"Boss! Teacher Han! Look behind you!"
Little Du ran over to the other visitors, gasping for breath, his face pale.
"Behind us?" Guo Miao glanced back. The dim, oppressive corridor behind them showed nothing out of the ordinary.
"The puppets! The puppets are coming!"
Du Chaojin's shout stopped everyone dead in their tracks, undoing the few meters of progress they had just managed.
"Are you sure you didn't see wrong?" Song An murmured soothingly to Little Du, even as he sidled closer to Guo Miao.
"I didn't! They really moved!" Little Du caught his breath. "Go see for yourselves! When we first spotted those puppets, they were at the far end of the left corridor. Now they've moved all the way to the junction between the two passages!"
"Stay calm." Teacher Han looked entirely composed. "Puppets that move on their own — I saw something similar three years ago. It was a haunted house in Japan, themed around dolls. The smaller dolls had all sorts of mechanical parts installed inside them, allowing them to move independently and change facial expressions. As for the large puppets, four-fifths were props and the remaining one-fifth were actors hidden among them."
"Real people pretending to be puppets?" Little Du grew even more confused after hearing Teacher Han's explanation, and his own certainty began to waver.
"I noticed the puppets in the left corridor the moment we came in." Teacher Han crossed his arms over his chest. "Those puppets are exactly the same size as real humans — almost as if they were molded from living people. Here's something you need to understand: puppets used as ordinary props, whether at Tianteng Hospital or anywhere else, all have physical and facial imperfections. A perfect puppet costs around thirty thousand — you'd need a top-tier master to craft one. Very few haunted houses can afford that."
"Then why would this haunted house owner invest so much in puppets like these?" Ye Xiaoxin kept jotting notes in her little notebook, though nobody could tell exactly what she was writing.
"It's simple — it means those puppets are one of his major scare points!"
Han Qiuming stroked his chin, his gaze settling on Ye Xiaoxin through his thick glasses. "Living actors mixed in among lifelike puppets can have an extraordinary effect at critical moments — like what Little Du just encountered. At first glance it looks like the puppets moved on their own, but in reality an actor hidden among them is carrying the puppets forward. If we were to hide and observe secretly, we might actually catch them in the act."
Song An nodded beside him. "Teacher Han's right on that point. A year ago, Tianteng Hospital tried something similar, but our puppets looked too fake. The visitors saw through them immediately."
"Oh, so that's how it is." Little Du's expression brightened somewhat. "It really got me just now. Those puppets looked so realistic — I thought they could move by themselves."
"Even a half-wit could tell that's impossible." Teacher Han spoke with absolute confidence, his reasoning perfectly sound. "If we had more time, I'd hide inside that room and record the whole process of the actor moving the puppets, just to show you."
"All right, let's keep moving. We'll figure things out once we find the recorder." Guo Miao felt the situation was far from simple, but he couldn't find any reason to argue with Teacher Han.
"Old Guo, there are two things we need to keep in mind about that recorder." Teacher Han's mouth was brave, but deep down he had already developed a healthy wariness toward
"I don't need you to tell me that." Guo Miao took the lead, stepping over the blankets and bedding scattered across the floor. Walking on them felt strange, like trampling through bundles of tangled hair.
"That's only the first thing. There's something else I need to bring up — have you noticed how strange his game rules are?"
"How so?"
"Finding the recorder doesn't count as clearing the game. You have to carry the recorder out of the Third Ward for the game to officially end."
"But that recorder belongs to us in the first place — isn't it perfectly normal for us to bring it out?" Little Du cut in.
"I think you're all underestimating how devious this haunted house owner is." Han Qiuming took out a cloth and wiped his glasses — the lenses were remarkably thick. "The recorder itself is probably the switch that triggers the scene. In other words, from the moment we find it, all the horror set pieces in this area will come flooding out. Before that, we're completely safe."
"That may be true, but nobody can guarantee anything." Song An was the biggest of the group, yet he was the least courageous.
"Either way, I personally think there's no reason to be afraid right now. The most important thing is to get a clear sense of our surroundings and memorize the layout. After all, his haunted house uses an open-world setting with a complex interior — only by studying the space now can we escape at top speed once we find the recorder and every ghost actor in the scene goes berserk." After finishing his analysis, Han Qiuming had convinced himself, regardless of whether the others bought it.
"That makes sense. No matter how scary a haunted house is, it's just people playing tricks. As long as we stay calm and don't get too caught up, we won't feel afraid." Ye Xiaoxin pressed her notepad firmly against her thigh and slipped it into her pants pocket.
Earning Ye Xiaoxin's agreement, Han Qiuming grew excited. The last trace of fear in his heart gradually faded. He was about to quicken his pace to walk alongside Ye Xiaoxin when someone grabbed the back of his jacket. He turned around — the one with no sense of timing was the youngest of the group, Du Chaojin.
"Teacher Han, look at that." Everyone turned to face the outside of the Third Ward. Standing in the center of the iron gate was a female puppet wearing a school uniform, a student ID hanging around her neck. Her head hung low, every joint in her body twisted at unnatural angles, her form subtly deformed.
In that brief moment of distraction, those puppets had drawn even closer.
"Perfectly normal — it's the most basic psychological trick. That surnamed Chen is probably hiding in the monitor room right now, issuing instructions to his actors. He wants to use those steadily advancing puppets to create psychological pressure on us, because people who grow anxious become far more susceptible to fear and unease."
Han Qiuming told Little Du not to worry. "Fake is fake. I used the same trick years ago. Relax — those puppets absolutely won't dare come within five meters of us. Five meters is the safe zone. If the puppets get too close, the actor inside can't operate them. I guarantee you this based on nearly ten years of experience in this field."
After that, he stopped paying attention to Little Du entirely and jogged over to Ye Xiaoxin's side, offering his critiques on the various design choices throughout Chen Ge's haunted house.
"That guy..." Guo Miao sighed and turned to the others. "Stay close to me. Don't touch anything in the corridor, and don't wander into any of the wards on your own."
"Got it." Little Du trailed at the very back of the group. He didn't notice that the moment his foot lifted from the ground, the puppets outside the door began to move as well.