"Four?"
Watching the strange figure in hospital scrubs hold up four fingers, Huang Hu felt like he was having a heart attack.
His chest ached, his head spun, and if he hadn't been live-streaming, he probably would have hurled his phone to the ground and bolted.
Stay calm! This is a haunted house! Those are haunted house actors! It's fine, it's fine!
Huang Hu tried desperately to convince himself, but his body was already beyond his control — his calves trembled uncontrollably.
Normally a smooth talker, he couldn't form a single word now. A bone-deep chill assailed him from every direction. He could sense that the four figures before him were something out of the ordinary.
Even people born with congenital deformities couldn't end up looking this grotesque once they'd grown up.
Their limbs had been twisted into corkscrews, their bones warped. One had both eyes gouged out, leaving only two pitch-black hollows. Another's eye sockets were filled with nothing but whites that rolled about now and then.
The four patients advanced in a row. The light distorted around them, and only then did Huang Hu realize — none of the four had shadows!
"Stay away!" he shrieked. Gone was all the composure he'd shown back in the room. He now understood that the person he'd been acting opposite earlier wasn't Li Xu at all — it had been one of the haunted house performers.
Once that realization hit, another question surfaced in his mind — so where was Li Xu?
He recalled the phone call Li Xu had made to him earlier. On that call, Li Xu's voice had been nothing like normal — it sounded like he'd genuinely stumbled into serious trouble.
"Li Xu's been working in this haunted house for ages. He's a veteran prop specialist in the industry. If something was weird enough to freak him out, this place might really be haunted!"
Cold sweat streamed down his face. Before coming here, Huang Hu had looked up all sorts of urban legends about the haunted house, and now every last one of them crowded into his mind, the endless fear threatening to swallow him whole.
"I should have left!"
His regret came too late. The four silhouettes began to accelerate, their deformed bodies lurching forward, their features slowly contorting into hideous, ghastly faces as they roared and charged at Huang Hu!
They weren't people! This place really was haunted!
Huang Hu's jaw dropped but no sound came out. Terror spilled from his eyes. He felt like he was suffocating.
"Big Hu, why'd you come out on your own? You've been talking to yourself since a while ago — this isn't what we agreed on!" At that critical moment, the door a few meters behind Huang Hu swung open. Li Xu had followed Huang Hu's instructions and painted a ghostly face on himself before stepping out.
Hearing Li Xu's voice, Huang Hu's heart — frozen solid with fear — seemed to catch a ray of light, and his brain reasserted control over his body.
He spun around, locked eyes with Li Xu, drew a breath to scream — and then his phone began vibrating like mad.
Instinctively he glanced down. The caller ID displayed two characters: Li Xu.
The call was from Li Xu?
Then who was the Li Xu standing in front of him?
His finger barely touched the screen. Using the little strength he'd just recovered, Huang Hu raised the phone to his ear.
"Big Hu? Jin Yuan and Leng Nan are both unreachable! I'm hiding near the exit right now — get out of there quick! There's something seriously wrong with this haunted house!"
Li Xu's voice crackled through the phone, laced with urgency and unease: "I'm not joking! Get out! Now!"
"I know you're not joking…" Huang Hu stood frozen, phone pressed to his ear, eyes fixed on the Li Xu who was steadily walking toward him from a short distance away. "The problem is… I've got two of you right now!"
An indescribable wave of horror burrowed through his pores and into his body. It was beyond anything Huang Hu could endure. He let out a bloodcurdling scream and, in a frenzy, charged straight at the Li Xu in front of him.
Four behind him, one ahead — animal instinct made Huang Hu the single most correct choice of his life.
"Are you out of your mind? I'm Li—" Before the words could leave his mouth, the completely unhinged Huang Hu had already closed the distance. He grabbed his backpack and smashed it into Li Xu's face with all his might.
Li Xu had been busy with his makeup moments ago and had no idea what was going on. Before he could react, Huang Hu's backpack connected squarely with his nose.
"I'm Li Xu! Damn it! I just finished my makeup!"
Li Xu reached out to grab Huang Hu. Huang Hu screamed again at the sight of him as though he'd run into a vengeful specter. Abandoning both his backpack and his still-live-streaming phone, he sprinted toward the end of the corridor with every ounce of desperation in him.
"Huang Hu!" Li Xu clutched his throbbing nose, his voice pitching to an unfamiliar register. Worried about Huang Hu, he gave chase.
The two visitors — one fleeing, one pursuing — vanished from the third basement level in the blink of an eye.
The four employees in hospital scrubs slowly came to a halt. They glanced at one another, all sharing the same feeling: those two didn't seem to want to play with them at all.
The all-white eyes rolled gently. The "patient" standing in the center felt his black hair rise as the frustration he'd been holding down finally broke free.
When he'd first appeared, that visitor had held up three fingers at him. Then, after he'd finally managed to wrangle three coworkers over, the visitor flashed four.