With a good start, everyone decided to press their advantage.
“The parkour game I played yesterday had really complicated traps,” Number Three said first. “But I think I can try it again today, so that… I won’t be completely clueless.”
"No one is more suitable for that management game than me," Number One snorted. "I'll give it another try."
"What about other game consoles? Shouldn't we try those too? They shouldn't just sit there as decorations," Number Five chimed in with his opinion.
Xiao Cheng listened to their discussion with great interest.
After consulting with everyone, the mute girl, accompanied by Number Five, went to play a dress-up game without any cards. The game wasn't too difficult, and she returned quickly with a game coin in her hand, though it was silver and had no numbers on it.
"Just like the last one, the game console went black after I finished the game," Number Five explained to everyone. "The game coins are silver, I don't know what they're for."
"You can keep what you got." The others had no objections. "This is a new approach; we can try to find a new breakthrough."
"That's settled then. Everyone go about your business. Let's share any new leads we find." Number One summarized the discussion.
Xiao Cheng and Fang He went to see a horror puzzle game together. Unlike the escape room game that the mute girl was playing, this one was more focused on plot reasoning and puzzle-solving.
The game's backstory is roughly about a streamer who teams up to explore a supposedly haunted old house. However, once inside, the team members disappear one by one, leaving only the protagonist in the end.
The opening cutscene immediately sets the tone for a terrifying atmosphere, and after the ghost bride's close-up attack, the two face-to-face encounter leads to the game's main level.
Act One: Applying makeup to the ghost bride.
Xiao Cheng: "..."
In other words, it's completely incomprehensible what inextricable connection they have with dress-up games.
Fortunately, this time they didn't need to improvise; they only needed to find the makeup tools and the bride's wedding dress according to the instructions.
"This game doesn't seem too difficult."
Fang He watched as Xiao Cheng dragged the props she found onto the ghost bride one by one.
The slender woman was wrapped in a bright red wedding dress, her face pale yet beautiful.
Then there's another cutscene where the ghost bride throws out a blood-stained hem of her dress. The protagonist recognizes it as belonging to Da Chun, one of the missing team members.
When he went to pick up the hem of his clothes, he accidentally triggered a mechanism in the underground chamber, and he fell down when his foot slipped.
Then comes the second act, the search for Da Chun.
The difficulty of this level has increased significantly, and the level of horror has also risen. The protagonist finds a portrait of Da Chun and a crossbow in the secret room.
"Looks like there's still a boss battle?" Xiao Cheng got tired of playing and switched to Fang He.
"The storyline is quite long; it'll probably take a long time to play," Fang He estimated the time.
After finding Da Chun's portrait, the ghost bride reappeared and silently gave a second clue.
Team member Erxia's butterfly hair clip.
Erxia is the only girl among them. According to the plot, she is Dachun's girlfriend, and she was dragged along by them this time.
The third act is about finding Erxia.
The puzzle becomes more difficult, and there are options regarding branching storylines, allowing them to decide whether or not to sacrifice Da Chun's portrait to activate the mechanism.
Then the two realized that something even more terrifying than the horror game itself had happened: this long and tedious game had no save function.
"How should we choose?" Fang He stopped what he was doing and turned to ask Xiao Cheng for her opinion.
"No." Xiao Cheng answered him almost without thinking.
Fang He smiled, and the moment she finished speaking, he clicked the option, and the game's story continued.
The box burst into flames from the inside out, and finally, in a pile of ashes, the two found Erxia's portrait.
"Looks like we made the right choice." Xiao Cheng raised an eyebrow.
"Not necessarily. If the setting is even more disgusting, we might only find out at the end, 'Ah, it's a bad ending.'"
Xiao Cheng remained noncommittal.
The fourth act of the game is about finding Sanqiu, the protagonist's third teammate, a paranoid and immature young man, who was also the one who first suggested this exploration.
The protagonist finds the way out of the underground secret room, climbs up, and arrives at the backyard of the old house. Next to the dry well in the backyard, he finds the live streaming equipment that Sanqiu was keeping.
Then he realized that the live stream hadn't ended; his back was still visible on the screen, and there were still comments scrolling by.
[I've placed my bet! How many people will the ghost bride successfully devour this time?]
[The streamer is so handsome!]
There was also a huge wave of posts telling him to jump into the dry well.
[Sanqiu is in the well! Anchor, hurry!]
[The anchor was so excited to see us!]
The protagonist, clutching the live-streaming device that wouldn't turn off, looked back in terror.
There was nothing there.
In the instant he turned his head, from his blind spot, a skeletal hand reached out from the dry well and grabbed his ankle.
At the bottom of the dry well is a tightly closed stone door, next to which are piles of rotting and half-rotting rat carcasses; you can almost smell them through the screen.
The puzzle difficulty suddenly decreased in this scene, but the number of plot branches increased significantly. The protagonist successfully communicated with some unknown audience members, and with their hints, opened the stone door. Inside the altar hidden behind the stone door, they found a portrait of Sanqiu.
This time, Xiao Cheng once again chose to refuse the sacrifice.
Then comes Act Five, searching for the last teammate, Si Dong.
According to their timing method, it was already noon. The other six people had not yet passed the level, so they had temporarily given up and gone upstairs for lunch.
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