Rules Horror?

"Five years ago, an unsettling case occurred in the Western Outskirts of Hanjiang City. A gifted girl born into a family of close-relative marriage had both her hands chopped off by her father and ultimately died a tragic death. Before she died, she left behind her final painting. I bought that painting specifically to gather material for the Haunted House..."

Zhang Ze murmured.

Lin Xiaomei and the others entered the door in the painting.

"Caw!"

As they pushed the door open and entered, the shriek of a crow rang beside each of their ears at the same time.

"The sound effects are so realistic. It's like there's really a crow right beside my ear."

"I remember the case the Haunted House owner mentioned. I think it was the Genius Girl Case in the Western Outskirts of Hanjiang City. Some people also called it the Artist Case."

"He really has guts. That painting was known as the Cursed Oil Painting, yet he still dared to take it in. Do you think... that painting was really authentic?"

Lin Xiaomei suddenly said mysteriously.

Zhao Haiyang jumped in fright, the fat on his face quivering. "Sister Lin, don't mess with us on purpose. Who doesn't know about that painting? They say anyone who takes possession of it won't live longer than a month."

"Exactly. Some people even say the painting contains concentrated uranium and is radioactive, which is why it kills people."

As Lin Xiaomei chatted away,

she suddenly noticed that the scene before her had changed.

A scarlet substance filled the air, somewhat like a kind of gel. It made the surface of her body feel sticky, yet when she looked closely, she found that there was actually nothing there.

They had appeared inside a small wooden cabin.

The cabin was empty. The interior layout looked familiar, and Lin Xiaomei felt as though she had seen it somewhere before, but when she tried to think about it, she could not recall anything at all.

"Sister Lin, there are words on the table," Zhao Haiyang suddenly said.

Lin Xiaomei walked over to the table. A line of words had been carved into it with a knife, every character cut deeply into the wood. The handwriting was savage, like a final note carved by someone on the verge of death.

[I am Lin Wan. By the time you see these words, I am already dead]

[There is a ghost in this place—a female ghost with both hands severed. She will hunt down everyone who wanders into the forest without discrimination. If you want to survive, you must follow the rules below]

[1: You may trust Little Bear]

[2: You may trust Bald Strong, although he is sometimes not quite normal]

[3: When Little Bear and Bald Strong meet, run. The farther away you run, the better!]

[4: Do not approach Crow. Crow is a lie]

[5: There is an out-of-place cellar in the forest. It is the only exit and the only chance of survival]

[6: ...]

"This is... Rules Horror?" Zhao Haiyang stared at it for a long while. "What a cliché plot. It completely ruins the horror atmosphere in one go."

Hu Xin and Dong Xing nodded as well.

As a new category of supernatural tales, Rules Horror was not a cure-all in many cases. It was more suited to horror simulation themes. Once it was placed in a real Haunted House, the human brain's sensitivity to this kind of information would plummet.

That was why most Rules Horror stories were only active on the internet.

Rather than in offline Haunted Houses.

Offline Haunted Houses were better suited to sensory stimulation, to environmental horror that sent chills down one's spine.

Lin Xiaomei did not speak. Instead, she reached out and carefully touched the scratches on the table. As her fingers traced every mark and every stroke, her expression grew worse and worse.

"Something's not right."

"If this were VR, it would be impossible to touch a physical object. But the texture of this table... it doesn't feel like some fake thing constructed by a machine at all."

"It feels more like a real table, a table where a real dying person carved their final words."

Upon hearing this, Zhao Haiyang, Hu Xin, and Dong Xing all changed expression.

Zhao Haiyang swallowed. "Some VR setups also arrange physical props and then use VR to create matching visual effects. That's not really strange, is it?"

"That's true, but these strokes feel too real. Ordinary props simply can't achieve this. I've seen suicide notes written by people near death. Only someone about to die could leave behind those kinds of details..."

Lin Xiaomei muttered to herself as she abruptly fell into her memories.

Not long after becoming a reporter for Mystery Case Tracking Studio, she received a case submission. She eagerly rushed to the scene, only to discover that the deceased had left behind nothing except a notebook.

That notebook detailed the process from when the deceased first noticed something abnormal to their gradual death.

The entire process became increasingly abnormal.

It was like the way a mentally ill person viewed the world had changed.

By the end, the handwriting was nearly crazed. Lin Xiaomei still remembered those strokes—they were exactly the same as the handwriting before her.

"Anyway, those are the rules."

"There's a ghost in this forest. The ghost is the absolute villain, and it will hunt us."

"Little Bear and Bald Strong are friendly units, but it seems they can't meet each other."

"Then we need to find a cellar in the forest."

"They call it a forest, but VR space is limited. We saw from outside that the venue wasn't large, probably only about half a football field. The four of us should find it after searching for a while."

Zhao Haiyang still pulled Lin Xiaomei back from her memories to reality.

After adjusting for a bit, they walked out of the cabin. There was a pile of stacked wood in the yard, and the storage room contained tools such as chainsaws and axes.

Lin Xiaomei took an axe.

Zhao Haiyang carried a chainsaw on his shoulder.

When he found that it worked, he was instantly overjoyed.

"Damn, I didn't expect there to be weapons."

"What the hell is there to be afraid of now?"

"Watch me chop up any ghost or bear into eight pieces!"

Zhang Ze watched all four of their actions through the crows.

He had arranged everything.

That included the writing on the wooden table and the tools in the storage room. He had placed all of it there.

On the surface, Lin Xiaomei and the other three were exploring an empty cabin, but crows positioned at every angle were watching them from all directions without a single blind spot.

If they did anything that could threaten their safety,

Zhang Ze would end the game immediately.

Since this was the first game, Zhang Ze intended to prepare a proper feast of terror for them.

The Rules Horror message on the wooden table was merely misdirection.

Even the chainsaw and axe in the storage room had been deliberately designed by Zhang Ze.

The purpose was to let Lin Xiaomei and the others first gain a tiny, insignificant sense of security and prepare themselves mentally, planting the seeds of fear. When those seeds were detonated later, the effect would naturally be better.

Lin Xiaomei and the others searched through the storage room.

Other than the axe and chainsaw, they found nothing else.

The storage room was so empty that it made them uneasy. What disturbed them even more was that they had a vague expectation of the Haunted House's size—it should have been, at most, half a football field.

Yet they had spent more than ten minutes merely walking around the storage room. By all logic, the space should have been compressed to the limit long ago.

The bloodstained iron cages, dim splattered bloodstains, and various dust-covered tools inside the storage room gave them an intense sense of déjà vu.

Something terrible had definitely happened in this place.

Yet they had no idea what exactly had happened.

"The Haunted House put so much detail into the storage room. There probably won't be much outside in the forest, right?"

Lin Xiaomei repeatedly told herself this in her heart, as though hypnotizing herself.

Even she did not notice that cold sweat had long since seeped from her forehead and slid down her face beneath the gas mask.