"The security guard took the actor from the iron cabinet and left?" Standing at the autopsy room doorway, Chen Ge gazed back the way he'd come, his pupils slowly contracting. The dim environment barely affected him. "I didn't hear any sound of rotating walls. He probably just hid somewhere."
He closed the autopsy room door. A few flakes of rust fell from the door panel — the props in the Tendo Haunted House clearly had some years on them.
Running his fingers over the rust on the ground, Chen Ge recalled all the equipment inside the autopsy room. "Doesn't look like it was deliberately aged. It was probably hauled straight from the abandoned hospital."
Some haunted houses, in order to recreate scenes as realistically as possible, would purchase decommissioned equipment at rock-bottom prices and reprocess it — like the operating table and cardiac monitor Chen Ge had just seen in the autopsy room.
The reason he'd noticed was that in an inconspicuous spot on the back of the cardiac monitor, there was a string of numbers: 2-2-1-15.
This was a hospital's internal classification code for medical equipment — indicating medical equipment category, functional diagnostic equipment, cardiac monitor, unit fifteen.
Different hospitals might not use identical numbering, but they were generally pretty similar.
"Residual spirits typically attach to the object that caused their death or the object closest to the time of their death. If every prop in this haunted house was sourced from real hospital equipment, there's a good chance they brought along items with lingering spirits attached."
Chen Ge was only speculating. He had no evidence, and he couldn't rule out the possibility that this was part of the Tendo Hospital's designed scenario. After all, he was tackling the highest difficulty.
Adjacent to the autopsy room was another ward. White cloths hung throughout, their purpose unclear. Chen Ge had no interest in going inside to check it out, and pressed forward.
The corridor lights emitted a dim green glow. At the end stood a closed iron door, secured with a large padlock.
"Looks like I need to find a key to get through to the next stage." With his path blocked and the autopsy room already searched, Chen Ge had no choice but to retrace his steps and slip into that room full of white cloth.
The white cloth hung from the ceiling, splattered with large swaths of bloodstains — the scene looked like a murder site.
He casually lifted one of the thick cloths. The light inside was even dimmer, and the staged scene was deeply unsettling.
The missing organs and severed limbs from the anatomical models in the autopsy room had been dumped haphazardly in here, mixed in with several model heads.
"This is getting pretty intense." Chen Ge was the first challenger to enter after opening day. The artificial blood on the floor hadn't dried yet — stepping on it left his shoes sticky, an uncomfortable sensation underfoot.
"This room is adjacent to the autopsy room. The security booth's TV mentioned that organ trafficking existed in this hospital. This must be where the illegal trade took place."
The Tendo Hospital had been designed by a Japanese-style team. In their pursuit of visual impact, they would go to extreme lengths with no limits — if domestic designers had been responsible, they never would have created a scene like this.
Walking over to the pile of severed limbs and organs, Chen Ge scanned through them and paused briefly. He noticed something out of place, though he didn't let it show.
"The female model on the autopsy room's operating table was missing one heart. The other mannequin models were missing some organs and limbs too, but none as significant as the heart. I just glanced through it — there's no heart in this entire pile. Chances are the key is hidden inside the heart."
Where had the young woman model's heart gone?
Chen Ge stared at the heap of organ and limb models, a guess forming in his mind. He bent down to search through the pile.
As his body slowly lowered, a head hidden within the heap suddenly snapped its eyes open and leapt to its feet with a piercing scream!
The ghostly face was twisted, covered in scars, its eyes dripping bright red artificial blood. Hair clung in a wet mass to its neck.