Liang Er, Liang San, and the amnesiac middle-aged woman groped their way through the black fog. Visibility was abysmal — anything beyond three meters was completely swallowed by the darkness.
"Where did this black fog even come from?"
"If it were white fog, I'd guess they used sublimating dry ice to generate it, but this is my first time seeing black fog." Liang Er scratched his head. "Odorless, colorless — seems like it does nothing except block your vision."
"In theory, the secret passage in the first scene should lead to a hidden room containing the first clue. The room shouldn't be too big — the haunted house owner probably wants us to find the doll's body inside the black fog," the middle-aged woman analyzed based on her own experience designing haunted houses.
"Let's search together. Stay close — there might be haunted house actors hidden in the fog."
The three pressed together and moved forward. They walked for a full two minutes and still hadn't reached any wall. Their expressions gradually changed.
"This doesn't feel like a small hidden room…"
"The area's enormous. Did we enter a new scene? But why can't we see a single actor? What's his design philosophy here? I'm completely lost."
"Should we head back the way we came? Regroup with the others first."
"Sure."
They stopped and turned around — and suddenly noticed something terrifying.
"Did we come from this direction?"
The ground beneath their feet was uniform everywhere, the black fog surrounded them on all sides, and there were no landmarks to speak of. There was simply no way to determine direction in here.
"Wait — wasn't there one more person in our group? When did that kid disappear?"
The longer they stayed in the black fog, the more the fear buried deep inside them began to swell. The three haunted house designers felt a creeping dread rising through their chests. And then they heard a woman's agonized, desperate scream.
Shuffling forward, they switched on the flashlights on their phones.
The beams warped inside the black fog, and they faintly made out a woman wrapped head to toe in bandages in the distance.
Swirling in the fog, the woman seemed to be torturing herself — frantically inhaling the surrounding black mist.
The fog surged into her body, tearing open wound after wound across her skin, then seeped back out through the gashes.
She appeared to be searching for something within the black fog, using her own body as a vessel. The entire filtering process was agonizing and horrifying to witness.
The fog gathered around her as she continuously inhaled it, and slowly, black-and-red tattoos began appearing across her body.
These tattoos clung to her skin like a second layer of clothing.
From a distance, the woman radiated a beauty so eerie it bordered on the otherworldly — but if anyone looked closely at what those tattoos depicted, every ounce of that beauty curdled into pure dread.
Black threads sliced through her skin like knives, the blood and black lines intertwining to reconstruct the miserable life of a child.
Inhuman encounters. Suffering and torment beyond anything a normal person could imagine. In the deepest pit of agony and despair, a flower of sin was blooming!
The phone flashlight illuminated the woman, and the three haunted house designers stared at the body beneath those bandages — covered in wounds — and felt their scalps go numb.
"What the hell is that? That's not a haunted house actor! Is it a mannequin?" Liang San studied the woman's unnatural posture and whispered to his brother.
"At first glance she's beautiful, but look closer and it's kind of disgusting…" The moment the word "disgusting" left his lips, Liang Er saw the woman's head slowly rotate in the distance, and a pair of eyes — consumed by curse and killing intent — locked onto him.
Liang Er's body instantly went rigid, every ounce of fat on him trembling.
The sound of high heels striking the ground rang out, slowly at first. Across the entire black fog world, countless faces rose in wailing.
Heads strung together by cursed threads surged from the ceiling, grinning madly. Centipede-like head-monsters scuttled across the floor and walls at frightening speed, charging toward the three haunted house designers with the deepest malice.
Just moments ago they had been saying there were no haunted house actors here — in barely a few seconds, everything had changed.
Liang Er and Liang San didn't even know where these things had come from. Their faces went paper-white, and pure instinct drove them backward.
More and more monsters appeared. Things they had never seen even in their worst nightmares — beyond anything they had ever defined as fear.
"Run! Run!"
The middle-aged woman was the first to react. She sprinted backward, and the moment she moved, all the monsters surged forward like a tidal wave.
There were too many!
Liang San started running too, but after just a few steps he heard a scream behind him — his brother was still standing in place.
"I can't move!" Liang Er had no idea what was happening to his body. Ever since he had uttered the word "disgusting," he felt his heartbeat growing erratic, as though from that moment on his body no longer belonged to him.
Liang San hesitated for a split second, but brotherly bonds ran deep — he spun around and grabbed Liang Er's arm. "Brother! I'll carry you on my back!"
Before he could finish, he saw countless black threads emerging from the fog, wrapping around Liang Er's body and creeping toward him!
Liang San recoiled in terror and let go. The flesh on his face quivered with fear, and his eyes — buried within that fat — opened wider than they ever had in his life. "What is that?!"
He let go and instinctively ran backward. "Brother! I'll go get help! Hold on!"
What happened behind him, Liang San could no longer concern himself with. He ran desperately in a single direction.
In the black fog there were no landmarks. He had no idea where he was now. Monsters surrounded him on all sides, and he didn't dare stop for even a moment.
"Liang San… Liang San…"
After running for an indeterminate amount of time, a familiar voice drifted through the fog.
"Brother?"
"Yeah, it's me! Come on, over here!"
The voice guided Liang San toward a certain direction, and faintly, the outline of a baby's figure materialized in the black fog.
Liang San wanted to avoid that figure, but he realized his brother's voice was coming from exactly where the baby was.
Something was wrong. He tried to change direction — but the instant he turned, the baby began chasing him at a frenzied pace!
"Liang San, I'm your brother!"
"Get away from me! Stop chasing me!" Liang San had lost every shred of the confidence he'd had when he first entered the haunted house. His psychological defenses had completely shattered the moment he abandoned Liang Er and ran.
"I really am your brother! Don't you remember? When we were little, playing hide-and-seek, you hid under the bed all by yourself — someone was whispering to keep you company. And do you remember the time you snuck out at night to go internet surfing, and there was a big dog in the stairwell barking at you over and over? After that you were afraid of dogs for the rest of your life. But that dog wasn't barking at you — it saw me!"
"I am your brother! I am your brother Liang Yi, the one you can never shake off!"
"I died before the two of you! But I never left!"
The baby figure scuttled across the ground at terrifying speed and finally caught up to Liang San. It climbed onto his body, clamped its hands around his neck, and that blood-and-flesh-smeared face hung upside-down directly in front of his eyes.