"If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear from ghosts knocking at your door. When it comes down to it, you all just wanted to use Xu Zhenzhen to make money."
"Stop! Don't come any closer!"
The actress screamed, but her voice was quickly drowned out by that anguished male wail.
"It hurts! It hurts so much!"
The man's voice rang out again, and this time, all three people in the room—including Chen Ge—froze.
"Brother Lin, did I hear that right?" The actress's arms were trembling. "That voice just now—it seemed to come from the tape recorder."
The actor was completely panicking too. He was certain the voice hadn't come from the recorder.
Both actors were shakily looking at whatever was behind Chen Ge, and it gave him the creeps. "There's something behind me?"
He reached into his pocket and grabbed the ballpoint pen, his leg muscles tensing up.
"Not behind you…" The haunted house actor said, then retreated straight to the far corner of the corridor, keeping nearly three meters between himself and Chen Ge.
"Then why are you running?" Chen Ge ground out through clenched teeth. When trouble came, these guys could really move. Back when his own haunted house ran into problems, whether it was a real ghost or a fake one, he'd always been the first one to charge in.
"It hurts, it hurts…"
Something even more alarming happened—the man's voice shifted position every single time it sounded!
The voice seemed to be creeping forward bit by bit, as though a man covered in wounds was slowly dragging himself along the corridor.
"It hurts, it hurts so much!" After vanishing for two or three seconds, the man's voice suddenly appeared right in front of the actress!
"Aah!"
The scream nearly pierced eardrums. The actress had never imagined anything like this would happen. Without a second thought, she bolted down the passageway ahead.
"A Qin!" The actor was too terrified to move, his body pressed flat against the wall. Being together had been scary enough, but now he was all alone.
Chen Ge picked up the tape recorder. The indicator light was still on, glowing like a red eyeball. The tape was still spinning inside, but the man's voice had somehow escaped into the corridor.
"It left the tape?" Based on past experience, Chen Ge already had a rough estimate of this tape ghost's power.
Lingering spirits and the lowest-ranked vengeful ghosts couldn't leave their host objects. Xiao Xiao, for example, had never once left her stuffed doll.
Slightly stronger were the mirror ghost and the pen spirit—both could occasionally leave their respective vessels, but only for very short periods.
Above them were the Slender Ghosts from the Third Ward, which spent most of their time standing on the shoulders of the living, yet could survive for a long stretch even after leaving a human body.
The most powerful, naturally, were the Red-clothed. They didn't need to cling to anything at all—they were what you could truly call "ghosts."
"The tape ghost's strength probably falls somewhere between the pen spirit and the Slender Ghosts—stronger than the pen spirit, but not as formidable in a fight as the Slender Ghosts."
The man's agonized cries still echoed intermittently along the corridor. He drifted aimlessly, neither harassing the paralyzed actor nor chasing after the actress who had fled.
This ghost was peculiar. It was as if it were searching for something.
"Screaming about pain over and over—what happened to him before he died?" Chen Ge had drawn the Crying Tape, and to make the vengeful ghost inside it listen, the best approach was to help resolve its obsession.
Because he couldn't find the tape recorder, Chen Ge had never had the chance to communicate with the tape ghost before. This was their first meeting.