"Every time I wake up, it's eleven fifty-six at night. When I just checked my watch, the clock on the wall was showing exactly the same time."
"A continuously looping nightmare — that fits the theme of this scenario. The way to achieve a perfect clear should be to break the loop." Chen Ge moved the fruit platter off the coffee table and placed the doll's corpse on the surface. "This scenario should undergo its first change in about three minutes. You'd better go find the rest of the doll's body parts quickly."
"We're a team here. Could you maybe be a little more polite when you talk?" One of the girls tried to say something more but was stopped by the bespectacled man.
The group paired up and began exploring the cabin. It wasn't large — only four rooms in total.
With the living room they'd first entered as the center, the bedroom was to the left, and the kitchen and bathroom were to the right.
The tourists rummaged through drawers and cabinets searching for body parts, while Chen Ge sat on the sofa, studying the severed head.
"In medium difficulty, you can pass just by finding all the body parts. Will the clear conditions change in hell difficulty?" He held the crumpled note he'd pulled from the doll's mouth. "Every time it hits midnight, he's killed in all sorts of ways. Is he trapped in a nightmare he can't wake up from, or is each death actually real?"
"Ahh!"
A scream from the bedroom interrupted Chen Ge's thoughts. Moments later, a female tourist bolted out of the bedroom, with the youngest male tourist right behind her — his left hand gripping a blood-stained axe, his right hand cradling three segments of a sawed-off doll's leg. "I found these under the wardrobe. And I also discovered this."
The young man tossed a coat onto the sofa. "There were body parts stuffed in the coat's pockets too. I'd suggest you all come take a look. I can't handle this by myself."
Chen Ge first laid all the body parts out on the coffee table, then entered the bedroom with the young man.
The wardrobe doors were wide open. Every piece of clothing inside was stained with blood. In the corner of the wardrobe lay a bloodied desk lamp base.
"The axe was also found in the corner of the wardrobe. It's a prop — not sharpened." The young man's expression was fairly composed; he hadn't been frightened.
"The body parts were stored with the murder weapons." Chen Ge seemed to realize something. He turned his gaze toward the living room.
On the fruit platter on the coffee table, alongside the five severed fingers, there was a fruit knife. And beneath the tray holding the head in the refrigerator, there was a dinner knife.
He pulled all the clothing from the wardrobe, searched the pockets, and placed the doll's dismembered parts on the table.
The other tourists watched him. Even though they knew perfectly well the body parts were fake, they still felt a wave of nausea and discomfort.
The more they watched, the more they sensed how terrifying Chen Ge was. This man not only showed absolutely no fear — he was actually assembling the various body parts together into their proper positions. Watching him work with such focus, he looked exactly like himself when putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
"Isn't he a haunted house owner? How does he know all this?"
"Maybe he was a forensic medicine student before. That would explain why those students kept visiting his haunted house — probably showing support for their senior."
A relatively complete corpse gradually took shape on the coffee table. With the Living Doll and Corpse Dressing talents, Chen Ge knew the human body inside and out.
After searching through all the clothing, Chen Ge finally found what he was looking for. In the pocket of a certain coat, he discovered a second note — This is a nightmare there's no escape from! I have to find a way to end it! I can't just sit here and wait for death!
"Did you find anything?" The bespectacled man had barely finished asking when the clock on the wall suddenly began to chime — midnight had arrived.
Along with the cuckoo, cuckoo sound, a small door at the bottom of the clock opened and a cuckoo bird appeared. Strung around its body was a blackish-red heart.
"Watch out!" The youngest male tourist suddenly let out a sharp cry. He glanced at his wristwatch and retreated into the crowd.
No one knew what this young man's profession was, but from his reactions, it was fairly clear that his job apparently allowed him to sense danger in advance.
A creaking sound filled the room. Water began flowing in the bathroom. The curtains in the living room stirred. Amid the sounds of a woman weeping and a little girl laughing, a third voice emerged — as though muttering in a dream. You couldn't make out what was being said, but you could tell it belonged to a man.
"Something's coming."
The cabinet doors in the bedroom emitted a piercing creak. Several tourists peered inside — the wardrobe that Chen Ge had emptied earlier now somehow contained a garment once again.
It was a blood-red coat. Stains of blood trickled down its surface, and it swayed gently in the darkness of the wardrobe.
The policeman and the other tourists all crowded into the center of the living room. The scene before them seemed to be yet another element not in the script.
"A red coat?" Chen Ge narrowed his eyes, his pupils contracting. Every time he saw blood-soaked clothing now, it triggered an instinctive reaction.