Players, Please Board the Train

No matter the dungeon, the risks multiply at night. They still hadn’t figured out the basic rules of the Wax Figure Hall, so it was best not to linger here.

For different reasons, both Xie Ling and Bai Wenxian agreed to leave. This time they didn’t hesitate; they tried to use items to break through the hall’s walls.

Unfortunately, just like in the underground area, item attacks had no effect on the Wax Figure Hall—at least not on the exterior walls of the pavilion.

“Hee hee!” The child’s laughter echoed from ahead again, as if trying to lure them forward.

“What on earth is this? You go in and you can’t come out?” Xie Ling was both frightened and furious. She worried that the ghost stories players told might become real under the dungeon’s power.

“Let’s sort this out,” Xu Huo said. “When you came out, there were two wax figures in the lounge. One of them was holding the clue envelope, so you thought either Xu Ruosi or Long Aotian had gotten a clue.”

“I think it was Xu Ruosi,” Xie Ling said. “Long Aotian’s story was pretty ordinary.”

“Let’s not judge his story yet,” Xu Huo continued. “Among the strange events we encountered after coming out, none matched Long Aotian’s story.”

“Could it be that only when the horror challenge succeeds will things from the story appear in the Wax Figure Hall?” Xie Ling pondered aloud. “What a weird setup. Is getting monsters from your own story to kill you some kind of reward?”

“When I came out I violated the rules, and there wasn’t a clue wax figure, but the woman in the red dress from the story still appeared,” Bai Wenxian said. “That suggests success or failure in the horror challenge might not correspond to events in the Wax Figure Hall.”“You saw the woman in the red dress too?” Xu Huo looked at him. “Where did you see her?”

“By the entrance,” Bai Wenxian replied. “When I left alone.”

“I saw the red-dress woman once when I left as well,” Xu Huo said thoughtfully. “So why didn’t the monster from Long Aotian’s story show up?”

If success in the horror challenge and the Wax Figure Hall’s eerie events really weren’t correlated, it’s strange that only Long Aotian’s story didn’t come true.

“Maybe the monster in Long Aotian’s story isn’t representative,” Bai Wenxian suggested. “A ghost in a salt-drying field—are we supposed to have them perform salt-drying live?”

“Better one less than one more,” Xie Ling said. “Besides, the key issue isn’t how many weird things appear.”

“We need a way out, so we have to consider even minor clues,” Xu Huo said. “Long Aotian’s monster not showing up might also be due to limitations of the Wax Figure Hall. We’ve never seen all the monsters from a story appear at once.”

“You mean it doesn’t mean they can’t appear at the same time!” Xie Ling’s voice rose.

“That possibility can’t be ruled out,” Xu Huo said after a moment’s thought. “Since we can’t get out, let’s find Xu Ruosi and Long Aotian first.”

There was a high probability those two had been affected. Xie Ling asked suspiciously, “Could they have gone into the Cremation Oven?”

“There were no bones in the Cremation Oven,” Xu Huo replied, and there wasn’t time to waste. “Don’t you have an item that detects soil properties? Can you try the wall?”

He looked at Bai Wenxian, who said, “That item only works under certain conditions. I’m not sure if it can detect whether a body is behind the wall.”

As he spoke, he took out the item, dug a small hole in the wall, and inserted one end. The device didn’t react.

Xu Huo also tried his food Identification Fork on the wall, and it was equally useless.

“Even if someone died, they shouldn’t be sealed inside the wall,” Xie Ling said. “The room’s size hasn’t changed compared to before. The exterior wall can’t even be damaged by items, so hiding a corpse there seems unlikely.”

“Could the Wax Figure Hall be using the elevator to move corpses away?” Bai Wenxian speculated. “Like the two corpses above the Horror Room.”

“The range of movable space on both sides shouldn’t be big,” Xu Huo said. “I’ll go check. You two keep watch at the main gate. Whether or not we find corpses, splitting up might reveal differences in the Wax Figure Hall.”

“Wait, I’ll go with you,” Xie Ling hurriedly said.

Xu Huo looked at Bai Wenxian, who shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

Xu Huo and Xie Ling returned to the Horror Room. Xu Huo went in first and found another seat.

“What are you—” Xie Ling stared at him in astonishment, but at that moment the whole room began to sink again, the lights went out, and the wax figures relit.

“I’m going to tell a story about a human-skin ghost,” Xu Huo said, sitting by the flickering flame with his hands folded on the table.

Xie Ling watched him in stunned silence. “Isn’t the Wax Figure Hall already full of enough tales?”

Xu Huo invited her, his only audience, to sit down, then placed the Similarity Seeker on the table. He waited until the device displayed the number and positions of items before beginning to improvise his makeshift “human-skin ghost” tale.

Xie Ling sat opposite him, her face twitching as she listened to his story to the end. “Is this story you told real?”

“No,” Xu Huo said, eyes flicking from the Similarity Seeker. Only after the room rose and stopped did he stand up first.

Outside the Horror Room, the lounge was pitch black, but that posed no problem for him.

The entire lounge was empty; the wax figure that would have handed out a clue hadn’t appeared, and Bai Wenxian still hadn’t returned.

Xu Huo signaled for Xie Ling to hand over the envelope and the paper.

“This clue is probably just a smoke bomb to scare people, like your story,” Xie Ling said. “And the Wax Figure Hall doesn’t have those kinds of dolls.”

Xu Huo had earlier suspected the clue was fake, but now he inclined to believe the clue might be real.

When he and Bai Wenxian had come out, there were no wax figures outside. This time he told the story alone, Xie Ling came out with him—also a violation—and there were still no wax figures outside. That strongly indicates the Horror Room is indeed giving clues based on the stories guests tell.

Setting aside what the clue is for, the Wax Figure Hall and the Horror Room aren’t just a simple player kill zone; they have certain operating mechanics.

The Wax Figure Hall is currently sealed, but there must be a way out.

Xu Huo first thought of the Horror Night requirement: every guest must tell a qualifying story. Whether the story actually qualifies is irrelevant, because even if it does qualify there’s only about a fifty percent chance of getting a clue. In other words, as long as the room rises, the task “tell a horror story” is completed.

Now that he filled in the story, it depends on whether the Wax Figure Hall will open.

“Keep this safe.” He handed the paper back to Xie Ling. “First, let’s find Bai Wenxian.”

The two entered the Wax Figure Hall, cutting down several creepy wax figures as they made their way to the front door. As expected, Bai Wenxian was still guarding the entrance; when he saw them arriving, he said, “Perfect timing, the Wax Figure Hall has changed.”