Chapter 224: The Most Special Visitor

'Very realistic. It gives the exact vibe of stepping into a murder scene.' Pressing my back against the wall, I didn't open any of the sickroom doors. I had pretty much figured out the designer's temperament by now—pulling a single hair moves the entire body. If I triggered even a single mechanism, waves of fresh terror would come crashing down on me.

'Terrifying as these sickrooms look, there's nowhere to hide inside. Neither Tie Ningxiang's group nor that faint red figure could possibly be hiding in there.'

Continuing forward, the wretched "S"-shaped corridor presented a blind corner every few steps. I turned my head with extreme caution every time, terrified of bumping face-first into something.

Sweeping the first floor yielded nothing. I headed up the stairs to the second floor, but before I even reached the top, I heard a series of strange noises.

'Someone's on the second floor?' Bending low, I crept up the stairs as stealthily as a feral cat.

The environment on the second floor felt even more complex than the first. The corridor was narrower, the sickrooms were more numerous, and clutter was strewn everywhere across the floor.

'What is this?' I swept my flashlight across the floor. Amid the scattered old bandages and discarded medicine bottles, a sudden glint of light caught my eye.

I brushed aside the bandages and garbage, pulling out a heavy pair of iron dental extraction forceps from the 1990s.

It was coated in blackish-red bloodstains. If you didn't look closely, you would assume that was just its original color.

I tossed it casually a few times. It was heavy, forged from solid steel. I ran a finger along the edge of the forceps; it was extremely rough and jagged.

'A pair of iron forceps buried in a pile of garbage? What's the meaning of this? Isn't the Haunted House designer afraid that terrified visitors might lose their minds and attack the staff with it?' I remained highly skeptical of its presence here. 'I'll keep it for self-defense. If I really run into a psycho killer, at least I won't be completely defenseless.'

Gripping the iron forceps, I walked down the corridor for a bit longer, passing three sickrooms in a row. It wasn't until I reached the fourth room that my gaze locked onto what lay inside.

A wardrobe and a very ordinary hospital bed sat inside the room. Looking at the furnishings, it didn't seem much different from the other sickrooms. The only exception was the woman sitting upright on the pristine white bedsheets.

Her dry, yellowing long hair draped over her shoulders. Her head was bowed, and her back faced the sickroom door.

'It's probably just a dummy.' I swept my flashlight beam over it a few times, but it didn't react at all. Yet, just as I was about to leave, a muffled woman's cry for help suddenly echoed from within the room.

"Save me, save me." Her voice was faint as a mosquito's buzz—incredibly thin and low, sounding exactly as if someone were pressing against my ear to beg for their life.

'That voice sounds too real.' Unable to walk away, I hesitated for a second before finally pushing open the sickroom door.

The woman sat motionless on the hospital bed with her back to me. I swept the flashlight over her, but even under the beam, she remained completely unresponsive.

'It can't be a real person, even if the build is a perfect match.' Gripping the iron forceps in one hand, I slowly circled around to the woman's front.

Her plastic face was wrinkled and puckered, its facial features entirely blurred out. Nestled in her arms was a tape recorder.

'False alarm.' I picked up the tape recorder from the woman's arms, intending to switch it off. But the moment I pressed the button, a woman's hysterical screaming suddenly blasted from the speaker!

I hurriedly pressed the button again, finally cutting off the noise.

'Strange. The tape recorder wasn't even on just now, yet I clearly heard a woman begging for help.' As I set the recorder down and pondered this, that bizarre rattling noise echoed from the corridor outside once more.

'Someone's coming?' Glancing around, the wardrobe was the only place in the sickroom to temporarily hide. Without overthinking it, I threw open the wardrobe door.

The moment the wooden doors opened, a ghastly patient "corpse" inside spread its arms and lunged right at me.

Unable to dodge in time, I slammed right into its embrace.

'I knew there was a trap in this wardrobe,' I cursed silently. Hugging the "corpse," I squeezed inside and pulled the doors shut.

Waiting in a place like this was pure torture. With every passing second, the terror spiked. It felt as if something was fermenting in the stale air. Sweat beaded on my forehead and slid down my cheeks.

'They're here!' I turned off my flashlight, activated Chasing Eye, and peered out through the cracks in the wardrobe.

The strange rattling noise paused at the doorway. A moment later, a beam of light swept into the room.

'Is it a living person?' Just as I hesitated over whether to step out and greet them, I caught sight of the figure's horrifying getup.

A bloated Clown mask covered his face, and several massive, stitched-up scars tracked across his skin. He wore a bloodstained, tattered white lab coat, and one of his hands dragged a chain. Tightly lashed to the end of the chain was a plastic prosthetic limb.

If that was all I saw, I would have had no reason to suspect him of being anything but staff. But when my gaze flicked to his other hand, I hesitated. His free hand gripped a gleaming axe, and fresh blood was still dripping from its blade.

'A real weapon?'

The Amusement Park Haunted House wouldn't go so far as to use genuine weapons just to scare visitors, would they? The blood pattered onto the floor drop by drop, the steady dripping shockingly clear in the silent night.

The man straightened his Clown mask and stepped into the room, sweeping his flashlight over the interior.

He circled around to the front of the woman, grabbed the tape recorder, and gave it a shake before pressing the button. The woman's hysterical screaming and wailing immediately filled the sickroom. He listened for a moment, making sure it was working properly, before switching it off.

He didn't speak a single word the entire time. After setting the tape recorder down, he just paced back and forth across the room with the axe in hand.

He glanced toward the wardrobe I was hiding in several times, but for whatever reason, he seemed wary of it and didn't dare pull the doors open.

Two or three minutes later, the freak finally left. I waited until the sound of him dragging that plastic prosthetic faded into the distance before slipping out of the wardrobe.

Closing the doors, I immediately located the spots where the red liquid had dripped from his axe.

'The metallic stench of rust. This isn't paint—it's blood!'

The instant I confirmed this, I turned off every light source on me and dimmed the Underworld Live Show Live Broadcast Phone's screen to its absolute lowest setting.

'That guy was wearing a Doctor's coat, yet he had a Clown mask over his face. The clash of costumes is ridiculous. It's highly likely he's doing it on purpose to hide his true face.'

Determining that the red liquid was blood marked a critical turning point for me.

The Haunted House was very likely hiding a genuine murder case, and the killer had to be that Doctor in the Clown mask. I still couldn't be certain if he had anything to do with the disappearances of Tie Ningxiang and Yi Yi, but capturing him would give me the breakthrough I needed.

'My opponent is a human, not a ghost. This is good news.' Gripping the iron forceps, I stood flat against the wall, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Having survived six live broadcasts, I was no longer afraid of the dark. In fact, I had grown completely accustomed to the feeling of being engulfed in pitch-blackness; sometimes, it served as a natural camouflage.

'This Haunted House's theme is escaping the pursuit of a psycho killer, but today I'm going to be acting in the opposite way.' Compared to my past adversaries like Lu Xing and the black magician, the threat level posed by this Doctor in the fat Clown mask wasn't particularly high. My chances of successfully hunting him down were excellent.

Stuffing the flashlight into my pocket, I held the Underworld Live Show Phone in one hand and the iron forceps in the other as I stalked out of the room.

'You've probably never dealt with a visitor like me before.' Staring down the pitch-black corridor, I felt barely a ripple of fear. Creeping along the wall in the deepest shadows, I channeled the Profound Truth Mental Method, elevating my five senses to their limits.

'That crying Clown from the parade had a completely different height and build than this Doctor. There's likely more than one killer on the loose, so I need to be extra cautious.'

I might not be familiar with the layout, but the Doctor's chains would rattle loudly whenever he moved. That was my greatest advantage.

Sweeping the entire second floor, I saw no sign of the Doctor. I thoroughly checked every single sickroom, but found nothing of value.

However, on the wall at the far end of the corridor, I did spot a floor plan. It offered a rough outline of this three-story building's internal structure.

Two staircases flanked the left and right sides, connecting a total of three floors. It contained sixteen sickrooms and two secret rooms. These "secret rooms" served as safe zones for people to rest. According to the game's rules, the psycho killer wasn't allowed to enter them, but their entrances and exits were hidden.

'Could Tie Ningxiang and Yi Yi have been hidden in one of those secret rooms? Looks like I'm going to have to play this game for real.'