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Since the shop just opened, there are only two games available for the time being. The first one is called Silent Hill: PT. It is a horror game, and to be perfectly honest, it is very, very scary. I really wouldn't recommend it for anyone who is faint of heart. The other option is a game titled Digging the Ground for Ascension.
That one requires an incredible amount of perseverance and patience because it is extremely challenging. I'm curious, Director Hu Tao, which of these would you like to try first?
Li Mo gave this brief introduction to the Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, making sure she understood what she was getting into. Hu Tao, however, didn't seem intimidated in the slightest. She puffed out her chest and spoke with an air of absolute confidence.
I want to try this Silent Hill first! Whatever snot-filled monsters are in there, I want to see exactly how scary your little horror game can be.
She was incredibly self-assured, but then again, she was the 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. Her entire professional life was dedicated to dealing with the dead and spirits. Spirits and ghosts that might send an average person screaming for the hills were just another day at the office for her.
In her mind, as long as the sky wasn't falling and she wasn't surrounded by debt-collecting servants, there was very little in this world that could actually frighten her. Well, perhaps except for Xiangling's more experimental slime-based culinary disasters.
Having made her choice, Hu Tao followed Li Mo's guidance and put on the virtual headset. She navigated the menu and selected Silent Hill: PT. Meanwhile, Zhongli stood back with the group of curious onlookers, watching the large monitor that mirrored her perspective. He remained quiet, observing this strange new form of entertainment with his typical stoic curiosity.
The opening of the game was deceptively simple. After the title flashed across the screen and faded away, several lines of text appeared against a stark black background.
Be careful. The gap in that door... it leads to an alternate reality. I am me. Can you be sure that you are the only you?
When the visual feed finally flickered to life, Hu Tao realized her perspective was starting from the ground. Two small cockroaches scurried past her eyes, and directly in front of her, a door stood slightly ajar, revealing a dark, ominous crack.
Hu Tao let out a small gasp, startled by the realism of the insects, and quickly scrambled to her feet. She found herself standing in a small, dimly lit room. Looking down at her hands and body, she realized she was inhabiting the form of an adult male.
This feels quite realistic. It's almost like I've actually stepped into another world. I wonder if those words at the beginning meant anything?
Hu Tao thought about the cryptic message for a moment, but since there were no other clues in the room, she decided to head straight for the only exit. She pushed the door open boldly and stepped into a narrow corridor. The lights here were fairly bright, and paintings lined both sides of the hallway. Looking through the windows at the far end, she could see that it was pitch black outside.
It looks like a very common, ordinary corridor to me.
Hu Tao shrugged her shoulders and began walking forward with her usual wide, energetic strides. In the middle of the hallway, sitting on a small side table, was an electronic clock. It displayed the time as eleven fifty-nine at night, using the standard numerical format recognized across Teyvat. She knew that horror stories almost always reached their climax at midnight, so she made a mental note of the time.
As she reached the end of the first stretch and turned the corner, she found another brightly lit corridor with an open door at the far end. On her right-hand side, there was a closed door that appeared to lead to a bathroom. Hu Tao reached out and twisted the doorknob with a good amount of force, but the door was firmly locked and wouldn't budge.
Out of habit, Hu Tao reached toward her back, intending to pull out her Staff of Homa to smash the door down. She caught herself mid-motion, remembering that she was currently inside a game world where her physical weapons didn't exist. Since the bathroom was off-limits, she had no choice but to keep moving forward.
As she approached the doorway at the end of the hall, a man's voice suddenly crackled to life over a radio sitting on the counter. The announcement was cold and clinical.
On the day of the murder, the father went to the trunk of his car, retrieved a shotgun, and shot his wife while she was cleaning the kitchen after lunch. When his ten-year-old son came to see what was happening, the father shot him as well.
His six-year-old daughter was clever enough to hide in the bathroom. Reports indicate that he told her it was just a game to lure her out of hiding. Once she emerged, she was shot in the chest at close range. The wife, who had been shot in the abdomen, was pregnant at the time.
The radio broadcast continued as Hu Tao and the crowd of onlookers listened in stunned silence.
Investigators arrived at the scene after neighbors reported seeing the father sitting in his car, listening to the radio. A few days before the murders, neighbors claimed they heard the father loudly repeating a series of numbers. They said it sounded as though he were chanting strange spells. This was the third such incident in the area; another family was shot last month, and there was one more back in December.
In every case, the father murdered his entire family with a shotgun or a meat cleaver. While inspectors say these family murders appear unrelated, they suggest they could be tied to the unemployment and parenting stresses facing common families today.
When the radio finally went silent, Hu Tao and the people watching from behind her took a moment to process what they had just heard. While the concept of a news broadcast was entirely new to them, the grim details of the story were easy enough to understand.
Hu Tao looked around the environment again. Now she noticed the wedding photos on the table, the moldy banana peels, and the overflowing pile of cigarette butts.
It was a story of a brutal homicide, or perhaps a series of them, where a father had turned on his own family. Between the mention of strange spells and the mental instability of the perpetrator, it felt remarkably similar to some of the darker urban legends found in Teyvat.
So, this is the story we're following?
Hu Tao tapped her chin thoughtfully. She felt like she finally had a handle on the situation and understood the premise of the game. It was a tragedy of the restless dead, and as the Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, she felt right at home dealing with such grim affairs. Little did she know, the true horror of the hallway was only just beginning to wake up.