Rebirth: A Cinderella's Counterattack

Chapter 217: Chapter 202: This Birthday is Quite Thrilling (Haunted House - First Part)

”Should we buy some snacks before going in?” Luo Qianqian whispered as she looked at the popcorn vendor next to the Haunted House, her mind, however, was on the idea of bribing the staff dressed as ghosts. She was scared but also really wanted to play the game, while equally afraid of losing face.

”Are you going to feed the ghosts? Rumor has it that they are satisfied with just mud Wanzi,” Pei Yuhao said seriously. ”Just buy a bottle of water to activate the mud and take it with you.”

”A fair point,” Pei Yutian nodded gravely in agreement.

Watching them buy flashlights and put on fluorescent rings around their wrists, Luo Qianqian resignedly followed behind.

”This Haunted House looks the biggest, let’s try this one first,” Pei Yuhao suggested, pointing to a building standing halfway up the hill, comparable in size to a general hospital or school. Despite the sun being out, the entire amusement park still felt shrouded in darkness. Why build an amusement park beside mountains and water? The already eerie setting was intensified by the deliberately aged exterior of the Haunted House. Moreover, the flyers claimed that someone had once been trapped inside and had starved to death.

With this thought in mind, Luo Qianqian’s hands trembled as she held the flyer, her legs began to shake, and her entire being felt unwell. She tightly clutched at Gu Yanzhi’s hoodie strings.

They quickly crossed the overgrown path, and as the Haunted House loomed before them, Luo Qianqian, cautiously approaching in a group, had already grabbed Gu Yanzhi’s arm with a face full of fear. Why did she insist on playing such a self-scaring game for her birthday? What if it frightened her to death?

The entrance to the Haunted House was decorated with blood-red bandages from which a skull was hanging, surrounded by yellow police tape. They ducked under the tape to reach the entrance. The skull looked as if it might fall at any moment, and Luo Qianqian, with a mournful expression, clung tightly to the person in front of her. Pei Yuhao was also frightened out of his wits, not expecting the effects to be so realistic, but seeing Luo Qianqian’s reaction, he calmly made a sign to Pei Yutian.

Pei Yutian, catching his brother’s look, nodded and stealthily made a hand signal to Gu Yanzhi. Gu Yanzhi, in turn, nodded back to Qiao Xiyang, who was at the end. With a mutual understanding, the four of them entered the Haunted House.

The main door of the Haunted House was a heavily weathered, deep red, and incredibly heavy solid wood door. After exerting a great effort to push it open and all five of them walked inside, the door slowly closed behind them with a dull thud, locking tightly. Luo Qianqian jumped in fright. Darkness descended, and just as she was about to turn on the flashlight, the lights of the Haunted House flickered on one by one.

Luo Qianqian turned back to tug at the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Her eyes filled with panic as she looked at the others, appearing quite pitiable under the dim lights, ”Is this place really haunted? The door won’t open.”

”What, you think you’d be able to leave if it opened? A door like this can only be opened from the outside—it’s made to prevent people like you from escaping,” Pei Yuhao explained, finding Luo Qianqian’s reaction amusing.

”I think Qianqian makes a lot of sense,” said Pei Yutian with utter sincerity. ”I too have a feeling there are ghosts here.”

Luo Qianqian’s face became even more troubled, yet as an atheist who had yet to encounter anything, she wasn’t scared to that extent just yet.

The Haunted House was immense, with no end in sight at first glance, and it seemed to be three floors high from the brief look they had from outside.

Picking up a white envelope hanging on the door, Gu Yanzhi read it and said, ”We need to find the key and the exit to leave, and the exit is locked too. It seems we have no choice but to go upstairs,” effectively crushing Luo Qianqian’s hope of finding an exit on the first floor and leaving.

”Jumping out of the windows won’t work either,” Qiao Xiyang observed, noticing that the windows were tightly nailed shut from the inside, leaving gaps far too small for anyone to squeeze through.

”You’re all such jerks. I wish we’d gone on the roller coaster instead,” Luo Qianqian calmed down, pulling the hoodie strings as she surveyed the surroundings. If it was just an escape room game, she was quite good at that, having played a lot of similar games.

The smell of decay was everywhere, making it unbearable for most. Only the foyer on the first floor was lit up; everything else was shrouded in inky blackness, an endless void beyond which no one knew what lay.

”Where to first?” Pei Yutian looked at the stairs and then at the dark hallway on the first floor, swallowing hard before turning to Pei Yuhao.

”Let’s start with the upstairs, find the key, and then look for the exit. Otherwise, we’ll need to walk the first floor twice,” Pei Yuhao decided after a moment of thought.

”I agree. Should we split up?” asked Qiao Xiyang, nodding and looking at Luo Qianqian.

As everyone expected, Luo Qianqian shook her head like a rattle-drum, ”No, let’s stick together.”

The group ascended the creaky wooden staircase, with Pei Yutian turning on his flashlight. The beam of the flashlight cleared the darkness of the corridor; the oil paintings on the walls were stained with blood, and there were black handprints on the walls. Even the ceiling was decorated with drawings of bats. Luo Qianqian shivered with fear, clutching the drawstring of her hat tightly in one hand and gripping the jade pendant around her neck tightly with the other hand. After all, jade wards off evil, a fact Luo Qianqian firmly believed.

The doors of the rooms lining the corridor were all closed, giving the dim hallway an air of mysterious unpredictability, not knowing what might lie within. However, Luo Qianqian had already treated the Haunted House like a Secret Chamber escape, boldly pushing open the door of one room; Pei Yutian’s flashlight followed, and the group was startled to see a classroom? With a blackboard and chairs?

”Is this an abandoned school?” Luo Qianqian entered the classroom and found the light switch with the help of the flashlight. The second she turned on the room’s lights, she screamed because sitting on the teacher’s desk was a ceramic doll with blood-stained tears, and on the blackboard was a large: ”Die.”

Without looking at the ceramic doll, she turned to Pei Yuhao and his three companions and asked with forced calm, ”Could the key be in one of the classroom’s desks?”

The four exchanged strange glances towards the podium, then Gu Yanzhi was the first to come around, ”Then let’s divide the work and search. I’ll check the podium. Yuhao is responsible for the first three rows, Yutian for the four rows behind, and Ah Yang and Qianqian will take care of the storage cabinets in the back.”

Right, right, right, Qianqian, you don’t go to the front, it’s creepy.” Pei Yutian quickly nodded in agreement, pushing Luo Qianqian towards the back to rummage through the cabinets.

Luo Qianqian had no misgivings; indeed, she didn’t want to look at that ceramic doll again and earnestly began searching the cabinets. It wasn’t until she stopped looking back that the others sighed with relief, naturally, there was no key.

”Let’s go, to the next classroom, this one is creepy.” After leaving the room, Luo Qianqian instinctively tightened her grip on her hat’s drawstring. Listening to Pei Yutian speak, she also nodded hurriedly.

In the next room, Luo Qianqian refused to turn on the lights, clinging to Gu Yanzhi’s hoodie sleeve, hiding at the very back. Helplessly, Pei Yuhao found the light switch with the aid of Pei Yutian’s flashlight and turned it on. The expressions of all five were very odd—the room wasn’t a classroom but a bedroom, which made them uncertain about the purpose of this building.

The bedroom was neither large nor small. The four stood at the door, and Pei Yuhao decided with rock-paper-scissors to search.

He lifted the covers, and on the bedsheet was a blood stain in the shape of a human, as if someone had dissolved there, with bones and hair placed atop the blood stain. Luo Qianqian averted her gaze, not looking; it was all fake, anyway. Skulls weren’t scary to her; what scared her were decayed ghosts half-covered in worms. On the desk was an unfinished letter, with only a few numbers written: 8828.

Inside the wardrobe were a few casually placed clothes, but what was noteworthy was that each item was a different color. Luo Qianqian paused, pulling out her phone to note down the sequence of colors.

The curtains were drawn shut, and at Qiao Xiyang’s reminder, Pei Yuhao pulled them open, exposing a series of patterns drawn on the sliding windows, which Luo Qianqian yet again noted down. After writing down all the marks in the room, they moved on to the next room.

”Following this pattern, a classroom, a bedroom, could the next one be a bathroom?” Pei Yuhao was completely bewildered by the building’s layout.

He guessed wrong; the room was empty, covered in dust, and aside from their recent footprints from turning on the light, there were no other traces. In the exact center of the room hung a life-sized silicone doll, eerily similar to a real person but with a stilted expression. Luo Qianqian thought to herself that in ten years, such a doll could probably be mistaken for a real person. Beneath the feet of the silicone doll, there was a piece of paper with just one number: 3.

”We don’t need to go in there, right?” Pei Yuhao said, looking at the wall without windows, empty except for the doll hanging from the crystal lamp. In the light, it was extraordinarily creepy.

”I feel that way too.” Luo Qianqian firmly refused to enter, finding it simply too frightening.

”That’s the end of it, just one room left.” Looking at the wall ahead, Qiao Xiyang saw the fluorescent red sticker under the door, sighed softly, and pointed to the last room.

Gu Yanzhi also saw the sticker and exchanged a look with Qiao Xiyang, nodding, ”Ah Yang, it’s your turn to go in.”

Pei Yutian and Qiao Xiyang found the room’s light and turned it on. Glancing at the room’s decor, they shivered, the floor was covered with bloodstains, the table bore marks of being hacked by a knife, and on the ground was even a human shape outlined with tape.

”Is this an office?” Luo Qianqian observed the surroundings, including the large safe tucked behind half-open cabinet doors at the back: ”Could 8828 be for this safe?”

Qiao Xiyang calmly entered the four digits into the safe, and with a clunk, it opened.