In the livestream, the viewers had watched the entire spectacle through the night-vision camera.
[Ahahahahahahahahaha I laughed so hard I nearly pounded my bed frame to pieces.]
[Help! Is this really something I can watch for free?]
[Hahahahaha this was clearly a game for three, yet Chu Yu didn't even get to have a name.]
It turned out that when the power had gone out inside the haunted house, the pitch-black surroundings had made both men instinctively grope around for Chu Yu.
But she had reacted quickly and already left that spot. Gu Jinhuai and Chu Chen, half a beat slower, had happened to find each other instead, mistakenly taking each other's hands.
The atmosphere in the tunnel was utterly silent.
So silent it was suffocating.
"I never expected you money-grubbing lot, reeking of filthy lucre, to be so lucky as to escape my first round of attacks unscathed. No matter. Greater dangers await you ahead. I hope your luck holds!"
Backstage, a member of the production crew finished playing the prerecorded message and switched off the broadcast equipment.
The crew joked among themselves. "Chu Yu and her brother's group is hilarious. I didn't think any of the guests would pick this one. Looks like we're in for a good show today."
In fact, the production team had arranged all the props and mechanisms inside the haunted house well in advance.
The first two options had the highest difficulty ratings. Only the last one truly posed no danger at all, requiring nothing but brains to solve puzzles and clear the stages.
What they hadn't quite expected, however, was that the Chu siblings' minds would work in such peculiar ways, perfectly ruling out the best option and choosing the one with the highest difficulty and danger ratings.
Of course, the seemingly dangerous boulder from earlier was also a prop the production team had paid specialists a hefty sum to make out of special materials. It wouldn't actually cause the guests much harm.
Compared with the hair-raising danger on Chu Yu and her brother's side, what the other two pairs of siblings encountered was far less thrilling.
The Wen siblings, who had been the first group to make the safe choice, were now frowning as they stared intently at the first puzzle mechanism.
It was a number-related puzzle, and it wasn't actually very difficult. All it took was a shift in perspective to figure out the real answer.
But twenty minutes had passed since the Wen siblings had successfully entered the next stage, and they still had no idea how to solve the puzzle.
Wen Tianqi's patience gradually wore thin. Growing irritable, he began to complain. "What kind of stupid puzzle is this?"
Wen Zhixin was affected too, and the sight of the puzzle filled with numbers left her thoughts even more blocked.
The number of viewers in their livestream was also gradually falling out of boredom.
Just then, a bullet comment suddenly popped up.
[Help! I just came over from Chu Yu and her brother's livestream. I nearly laughed myself unconscious over there. It's so much fun!]
The viewers in the three livestreams had always liked hopping between them.
The moment they saw that comment, quite a few people were drawn over.
Meanwhile, Chu Chen and Gu Jinhuai, still trapped in that awkward atmosphere, had no idea that in just these few short minutes, viewers had already recorded the scene of them desperately fleeing hand in hand through the darkness and shared it across all the major social platforms.
[Ahahahahahahaha I'm seriously dying of laughter. Never thought I'd see the day our heartthrob Gu ended up like this.]
[What on earth were these two thinking hahahahahaha.]
All sorts of meme comments kept appearing. Some viewers even turned the scene of the two holding hands into animated reaction images, which began spreading rapidly through major chat groups.
Meanwhile, Chu Yu finally noticed the subtle atmosphere that seemed a little off.
She ventured, "Aren't you two... going to get up?"
Those words finally roused the two men from their silence.
The two, who had been leaning closely against each other, sprang apart like springs, then got up and came out of the tunnel entrance separately.
Gu Jinhuai brushed the dust off himself and gave a light cough, pretending nothing had happened.
Chu Chen likewise acted as though nothing had happened. He turned and walked straight over to the next stone door, which was already open, and pointed at it. "That means we've cleared the first stage, right?"
Chu Yu looked back and forth between them suspiciously, her face full of gossip-hungry curiosity. "You two just now..."
Before she could finish, Gu Jinhuai cut her off. "Let's go to the next stage."
Chu Chen nodded in agreement and strode through the next stone doorway without looking back.
Seeing the two acting like guilty thieves, Chu Yu grew even more suspicious. Smiling, she followed them.
As the three entered the second doorway, they were all a little more alert.
Beyond the door was a long corridor laid with red carpet, with several old murals hanging on the walls.
Chu Yu entered the corridor last, and the stone door slowly closed behind her.
Just then, an eerie voice singing opera suddenly rang out in the previously silent corridor.
"My home is in Danyang, my surname Dong, my given name Yong. With both my parents dead, I am all alone. For my father died without a coffin, I sold myself into servitude to bury him. My belly full of sorrow, my sighs without end..."
The shrill female voice made their scalps prickle, and paired with the sinister atmosphere, it was all the more terrifying.
Chu Chen, who had been charging ahead a moment earlier, immediately lost his nerve and hurriedly turned around to hide behind Chu Yu.
"Sis, this should be a female ghost. You're both women, so how about you go talk to her?"
Chu Yu: "..."
"Can't you make me proud for once?"
Chu Chen answered without hesitation, "Nope."
While the two were talking, the eerie opera singing had already stopped.
The lights in the silent corridor flickered, once again entering the haunted house's routine state of unstable voltage.
Gu Jinhuai's gaze fell on a door at the side of the corridor.
A red paper-cut window decoration was pasted on the door, and through the glass, it seemed they could vaguely make out someone moving around inside the room.
Gu Jinhuai quickly concluded, "We probably have to enter this room to trigger the mechanisms and storyline that come next."