The room's temperature stopped dropping. As his phone buzzed, Chen Ge received another ten messages.
"Lucky Red Dress favored one, congratulations on obtaining a Nightmare task reward usage!"
"After using this reward, the daily Horror House tasks at midnight will definitely include a Nightmare-level task!"
"Lucky Red Dress favored one! Congratulations on obtaining the haunted house employee outfit set — Misfortune Clown!"
"Misfortune Clown: They always watch me cry with smiles on their faces, thinking my sorrow is laughable."
"Note! The Misfortune Clown set consists of a clown mask, a blood-colored makeup box, and a human-skin circus costume. Wearing the complete set will produce unknown special effects."
"Lucky Red Dress favored one! Congratulations on obtaining the haunted house employee outfit set — The Gourmet!"
"The Gourmet: I am the world's pickiest gourmand. I have tasted the flesh of nearly every animal in existence. Later, I became obsessed with the most exquisite ingredient of all. Would you like to come to the kitchen with me and take a look?"
"Note! The Gourmet set consists of a night-colored suit and a goodnight suitcase. This set can increase personal charm. A friendly reminder: please do not open the Gourmet's suitcase when there are many people around."
"Lucky Red Dress favored one! Congratulations on obtaining the haunted house employee outfit set — Stranger!"
"The Stranger: Random murder is one of the hardest cases to crack. No pattern, no motive, unrelated victims, and the simplest foolproof killing method. When you walk alone at night, be careful of the stranger you brush past."
"Note! The Stranger set consists of a single set of casual clothes. This set can reduce your presence to the absolute minimum. Even if someone sees your face, memories of you will quickly fade."
"Lucky Red Dress favored one! Congratulations on obtaining a special-type prop — Unforgettable Wedding Ring!"
"The Unforgettable Wedding Ring: Shortly after getting married, the husband often stayed out all night. One stormy night, after the husband left, he never returned. The police searched for three weeks but never found his body. The devastated wife wept herself to sleep every day. The case eventually went cold — no one knew where the husband had gone, and the woman went mad, often muttering to herself while staring at the two wedding rings on her finger."
"Note! Both parties wearing the wedding ring can sense each other's approximate location, no matter how far apart they are! However, wearing them for extended periods will have negative effects on the body."
……
Another ten-draw session, but it truly seemed like Chen Ge had drained all the fierce ghosts from the prize pool.
Once again, he didn't draw a single fierce ghost. Every prize was a prop, and none of them were particularly rare items.
"Did I spend all my luck running into ghosts? That can't be right! I haven't drawn a fierce ghost for twenty-one consecutive draws now. Could I be accumulating luck for something bigger? Will the next draw give me a top-tier Red Dress, or maybe even a Malevolent God?"
He shook his head — even he felt that was unrealistic. After all, Malevolent Gods and Red Dresses were completely different tiers entirely.
After completing all thirty draws, Chen Ge committed every reward item to memory, then casually made his way through Virtual Future Park's haunted house.
"Hurry! He's coming out!"
"Jiang Ming! Jiang Ming! That guy is heading toward your exit!"
"All departments, heads up! Stay sharp!"
Pushing open the last door, Chen Ge stepped out of the haunted house and saw Jiang Ming waiting at the exit.
"Long time no see. How've things been?" Chen Ge had expected Jiang Ming to hold a grudge, but that wasn't the case at all. Jiang Ming greeted him quite naturally.
"Thanks to you, things have been pretty good."
"My doing?"
"You sent that idiot Ma Feng to the hospital. Right now, even breathing feels natural." Jiang Ming said in a low voice.
The management at Virtual Future Park was nothing like New Century Amusement Park — the infighting seemed far more intense. After Jiang Jiu was hospitalized, Ma Feng had seized sole control. As Jiang Jiu's adopted son, Jiang Ming had clearly not been having an easy time.
"Don't say things like that. Him ending up in the hospital had nothing to do with me. We signed a liability waiver and everything." Chen Ge walked past Jiang Ming. In truth, he had been tempted to tell Jiang Ming that compared to Ma Feng, it was actually Jiang Jiu whom Chen Ge had personally sent to the hospital.
After playing through several more rounds and pushing Virtual Future Park's haunted house score to over ten thousand points, Chen Ge finally prepared to leave.
Watching his retreating figure, the haunted house staff were left stunned. Data analytics, visitor simulations — all of it had proven useless against Chen Ge. They had predicted it would take six months before anyone could reach that ten-thousand-point milestone.
Taking a taxi back to New Century Amusement Park, Chen Ge headed straight for the Horror House prop room. The room, already packed with props, now looked even more cramped. Various new items had appeared in the corners, but you wouldn't notice them at a glance — as if they had always been sitting right there.
"It almost feels like they were always meant to belong to the Horror House."
Chen Ge had no idea when these things had shown up. It gave the impression that someone had opened some door and transported items directly into the prop room.
"Probably just my imagination." Holding the black phone, Chen Ge cross-referenced the item descriptions and organized all the drawn items into their respective categories.
Around six in the evening, the Horror House closed for the day. After the living staff had clocked out, Chen Ge pulled out the comic book and summoned most of the fierce ghost employees to the first floor of the haunted house.
If any visitor happened to wander in at that moment, they would probably be scared to death on the spot.
The corridors of the already-closed haunted house were filled with floating figures, each one still in full makeup and costume.
"Some of you have been working here for quite a while now. From the initial adjustment period to becoming the backbone of this place, your transformation has exceeded every expectation I had. Our haunted house has only gotten better because of you." Chen Ge opened the prop room door. "I'm truly grateful to every single one of you, and I want to do something for you in return."
"Boss, there's no need to get all sentimental on us. We've already made this place our home. Without the Horror House, we'd still be wandering aimlessly through some forgotten corner of the city." Lao Zhou stood beside Duan Yue, a blissful expression on his face. "Either way, I love this job. Here, I can feel an emotion I haven't experienced in a long time. I don't even know how to describe it."
"I don't really feel like I'm working at all. It's more like playing a pretty interesting game." Men Nan said with a casual expression. He simply refused to admit that someone of his stature — a proper Red Dress, no less — was working for Chen Ge.
"Anywhere else in this city, no matter what I do, no matter what I see, everything around me seems to constantly remind me: you're dead, this world doesn't belong to you, you're just a misplaced ghost who should have dissipated long ago. But here, I've never once felt that way. I don't need to hide who I really am, and no one questions it." After the "class president" from Medium Ghost School finished speaking, many of the student obsessions nodded in agreement. They were, after all, a group of homeless children.
"Before, I didn't care about anything. Only after I gambled away everything did I start to regret it. I thought a piece of trash like me would never get another chance to change. But then I met the boss." Lao Bai stood with one hand in his pocket, leaning against the doorframe in his blood-red clothes. "Before, I didn't have a choice. Now, I just want to be a good haunted house employee."