Chapter 1128 - Little Game in the Dark 2 in 1 (1/2)
A figure was approaching him in the dark. Ma Feng lowered his voice and turned back to ask, “Sister Snake?”
“No, it is me, Sun Xiaojun.” The familiar voice rang out beside him, but the appearance of his teammate did not give Ma Feng any sense of safety or consolation. If anything, it only made him even more agitated.
“Did you notice that the light from your phone is gradually getting dimmer and dimmer as well?” Ma Feng reached out one hand to lean against the wall. The darkness amplified the anxiety that he was trying desperately to hide.
“So that has been happening to your phone as well! The screen is getting dimmer and dimmer too! Looks like there is something wrong with our sight. That spooked me for a second. I thought something has gone wrong with my phone and I would have to go and buy a new one.” After hearing what Sun Xiaojun had to say, Ma Feng’s brows creased even deeper. Among this group of visitors, none appeared normal.
Using his own memory, he held his phone and swiped the light around him to look for the figures of Shang Guan Qing Hong and Sister Snake. With every turn of the phone, the light from the screen dimmed a degree further.
“Brother Ma, Shang Guan Qing Hong, I think we’d better leave this scenario as fast as we can.” Sister Snake walked out from the room next to him. “I really did not dare imagine that someone would make a completely dark scenario inside a haunted house. This has already gone far over the limits for a normal haunted house visitation. It is more like a test for the visitors’ threshold of mental and psychological stress. We have all underestimated the haunted house boss’ insanity.”
Sister Snake warned them as she walked back along the way that they came in. She did not wish to stay in that sub-scenario for even a moment longer.
“But if we abandon our original plan of finding a hidden pathway in this sub-scenario, it means we will have to go to the maternal and childcare center next door. As mentioned earlier, the hospital is the place with the strongest Yin energy because it is the location where most people die. After all, the haunted house boss must have his reasons for placing these two scenarios at the end of the street. It probably means that the terror levels of these two sub scenarios are roughly equal to each other.” Shang Guan Qing Hong also exited from the room behind Ma Feng. He appeared to be looking for something earlier. “Furthermore, we have already spent some time inside this scenario. When we reach the other scenario, perhaps the black fog will have already arrived at these two places, and the level of difficulty will only increase further.”
“Horror that you can see and horror that you cannot see cannot be compared at all. You guys had better listen to me.” Sister Snake showed the side of her that made her the boss of the second most popular haunted house in the country. No matter what Shang Guan Qing Hong said, she had made up her mind that she was going to leave this place. Even though Shang Guan Qing Hong held a different opinion to Sister Snake, at a time like this, he was more willing to lean toward Sister Snake’s experience and instinct. After all, she was more experienced than he was.
The three led Sun Xiaojun and retraced their steps. The lights from the screens of their phones had slowly weakened to a point where it could only light up about one to two meters ahead of them. After taking a few steps, it was as if the battery of their three phones ran out at the same time, and the light died without warning. Darkness fell completely; there was not even a trace of light. The bodies of the three visitors appeared to be frozen, and they stood fixed where they were.
“Do not panic! The four of us should hold each other’s hands. The exit is not far away from here. I know that for sure. We need to leave this place as soon as possible!” At that crucial moment, Sister Snake became the lynchpin of the group. Actually, since she entered Chen Ge’s haunted house, she had not said much. That was because she had been closely observing Chen Ge’s haunted house, and the more she observed, the harder her heart palpitated. Be it the method of the tour or the placement of the scare points, Chen Ge’s haunted house was immensely unique from the other haunted houses on the market. In other words, he was walking a path that other people could not replicate even if they tried. Sister Snake also understood why Chen Ge’s haunted house had gotten so popular online, but the epiphany had arrived a little bit too late.
“Do not wander about and do not scare yourself! Everyone, reach out and hold onto each other! The human psyche will become weakened and more helpless when surrounded by darkness. The four of us must not be separated from each other!” Sister Snake was very assertive, and she gave her orders directly. “I hope everyone can understand that we are only visiting a haunted house; no danger will occur to us! That is guaranteed! So, what we need to do now is not scare ourselves!”
Even though Ma Feng was not used to getting orders from others, in those circumstances, he still obediently did what he was told. He reached out as Sister Snake had ordered and grabbed the wrist of the person next to him.
“We have to get used to the darkness. Because our sense of sight has been deprived, the other senses will be heightened in its place. The haunted house’s boss might use other methods that are not common on the market to scare us, like the use of voices or touch.” Sister Snake had already grabbed the hands of the people next to her. “Who is on my left?”
“It is me.” Shang Guan Qing Hong’s hand was slick with cold sweat. He was rather embarrassed by it, but Sister Snake was not someone who would mind something like that.
“So, who is on my right?”
“That would be me,” Sun Xiaojun answered softly. The four confirmed their locations like that. They stood in a single file. Sun Xiaojun was at the far right of the line, and Ma Feng was on the far left.
“We should stay closer together and walk out of this place in this formation. When we arrived at this place, I purposely looked around the place. The boss probably worried that the visitors might trip and accidentally injure themselves, so the corridors are relatively clean. At least that is something that we do not need to worry about. We only need to firm up our courage and walk forward toward the exit.” The few visitors listened to Sister Snake’s orders and started to head toward the exit, but they only walked for a few steps when something scary happened.
“Did you guys hear that shrill calling of what sounds like a cat? The sound appears to have been there since we entered this place, but now it appears to be getting closer and closer to us.” The moment Shang Guan Qing Hong said that, he suddenly felt something brush against his feet. The brush of silken hair caused goosebumps to appear all over his body. His body instantly froze to the ground. “Someone just touched my leg!”
The four of them were holding each other’s hands, so if one of them stopped, the rest of them had to stop as well.
“Are you sure it was a person? Perhaps you accidentally kicked something.”
“It felt like human hair! It was real! I swear to you!” Surrounded by darkness, Shang Guan Qing Hong did not know what had brushed against him at all. Based on the feeling that came from his leg, many scary images instantly started to fill up his mind.
“Do not stop moving! We need to keep on pushing forward! The exit is not far now!” Sister Snake yanked Shang Guan Qing Hong along by his arm. “It was just a brush of your leg, so why are you so scared? And stop the senseless screaming!”
Compared to Sister Snake, Shang Guan Qing Hong was like a newly married daughter-in-law who was being lectured by her new mother in law. Even though he felt so wronged, he was not going to pick this moment to argue with Sister Snake because, deep down, he knew that Sister Snake was right. The sound of the cat’s calling was getting louder and louder in their ears. Beneath the cats’ calls, there were other sounds mixed in, like the sound of the doors creaking open and the sound of someone’s nails trailing past the metallic stair banisters.
“I feel like this cat’s call is urging us to run. Perhaps we are currently surrounded by several cats at this moment.” Sun Xiaojun had started his habit of running headfirst into an analysis at the wrong moment.
“This is the first time I have heard of a haunted house employ cats as actors.” Sister Snake shook her head. She could not see anything in the dark. “The meowing of the cats was probably recorded before the scenario was released to the public. There are at least ten surround sound speakers installed in this scenario, and the reason for their placement is to play the seemingly approaching shrieks of the cats to apply pressure to the visitors, creating the illusion that something dangerous is slowly approaching the visitors. The thing that brushed up against Shang Guan Qing Hong earlier was probably fake cat fur. The intention behind the boss’ design is to increase the sense of authenticity. After losing the sense of sight, the world will appear less real, and we visitors can be more easily misled, so at this moment, we need to be as calm as possible!”
Even though the four of them kept telling themselves to calm down, in reality, they had been making very slow progress. In comparison, one could realize how courageous and uneasy it was for Chen Ge when the man challenged the real door himself.
“How come we have not reached the exit yet? I remember the exit is not that far away from where we were!” Shang Guan Qing Hong’s legs were shaking. At his age, he could not suffer too many ‘surprises’ anymore. Currently, his forehead was covered in cold sweat, and he was close to his breaking point.
“In the darkness, we will slowly lose our sense of distance, time, and direction. All we can do now is firm our resolve and make sure that it is not shaken as we continue our way forward. That is the only thing that we need to do.” Sister Snake kept encouraging the others, but in reality, she was also repeating these same encouragements to herself. The refusal for the exit to appear slowly wore down the visitors’ hope. Despair began to corrupt the visitors’ hearts. The visitors became more and more fragile, and right at that moment, the extremely shrill wail of a cat rang out between the shoulders of Shang Guan Qing Hong and Sister Snake!
It was like the cat had used the last moment of its life to scream as loud as it could to warn the rest of them before it was dragged away and slaughtered in the worst way possible!