After the woman finished speaking, Chen Ge could clearly see goosebumps rise on the back of the corpse actor's neck.
He had only casually filled in a few characters based on the handwriting on the piece of white paper — he hadn't expected the haunted house actors to react so violently.
Chen Ge narrowed his eyes, standing between the tape recorder and the haunted house actor. He was beginning to sense that there really was something wrong with this haunted house. It was quite possible that an actual haunting had occurred here before.
Xinhai was a first-tier city. Tian Teng Hospital had gone to enormous trouble to set up its scenes there, yet they seemed to have shut down shortly after opening, taken a break for a while, and then relocated all the way to Jiujiang — a city far from Xinhai.
"If the three characters 'Xu Zhenzhen' really could summon a ghost, why would they stubbornly continue using those three names in their haunted house?" Chen Ge couldn't quite understand the thinking of Tian Teng Hospital's manager. "Does he really think that changing locations and keeping far away will let him escape a vengeful ghost's pursuit? Or does this Xu Zhenzhen hold some special significance for the haunted house owner?"
The haunted house was dimly lit. The corpse actor took the piece of paper and studied it carefully. "The ink hasn't dried yet."
He turned to look at Chen Ge, then quickly looked away, muttering to himself: "Only one visitor came today. Even if he brought a pen into the haunted house and wrote this line, what about the voice on the tape recorder? This scene was newly added — no one outside the design team knows there's a tape recorder hidden in there. No visitor, however strange, would carry a cassette tape around with them!"
While the male actor was thinking, the tape recorder let out another agonized scream.
That scream was completely different from anything a voice actor could produce. Standing just a few meters away, it made his hair stand on end and his jaw clench, as though a murder was taking place right beside him.
"Brother Lin…" The female actress edged toward the door. "How can the voice on that tape recorder sound so real?"
"I'm not entirely sure either." The corpse actor glanced back and noticed that Chen Ge was still standing next to the tape recorder.
He hesitated for a moment, then chose to ignore Chen Ge. Instead, he hurried over to the woman and lowered his voice: "Apart from this piece of paper, has anything else appeared in your scene?"
"Nothing."
"What about the people in the scenes ahead?"
"They should be coming soon." The woman's eyes darted nervously. "That thing isn't going to show up again, is it? We literally just opened today! Didn't the boss say everything had been resolved?"
"What are you two talking about? What happened here before?" Chen Ge picked up the tape recorder, intending to convince the haunted house staff to let him take it outside first.
Seeing Chen Ge approach with the tape recorder in hand, both haunted house actors' expressions froze.
"Put that thing down!" The woman's voice went shrill. "The voice on that tape recorder wasn't recorded by us!"
Of course Chen Ge knew it wasn't them — but he couldn't let on. "So in your haunted house, the voice on the tape recorder isn't yours. Whose is it then? A ghost's?"
The actors were rendered speechless. After a moment, it was the woman who spoke up again. Ignoring the male actor's attempt to stop her, she said in a rush: "Back in Xinhai, there were visitors who came out crying, telling us that one of our actors gave an amazing performance. But the truth is, we never had that actor in our haunted house! We asked the visitor to describe what the actor looked like, and the person they described was identical to the Xu Zhenzhen in the newspaper!"
Chen Ge looked at her with an odd expression. "Was that visitor pranking you? Just having a joke at your expense?"
"It wasn't just one case. Starting from a certain day, more and more visitors reported seeing Xu Zhenzhen." The male actor pulled out a jade Buddha pendant from under his shirt. "Every one of us carries protective talismans. But here's the strange thing — up until now, none of us haunted house actors have ever seen Xu Zhenzhen."
"Since there really might be a haunting, why did you fill the haunted house with Xu Zhenzhen's name after moving to Jiujiang? Aren't you afraid of dragging the ghost here too?" Chen Ge felt there was something off about these people. "You're not putting on an act right now, are you? The note, the tape recorder — all staged just to scare me."
"Absolutely not." Both actors looked so aggrieved they were about to cry. "First, you need to understand one thing. Our haunted house launched in Xinhai, and in order to attract visitors, we decided to incorporate real events to boost the horror factor. Xu Zhenzhen's bizarre suicide was extremely famous in Xinhai — almost anyone who saw that name would have their buried memories instantly triggered."
The male actor's face was pale. "We were backed into a corner. Over the past two years, fewer and fewer people have been coming to haunted houses. We've updated and revamped our scenes multiple times — we've tried pretty much everything we could think of. As visitor numbers kept dropping, we had to find some way to maintain our popularity."
"So you took real death cases and worked them into your haunted house as a hidden storyline?" Chen Ge thought these people were even bolder than himself — at least he had trump cards to play when things went sideways.
"And it worked. After integrating real cases, our ratings climbed steadily. Many visitors would even bring their friends back for second or third visits, trying to crack the hidden storyline and uncover Xu Zhenzhen's secret."
"If it was that popular, why did you come to Jiujiang? Wouldn't it have been better to stay in Xinhai and keep making money?" The tape recorder in Chen Ge's hand continued to produce heart-rending sounds, but he acted as if he couldn't hear them at all.
The two haunted house actors stared at Chen Ge, not knowing what to say. Every time Chen Ge took a step forward, they both retreated a step in unison.
"So many visitors had seen Xu Zhenzhen in the haunted house. This unexpected phenomenon made us the highest-rated and most popular haunted house in the industry. But the good times didn't last. We became so famous that it attracted the displeasure of Xu Zhenzhen's family. Her younger sister came to find us."
The female actor revealed the hidden history of Tian Teng Hospital. As Chen Ge listened, he casually switched off the audio pickup.
"Both sides negotiated. Xu Zhenzhen's sister felt we had violated her sister's and her father's reputation. She demanded a hefty compensation and wanted us to redesign the entire interior of the haunted house."
"Our manager agreed to remove Xu Zhenzhen's name but refused the compensation and the redesign."
"Xu Zhenzhen's sister, in a rage, threatened to pursue legal action. I'm not sure what happened after that, but before long the haunted house shut down."
The woman was probably telling the truth. Large-scale mobile haunted houses were a nightmare to get approved, and any incident could get them shut down — Chen Ge knew this better than anyone, since his parents had once operated a mobile haunted house themselves. They had only settled down at New Century Paradise after accumulating enough of a reputation, partnering with the park.
"We packed up our props, rearranged our scenes, changed the name, and moved to another city. But the results were terrible — we barely lasted two weeks before visitor numbers dropped to almost nothing."
"After discussing it with the manager, we concluded the problem still came down to Xu Zhenzhen. So we came all the way to Jiujiang, far from Xinhai, and recreated our most popular scenes from the peak era."
The two haunted house actors had retreated all the way out the door. Looking at Chen Ge with the tape recorder in his hand, they had laid everything bare.