The old house had clearly seen many years. The ground was paved with mottled stone blocks, the walls built from blue bricks, and yellow talismans were stuffed into the gaps between them.
The courtyard was ordinary, nothing particularly special about it, yet looking at it always made one feel uncomfortable—probably because of those talismans.
Pushing open the crimson doors, a thick, musty stench wafted out from within the courtyard walls. Yellowed joss paper lay scattered across the ground, white inverted "fu" characters were pasted onto the pillars, and small paper effigies hung from the ceiling everywhere.
Moving further inside,
"Are those heads of the pig, sheep, and ox real?"
Before even getting close, Chen Ge could smell the strange odor emanating from the offerings. The things had already gone rancid, but the theme park didn't seem to have any intention of replacing them.
"I didn't expect to see such a traditional scene inside the Virtual Future Theme Park."
Stepping around the bronze mirror, Chen Ge looked around. On the walls of the main hall hung twenty-four paintings of evil ghosts. Each ghost in every painting was missing a part of its body—one lacked an eye, another was missing a leg.
"Why are all the evil ghosts incomplete? Could it be that they were afraid if the paintings were finished, the evil ghosts would crawl out?"
The paintings on the walls looked like they had genuine age to them, and they didn't seem to be replicas.
Chen Ge walked over to the evil ghost paintings, and the more he looked, the more familiar they felt. "They're similar to the evil ghosts Dr. Gao carved on my haunted house door. When Chang Wenyu wanted to destroy the door of the Spirit Medium School, there was a similar evil ghost pattern branded on her back. The only difference is that the evil ghost images Dr. Gao and Chang Wenyu displayed were all complete, while the ones here are all incomplete—they've lost their essence."
Chen Ge picked up the headless female ghost's head and asked whether she could sense anything from the paintings. The headless female ghost stared for a long time, even using her blood-red tendrils to touch the scrolls, but she found nothing unusual.
"The entire old house is suffused with an aura that makes one very uncomfortable. I can't read most of the ritual inscriptions, but what they give me doesn't feel like they're praying for peace."
Chen Ge wanted to study the place a while longer, but from the side hall came the sound of something being knocked over.
Picking up the chainsaw, Chen Ge pushed open the door to the side hall. Bloodstains lingered on the floor, and joss paper stained red lay plastered against the ground.
The moment he entered this room, Chen Ge felt deeply unsettled, as though something was wrapping around his body, making even breathing difficult.
"Something's not right." He didn't move forward. Instead, he stood in the doorway.
After a short while, he faintly heard the voice of the bespectacled man.
"Hurry up with whatever you're doing. That guy might be coming soon."
"I know, but the problem is I don't seem to have the key for this door."
"You said you could open every door inside every scenario, didn't you?" The bespectacled man's voice was strained, clearly anxious, though he didn't dare raise his voice.
"Before we came in, I memorized all the scenario data, but I have absolutely no memory of this one! Seriously, I regretted walking in the moment I got through the door. My brain has zero information about this scenario." The youngest man's voice was trembling.
"This scenario wasn't recorded?"
"Exactly! You keep telling me to open the door, but I don't even have the corresponding key. How am I supposed to open it?"
"That's impossible! Could the data have been incomplete?"