Wearing a bloodstained doctor's coat and wielding the Skull Crusher,
"Ten minutes have passed already, and there hasn't been a single scream from the scene. Looks like they've gotten used to Ward Three." Chen Ge felt he was growing increasingly merciful — he'd worried the visitors might completely break down facing such intense scares right off the bat, so he'd given them ten minutes to ease in.
"The Tianteng Hospital people should have found the tape recorder by now. Time to turn up the difficulty a notch." Chen Ge stepped into the pitch-black underground passage. After descending the stairs, he glanced down the left corridor — not a single mannequin stood outside the last classroom. "These guys are behaving themselves today. Usually there are always a few who slip out for a stroll."
Cradling the faceless nurse uniform and carrying the Skull Crusher, Chen Ge pushed open the iron door of Ward Three.
"The completion rate for the Ward Three trial mission isn't high, and the hidden mission hasn't been triggered either. The overall scene completion is probably only around fifty percent — it can't really be called a true three-star scene. On top of that, there are professional haunted house actors among the visitors. They might actually have a real shot at making it through." Chen Ge walked along at an unhurried pace, not feeling particularly pressed.
"First, I'll find the madwoman's mannequin and put this nurse uniform on her to see how it looks."
Rounding the first corner, Chen Ge — lost in thought — suddenly came to an abrupt stop.
In the middle of the corridor, over twenty mannequins had nearly blocked the entire path, strewn about in every direction, their detached heads rolling back and forth as though they were having a grand old time.
"What are you guys doing here?!" Chen Ge stood in the center of the corridor with the iron hammer in hand. The rolling heads froze instantly, each one playing dead.
"This isn't your scene! Why are you wandering around the hospital in school uniforms?"
The mannequins, naturally, said nothing. They lay perfectly still — like grade-schoolers who'd snuck into an internet café and just run into their homeroom teacher.
"Running in here is one thing, but getting completely wiped out by visitors?" Chen Ge sounded angry, though in truth he felt a pang of distress. He picked up the heads from the floor, matched the numbers, and reassembled several mannequins. "These visitors didn't even spare the mannequins. Quite the audacity."
The lighting was too dim for efficient work, so after putting together five or six, he rose and left. "I'll come back to reattach your heads after I've seen our guests off."
There was a note of menace in his voice as Chen Ge gripped the Skull Crusher and dashed toward the next corridor.
……
Inside the electrotherapy room, Han Qiuming pressed his ear against the tape recorder and listened for a long time without hearing anything.
"Could this just be a blank tape?" He thought about it for ages before arriving at that conclusion.
"Would the haunted house owner really do something that pointless?" Ye Xiaoxin felt sure there was something wrong with the tape, but after listening for a long time, all she could hear was the faint hiss of static.
She reached over and pressed the switch, but no matter which button she pushed, the recorder's indicator light stayed on and the tape continued to spin in silence.
"This recorder must have been modified by the haunted house owner. The switch on the casing is just for show — the real switch is somewhere else." Han Qiuming searched for a while but couldn't find the actual switch. His expression wasn't great — ever since entering Ward Three, he'd made a fool of himself in front of Ye Xiaoxin several times over. The harder he tried to impress, the more the haunted house's props seemed to conspire against him.
"Never mind. Let's get out of here first." Han Qiuming checked his phone. "Three minutes left. If we hurry, we should still make it."
He and Ye Xiaoxin exited the electrotherapy room at the end of the corridor and retraced their steps, planning to leave through the hidden passage in Ward Three.
At the same time, on the other side of the corridor.
Guo Miao, Song An, and the others had rushed frantically deeper into Ward Three. They'd done a quick sweep of the second and third corridors, checking every room — the director's office included — but hadn't found Han Qiuming anywhere.
"Boss! We've checked every room on both sides and there's no sign of Han Qiuming!" Song An panted, his voice agitated, his words tumbling out fast.
"The corridor is straight as an arrow — if he'd come this way, we definitely would've run into him. Where the hell did this guy go?"