"This game is called the Four Corners Game. At midnight, four people each stand in one corner of a pitch-black, enclosed room. Then, walking clockwise along the walls—"
"When one person reaches the next corner, they lightly tap the shoulder of whoever was originally standing there."
"Since a room only has four corners and four people are playing, the moment someone starts moving, there will always be one empty corner."
"When you pass that empty corner, cough once, then just keep walking to the next corner."
Chen Ge glanced at the five children on the screen and instantly recognized this well-known spirit game.
"How do you know so much about it?" Cui Ming looked surprised. He was holding a diary he'd found next to the projector, and the very first page laid out the rules of this game.
"What I just described is the basic version. If you want something more thrilling, you can also blindfold yourselves. Every time you reach a corner, softly call out your own name, then ask the other person for their name. That makes it much easier for a fifth person to appear." Chen Ge reached out his hand for the diary, but Cui Ming instinctively pulled it away. "What's wrong? Don't trust me? This haunted house is terrifying and dangerous — we only have a shot at clearing it if we stick together."
"I'm not saying I don't trust you. But don't you think it's a little odd that a visitor just casually rattles off such a creepy game?" Cui Ming seemed to have had some traumatic experience during a previous visit to a haunted house, leaving him with deep psychological scars. As a result, he was wary of everyone.
"Is there anything odd about that?" Chen Ge slipped his hand into his pocket and lightly touched his black phone. "Games like this that are pretty well-known aren't actually that scary, because so many people have played them. I've got some rarer spirit games on me — want to give one a shot? This venue is perfect for it."
Cui Ming swallowed hard and glanced around.
The classroom door was being hammered by the monsters outside. The model corpse hanging in front of the blackboard swayed back and forth. The mannequins seated in the rows of desks had twisted, grotesque expressions on their faces. Was this really the right environment to be playing spirit games?
"All right, I'll stop messing with you. If I'm not mistaken, the freshman welcoming ceremony at Nightmare Academy is probably this game. The only way to escape is to follow the game's rules." Chen Ge ran a haunted house himself, so he knew all these tricks.
"The ghosts are about to break in, and you're still chatting? Whatever the plan is, just do it!" Li Yuan and Xueli had also walked over, giving the door a wide berth.
"Let me correct you on one thing — what's pounding on the door right now isn't ghosts. It's monsters. They belong to two different factions." Chen Ge took the diary from Cui Ming, opened it, and placed it on the lectern. He himself stood in front of the blackboard, with the blood-scenting model corpse swaying behind him like a pendulum of doom.
"This diary has no name on it. From the handwriting, it was written by a student. What's worth noting is that the handwriting throughout isn't entirely consistent — which means this diary had multiple owners." Chen Ge offered his analysis casually. "The pattern seems to be that after each game was completed, the handwriting changed. Could that be an indirect sign that every participant in the games died after recording their entry?"
Chen Ge spoke very quickly. Trained by the black phone, the more eerie and terrifying the environment, the calmer he became — his mind racing at full speed.
"Combining the video on the screen with the diary, I can more or less reconstruct what happened. Four freshmen snuck into this school at midnight to play the Four Corners Game. While playing, an extra person appeared, and then all four of them vanished. Now we're going to take their place and experience the game firsthand." Chen Ge planned to compress the two-hour tour down to under thirty minutes. He gently pushed the model corpse aside. "Excuse me."
While the other visitors were still curiously flipping through the diary, Chen Ge had already positioned himself in one corner of the classroom. He quickly spotted a pull-ring embedded in the corner.
He reached down and tugged it. The blackboard trembled slightly.
"There's a mechanism installed? Got it." Chen Ge called out to the other visitors. "There should be a pull-ring in each of the four corners. We find four people to stand in each corner and pull them all at the same time. The mechanism should activate, and then we can escape."
Having weathered far bigger ordeals, Chen Ge's thinking speed and adaptability far surpassed those of ordinary visitors. On top of that, he was battle-hardened with experience — practically the moment he spotted a single clue, he could piece together the truth of what had happened.
The visitors hadn't even figured out what was going on yet, and Chen Ge had already deduced the way out.
A few of the visitors, half-skeptical, took their places in the classroom corners. When they pulled the mechanisms simultaneously, the blackboard slowly rose, revealing a hidden passage behind it.