The situation at Virtual Future Amusement Park was worse than
They had integrated items tied to real urban legends directly into the haunted house, and the obsessions clinging to those items had found new life within the haunted house's scenes.
The critical difference between their setup and Chen Ge's haunted house was that the ghosts attached to those old relics were completely uncontrolled. They could easily harm any tourist who wandered inside.
Obsessions were invisible. After visiting, tourists wouldn't notice anything wrong with themselves right away. It might be a long time before various symptoms began to appear.
"You're being incredibly irresponsible toward your visitors." Chen Ge really wanted to meet whoever was in charge of the haunted house at Virtual Future Amusement Park. There was definitely something wrong with that person.
"Xiao Ling's friend might have just been the sensitive type, which is why she said those things. You have to understand—when people are extremely tense, they can experience hallucinations," the police officer said, afraid that Chen Ge would misunderstand.
"My friend was telling the truth. It's just that nobody listened. Everyone knows there are no ghosts in the world—fine. But how do you explain what she actually saw?" Xiao Ling started arguing with the police officer, and Chen Ge leaned against the wall, watching with great amusement.
Before coming here, he had guessed that Virtual Future Amusement Park would hire actors to play the part of tourists, and he had prepared accordingly. But he hadn't expected these actors to be so utterly unprofessional.
Maybe cramming over forty hell-level scenarios into the place all at once had been too much of a shock, shattering their psychological defenses. Or maybe the Reincarnation Haunted House had been built too hastily, and the rank-and-file staff were well aware of the hidden dangers.
All things considered, a combination of factors had led to the current situation. The "insiders" were turning on each other, while the tourists had become the ones steering the ship.
"Stop arguing, everyone. We're all here as visitors. If none of you want to give up right now, we'd better stick together." Chen Ge's voice sounded especially pleasant at a moment like this. His presence was like a beam of light—always able to bring warmth, always someone you could rely on.
Xiao Ling stopped paying attention to the police officer, turning her face to the side.
"We're all on the same side here. Don't let something small ruin the mood," Chen Ge consoled her a few words, then got straight to the point. "Does your friend know the stories behind those old relics? Where did those items come from—especially that shrine?"
"They were collected from a village near the reservoir on the east side of the city. The scenery there is lovely, but it's quite remote, and the locals aren't friendly to outsiders at all."
"Did anyone in the village say anything when you went to collect the items?" Chen Ge didn't care about the other objects, but that shrine was clearly a major problem. It was the source of the curse.
"There weren't many people living in the village, and most of them were elderly. After my friend explained why she was there, they drove her straight out. Later, my friend's boss gave a young villager two hundred yuan, and only then did he sneak us in after dark." Xiao Ling recalled many details.
"The village wasn't large, and many of the houses were empty. The old residence where the shrine was located sat on the shaded side of the village—it was the biggest house there, and it had been abandoned many years ago."
"The young man who led us into the village said that many terrible things had happened in that house."
"Decades ago, the owner of the house married the daughter of a wealthy family. Although the daughter was quite ugly, her family had money, and life was comfortable enough."
"Later, the wealthy daughter became pregnant, and they hired a female servant from out of town. But strangely, after that servant entered their home, she was never seen again."
"At first, the villagers didn't think much of it—the couple had always been kind people. What truly unsettled people was a few weeks later, when a thief climbed over their wall and broke into the house. The thief was driven completely insane on the spot."
"No one knew what the thief had seen inside the house. The owner's explanation was that he'd been startled when he spotted the thief, accidentally struck him on the head with a wooden stick, and knocked him silly."