manynovel Chapter 20: Strange Tales of Rules?
Chapter 20: Strange Tales of Rules?
"Five years ago, a disturbing case occurred in the western suburbs of Hanjiang City. A girl with artistic talent, born to a family of consanguineous marriage, had her hands chopped off by her father and ultimately died tragically. Before she died, she left behind a final painting, which I bought specifically to gather material for my haunted house project..."
Zhang Ze murmured.
Lin Xiaomei and the others entered the door in the painting.
"Gah!"
As the group pushed open the door and entered, the cawing of crows rang out in unison.
"The sound effects are so realistic, it's like there are really crows next to my ears."
"I remember the case the haunted house owner mentioned. It seems to be the case of the genius girl in the western suburbs of Hanjiang City, or the artist case."
"He's incredibly bold. He took on a painting that was considered cursed. Do you think... it's even an authentic piece?"
Lin Xiaomei suddenly said mysteriously.
Zhao Haiyang was startled, his chubby face jiggling. "Sister Lin, don't be so silly as to tease us. Everyone knows about that painting. It's said that no one who takes it on lives more than a month from now."
"That's right, some people say that this painting actually contains enriched uranium, which is radioactive and that's why it can kill people."
Lin Xiaomei continued chatting.
Suddenly, the scene in front of me changed.
The air was filled with a scarlet substance, somewhat like a gel, making her body feel sticky, but upon closer inspection, it turned out there was nothing there at all.
They appeared inside a small wooden cabin.
The cabin was empty. The layout of the interior looked familiar, and Lin Xiaomei felt like she had seen it somewhere before, but she couldn't remember where.
"Sister Lin, look, there are words on it," Zhao Haiyang suddenly said.
Lin Xiaomei came to the table, where a line of words was carved with a knife. Each word was deeply engraved and the handwriting was fierce, as if it were a suicide note carved by a person before death.
I am Lin Wan. By the time you see these words, I will already be dead.
[This place is haunted, by a female ghost with both hands severed. She indiscriminately hunts down anyone who wanders into the forest. To survive, you must follow these rules.]
[One: You can trust the little bear]
[Second: You can trust Bald Qiang, even though he's sometimes a bit eccentric.]
[Three: When Little Bear and Bald Qiang meet, run away, run as far away as possible!]
Fourthly: Don't go near crows; crows are a lie.
[Five: There is an incongruous cellar in the forest; it is the only exit and the only chance to survive.]
【six:……】
"This is... a ghost story about rules?" Zhao Haiyang stared at it for a long time. "What a cliché plot. It ruins the atmosphere of horror right away."
Hu Xin and Dong Xing nodded in agreement.
As a new genre of ghost stories, rule-based ghost stories are not a panacea in many ways. They are more suitable for simulated horror themes. If placed in a real haunted house, the human brain's sensitivity to this type of information will drop sharply.
This is why most rule-based supernatural tales are only active on the internet.
Instead of a physical haunted house.
Because offline haunted houses are more suitable for sensory stimulation and creating a chilling, terrifying environment.
Lin Xiaomei didn't speak, but reached out and carefully touched the scratches on the table. As her fingers touched each scratch and each stroke, her face grew increasingly pale.
"That's not quite right."
"If it's VR, you can't touch the physical object, but the texture of this table... doesn't feel like a fake product made by a machine at all."
"Instead, it's like a real table, a table where a dying person carved their last words."
Upon hearing this, Zhao Haiyang, Hu Xin, and Dong Xing all changed their expressions.
Zhao Haiyang swallowed hard. "Some VR systems also use props to achieve corresponding visual effects. There's nothing strange about that, is there?"
"That's right, but I always feel that the strokes are too realistic. It's something that ordinary props couldn't achieve. I've read some wills written by dying people, and only people who are about to die would have those kinds of details..."
Lin Xiaomei murmured to herself, suddenly lost in memories.
She had only been a reporter for the mystery tracking studio for a short time when she received a case submission. She rushed to the scene and found that the deceased had left nothing behind except a notebook.
The notebook contained a detailed record of the deceased's journey from the discovery of the abnormality to his eventual death.
The whole process became increasingly abnormal.
Just like how the way mentally ill people see the world changes.
The handwriting eventually became almost manic. Lin Xiaomei still remembers those strokes, which are exactly the same as the handwriting in front of her.
"That's basically all the rules."
"There are ghosts in this forest. Ghosts are the absolute villains, and they will hunt us down."
"Little Bear and Bald Qiang are friendly units, but it seems they can't meet."
"Then we need to find a cellar in the forest."
"Although it's called a forest, the VR space is actually quite limited. We can see from the outside that the venue isn't very big, probably only about half the size of a football field. The four of us can find it in a short while."
Zhao Haiyang pulled Lin Xiaomei back to reality from her memories.
After a short while, the group went outside from the cabin. There was a pile of wood in the yard, and tools such as chainsaws and axes in the warehouse.
Lin Xiaomei took an axe.
Zhao Haiyang was carrying a chainsaw.
Upon discovering that it worked, I was overjoyed.
"Holy crap, I didn't expect they had weapons."
"What's there to be afraid of?!"
"Watch me chop that monster and bear into eight big pieces!"
Zhang Zequan observed all four men's actions through the crow.
He arranged all of this.
The handwriting on the wooden table and the tools in the warehouse were all arranged by him.
On the surface, Lin Xiaomei and her three companions were exploring an empty cabin, but in reality, crows were watching them from every angle.
If they engage in any behavior that could threaten their lives.
Zhang Ze would immediately end the game.
For the first game, Zhang Ze planned to prepare a terrifying feast for them.
The strange rules on the wooden table are just misleading.
Even the chainsaw and axe in the warehouse were deliberately designed by Zhang Ze.
The purpose was to give Lin Xiaomei and others a little bit of security and to prepare them psychologically, planting the seeds of fear so that when they exploded later, the effect would be better.
Lin Xiaomei and the others searched the warehouse thoroughly.
Apart from the axe and chainsaw, nothing else was found.
The warehouse was eerily empty, and what made them even more uneasy was that they had a vague idea of what the haunted house would be like—maybe half the size of a football field at most.
But they spent more than ten minutes just browsing the warehouse, which should have been compressed to the extreme by now.
Inside the warehouse, the blood-stained iron cages, the faded bloodstains, and the various dusty tools gave them a strong sense of déjà vu.
Something terrible must have happened here.
But they had no idea what had actually happened.
"The haunted house is so detailed in the warehouse, there probably won't be much in the forest outside."
Lin Xiaomei repeatedly told herself this in her heart, as if under hypnosis.
She didn't even notice that cold sweat had already seeped from her forehead and slid down her face through the gas mask.