The ghost house's manager ghost somehow felt that something was not quite right, but he still wore a strange smile. "Do the three guests want to enter the ghost house now?"
"In the ghost house, if we never find the key or hidden passage, will we be forcibly taken out?" Mu Anqi asked. "If we can't clear the stage, will we be trapped in the ghost house forever?"
"Our ghost house scene isn't very big, and there are obvious hints for the hidden passage or key. You don't have to worry." The manager ghost said considerately, "If you can't clear it, you don't need to panic either. At eight o'clock the next morning, our staff will safely bring you out. There's also food and water arranged inside the ghost house scene~"
"Alright." Mu Anqi looked at Zhao Guogu to check if there were any other questions.
"If, during the escape, we accidentally damage some facilities…" Zhao Guogu thought of Si Suying's hand grenade and the syrup sprayed from Mu Anqi's candy cane, and couldn't help but ask. After all, one of those was hard to repair, and the other was hard to clean.
"We have special restoration staff prepared, so you don't have to worry about that~"
"I don't want anyone to know about what happens inside the ghost house. Can you not livestream us here?"
"Rest assured, we respect the privacy of our visitors." The manager ghost hadn't expected these three players to be so troublesome, but when he remembered that his ghost house hadn't had any players for a long time, even if they didn't livestream… "But we do need to keep track of the number of eliminations and the fluctuations in visitors' emotional values~"
"This, ah, that's fine." Mu Anqi made an "OK" gesture. As long as these tourist ghosts didn't see how they made their moves, they probably wouldn't get scared so easily. Anyway, the more ghosts they could bait, the better.
Mu Anqi also noticed that this manager ghost especially wanted them to enter the ghost house attraction—most likely because no players had come to challenge this remote place in this round of the game. Sigh, truly a ghost who'd never been beaten up by players, completely unaware of how terrifying the punishment from Nirvana players could be.
Having gotten a satisfactory answer, the trio finally nodded and followed the ghost manager's guidance to the queuing area, entering the ghost house together with five ghost tourists.
According to the request of the three, what was displayed outside the ghost house queuing area was their emotional values.
Yes, only the emotional values of the three players. To distinguish them, the screen showed A, B, and C. As for the five ghosts going in with them? Ghosts didn't care about the emotions of their own kind.
"Can't see the actual situation, so it's not that interesting… Those guys definitely won't eliminate the players too quickly. I really envy those ghosts…" a ghost tourist standing in the queuing area couldn't help but sigh. "I hope the first two groups don't run into the players, that way they might just clear the stage directly." That way, he'd still have a chance to go in and play.
The ghosts in line looked up at the emotional value screen and found that Player A and Player B's emotional values fluctuated constantly between 10 and 20, while Player C's emotional value stayed below 5 the whole time.
Emotional values below 30 were within the normal range. As for below 5… was that player just spacing out inside the ghost house?!
The player with a mind as calm as still water was none other than Si Suying herself. She followed quietly behind Mu Anqi and Zhao Guogu, listening to the two whisper about when to make their move. As soon as they entered the ward building, the hospital's main doors had been tightly shut, no longer able to be opened. To leave, they had to find the hidden passage and key.
Mu Anqi: "Wait a bit. Let's look for clues first. Eliminating ghosts too quickly isn't good—if they realize something's wrong and stop coming in, that'd be bad."
Zhao Guogu: "Alright. This hospital is pretty big. Let's search the first floor for clues, then later go to the second floor and find a chance to eliminate one. Si Suying, come over, rock-paper-scissors—we'll decide the marking order first."
Si Suying silently went over and played a simple round of rock-paper-scissors with them to decide the order. In the luck department, Zhao Guogu won first, followed by a showdown between the two unlucky ones, Si Suying and Mu Anqi.
After five ties, Mu Anqi won by a small margin and took second place.
The five ghost tourists followed closely behind the three players, faces full of excitement. Watching the players whispering to each other, their hearts were filled with thrill and anticipation, without the slightest trace of panic. Players, after all—going into a ghost house with ghosts—were surely scared. It was normal for them not to want to walk together. Just look at these three players, whispering and trembling—how pitiful!
The gloomy, gray, decayed ward building had ceiling-mounted incandescent lights that flickered now and then, as if with a loose connection. The silent, abandoned hospital exuded an extreme sense of eeriness.
"This looks like an inpatient ward," Mu Anqi couldn't help but say. "So, the ghosts in this ghost house are all patients?"
"Probably. I feel like there's danger in that cabinet," Zhao Guogu pointed toward the locker where work uniforms were stored.
Mu Anqi gripped her candy cane tightly, aimed the barrel at the gap in the cabinet, and poured in hot, spicy syrup. A ghost's angry curses rang out instantly. Just then, the entire ward building suddenly lit up with a flash of red—
The patient escaped?! Mu Anqi had no idea what kind of scenario this was. But she could clearly feel the ground beginning to shake, as if something huge was quickly coming down the stairs.
"Now's the time!" Mu Anqi's mind lit up, and she shouted loudly. This was a heaven-sent opportunity! She quickly uttered five blessing words to immobilize the five ghost tourists, then drew her handgun, loaded it with ghost-specialized bullets, and shot one of the upside-down ghosts in the head. Then another.
Zhao Guogu pulled a fruit knife from her backpack and, the moment Mu Anqi held a ghost in place, stabbed the knife into its head—then moved on to the next ghost.
Si Suying let out a "meow~" and used her sharp cat claws to finish off the last ghost.
Clean and neat!
The two-meter-tall "mad patient" who had been deliberately stomping heavily while rushing downstairs suddenly leapt from the staircase at that exact moment, landing at the first-floor stairway in what he thought was a "terrifying" pose.
…And witnessed the three players' actions.
Where did these devil-like players come from?! How did the manager ghost even approve them?! — The "madman's" heart shook, but he still tried hard to display his scary expression. The yin energy on his body spread out as he raised the blood-dripping kitchen knife in his hand, let out a roar, and charged toward the three players!
Watch him avenge his kind!
Ah!—
He stepped right on his own dripping blood, slipped in excitement, and slid on his knees in a comical fashion right up to Mu Anqi, leaving behind two long streaks of blood…
Mu Anqi's expression was complicated; she didn't know whether to feel sorry for the ghost or to marvel at Zhao Guogu's "terrifying" nature. She simply breathed out the four words "a bright future ahead," then aimed the barrel at the ghost's head. "Tell me exactly where the key and the hidden passage are, or I'll shoot." To make sure the ghost told the truth, Mu Anqi even reluctantly stuffed a Guansi into a red envelope to activate her skill.
"Madman": These players this round are more like ghosts than the ghosts themselves!
That bullet really could harm ghosts. And getting his head blown off… the "madman" felt he would need quite a while to recover. He looked sadly at Mu Anqi, then turned his head toward the direction of the surveillance cameras. "Boss, you all saw it, right? I really had no choice this time, these players are just too—"
"The cameras aren't on," Si Suying interrupted the ghost's attempt to play the victim. "We refused the livestream."
The "madman" froze, then immediately threw the kitchen knife onto the ground. "Ah, you should've said so earlier! Alright, then after I tell you these two pieces of information, you can't tell anyone it was me who leaked them. If I happen to run into you again later, you have to spare me."
"Alright," Mu Anqi agreed. She had no intention of wasting bullets on staff members anyway—after all, these ghost employees didn't have any tokens on them.
"This isn't a ghost house at all." Watching the bloodstained hospital-gown-wearing "madman" pick up his knife and head upstairs, Zhao Guogu couldn't help but remark. "This so-called ghost house attraction is clearly just a 'ghost battle royale.'"
"Come on, after we get the key, let's guard the hidden passage," Mu Anqi said with a smile. "I guarantee that before eight o'clock tomorrow morning, not a single ghost will clear this stage alive."
…
"What's going on? At this point, it should only be the 'madman' making his entrance! Why have five ghost tourists been eliminated, yet those three players are fine?" The ghosts outside the attraction were furious. "Is your ghost house staff trying to hog all the emotional value by deliberately eliminating other visitors?!"
"Where are the tourists? Why haven't the eliminated tourists come out?"
"What's going on with your ghost house? How could you do something like this!"
"Five ghosts died, yet the highest emotional value of those two players was only 45?"
"Is the emotional value tester for Player C broken? Why is her highest emotional value only 10?"
While the onlooking tourists were protesting about the "rigged game," the ghost house medical team urgently carried out the five half-dead ghost tourists and then sent them out to rest.
The onlooking ghosts could clearly hear one of the slightly conscious ghost tourists sobbing, "Too scary…"
Who was scary, exactly? The players, or the "staff"?
The players' emotional fluctuations didn't seem big at all—were they split up? A ghost house without a livestream was truly infuriating.
The ghost house manager, who kept trying to maintain order, hesitated to speak, feeling only a headache. He couldn't help but call the backstage: "What on earth are you doing?! Do you even understand how to toy with players to stir up emotional value?!"
"But those players haven't even gone up to the second floor yet. Just now, the madman went downstairs, took out five tourists, and didn't see the three players! I didn't turn on the exclusive surveillance earlier—now I have." The chief in charge of the ghost house staff explained. In the past, players' gameplay was always livestreamed directly to the outside, but this time Mu Anqi requested otherwise. He hadn't adjusted in time, so he didn't see what had just happened. Still, he thought it didn't matter. "Don't worry, the 'madman' was planned out. Once those three players realize that all five tourists who entered with them have been eliminated, they'll be terrified! Then it'll be up to us."
Manager ghost: "…?"
Wait, you actually eliminated them yourselves?
Even if you wanted to hog the emotional value, you didn't need to be this hasty, right? At least leave two ghost tourists! This really is a rigged game.
The manager ghost felt extreme pain and let out a deep, furious roar: "Give me twenty percent of the emotional value!"