"Alright, don't worry."
He watched Chen Ge head underground, then dutifully closed the wooden plank and hauled props on top of it to weigh it down.
……
Yang Chen and Wei Wu's two groups had taken the left passage. After going halfway, another fork appeared ahead.
"This is the second junction. The left path ends at a deep well, and the right path ends at three empty rooms."
Yang Chen flipped through the notebook in his hand. It contained detailed descriptions of every scene. The fact that someone could remember all this so clearly showed just what kind of despair his seniors must have experienced in this place — so vivid that it remained burned in their memories long after returning to campus.
"The three rooms each have their own numbers. In one of them, a female corpse is hidden behind the bathroom ceiling. According to the senior's notes, there's a school ID card in the corpse's pocket."
Listening to Yang Chen's description, Li Xue and Wang Yan both furrowed their brows. Just hearing about it was enough to make them not want to go anywhere near it.
"We'll go get that ID card," said Kong Xiangming, who had been silent up until now. Wei Wu started to say something, but Kong stopped him with a look.
"Fine. We'll guard the door from outside for you. The notes mentioned that when tourists enter the empty rooms, there might be dolls outside trying to harass them."
"No need. Doesn't clearing the attraction have a time limit? You guys go down the other path first. We'll catch up with you later." Kong Xiangming turned and left without waiting for a reply, Wei Wu following behind him. Both of them had been completely calm the entire time.
"Old Yang, let's go too." Wang Yan pointed toward the path leading to the deep well and whispered, "Splitting up is perfect — saves us from them dragging us down."
The notes had previously warned against separating, but the situation was different now. Those two tourists were most likely haunted house actors in disguise.
Yang Chen nodded, and the three of them jogged over to the deep well. Just as the notes described, two school ID cards were lying at the bottom.
"Two ID cards at once. Looks like the senior wasn't lying — this well really is dangerous." Li Xue pulled a spool of thread from her handbag, unclipped a hairpin from her head, and tied it to the end of the thread. "Good thing we came prepared."
"Bet the haunted house owner didn't see that coming." It was the first time the three students had felt happy since entering the haunted house — as though they had triumphed over the wicked haunted house owner on a spiritual level.
Li Xue lowered the thread into the well and easily hooked one of the ID cards. She slowly pulled it up, and when the card emerged from the shaft, the three of them looked as though they'd stayed up all night grinding and finally scored a top-tier drop.
"Nice work!"
When Li Xue lowered the thread back into the deep well, she noticed with some surprise that the well seemed to have gotten a little deeper.
She tried several times before finally hooking the second ID card. But when she tried to pull it back up, a horrifying scene appeared inside the well.
The fine sand slid aside, and a dead face surfaced.
The upper half of the ID card was exposed above the sand, but the lower half was clenched between the corpse's teeth!
"Holy crap!"
"They're playing this rough?!"