"Why did it go quiet outside?" Heshan craned his neck to glance at Old Zhao. "Should we go out and take a look?"
"If the enemy doesn't move, we don't move. Wait until the screaming starts, then we head out and search in the opposite direction. That way we'll definitely avoid whatever's scary." Old Zhao said this with absolute conviction.
"Doesn't that count as selling out our teammates?"
"Selling out my ass — we're leveraging our teammates' sacrifice to buy time for victory." Old Zhao was so fat he looked like a ball, standing behind Heshan, though unfortunately Heshan's slight frame couldn't even cover half of him.
"Then how much longer do we have to hide? What if we're the only two left in the haunted house?" Heshan was an honest soul, and looking at the senior student cowering behind him, he couldn't shake the feeling he was being played.
"We've already checked every room on the second floor, and most of the third floor before that. I'm betting the exit is on the first floor — in other words, we're already very close to getting out." Old Zhao patted Heshan on the shoulder. "Keep your spirits up. Don't give up at the door of success."
"It's always 'the door of success' with you — are you seriously trying to feed me motivational quotes right now?" Heshan said helplessly, the bitterness stuck in his throat. He'd only come here to lead the way for his seniors; he'd never intended to go inside.
"Don't be so pessimistic." Old Zhao started counting on his fingers. "I heard Monkey and Xiaohui scream earlier — they've probably already been sent out. Then there's the eighth person who snuck into our group before. That means there should still be five of us from school in the haunted house. The killer has a three-in-five chance of chasing someone else, so there's no rush. We just wait."
"Fine, I'll do what you say." Crouched by the doorway, Heshan peered through the crack. In the blink of an eye, something seemed to have appeared in the dim corridor.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. A ragged cloth doll had materialized on the floor at some point.
"Am I seeing things? Was that doll always there? No way — I've been hiding here for over ten minutes, staring outside the whole time." Heshan lightly slapped his own face and looked once more. Not only was the doll still there, it had moved closer to the door.
"Can it move on its own? Or am I so nervous I'm starting to hallucinate?" He shook his head and looked again, but the doll had vanished from the gap in the door.
"Strange. Was I really seeing things?"
…
On the first floor, in the staff corridor,
Donning the blood-stained doctor's uniform, wrapping the chain links engraved with a human face around his body one by one, gripping the iron skull-breaking hammer and pulling on the replica human-skin mask — whether by height or presence, Chen Ge's portrayal of the Skull-Breaking Doctor was far more intimidating than Xiao Wan's.
"Are these little punks trying to play a war of attrition with me?" With every step, the chains clattered. It sounded menacing, but it also gave away his position. After wandering through the set for five minutes, Chen Ge still hadn't spotted a soul.
"Boss, they're not showing up on the cameras. They must all be hiding inside the rooms — you'll have to check them one by one." Xu Wan's voice came through the earpiece. "I'd suggest installing cameras in every corner of the haunted house going forward. Only covering the corridor intersections leaves too many blind spots."
"Let's talk about that when we've got the money." Chen Ge hefted the hammer and pushed open doors one by one. As he reached the second-floor landing, he suddenly noticed a cloth doll lying face-down in front of one of the doors.
"How did this little guy get out again? And it parked itself right in front of a room." Chen Ge held the hammer up, thought for a moment, and understood. "There's someone hiding inside. This little guy is helping me."
He pretended to notice nothing and walked past the door as casually as he could.
After putting about a dozen meters between himself and the door, Chen Ge gathered the chain dragging on the floor into his hands, pressed himself against the corridor wall, and crept silently back toward the room.