After reading the clearance conditions, Jiang Yan fell into thought.
Now there were only three game zones left: the haunted house could only be entered by adults, and the animation area could only be entered by children. That alone was already a thorny difficulty, but now the ghost behind them had raised the stakes even higher. The rules made it clear: no one could enter the sixth project, and all of them needed to guess, before it began, which animated story it would enact.
It was entirely foreseeable that the story behind the sixth project was the back ghost’s own story line.
The energy field would never set up a no-win situation, so the clue to clearing the sixth project must lie in the first five projects and in the hotel itself.
Room 303 wasn’t far. Jiang Yan arrived at the door very quickly.
Zhao Kepu’s honest, booming voice drifted toward her from nearby, as he chatted with Mu Wang about children. “Ah, kids are kids, it’s normal!”
“I was super timid as a kid. I held it in all day and finally managed to cry just now—I about screamed my head off, I didn’t even dare get close… But I didn’t expect the kid in black to be able to cry, too. The two of them took turns bawling, and I secretly recorded several minutes—you gotta add me later, I’ll send the audio to you!”
Several seconds passed before Mu Wang responded, “Mm.”
Zhao Kepu shuffled along slowly, fumbling in his trouser pocket for his phone, ready to play a snippet for Mu Wang.
Mu Wang couldn’t stop him—in the moment his hand reached out, a shrill, ragged wail blasted through the hotel corridor like a knife.
Mu Wang: “…”
Zhao Kepu grinned foolishly. “That’s me crying. Yours is coming up next. You sound great when you cry.”
“…”
Mu Wang tried to correct him. “That’s not me crying.”
Zhao Kepu reassured him, “Close enough, close enough.”
Mu Wang said nothing, but his pace clearly quickened. Zhao Kepu called after him in confusion, but Mu Wang strode off determinedly, leaving nothing but the back of his dark head.
Jiang Yan let out a laugh and knocked on the door.
Shen Huanhuan opened up quickly, and right then Mu Wang also arrived. Half a minute later, Zhao Kepu huffed his way into the room.
Room 303 was the storage closet on this floor, cluttered with miscellaneous things, mops and brooms. Judging by the duty roster taped to the door, people only came here at midnight.
As soon as they entered, Shen Huanhuan volunteered, “I’ve checked—303 is the only room on this floor that isn’t locked and can be opened. The others all need a key card.”
Jiang Yan responded, casually rifling through the stuff in the room. Yu Renwan also activated her physique, standing ready in case something jumped out.
But after two minutes, nothing happened.
Yu Renwan affirmed, “There’s no clue here.”
Zhao Kepu didn’t believe it and searched a few more minutes, sweating, but he found nothing and finally stopped, wiping his brow.
He asked, “Did you all see those lines of red text?”
Jiang Yan nodded.
Shen Huanhuan said softly, “The clearance requirement is so unexpected…”
Zhao Kepu agreed. “Right, right, they want us to blindly guess what the sixth game is! And it looks like there’s only one project left for us to clear ourselves. Leaving the animation zone to the kids feels way too risky.”
Jiang Yan said calmly, “Let’s check over the clues first.”
Mu Wang produced a clue from his room. “This is what we found—Jiang Suisui’s info.”
Shen Huanhuan also took something out. “Ours is Luo An.”
Jiang Yan took Mu Wang’s paper and passed her own sticky note to Shen Huanhuan. “Meng Jinru’s.”
The three of them traded clues as they read. Yu Renwan edged close to Jiang Yan, and Zhao Kepu moved over toward Mu Wang; Mu Wang stiffly shifted and eventually handed the slip to Zhao Kepu. “You look first.”
Jiang Yan ignored them and focused on the storyline about Jiang Suisui in her hands.
The contents of the Duck Duck 5D Theater had already been retold by little Jiang Yan, but details about Jiang Suisui’s death had not come up. The clue Mu Wang found filled in that blank.
Jiang Suisui was born into an unhappy family.
Her mother remained childless for five years after marriage. Though nobody in the village said anything to her face, behind closed doors she was the subject of endless gossip. Jiang Suisui’s father came home less and less, prodded by relatives to divorce. They were preparing for it when, suddenly, her mother became pregnant.
Her father knelt and tearfully begged her mother’s forgiveness, even slapped himself, and her mother chose to forgive him. They stayed married, and Jiang Suisui was born.
But because Jiang Suisui was a girl, her mother’s life didn’t improve much.
Her father’s relatives kept pushing her to have a second and third child, but, thanks to a hemorrhage during childbirth, she couldn’t get pregnant again. So, after much thought, her mother poured all her energy into Suisui’s education, hoping her daughter would bring her respect. Meanwhile, her father forgot he had a daughter at all, spending his days playing mahjong, only coming home every few days.
When Suisui was five, village life unexpectedly improved a bit.
That year, the first university student to leave the village came back. She dressed fashionably, with dyed-red hair, drove a fancy little car, and even built a house for her parents. From that day on, more village girls started going to school. Suisui was the best student among them.
Even though she was only at the top of her kindergarten class, her mother boasted of her daily to the other villagers, claiming Suisui would be the next university student. Her father, upon hearing this, went to admire the older girl’s car, patted the fresh-brick house, dreamed a sweet dream, and started coming home more often.
Each time, it was to lecture Suisui about filial piety, but Suisui was so flattered by the sudden fatherly affection that she behaved even more obediently.
But her father’s interest lasted only a month. The villagers were fickle; before long, all the other girls dropped out of school, leaving only Suisui.
Her father wanted her to quit school, too, but her mother made Suisui kneel and swear she would one day attend a prestigious university and honor her parents. In the end, her father, with a sour face, gave his grudging consent.
Because her father allowed her to study, he became known as a classic doting father in the area.
Since her mother pinned all her hopes on Suisui, her demands became extremely strict: every test must be first place, her handwriting the prettiest in class, her posture the most upright, no talking back, no picky eating, always respectful and obedient to her mother.
This state continued for a long time.
At age five, Suisui wished for a puppy. Her mother thought it a harmless request and agreed.
Suisui cherished the puppy all the more for being a gift from her mother.
When she was six, a fire broke out at home—the straw in the yard caught fire. The puppy saved Suisui but was forgotten by the villagers in the flames.
Her grades plummeted. To help her recover, her mother bought a duckling to distract her attention. It did the trick: Suisui bounced back, acing her kindergarten exams.
But she became too attached to the duckling, always seeking it out as soon as she got home.
Her mother, feeling her daughter drifting away, repeatedly proposed giving the duck away. Suisui always refused, her seriousness challenging her mother’s authority.
To assert her power, her mother chose Suisui’s birthday, in front of all their relatives, to cook the duck.
Her mother’s motivation was all too easy to guess: “See? Even on your birthday, the happiest day of your year, you must obey me. If I want you to smile, you cannot cry. I can control any thought in your mind.”
And so, as she served Suisui slices of duck, she asked, “Is it good?”
Suisui kept repeating, “It’s good.”
After the birthday meal, Suisui ran to her room sobbing and confronted her mother, asking why she had to eat her duckling. With the relatives still in the house, her father and mother lost face—Suisui used to be the very model of good behavior, the standard for other kids.
To restore that image, her mother began repeating this ritual—each day, Suisui had to eat a bowl of duck meat before she was allowed to stop.
This continued for six months. Once, Suisui finally snapped. She overturned the pot, and scalding water splashed onto her mother.
The cycle shifted.
Now her mother bought live ducks, supervised Suisui as she killed them, then washed the blood, plucked them clean, removed the guts, and personally boiled them.
From then on, Suisui became even more obedient.
Her technique for killing ducks grew deft. On her eighth birthday, Suisui got up early and cooked three pots of duck meat.
Gazing up at her mother’s satisfied face, before all the guests, Suisui began shoveling bowls of duck into her mouth.
She chewed the duck bones to mush and swallowed them. As she forced them down, she vomited across the table. The lively chatter fell silent.
Everyone stared, stupefied.
By the time her mother rushed over, Suisui had already vomited twice. She pushed her mother away and kept eating duck. She put bloody, undercooked meat into her mouth, swallowed countless broken bones. Her body began to convulse, her features twitching. After several rounds of vomiting, she started coughing up blood.
Gastric hemorrhage.
Suisui was taken to the hospital.
Two nights later, while her parents slept, she locked herself in the hospital bathroom and tied a sash around her neck.
When she died, her face was purplish, blood oozing from her nose and ears, sitting stiffly on the floor like a frozen doll.
At the bottom of the page was written:
“Jiang Suisui died of asphyxiation. In her last minute before death, she was taken in by the Tongyuan Amusement Park.”
“Game Area—Duck Duck 5D Theater.”
“Clearance Method—Suisui truly is a good girl: please answer, what did obedient Suisui eat on her birthday?”
The audience in the livestream was deeply moved by Suisui’s story.
[Seems like the theater version really whitewashed Suisui’s parents.]
[The girl was a bit obsessive, torturing herself like that…]
[Whoa whoa, hold on, who’s really obsessed? A parent’s character influences a child—Suisui’s mother was the true fanatic here.]
[Suisui probably didn’t really understand what death meant—she just wanted to get back at her mother, in the only way she could.]
[Suisui’s mother’s suffering started with her marriage, her husband, her environment. The mother is pitiful in her own way.]
[But Suisui is the most pitiful of all.]
…
[Wait, hang on—isn’t there something off about how she died?]
[Yeah! I remember her parents called the police, saying their daughter went missing near the abandoned amusement park. Why does it say she died in the hospital?]
[Is it possible… that the ghost behind all this erased the traces of Suisui’s death? In her dying moment, her body and memories entered the Amusement Park.]
[I thought so too! The record clearly stated that, when the parents called the cops, they said Suisui left a note saying she was going to Tongyuan Amusement Park—so they thought she disappeared on her way there. Now it seems the ghost planted that note.]
The people in the livestream all arrived at this conclusion as well.
Jiang Yan said plainly, “The back story ghost in this energy field is extremely powerful. Not only can it trace memories and select dying children from the surrounding area, it can also interfere with the real world and fabricate information.”
Shen Huanhuan nodded. “So, most likely, the back story ghost was a top-level psychic. Only that would explain how it could intervene in reality within such a short time after the energy field formed.”
Jiang Yan pondered for a few seconds.
She suddenly said, “It could also be a yao.”
Everyone froze. After several breaths, Shen Huanhuan affirmed the idea. “Right. It isn’t just psychics who have tracing ability. Some yao can, too.”
Zhao Kepu wiped the cold sweat from his face with a handkerchief.
“Driving me crazy… If the back story ghost turns out to be a yao, I’m in real trouble—I’ve never seen a yao in my whole life!”
Jiang Yan shot him a look. Mu Wang lowered his lashes. Yu Renwan gave a soft cough and silently gazed out the window.
Truth was, there were more yao than people in this room.
*
Next came Luo An’s storyline.
Luo An was the little boy who’d blown Jiang Yan a kiss on the carousel, so Jiang Yan still remembered him quite clearly.
There was little to add.
An An’s father was addicted to gambling, and with creditors always at their door, he sold his own wife. The wife, long abused, desperately wished to escape her situation. When a buyer appeared, the husband tricked her—she thought he was there to rescue her and wanted to take An An along. But for his mother’s safety, An An refused.
Later, An An too was sold by his father. During the journey, he jumped off the truck. His father and the buyer chased after him. An An was very small, his body unsteady when he ran. On the hillside, he tripped and fell, rolling down the slope.
At the bottom, in the distance, he saw Tongyuan Amusement Park.
The final lines on the clue read:
“Luo An died of cerebral trauma. In his last minute before death, he was taken in by Tongyuan Amusement Park.”
“Game Area—An An’s Carousel.”
“Clearance Method—All his life, An An just wanted to return to his mother’s arms: please help him go back.”
Now Yu Renwan handed Jiang Yan a file.
“This was in the ceiling vent in the room.”
Jiang Yan opened it.
Inside was a hospital diagnosis.
From An An’s mother.
The diagnosis said she was infertile.
Yu Renwan commented, “An An must’ve been bought from someone else.”
Zhao Kepu suddenly understood. “See, I knew it! In a backward village, sons are everything, it’s unthinkable to sell your own boy.”
“So he was bought. Now it makes sense.”
A few more minutes passed as everyone finished reading the storylines of the three children.
Shen Huanhuan set down her sticky note and said softly, “All of them lived especially tragic lives and died horribly. Family relationships were all a mess. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much in common…”
She glanced toward Jiang Yan. “Do you have any theories, Sister Jiang Yan?”
Jiang Yan shook her head.
As Shen Huanhuan had said, each family suffered its own tragedy, and even if you tried to force a common thread, there wasn’t much to find.
After a brief discussion, everyone decided to set aside the children’s information for now and search the hotel for clues to the back story ghost.
The clock on the wall ticked over to nine o’clock.
With a “tick,” Jiang Yan stood up.
She opened the storage room door and stepped out. Just as she did, she felt something softly kick her shoulder.
The hallway was pitch black.
Jiang Yan’s eyes adjusted to the dimness as she slowly looked up.
Somehow, countless enormous dolls were dangling from the ceiling on black threads. Among them hung a panda doll familiar to Jiang Yan, with sharp steel wire cutting through its skull, ghastly white stuffing spilling from its neck. Its body was battered, but its face bore a huge smile.
“I like it here,” it said.
“The amniotic sac broke, I was torn away once, but now I’ve returned to my mother’s arms.”
“So warm,” the dolls chorused, “so warm—”
Jiang Yan lowered her gaze.
Expressionless, she passed through the parade of monstrous dolls.
As she moved among them, a strange sensation crept up through her.
—This place felt like the perfect cemetery the back story ghost had prepared for the children.