"The intersection is just up ahead. Those four clues are definitely spread across different routes. Let's split into two teams—one goes left, one goes right. Keep in touch via phone and report your progress in real time." Wei Jinyuan had an arrogant attitude, but the man genuinely knew his stuff when it came to haunted house scene design. "There are no useless scenes inside a haunted house. Every room could have hidden mechanisms and actors. Just follow behind me and don't touch anything you're not supposed to."
"You take a team with Cold Guy, and I'll take the streamer and go the other way." Li Xu glanced at Wei Jinyuan, feeling that something about the man's body movements seemed off—his coordination was a little strange.
"Sure, let's do it that way." Wei Jinyuan didn't bother asking for the other visitors' opinions. It was as if stepping into the haunted house meant stepping onto his home turf. "You're lucky you ran into us."
"Okay." The female assistant tugged Hei Qi along and walked over to Wei Jinyuan's side. "It's our first time visiting a domestic haunted house, so we don't know much about how things work here. Sorry to trouble you."
Li Baofu said nothing, as though he were lost in thought. The female assistant knew he had an odd personality, and they'd just had an argument with Wei Jinyuan's group, so she assumed he was just too proud to back down and felt embarrassed. She didn't press him.
"Then it's settled. The four of us are heading out first." Wei Jinyuan held up his phone. "See you at the exit."
"See you at the exit." Li Xu watched Wei Jinyuan's group enter the left corridor, then turned and headed right. "We came into this haunted house for our own reasons. You're welcome to follow if you want, but if you think we're unreliable, you can leave anytime."
Li Xu was in a foul mood because of Wang Yan, and his attitude showed it.
"Following you guys? I'd rather lead them myself." Wang Yan was about to leave with his girlfriend, but she felt it was safer to stick with Li Xu. The disagreement escalated, and in the end Wang Yan found himself isolated.
There was nothing he could do. Wang Yan might not have been a coward, but he wasn't brave enough to tackle a three-and-a-half-star scenario on his own.
"If you'd just followed everyone from the start, we wouldn't be in this mess. Did you really have to say all those bizarre things just to show off? Don't you think that's childish?" The scholarship student didn't name anyone directly—it sounded like he was talking to himself—but everyone around knew exactly who he meant.
"Childish?" Wang Yan looked up at the guy and instinctively wanted to argue back. The words were already on the tip of his tongue when he suddenly realized that everyone, including his own girlfriend, seemed to think the scholarship student had a point.
At this point there was no use arguing. Wang Yan wisely shut his mouth. He had indeed been childish in the past, but after being tempered by
As though he had made some kind of resolution, Wang Yan dutifully fell in line behind Li Xu, looking for all the world like he had finally admitted defeat.
"If you'd done this earlier, it would've saved us all this trouble. Acting like nobody else has ever been through a haunted house before." The scholarship student and Wang Yan's girlfriend brought up the rear. The five of them entered the right corridor.
The two teams officially split up. After they had gone, a faint mist began to drift through the street, and a figure walked through it.
……
Ten people had made the street feel cramped. With half of them gone, the area suddenly felt vast and empty.
"No background briefing, no storyline setup, not even a single signpost—this haunted house is a miracle that it's managed to stay open this long." Wei Jinyuan couldn't understand why a haunted house like this had become so popular.
"Maybe the visitors are just drawn to the novelty. After all, there's never been a haunted house on the market with this level of freedom." Li Changyin ran his hand along the wall beside the road. "Although there is something strange about this place. I took a close look—all the buildings in this scene are identical to their real-world counterparts. They used actual cement and bricks. It feels incredibly real."
"If he doesn't use plastic and plywood for construction, what's he going to do when it's time to tear it down? Is he planning to keep these scenes forever? Haunted house visitors are the most fickle crowd—play through a scene once and they're already bored. Building everything out of cement is way too expensive." Wei Jinyuan shook his head. "It's not a fair comparison. He has the entire New Century Amusement Park backing him, with the park providing the funding. We can only rely on ourselves."