Chapter 221: Cloth Dolls

Sheep blood has a gamey smell, pig blood stinks, and chicken and duck blood carries a foul odor. Only human blood has a truly unique scent—a salty tang with a faint hint of rust. If you taste it with the tip of your tongue, you can even sense a trace of sweetness.

"This is human blood!"

I didn't think a Haunted House would use real human blood just to build a terrifying atmosphere. Blood is hard to preserve, and besides, ordinary tourists wouldn't be able to distinguish between different types just by looking anyway.

Under the beam of my flashlight, the bloodstains were distributed irregularly across the iron chains, as if they had been accidentally splattered there.

If the blood had flung from a swinging wound, the spots would form a straight line or cluster around one. The scene before me obviously didn't fit that.

"The blood is still fresh. Someone must have been standing by the door when their body was slashed by a sharp blade, causing the blood to splatter."

There were only blood spots on the chains, with no brains, bile, or anything else mixed in. The victim's injuries shouldn't be too severe.

The area leading underground was locked tight, so for now, I could only head to the other two themed zones to search.

As I walked into the eerie, terrifying Haunted House, the lights on both sides grew dimmer. A fork appeared ahead of me, splitting into two different themed zones.

Operating on the premise that there might actually be real ghosts inside the Haunted House, I was extremely cautious, carefully reading the background stories for both themes.

The building on the left told the story of five children who played pen fairy on the Night of the Returning Soul while their parents were away. As a result, they actually summoned something. Four of the five children were killed and became resentful spirits. Visitors needed to find the sole surviving child to escape.

The building on the right was a bit more modern. The gist was that a homicidal maniac had imprisoned the visitors inside an abandoned hospital. Visitors had to avoid the roaming killer and find the key to escape.

The park would close in a few minutes, and the Haunted House had already shut down. Both passageways had signs blocking entry that read "No Entry, Enter at Your Own Risk." No staff members were visible around either. I could only see an unmanned desk with some liability waivers laid out on it. The general idea was that people with a history of mental or heart illness were forbidden from entering, and if anything happened, the Amusement Park bore no responsibility.

"Midnight falls. An Amusement Park built over a graveyard, and a Haunted House that might contain real spirits. This is starting to feel a bit like the Underworld Live Show." I picked up my Large-Screen Phone, vaulted over the guardrail, and entered the building on the left first.

The old wooden stairs had been deliberately aged. They creaked underfoot, feeling so precarious that they might collapse at any moment.

"The atmosphere is set up well, but unfortunately, it won't scare me."

I climbed the dilapidated stairs to the building's entrance, stopping before a door left slightly ajar.

"Is anyone there?" The darkness was dead silent. There was no response. I could only hear my own heartbeat and the groaning of the wooden floorboards beneath my feet.

I pressed my palm against the doorknob and slowly pushed the door open. Just halfway through, a faint sound came from overhead, like a triggered spring mechanism. I looked up just in time to see a twisted human face drop down from the doorframe!

"What the hell?!" I took a step back out of the room. Clutching my chest, I swept my flashlight around. A cloth doll lay quietly on the carpet by the doorway.

"Placing this doll on the doorframe in advance so it drops right onto a visitor's head the moment they push the door... Whoever designed this Haunted House has a seriously twisted mind." I picked the cloth doll up off the floor. It was tattered and handmade. Its original eyes had been gouged out, replaced by features meticulously drawn on with a red watercolor pen.

Having been ambushed before even walking through the door, I didn't dare be careless anymore. I held my breath and raised my guard.

The inside of the Haunted House was much larger than it looked from the outside. It had three floors in total and was completely sealed, with no windows. Since the staff had already gotten off work, there wasn't a single light on inside.

Standing at the doorway, I felt a bit of trepidation. Sweeping my flashlight ahead, I walked inside.

The first floor was a living room, roughly thirty to forty square meters, furnished with all sorts of ordinary furniture. I slowly walked to the center of the room.

An upside-down plate sat on a knee-high coffee table. Pinned beneath it was a sheet of white paper covered in a grid.

Although my main goal was to find Tie Ningxiang and Yi Yi, professional instinct made it hard for me to resist these puzzle elements.

I casually flipped the plate over. Pressed underneath were the names of five children, arranged like a pentagram with a name written at each point.

Looking closely, I saw that four of the names had been crossed out with a red ballpoint pen. Only one name was spared.

"Chi Xiaotong?" I picked up the white paper and read the somewhat awkward name aloud. "Do I have to find this girl to clear the Haunted House normally?"

A faint breeze brushed past my back. I suddenly felt something moving and hurriedly turned around, but everything was normal. I didn't find a thing.

"I underestimated this Haunted House a bit. It seems its world-class horror reputation isn't entirely just hot air." Holding the white paper, I examined the other items on the table. "If finding the surviving girl is the only way to pass, then the actor playing her must have already left. No matter how hard I search, I won't be able to clear this normally."

There was also a ballpoint pen, a few photos, and some textbooks and homework on the coffee table. I skimmed through them but didn't gain anything.

But just as I was flipping through the materials on the table, another gust of cold wind blew in from behind me.

"That definitely wasn't my imagination."

Pondering it over, I quickly understood the Haunted House designer's intent. The pile of items on the table provided very few clues; their purpose was just to attract a visitor's attention. Then, when the visitor was entirely focused on studying the materials, true terror would suddenly strike from behind!

"What a twisted design, full of malice!" I pretended to keep looking at the materials. Sure enough, another gust of cold wind soon hit my back.

"Man or ghost?" I gripped my flashlight tightly and threw a punch behind me. I didn't care what it was; the situation was urgent, so I'd strike first and figure it out later.

But to my surprise, my fist hit nothing but air. I turned around to look, and there was still nothing there.

"That shouldn't be." I shined my flashlight around. As the beam swept upward, I suddenly saw an incredibly terrifying cloth doll sitting on the wooden stairs leading to the second floor!

"When did that get there? Did the staff place it? How did I not notice it at all?" Three gusts of cold wind had blown past, and now an ugly cloth doll had appeared on the stairs. No matter how I thought about it, I couldn't understand the mechanics behind it. "Is it really haunted? It's not even midnight yet; it shouldn't be."

Just as I turned around, preparing to walk over and investigate, a faint glimmer of light came from behind me. The light appeared with impeccable timing, as if someone were secretly monitoring my every move and taking targeted countermeasures.

"Now what?" I slowly turned my head. The dilapidated, boxy television that had been sitting two or three meters across from the coffee table had somehow appeared barely a foot behind me. It was pressed right up against the wooden coffee table, as if it had walked over on its own.

Even more terrifyingly, it had turned on automatically at some unknown point. It produced no sound, but on the black-and-white screen, a little girl covered in scars was staring intently at me with dead, fish-like eyes!

Swallowing hard, my palms began to sweat. If I had come in at any other time, these things absolutely wouldn't have scared me. But in this Amusement Park, at this hour, I knew very well that the Haunted House might conceal actual ghosts and monsters. I couldn't distinguish which were man-made pranks and which were traps filled with murderous intent.

There were no lights in the Haunted House, leaving me entirely reliant on my flashlight. Holding my breath, I circled around to the back of the television and leaned down to look.

"Son of a bitch!"

Mechanical wheel tracks were installed beneath the television cabinet. I unceremoniously tore up the floorboards by force, revealing a transmission mechanism similar to a conveyor belt underneath.

I grabbed the ballpoint pen from the table and jammed it into the belt to stop it from running back and forth. Cursing under my breath, I then walked toward the cloth doll that had appeared out of nowhere.

This suddenly appearing cloth doll looked a lot like the one by the door. Its original facial features had been completely ruined and torn away; the eyebrows and eyes on its face had been drawn on with a red pen.

"Terrible drawing skills."

The person who drew the facial features on the cloth doll hadn't deliberately tried to make them look terrifying. On the contrary, they had drawn them methodically and meticulously, as if doing it to pass the time out of boredom.

Take the doll in my hand, for example. Not only had they drawn the basic facial features, but they had also specifically used a black pen to dot a mole on its cheek.