The whole crowd was watching, but Chen Ge had no leisure to linger. He had just received a call from Captain Yan, and the news about the Third Ward of the psychiatric hospital left him uneasy.
"Boss!"
He Shan and Gao Ruxue squeezed through the crowd and ran up to Chen Ge. "What did you do to those haunted house actors?"
"What could a visitor like me possibly do to haunted house actors?" Chen Ge raised an eyebrow. "Come to think of it, weren't you two worried about my safety at all?"
He Shan and Gao Ruxue looked stunned. He was right—normally, when a visitor got tossed into a haunted house alone, people should have been worried about the visitor!
Yet for some reason, the moment they saw Chen Ge go in, their instincts had been to sweat on behalf of the haunted house staff.
"Of course we were worried. Naturally." He Shan flashed his trademark grin—awkward yet polite.
"Anyway, remember to come visit my haunted house when you get the chance. I've built some new sets, and this time they're guaranteed to get your blood pumping." Chen Ge was in a hurry to leave. He unclipped the portable heart-rate monitor and the pickup microphone he'd been carrying on him, then turned to glance at the haunted house manager. "My heart rate didn't go over a hundred, did it?"
"No—lowest was sixty, highest was a little over ninety."
"Ninety? That high?" Chen Ge looked mildly surprised. Inside the haunted house he had felt perfectly calm, as if he were just walking through his own front door. He hadn't expected his heart rate to fluctuate that much.
Seeing Chen Ge's dissatisfied expression, the haunted house manager felt the whole world closing in on him, the bitterness in his heart threatening to overflow. "This was literally our opening day…"
"Having my heart rate swing that much is actually pretty impressive for a haunted house, but you're still several tiers below the Western Suburb New Century Paradise haunted house—the one you can reach by taking the Number 13 bus." Chen Ge said this with an easy, matter-of-fact look on his face. "The truth is, you've got real talent. There was no need to resort to all those underhanded tactics—trashing our local Jiujiang haunted house on your website to prop yourselves up, using real news stories to chase clicks, and so on."
Chen Ge glanced at those bedraggled, thoroughly terrified haunted house actors, and a thought began to form. "Your set design is genuinely clever, the backstory is interesting, and the way you weave an explicit plot together with a hidden thread—letting the audience solve puzzles in between the scares—I had a genuinely good time today."
A good time? You actually had fun in a haunted house? Fun, my foot!
Being praised by Chen Ge was the last thing the manager and his crew had expected, and it certainly didn't make them feel any better. "A bet's a bet. We'll take down every false claim about your Western Suburb haunted house."
"No problem. If your haunted house ever runs into issues like this again, feel free to come find me. I genuinely respect your professionalism." The push-cart ghost's expression, the corpse actor's dead-eyed stare—every detail had been rehearsed in front of mirrors countless times. The actors at Tendo Hospital had years of experience in the industry; they were Tendo Hospital's greatest asset.
"That's all I have to say. Get back to work, and remember—come visit my haunted house if you get the chance." Chen Ge's gaze drifted past the manager to the actors standing behind him, and he gave them a friendly smile before turning and strolling away, every movement perfectly natural.
Chen Ge had not pressed his advantage or unleashed a string of vicious mockery.
More importantly, every single haunted house actor had come running out. A visitor tossed in alone—that already counted as a tour incident.
If there had only been a handful of people watching, it might not have mattered. But this happened on opening day, in front of a huge crowd. If Chen Ge had refused to let it go, Tendo Hospital's grand opening would have been completely ruined.
But Chen Ge had done no such thing. His words had even carried a note of genuine admiration—a detail that surprised the manager while also filling him with a measure of relief.