"Could it be that Boss Chen's parents were… by him…" Song An felt as though his throat was stuffed with ice shavings. His lips trembled uncontrollably as he spoke.
"In that sickroom by the entrance — you saw the bloodstains on the edge of the bed frame, right? There were outsiders present before, so it wasn't convenient for me to say anything." Guo Miao reached into his pocket, fished out a cigarette, and stuck it between his lips. "Artificial blood plasma is never that color. The scratch marks and fingerprints we saw were probably left by real people."
"There are plenty of similar scratch marks and bloodstains scattered throughout this attraction. If those are all real…" Song An shuddered and glanced around. This wasn't a haunted house at all — it was a slaughterhouse!
"Boss, should we call the police?"
"I want to, but think about it — we're touring someone's haunted house, and we call the cops ten minutes after walking in. What if we've misread the situation? We'd never be able to show our faces again for the rest of our lives." Guo Miao clenched the cigarette between his teeth. "Let's regroup with the others first."
"Boss! Brother Song!" While Song An and Guo Miao were talking, Du Chao came sprinting over, gasping for breath. "The puppets came alive! Nobody moved them — they're following us on their own!"
"The puppets came alive?"
As time wore on, bad news arrived one after another.
"Yeah — Teacher Han said the staff must be hiding in the pile of puppets, moving them around from behind to pressure us. So he charged into the crowd of puppets trying to find the workers." Little Du caught his breath. Being back with Guo Miao and Song An made him feel safer.
"He didn't find any staff among them?" Guo Miao and Song An's expressions shifted. This haunted house wasn't playing by any rules they knew.
"There wasn't a single staff member in that entire group of puppets."
"If no staff moved them, how could the puppets keep following us? Han Qiuming may be petty and selfish, but when it comes to haunted house design, he's genuinely professional."
"I don't know. Teacher Han took every single puppet apart and couldn't find anything unusual. They're just ordinary puppets."
"You took apart the haunted house's puppets?" Guo Miao felt that sense of foreboding in his chest slowly turning into reality.
"I tried to warn him, but he went ahead and ripped the heads off every last one of them." Little Du's face was a grimace of regret. "You have no idea what it was like — Teacher Han standing in a sea of puppets, declaring that since Boss Chen had wrecked Tianteng Hospital's reputation, he was going to turn Boss Chen's haunted house completely inside out!"
After hearing Little Du's account, Guo Miao and Song An both froze solid.
Turn it completely inside out?!
Even courting death has its limits!
Why on earth would you pick a fight with a psycho killer?!
"What's wrong with you two?" Little Du noticed that neither Guo Miao nor Song An was saying a word, and the atmosphere had grown heavy. "Did you get scared too? I've been walking at the back of the group, and I keep feeling like someone's following us. Every time I look back, those puppets are a little closer. Oh — and one of the puppets actually smiled at me!"
"Little Du, the puppet thing honestly isn't the important issue right now." The cigarette in Guo Miao's mouth had been chewed through at some point. He quickly picked up the broken filter and stuffed it into his pocket.
"Not important? Boss, there are close to twenty of those puppets by my count. If they all come alive, we're toast." Little Du was shocked by his boss's reaction — it was the complete opposite of what he'd expected.
"Boss is right. There's a much more pressing problem we need to deal with." Song An's expression was even more grim. "Let's find Han Qiuming first."
Song An's shift in attitude left Little Du more confused than ever. "Brother Song, didn't you just get into an argument with Teacher Han? And now you want to go find him?"
"I have no choice." Song An's face was stern. "I can't just stand by and let someone die, can I?"
"Let someone die?!" Little Du's jaw dropped. Since when had things gotten this serious?
"We just came here to tour a haunted house!"