"Blood" seeped from beneath the piano keys and flowed toward Xu Yin's fingers. His brows furrowed slightly as his melancholy eyes stared into the depths of the piano.
Accompanied by a shrill wail, a deathly pale hand suddenly shot out from inside the piano, clawing toward Xu Yin!
The five fingers closed together, grasping for the seat—but they caught nothing.
He dodged?
The hand's owner wasn't panicking. The previous move had apparently been nothing more than a warm-up. The real terror was about to descend.
Strands of black hair coiled around the piano strings, and a thin, diminutive dark figure crawled out from within the instrument.
Long hair covered her face. Through the gaps, Xu Yin could only make out her vivid red lips and twisted expression.
"Stay! Stay with me!"
The woman lunged at Xu Yin like a lunatic. The hair that had been obscuring her vision flew open, and with her blood-red contact lenses, she finally got a clear look at this particular visitor.
What filled her sight was a red outfit dripping with blood, wounds that hadn't fully healed, and countless black threads saturated with boundless malice weaving through flesh and muscle!
This scene was nothing like what she had imagined while hiding inside the piano! It was also the first time she had ever seen anything like it in five years on the job!
A suffocating sensation slammed into her brain. Every nerve in her body tensed to the breaking point. Just as she was about to touch the strange visitor, she felt time slowing down, her body growing lighter and lighter—as if her soul were being sucked away. She could even see her own body drifting closer to the visitor in slow motion.
"Now's my chance! Run!" Chen Ge, hiding behind the piano, saw that Xu Yin's attention had been drawn to the actress inside the instrument. He snatched up the short actor and his backpack and charged out of the music classroom.
Chen Ge "narrowly" dodged past Xu Yin and bolted at full speed!
"Hey—Sister Ling is still in there!" the short actor waved his arms frantically.
"So do you want me to throw you back in to save her?"
"Let's not. Sister Ling sacrificed herself to buy us time. We can't waste her good intentions."
While the short actor was talking, Chen Ge glanced back over his shoulder, a hint of worry on his face.
"Don't let Xu Yin get carried away and—no, not the piano—scare the person inside half to death."
Inside the music classroom, the black and white keys had been completely dyed red. They had lost all control, bouncing up and down on their own, playing a frantic, deranged melody.
In truth, Chen Ge had noticed someone hiding inside the piano the moment he entered the music classroom. The instrument sitting in the center of the room was much larger than a regular piano—it had clearly been modified by the Nightmare Academy, with a narrow compartment inside.
Chen Ge sprinted at full tilt while the short actor screamed at the top of his lungs, raising an enormous commotion.
Haunted house actors were long accustomed to screams and sobs, but as they listened, something started to feel off. Why did today's screaming sound so familiar? It sounded like one of their own colleagues!
Chen Ge led Xu Yin through three scenes—the music classroom, the security office, and the gym equipment room—tearing through all three in under three minutes.
By the time the haunted house staff received word from their boss and filed out of their respective scenes to assemble, Chen Ge had already carried the short actor up to the second floor.
"Why is this elevator always stuck on the basement level? Is your haunted house built on top of a ghost nest or something?" The casual remark sent cold sweat pouring down the short actor's back. Someone had said the same thing before, and he hadn't believed it—but now, with the evidence right in front of him, he had no way to argue back.