"Do you guys hear something strange?" Qin Guang stood guard at the doorway, cradling the cloth doll's head in both hands like some kind of mascot.
The task Zuo Han had assigned him was simple — watch the door. The doll's head in his hands could disperse the black fog and keep the vengeful spirits at bay.
That reasoning had convinced Qin Guang. He had already seen for himself back in the fog that the doll's head really did have that effect. Now even if someone tried to take it from him, he'd probably refuse.
"Just stay out here and don't move around. If you see any ghosts coming, alert us." Zuo Han and the other students from Hanjiang Medical Academy were searching inside the room. The real reason he wanted Qin Guang outside was to use him as bait — even if a vengeful spirit did show up, it would most likely fix its attention on Qin Guang first.
"Got it." Qin Guang had barely finished answering when he heard the strange sound again. It was coming from downstairs.
He slowly turned his head and stared at the stairwell entrance.
Tattered walls were plastered with white paper talismans bearing the character for "blessing." Paper money was scattered across the floor. Bowls of white rice lined the doorway. The whole building looked like a massive tomb, burying an entire floor's worth of the dead.
"It's fine, it's fine. I'm just playing in a haunted house. I've been to real supernatural sites — why would I be scared of fake stuff?" Qin Guang desperately tried to reassure himself, but fear, once it took root, grew like poisonous weeds. The more he comforted himself, the more his mind fixated on what he was afraid of.
His gaze kept drifting toward the stairwell entrance against his will. Since no one had passed through for a while, the motion-activated light at the corner of the stairs had switched itself off, plunging the entire corridor into darkness.
"Hhh… that's actually a little scary…"
He sucked in a cold breath and shrank back slightly. He didn't know why, but an awful premonition gnawed at him, as though some primal instinct were urging him to flee this dangerous place.
"How much longer do you need?" Qin Guang turned to ask Zuo Han. Zuo Han's voice drifted out from the bedroom.
"Almost done."
Hearing that, Qin Guang felt slightly reassured. His current state was like that of a child too afraid to sleep alone — every so often he had to call out to an adult just to make sure they were still there.
His heart had barely settled when a faint cold light suddenly fell across his face. The motion-activated light at the stairwell corner had inexplicably turned on.
"Nobody passed through the corridor! And I didn't hear anything!" He stared fixedly at the stairwell corner, not noticing the blood seeping through the cracks in the wall — only the black fog that was slowly drifting through the hallway.
"The fog is seeping into the corridor?" His heartbeat quickened. Through the haze, there seemed to be the vague silhouette of someone moving.
Qin Guang focused all his attention on the stairwell corner. In the brief instant he blinked, a child's face suddenly thrust out from the corner wall!
"Jesus—!"
Clutching the doll's head, Qin Guang stumbled backward in a panic, his body slamming into the door.
"What happened?" Zuo Han and Heshan rushed out at the noise.
"There's a kid at the corner! He's been following us!" Qin Guang gripped the doll's head with white-knuckled hands, his eyes locked on the stairwell entrance.
Heshan steeled himself and walked to the top of the stairs. There was no child there. "Are you seeing things?"
"He's not lying. Someone really was in the corridor just now." Zuo Han pointed at the motion-activated light. "The corridor light is on — someone was here. We need to speed up. Boss Chen isn't going to give us any more time."
How terrifying it would be if every ghost in the entire scenario went bersome — Zuo Han had experienced it personally. It was a memory he never wanted to revisit for as long as he lived.
"Next room. Now!" Zuo Han visibly picked up the pace. Qin Guang didn't dare stand guard outside alone, so all four of them entered the room together, rummaging through everything for clues.
"We're running out of time." Sweat beaded on Zuo Han's forehead, unease hidden in the depths of his eyes. Teacher Wang had never seen that kind of emotion on Zuo Han before.
Clearing the scenario was nearly impossible. Zuo Han had already started thinking about his exit strategy. Of the four-person team, only Heshan and Qin Guang were still earnestly searching for clues.
"I found something strange — in this building, every household that has a child meets with tragedy." Heshan had found a family portrait on the windowsill. The adults' faces were preserved, but the children's faces had been cut away. "It seems like there's a ghost in this building who desperately craves a family and love. He's envious of happy families. The happier the family, the more horrific their fate."
"What you're saying is a bit one-sided. I think this ghost is actually quite simple. Even if he represents evil, it's a confused, aimless kind of evil." Zuo Han stared at the photograph in Heshan's hand. "It's like children who tear the wings off dragonflies or steal puppies and kittens and hurt them. Their behavior is certainly detestable, but it just shows they were never properly guided."
Zuo Han placed the family portrait back where it had been. "Do you remember Building Two of Jiuhong Community? The private psychiatric hospital we explored earlier."
"Senior, why are you suddenly bringing that place up? The two buildings have completely different styles — Building Two is closer to a hospital, while Building One is just a normal residential block." Heshan was confused.
"Think carefully about what I just said. The ghost in this building is a monster who never developed self-awareness. If he had met the right person, maybe he would have repented and become a good ghost. But what makes it truly despairing is that the last sub-scenario we visited was a hospital — and instead of receiving proper treatment, he was led even deeper into the abyss." Zuo Han had pieced together the connection between the two buildings. "Based on my theory, each hidden building in this scenario probably contains a part of the doll's body. If we want to reassemble the doll's remains, we need to experience everything the doll experienced — watch how he gradually descended into the abyss and became the very thing he loathed most."
"We've only found one head so far. You're saying we need to go through at least four more buildings?" Qin Guang was practically crushed.
"The haunted house wouldn't give us an impossible task. So I've been thinking, and I believe the real objective isn't to find all the doll's body parts and bring them out — it's to experience the doll's life and find a way to redeem him, help him build a proper sense of self. At the very least, get him to spare the rest of us." Zuo Han spoke with conviction.
"That's… way too wholesome?" Qin Guang could barely accept it. Not that you could blame him — the haunted house's first impression was so absolutely terrifying it could practically scare the bile out of you. Who would have thought that beneath such a monstrous exterior lurked such a tender heart?
"The doll's body can disperse the black fog. The haunted house owner has us searching for the doll's remains — partly to force us into experiencing that ghost's life, and partly because the doll's remains themselves serve as protection for us, making it easier to complete the task. This haunted house owner is remarkably skilled. Every task he's designed carries deeper meaning."
Hearing Zuo Han's explanation, Qin Guang clutched the doll's head even tighter, unaware that Zuo Han had woven lies in with his truths.
The information Zuo Han had revealed was merely to make Qin Guang more compliant — more willing to do what Zuo Han wanted.
The number of surviving visitors had already dwindled considerably, which was why Zuo Han had started paying attention to Qin Guang. At any other time, he wouldn't have even bothered speaking to him — they were fundamentally different kinds of people.
Zuo Han's attitude toward searching for clues had noticeably lost its earlier enthusiasm. Teacher Wang's attention had shifted more toward observing Zuo Han. Of the four-person team, only Heshan and Qin Guang were putting in genuine effort to scour the haunted house for clues.
Entering the bedroom, Qin Guang — still cradling the doll's head — approached the bed. He noticed a layer of dark, ointment-like substance spread across the bedsheet. "What is this?"
He lifted the mosquito net and peered inside. The black residue had left a gap in the shape of a living person, and within that empty outline, faint small characters were barely visible.
Still wearing his shoes, Qin Guang stepped onto the bed and crouched over the empty space, pulling out his phone and aiming its light at the sheet.
"It came again today. It's still standing at the doorway. I don't know what it wants. It seems like it's trying to come in."
"It looks like my dead child. At least from behind, it looks very much like them."
"My family saw it too. It's not a hallucination. It really exists."
"Whose child is it? Why does it appear in the hallway in the middle of every night?"
Just reading the text on the bedsheet gave Qin Guang chills down his spine. "There's a ghost child in this building!"
He kept reading, and a cold draft seemed to churn in his chest, as if he'd swallowed a mouthful of ice shards in the dead of winter.
He was so absorbed in the text that he didn't notice at first — the shadow cast on the bedsheet by his phone's light suddenly flickered.
Qin Guang glanced back. Heshan, the closest person to him, was standing at the bedroom door. He hadn't come inside.
"That wasn't the med student. I've been crouching here without moving. Was it just my imagination?" Qin Guang didn't dare stay in the bedroom any longer. He stood up, and his forehead brushed against the mosquito net — a light, itchy sensation.
He reached up to scratch his head, and out of habit tilted his neck to look up. And in that very moment, he saw — faces plastered across the mosquito net above him!
Pale outlines were pressed against the outside of the net, their facial features hollowed inward, all of them staring down at him! And they had no idea how long they had already been watching!
"AH!"
Qin Guang tumbled onto the bed. Footprints appeared one by one on those dark stains, as though the ghosts outside had stepped inside the mosquito net.
"Help! HELP!"
Clutching the doll's head, Qin Guang rolled off the bed like a maddened bull.