vaguely materialize.
"Maybe it's not about moving it up and down?" Gripping both ends of the mirror, Xiao Sun tried twisting the frame. The moment he applied force, the support bracket holding the frame snapped clean off.
"What the—?!"
Staring at the mirror he'd just ripped clean off the wall, Xiao Sun stood there dumbfounded. He involuntarily glanced toward the secret passage, from which black mist was still billowing out.
The wall slowly closed up. The door with the bloody snail vanished as though it had never existed.
The door on the outside of the passage had shut, but the black iron door inside was still cracked open.
Black mist poured through, seeping into the building and spreading through the gaps in the walls until it filled the entire room.
Grotesque, desperate faces flickered in and out of view across the walls. The difficulty of the scene was climbing by the second.
"What are you doing?!" The students from the Hanjiang Forensic Medicine College who were exploring the same floor came rushing over. They stared at the room shrouded in black mist and at Xiao Sun standing alone in the bathroom, clutching a mirror.
"Honestly? I don't even know what I'm doing," Xiao Sun said, holding the mirror, unsure whether to put it down or keep it.
"Where are the others in your group?"
"They didn't listen to me. They left and went off on their own."
Downstairs, the other two groups searching for the doll's dismembered limbs heard the commotion and all came running up.
In the span of less than three minutes, the first floor had transformed completely. A terrifying, mud-like puppet lay sprawled by the doorway, black mist continued to pour out of the room, and the newcomers were left wondering if this was even the same place they'd just been.
"Why is everyone gathered here? Where are Liang Er and Liang San? And what's with this monster at the door?" Fu Bole peered into the room but couldn't spot the three haunted house designers.
"I don't know. Those three told me to stay here and not cause trouble, then they found some kind of secret passage, triggered a mechanism, and disappeared." Xiao Sun's explanation was deliberately vague — he wasn't particularly good at lying.
"How can three living people just vanish? Which room did they disappear in?" Ma Feng frowned. Three people had gone missing right after the groups were formed.
"On this floor." Xiao Sun was getting anxious — if he delayed much longer, he might be too late to even recover Liang Er and Liang San's bodies.
From his perspective, the top priority was finding Brother Chen and warning the Red High Heels that tourists had entered the hidden scene.
"All three in your group disappeared and you're the only one left. That's a little strange." Zuo Han had just opened his mouth to speak when Fu Bole suddenly walked over to the group from the Hanjiang Forensic Medicine College. "What are you trying to do?"
Fu Bole stared at Zuo Han, his expression turning somewhat dark. "It was you three who pulled this stunt, wasn't it?"