They're Not Human!

Last week.

Lin Xiaomei received some news.

The Cursed Oil Painting leaked from Hanjiang City's famous Genius Girl Case had ultimately fallen into the hands of a wealthy horror enthusiast. The horror game fan's surname was Zhou, and people in the circle called him Mr. Zhou, or Old Zhou.

Old Zhou was dead.

The expression on the corpse's face was equally twisted and terrified, as if he had seen something utterly horrifying before he died.

Similar expressions had appeared repeatedly in every death related to the oil painting. Lin Xiaomei naturally followed up on the story and had even planned to make a special interview video about it.

She had seen Old Zhou's face in the photographs back then.

That face in her memory gradually overlapped with the Old Zhou she had just seen.

Lin Xiaomei's face grew paler and paler.

"Could the haunted house owner really be so obsessed with detail that he even put a dead man's facial features into the database?"

"Impossible. Even the haunted house staff don't recognize him. That means this isn't game data at all—it's a real ghost. A ghost got in!!"

"This haunted house really has ghosts!!"

Li Yang: ...

Li Yang put on a confused expression, then waved his hand, indicating that he would get Lin Xiaomei and the other two out first.

"Wait, we have another companion. He seemed to have hurt one of your employees just now, and he disappeared after taking off his equipment. We can't leave him behind," Lin Xiaomei said.

Li Yang paused. "Could you be referring to... that guy?"

Huh?

Zhao Haiyang was back?

Lin Xiaomei froze instead. Following the direction Li Yang pointed, she nearly had a heart attack.

A man dressed as a lumberjack stood there. He was short, but his head looked like a tumor, at least two or three times larger than an ordinary person's. It was grotesquely deformed, and he even limped when he walked.

"What the hell is that? Did Sanlu Milk Powder become a spirit?!"

Li Yang hurriedly said, "That's Bald Strong. He's friendly, so don't worry. He's not scary at all..."

He was only halfway through his sentence.

The next second, the deformed figure pulled the chainsaw cord.

The air fell silent.

"Chug chug chug chug!"

The chainsaw roared.

Li Yang seemed not to have expected this. He stood rooted to the spot, forgetting even to move, and was sawed in half from head to toe. Warm blood sprayed in every direction like scattered flowers.

Lin Xiaomei, Hu Xin, and Dong Xing were closest.

Li Yang's blood splattered all over their faces.

"Drip..."

Warm bloodstains.

A pungent stench of blood.

Even his sawn-open organs were displayed before Lin Xiaomei, dripping with blood.

Lin Xiaomei was completely stunned.

Murder.

Someone had really been murdered.

This haunted house had gone completely insane. They were all ghosts—even the staff had been killed!!

"Run!!"

Using the last of her strength, Lin Xiaomei screamed. The three of them fled desperately deeper into the forest, throwing away their chainsaws and axes in a panic.

They even discarded all the equipment they had brought. Nothing was more important than staying alive.

Lin Xiaomei panted heavily.

News, interviews, footage—she threw all of it to the back of her mind.

All that remained was the most primal desire to survive, along with uncontrollable terror.

Even though she had seen many murder scenes, witnessing someone being killed right in front of her was still far too violent for her—especially when her subconscious kept telling her that a ghost had committed the murder.

Her entire worldview had been shattered.

The fact that she had managed to stay rational without going insane was already no small feat.

She had no idea how long they had been running.

She only knew that the trees in the forest were growing denser and denser.

The leaves carpeting the ground were getting thicker and thicker too.

She had even stopped counting her steps. This place was practically endless, so vast that she suspected they had fallen into some haunted realm.

Only one thought remained in her mind.

Find the Cellar and escape alive!

"Hey! You three are visitors, right?!"

"The Cellar is this way! Hurry over here!"

Suddenly, a familiar voice came from afar, seemingly from the end of a fork in the forest path. Strange cries of crows echoed everywhere, but Lin Xiaomei keenly caught that abrupt shout.

She looked toward the source of the voice.

Li Yang stood beneath a Korean Pine tree. The ground beneath his feet was unmistakably the Cellar. Its entrance was open, but the inside was pitch-black, impossible to see through.

"The Cellar?"

Seeing this, Hu Xin and Dong Xing headed toward Li Yang without a second thought.

Lin Xiaomei had originally wanted to follow her body's instinct, enter the Cellar, and leave this horrifying place.

But then, she suddenly remembered something.

"No, that's not right."

"You two, stop. That haunted house employee... isn't human at all!"

"He's a ghost too. This is a trap. If we go over there, we're dead!"

Lin Xiaomei said, "You both saw him get chopped to death alive just now. His blood even splashed on our faces. Don't you know what's real and what isn't?"

"Some haunted houses hire actors, use fake human organs, and even buy specially made artificial blood!"

"But the blood that sprayed out was warm! It was warm!! Even if he really was a haunted house employee, he was already killed just now. The person standing here can only be a ghost!!"

"Don't go over there. He wants to kill us!"

Lin Xiaomei's words woke Hu Xin and Dong Xing from their stupor.

The three of them stood frozen in place as if stiff with cold, not daring to move their feet for a long while.

Li Yang's smile grew increasingly sinister. "Come here. This is the Cellar. You can leave the haunted house from here."

"What... are you... still hesitating for?"

Seeing that Lin Xiaomei and the other two refused to enter the Cellar, Li Yang's smile became more and more uncontrollable. The crows around him flew onto his body and began tearing at him.

Soon, Li Yang's ruined body was ripped into pieces.

Lin Xiaomei's eyes widened.

Once again, she watched the entire process of someone being dismembered. This time, all the crows had done it together. Had these crows all grown up eating people?

Li Yang's corpse seemed to be changing.

It was becoming more and more... slender?

No...

His neck and limbs were stretching.

His eyes, his hair.

Even his severed hands...

This black liquid...

"Lingling?"

Lin Xiaomei's vision went black.

"Damn it, Sister Lin, don't fall asleep!"

"Help!!"

Outside the Haunted House.

Chen Ge was pushing the students from Hanjiang Forensic Medicine College out of the Haunted House. Several of them had been frightened unconscious and lay unresponsive on the ground, while professional medical staff nearby worked to keep them stable.

The onlookers began offering their opinions.

"This haunted house really is formidable. Even university students from the forensic medicine college couldn't beat it."

"Of course. How could the prestige of an old established haunted house be undeserved?"

"If the twenty-yuan ticket is already this terrifying, wouldn't the fifty-yuan ticket scare people to death on the spot?"

They chatted noisily for a while.

Uncle Xu's face alternated between red and white.

He was genuinely worried about Zhang Ze. Just as he was about to take out his phone and contact Zhang Ze, ask him about things, and, if necessary, apologize to the audience—afterward, he could still have Chen Ge help Zhang Ze out.

But the moment he took out his phone, he saw that Zhang Ze had called him first.

"Mm, Little Zhang, I'm here..."

"What? All four of them passed out?"