"Then do you think Option 3 reflects a normal person's thinking?" Fan Cong pressed both hands to his forehead, pushing his hair back.
"It's fine. Spending a night in a room with a corpse isn't completely unacceptable for most people." Chen Ge gestured for Fan Cong to sit down and watch properly. "A true gentleman watches the game without commenting — talk less. I need to get serious now."
This game had successfully caught Chen Ge's interest.
"Don't just mess around with it! I suspect there's a ghost living inside this game. If you let it out and then run off, what are we two brothers supposed to do?" Fan Cong's face was miserable. Seeing Chen Ge's focused expression, he felt deeply uneasy.
"I won't." Chen Ge stopped paying attention to Fan Cong and controlled Xiao Bu to wander around the house.
The stepfather's corpse lay in the living room, still bleeding. After choosing Option 3, the in-game Xiao Bu acted as if she couldn't see her stepfather's body at all, pacing back and forth through the house.
"The house she lives in is pretty big. I'm curious what Xiao Bu's parents did for a living. And why was there a dungeon key hidden inside her mother's nightgown?" Chen Ge grew more and more curious about the plot. He controlled Xiao Bu into the bathroom, and a dialogue box popped up again — You glanced at the mirror and found that your reflection wasn't in it. You hastily backed out.
"The mirror can't reflect Xiao Bu? Is Xiao Bu a ghost? Or is there a ghost living inside the mirror?" Chen Ge didn't dwell on the question and went into the bedroom instead. The moment he pushed the door open, a dialogue box appeared — You heard a thumping sound against the bedroom wall, as if coming from the room next door. What do you do next?
One: The other person is asking for help. Call the police immediately.
Two: Open the window and climb over to check.
Three: Ignore her. Go to sleep.
"Boss Chen, that sound is the female ghost — her head keeps bouncing against the wall. If you pick Option One, the phone will transmit the female ghost's voice. If you pick Two, she'll open the window and come in halfway through the climb. So you can only pick Three. But Three is also a death sentence — in the middle of the night, the thumping stops, and when you open your eyes you'll find the female ghost's head has passed through from the other side of the wall." Fan Cong had already spoiled the whole thing for Chen Ge in advance. "I've tried every option. There's no chance of survival."
Chen Ge thought it over and still chose Three: "The female ghost's head only comes through at midnight. Right now, there's still room to struggle."
After selecting Three, Chen Ge found needle and thread along with fabric in the nightstand drawer — presumably the tools for turning the stepfather into a ragdoll. "The detail design is really spot-on. I'm actually getting curious about Option Two now."
As Chen Ge was second-guessing himself, another message box appeared at the bottom of the screen — The doorbell is ringing. Someone is standing outside.
"Who would be here at a time like this?" Chen Ge controlled Xiao Bu to the front door, and three options popped up on screen — The visitor claims to be a police officer. He received a report from residents in the neighborhood saying someone witnessed a murder. He asks you to cooperate with the investigation. What do you do next?
One: Open the door. Cooperate with the police investigation, catch the killer, and avenge your stepfather.
Two: Tell him your stepfather was revived and has turned into a ragdoll.
Three: Ignore him. Go to sleep.
Looking at the three options on the screen, Chen Ge took a moment to think carefully: "That guy outside isn't a cop. He's probably the raincoat man Xiao Bu encountered earlier — the real killer who murdered her stepfather."
"Impressive. As expected of a professional horror scene designer." Fan Cong had only realized this after playing through several times. He found that the gap between himself and Boss Chen was genuinely huge — not in intelligence, but in thinking. Boss Chen could always guess a serial killer's thought process with ease.
"The raincoat man ran into Xiao Bu outside the elevator and wanted to eliminate the loose end, so he circled back to kill her. That fits the game's dark tone." Chen Ge moved the cursor to Option Two. "'Your stepfather was revived and turned into a ragdoll' — that line is likely to provoke the killer. Once he realizes he's been exposed, he'll definitely go berserk and resort to brute force to break down the door. Xiao Bu is just a child, a one-hit-kill body type. To play it safe, let's go with Three."
Hearing Chen Ge's analysis, Fan Cong nodded involuntarily: "Option Three is the best choice. But when you've held on until midnight and the female ghost comes through from next door, you have nowhere to run. You'll have to leave the house, and when you open the door you'll find the serial killer standing right there, blocking the only way out."
"So you're saying that after I picked Option Three, the fake cop outside didn't leave — he's been standing by the door this whole time, waiting for me to come out on my own?" Chen Ge stared at the screen. "This game really is designed to be hopeless."
"Yeah. Every option is a death sentence. There's no way to survive." Fan Cong grabbed his own hair, getting worked up.
"Complete hopeless might be a stretch." Chen Ge thought for a moment, then had Xiao Bu open the balcony window. He clicked on the backpack and threw the needle, thread, and fabric he'd just collected outside.
"What are you doing?" Fan Cong was baffled.
"Attracting the other serial killer's attention. Didn't you say there's another perp in the bushes dismembering a victim?" Chen Ge calmly discarded the fabric. In-game he couldn't shout, and there were no other heavy items around, otherwise he would've thrown something weighty down.
"Attract the other serial killer's attention?" Fan Cong and Fan Dade couldn't comprehend Chen Ge at all. This way of thinking was completely on a different level.
"Serial killers are lonely people. Most of them are lone wolves because they have fundamental personality flaws — the more people around, the more anxious they become. The only person they can ever trust is themselves. When two serial killers run into each other, the most likely outcome is that they start fighting each other." Chen Ge had been tossing fabric for a while when a man in a factory uniform stepped out of the bushes. He looked up at Xiao Bu.
The moment their eyes met, Chen Ge immediately controlled Xiao Bu to retreat. "Now comes the most critical part."
"Are you sure he'll come up?" When Fan Cong had played it himself, he'd never tried this kind of maneuver, so he had no idea what would happen next.
"You don't understand serial killers. During that brief eye contact, he was probably already counting the floors and pinpointing Xiao Bu's room. Eliminate the loose end — so he will definitely come up." Chen Ge seemed to catch himself after saying this and added: "I just have a relatively good understanding of serial killer behavioral patterns. Don't take it the wrong way."
If he hadn't explained, it would have been fine. After he did, the hair on Fan Cong's and Fan Dade's arms stood on end.
Fan Cong could handle it, but Fan Dade was genuinely terrified. As an observer, he felt the full weight of it.
The exact same game — his little brother played it and was tearing his hair out, miserable and despairing, feeling like he was on the verge of depression.
But when Chen Ge played it, the whole style changed completely. Calm, unhurried — he even seemed to be finding a long-lost kind of enjoyment in it.