Perilous

After more than ten seconds, Feng Ge finally regained his composure. He pointed weakly toward the bathroom: "The mirror..."

Those two simple words seemed to possess a unique, malevolent magic. Chen Ge's expression shifted slightly; he dragged Feng Ge to the bed before heading into the bathroom himself.

The mirror on the wall had been smashed to pieces, with glass shards scattered everywhere.

Ever since He Shan had fainted earlier, Chen Ge had covered all the mirrors in the Haunted House with black cloth, and for a while, things had remained peaceful. Now that a new scenario had opened, he had let his guard down for a moment, and this incident had occurred.

Chen Ge knew very well that for any entertainment facility, once it was labeled as having safety hazards, it would become extremely difficult to continue operating.

He picked up a shard from the floor and looked at his own reflection in the fragment: "I must get rid of this thing as soon as possible!"

Just as there is black and white in chess, there is good and evil in people; the same logic applies to ghosts and spirits.

The thing inside the mirror harbored clear malice toward the living. Chen Ge could feel it—it was highly aggressive and harbored ulterior motives.

He Shan fainting and Feng Ge being scared into smashing the mirror—these two "accidents" sounded an alarm for Chen Ge, filling him with a sense of urgency.

Covering the mirrors with black cloth was not a long-term solution; the thing inside the mirror had already become an obstacle to the rapid development of the House of Horrors.

With the mirror shattered, nothing suspicious remained in the bathroom. Chen Ge walked out after taking a quick look around.

He gripped the hammer in his hand and sat down next to Feng Ge: "Can you tell me what happened just now?"

After resting for a few minutes, Feng Ge's breathing had finally smoothed out, but his face remained terrifyingly pale: "I can't really explain it clearly."

"It's alright, just say whatever comes to mind." Chen Ge stared at Feng Ge. Unlike He Shan, who had been scared unconscious immediately, this man's psychological resilience was clearly much stronger; at the very least, he had dared to fight back.

Feng Ge tried to sit up from the bed. His complexion looked a bit better, but the fear in his eyes had not diminished in the slightest: "I was being chased by your staff, and in my panic, I hid in this room. At first, it was fine, but later, I vaguely heard someone calling my name."

"Did it call your name?"

"No, but I could feel that it was calling me." Feng Ge grabbed his hair: "The voice was right here in the room. It took me a long time to pinpoint the source."

As he spoke, the terror in his eyes deepened: "The voice was coming from the mirror in the bathroom. I seemed to be able to hear it, but I couldn't hear it clearly. I didn't know what it was saying, only that it had something to do with me."

"And then?" Chen Ge kept every word Feng Ge said locked in his heart; this precious experience could help him gain a deeper understanding of the monster in the mirror.

"Then I stood in front of the mirror, wanting to figure out what kind of trick this was. I tried to take the mirror down, but the moment I touched it, the sound in my ears suddenly grew louder. My mind started to feel hazy. I looked at myself in the mirror, and the more I looked, the less it felt like me." Feng Ge reached the crucial part. He cast a lingering, fearful glance at the bathroom, as if some monster were hiding there, ready to jump out at any moment: "I was standing in front of the mirror, but the person reflected inside wasn't me. Normally, I would have felt scared and wanted to get away, but then the thing that still makes me shudder happened."

"What happened?"

Feng Ge said with great seriousness: "At that moment, I didn't feel any fear or dread at all. Everything felt perfectly normal. My body started to lean toward the mirror, and my face was almost pressed against the glass. I could clearly see the face in the mirror leaning toward me too. Even though it was an identical appearance, it felt incredibly strange. I couldn't say what was wrong, but I just felt that the face in the mirror didn't belong to me. My thoughts became increasingly chaotic. My brain hadn't issued any commands, yet my hands pressed directly onto the mirror surface. I felt like I wanted to crawl into the mirror—no, that's not right, it felt like I was being locked inside the mirror and was struggling to get out."

When Chen Ge was doing his Nightmare-level daily tasks, he had experienced something similar. Looking back at the phone recording, his body had indeed been slowly leaning toward the mirror at the time: "Then how did you break free?"

"It was because of the mirror." Feng Ge gave Chen Ge an answer he hadn't expected: "I had no idea what I was doing at the time. Just as my face was about to touch the glass, I suddenly saw a ragdoll lying behind me through the reflection."

"A ragdoll?"

"Yes, the same kind of ragdoll I saw in other rooms in the building—palm-sized, with a stitched-on beard." Feng Ge nodded and gestured with his hands: "Suddenly having a ragdoll appear behind me made me feel scared. Fear burned up like fire. My only thought at that moment was to get out of there, but my body wouldn't listen. My will and my body started to fight; it felt just like sleep paralysis."

Feng Ge spoke calmly, but Chen Ge could hear the danger hidden within.

"Later, I suddenly heard He Shan shouting from the second floor, and I snapped out of it, like waking up from a dream." The fear in his eyes dissipated quite a bit: "I was terrified to the extreme, so I grabbed a chair and smashed the mirror. It was definitely a primal instinct. Your House of Horrors is too scary; I even forgot I was just visiting a haunted house."

At this point, Feng Ge seemed to remember something and waved his hand at Chen Ge: "Everything I told you is true. I'm not exaggerating or trying to shirk responsibility. I will pay for the mirror at its original price."

"You don't need to pay for the mirror. The fact that you weren't hurt is the best outcome for me." Chen Ge stood up and paced the room: "Where is that ragdoll you saw now?"

Feng Ge hesitated: "I think I kicked it under the bed. That's one of your props too, right? Sorry about that."

Lifting the bed skirt, Chen Ge pulled out the ragdoll with a footprint on it and brushed off the dust: "You should thank this ragdoll. It was the one who saved you just now."

"The ragdoll saved me? Alright... thanks. Can I go now?" Feng Ge shrank back, his face growing paler. He felt that the owner of this Haunted House wasn't quite right in the head, but being under someone else's roof, he had no choice but to offer a reluctant word of thanks.

"If I told you that everything you just experienced wasn't a prop or a special effect, but something truly real, would you believe me?" Wearing a blood-stained doctor's uniform and holding the tattered ragdoll in his arms, Chen Ge tilted his head to examine the college student before him.

Poor Feng Ge, despite being nearly 1.9 meters tall, was currently curled up in the corner of the bed like a little girl, looking utterly helpless: "Then do you think I should say I believe you, or that I don't?"