Chapter 1 (2/2)
Dragging the puppet that was ruined, Chen Ge entered the maintenance room. He had studied Toy Design in college, and the machinery and traps used in the Haunted House had been all personally designed and built by him. The maintenance process, which included sewing and repainting, was dry and repetitive.
“Still missing some fake blood. If I remember correctly, there’s still some stock in the attic.” The Haunted House was separated into three floors; the first and second floors were for haunted scenarios while the third was a storeroom.
After pushing open the wooden door, behind the haze of wood chips and dust, there were various kinds of materials and unwanted ingredients left behind by Chen Ge’s parents from when they had managed the Haunted House.
Unwilling to face the past, Chen Ge rarely came up to this place.
“Now that I think about it, it has almost been half a year already.”
Looking at the various equipment, Chen Ge was reminded of his childhood. At the time, his family had managed a mobile Haunted House, so he had gotten the chance to travel the country with his parents. When the two adults were busy, they would leave Chen Ge alone backstage to accompany the various ghosts, so Chen Ge’s unnatural guts had been trained since he was young.
After all, when his friends of the same age were playing with blocks and puzzles, he was running around with a fake human head.
“These are all precious memories.”
Chen Ge wandered aimlessly before finding himself back at the wooden box that kept the few things that remained of his parents. Inside sat a black cell phone and a rough-looking doll. The doll was the first toy Chen Ge made when he was a child, but he had zero recollection of the phone. Both of these items had been found in an abandoned hospital in the countryside, and regarding why Chen Ge’s parents would go there in the middle of the night, even the police couldn’t give him an answer.
“Where are the two of you?” Chen Ge picked up the doll and pinched its chubby face. Then, with a sigh, he told himself, “I’d better go find that fake blood. If I cannot survive this off season, I really will have to bid this Haunted House farewell.”
Chen Ge was talking to himself, but when he said so, the black phone, which had been silent in the box, suddenly lit up with a dim, cold light.
“What’s going on? Dark technology or supernatural phenomenon?” If this happened to someone else, that person probably would have raced out screaming bloody murder already, but in comparison, Chen Ge’s reaction was much calmer. He picked up the phone and inspected it closer.
“This is weird. I’ve tried opening this phone more than a hundred times before, but it wouldn’t work, so why did it open by itself today? This phone was found where my parents disappeared, so could it be that they know I’m in trouble and are contacting me to help?”
Chen Ge swiped the phone open, and on the front page with a black background, there was only one available app. It had the shape of a Haunted House as an icon.
“Wait… This looks so familiar, just like the front entrance of my own Haunted House!”
With a frown, Chen Ge clicked the app open, and a row of letters written in what appeared to be blood appeared on screen—Do you believe there are ghosts in this world?
Objectively speaking, this was a metaphysical philosophical question; for an engineering student like Chen Ge, it was practically unanswerable.
“There should be,” Chen Ge mumbled to himself, and a few seconds later, a new sentence appeared on screen.
“What you believe is the answer. From this moment on, you will officially take over as the new owner of the Haunted House. Of course, this is not something worth celebrating. Before the end of the tutorials, please heed my last advice: suicide is the most cowardice of behavior, and try your best to survive!”
“What and what? But this pompous way of speech does resemble that father of mine.”
Chen Ge clicked on the app again, and a new window appeared.
_______________
Western Jiujiang Haunted House
Status: Almost Closing
Good Reputation: Zero
Daily Visitor Number: Four
Monthly Visitor Number: Ten
My Team of Ghosts and Ghouls: None
My Item Storage: None
Unlocked Achievement: None
Current Available Scenarios [Set Pieces]:
– Night of the Living Dead – Horrible prop, untrained actors, the plot has no readable storyline or logic. Scream Factor: 0 Star
– Minghun [Nether World Marriage] – Couple torn apart in the living world, bound together forever in the nether world; sharing the same grave, pursuing happiness in death. Scream Factor: 0.5 Stars
Unlockable Scenarios:
– Murder by Midnight – A dangerous psychotic patient wandered about a fallen apartment. Scissors and mallets as hands, he is just wandering outside of your room. Scream Factor: 1 Star
– The Third Sick Hall – There are unexplainable noises coming out from this abandoned hospital building every night. As a newspaper reporter, you’re tasked with getting to the bottom of this dark mystery. Scream Factor: 3 Stars
– The Haunted Hearse – Leaving with the hearse carrying the coffin, if you cannot escape within an hour, you’ll stay forever inside the hearse. Scream Factor: 2 Stars
Daily Mission: Complete Daily Missions provided by the Haunted House to unlock more scary scenarios. The rewards correspond to the difficulty of the mission.
Haunted House Expansion Conditions: Monthly Visitor Numbers over 100. Good Reputation over 60 percent. (After 3 expansions, the Haunted House will upgrade to The Shivering Maze.)
Haunted Wheel of Misfortune (Expend Fright Points generated by visitors of the Haunted House to spin the Wheel): The Decree of Life and Death is never the decision of man; fortune and misfortune are only an inch apart. We have both Spirit Fruits to increase your life span as well as hatred-filled Baleful Specters!
Other functions: Yet to be unlocked