The faint audio emanating from the laptop speaker wasn't overpowering in the slightest, yet it cut through the tense hush of the gathered crowd like a knife, ensuring that every word and gasp was audible to all present in the room. Heads swiveled almost in unison toward the source of the disturbance, their eyes locking onto the pitiful figure of Fei Youliang sprawled awkwardly on the cold floor, his body twitching sporadically as white foam bubbled uncontrollably from the corners of his slackened lips, painting a grotesque picture of utter collapse. Expressions among the onlookers shifted in a kaleidoscope of emotions—shock rippled through some faces, disgust curled the lips of others, and a few even betrayed flickers of morbid curiosity, as if witnessing the unraveling of a live tragedy. The middle-aged man operating the laptop, ever attuned to the undercurrents of public sentiment, felt the tide of opinion turning decisively against the narrative he had hoped to spin; with a hurried flick of his fingers on the keys, he accelerated the playback, desperate to skip past this damning interlude and salvage whatever credibility remained in his presentation.
It took only a minute or two of rapid forwarding before the footage stabilized once more, revealing a pivotal moment captured in crisp, unflinching detail: Zhu Jianing and Fei Youliang, the unwitting protagonists of this chaotic escapade, had at last crossed the threshold into the heart of the Haunted House, their tentative steps marking the official commencement of their ill-fated exploration. Outside the entrance, a throng of curious visitors had begun to cluster, drawn inexorably by the unfolding drama; whispers spread like wildfire among them, fueling an infectious eagerness to peer beyond the veil of secrecy that shrouded the attraction's inner workings, with several bold souls shoving forward against the barriers in a bid to glimpse the concealed mechanisms of terror—the meticulously hidden traps, the labyrinthine layout designed to ensnare the senses, and the shadowy illusions that promised to blur the line between fear and fascination.
Nestled deep beneath the earth's surface, the Mu Yang High School scenario unfolded in an oppressive cocoon of silence, where the absence of external noise amplified every rustle and echo into something profoundly unsettling, transforming the underground expanse into a tomb-like vault of anticipation. The hidden recorder, strapped discreetly to one of the intruders, functioned with ruthless efficiency, capturing not just the visual tableau but the intimate cadence of their voices as they navigated the dim confines, their words laced with a casual malice that now echoed damningly through the laptop's speakers. In hushed tones laced with opportunistic glee, Zhu Jianing and Fei Youliang plotted their sabotage aloud, debating the finer points of uploading a fabricated guide to the internet's underbelly—complete with exaggerated falsehoods about the Haunted House's so-called "flaws"—and enlisting a shadowy brigade of paid trolls, derisively termed the "50-cent army," to flood online forums and review sites with a deluge of venomous critiques, all aimed at tarnishing the reputation of Chen Ge's meticulously crafted domain and driving away potential patrons in droves.
"So, these people are here to purposely create trouble?" one visitor murmured, the question hanging in the air like a spark ready to ignite, as heads nodded in grim agreement, the initial sympathy for the duo evaporating into a collective wave of indignation. "We almost believed them earlier," another added, shaking their head in disbelief, the words underscoring how deftly the pair had masqueraded as innocent thrill-seekers before their true intentions slithered into view. The murmurings swelled into a low, rumbling chorus that reverberated off the walls of the viewing area, a symphony of dawning realization and mounting frustration that left no room for ambiguity; the crowd's verdict was swift and unforgiving, branding the intruders not as victims but as calculated saboteurs. The middle-aged man, his face paling under the weight of this reversal, gripped the laptop's edge tighter, his earlier confidence fracturing as he conceded to the pressure by fast-forwarding yet again, the accelerated footage blurring into a frantic montage in a bid to redirect attention before the backlash could fully coalesce.
Owing to the deliberate scarcity of artificial lighting within the scenario—a choice that heightened the atmosphere of dread to excruciating levels—the images on the screen emerged in shadowy fragments, their clarity sacrificed on the altar of immersion, rendering every frame a study in suggestion rather than revelation. What flickered into view was a narrow, interminable corridor cloaked in inky blackness, its walls seeming to press inward with malevolent intent, flanked on either side by desolate classrooms frozen in time, their doors ajar like gaping maws whispering forgotten horrors from a bygone era of scholastic nightmares. Desks lay overturned in disarray, chalkboards scrawled with cryptic, half-erased messages that hinted at spectral lessons yet to be learned, and the air itself appeared to thrum with an unspoken threat; even through the filtered lens of the recording, this sparse tableau proved more than sufficient to evoke chills, the emptiness itself a canvas for the mind to paint its own escalating terrors.
The team from Qin Guang's studio had meticulously orchestrated this video exposé not out of any altruistic intent to bolster Chen Ge's burgeoning enterprise, but with a singular, predatory focus: to unearth irrefutable proof of the Haunted House owner issuing covert directives to his staff, compelling them to physically assault unsuspecting guests in a bid to fabricate "authentic" scares, thereby exposing what they presumed to be a web of unethical practices ripe for public outrage and legal reprisal. Yet, as the footage unspooled relentlessly for a full six minutes, defying their scripted expectations, it offered nothing of the sort—instead, it chronicled the duo's descent into unadulterated panic, their faces contorted in raw, unfeigned terror as they stumbled through the shadows, yelps and curses punctuating their every misstep, with not so much as a fleeting silhouette of an employee or actor materializing to justify their claims of foul play. The absence was glaring, a void that gnawed at the studio's narrative like acid, leaving their representatives exchanging uneasy glances, beads of sweat tracing paths down temples as the carefully laid trap sprung shut on empty air.
As the recording progressed without mercy, the visitors outside the screen's glow found their skepticism morphing into a burgeoning fascination, their earlier outrage giving way to puzzled intrigue at the sheer audacity of the setup; this sprawling behemoth of a Haunted House, with its vast underground labyrinth and promise of unrelenting dread, appeared to operate in ghostly solitude, devoid of even a single costumed specter or lurking attendant to orchestrate the chills—raising a cascade of whispers about the mechanics of terror: if no human hand guided the frights, then what unseen forces were at play to ensnare the souls of the bold? Questions bubbled up in clusters, voices overlapping in a tapestry of speculation—how could such an expanse sustain its reputation without visible puppeteers, and what arcane ingenuity allowed the scares to unfold in pristine isolation? The enigma deepened the allure, transforming passive observers into eager co-conspirators in the unfolding mystery, their curiosity a palpable force that tugged them closer to the laptop's hypnotic glow.
In short order, the video hurtled toward its most unnerving crescendo, arriving at the fateful juncture where Zhu Jianing and Fei Youliang, emboldened by a cocktail of bravado and boredom, elected to invoke the Pen Spirit game—a ritual of adolescent folly that summoned whispers from the veil between worlds, its rules deceptively simple yet laced with an undercurrent of irrevocable peril. As Fei Youliang's voice intoned the ritual's opening query, a question so eerily familiar it sliced through Chen Ge like a recalled premonition, the Haunted House owner felt a sharp pang in his jaw, his teeth clenching involuntarily as if to stifle a bitten tongue; in that suspended instant, the full weight of their transgression crystallized in his mind, illuminating the precise transgression that had provoked the entity's wrath, a violation not just of the game's fragile etiquette but of the delicate truce that governed such summonings in the shadowed corners of his domain.
What followed in the footage veered into the realm of the profoundly bizarre, defying the boundaries of rational explanation and etching itself indelibly into the minds of all who witnessed it: Zhu Jianing's hand, once steady on the pencil, slackened abruptly as if severed by an invisible force, his eyes widening in primal flight before he bolted from the confines of the room, abandoning his companion to the mercurial embrace of the ritual's aftermath, his footsteps a frantic staccato echoing down the corridor like accusations unspoken. Meanwhile, Fei Youliang remained rooted in place, his body rigid as a conduit, the pencil in his grip transforming from inert tool to possessed instrument as he scrawled across the white paper with frenzied abandon, the words materializing in jagged, uneven script that screamed of desperation: "YOU WILL DIE! YOU WILL DIE! YOU WILL DIE!"—each repetition a hammer blow against the veil, the message looping in obsessive fury as if channeled from a throat choked by the grave itself.
Gazing upon those feverish inscriptions that crawled across the screen like veins of ink bleeding through paper, the encircling visitors found themselves adrift in a sea of bewilderment, their brows furrowing in a collective puzzle that bridged confusion with uneasy amusement, the scene's absurdity clashing against the undercurrent of genuine unease it evoked. "What is he doing?" one onlooker ventured, voice pitched low as if speaking too loudly might summon the words to life, while another, emboldened by the group's shared disorientation, quipped with dark humor, "Mental breakdown? There's no need to trouble the park's doctor; we should call the mental hospital directly," eliciting a smattering of nervous chuckles that did little to dispel the chill settling over the room. The speculation spiraled, voices weaving a tapestry of half-formed theories: "In other words, two of them entered the Haunted House, and one of them was scared dumb by his friend?"—the notion landing with a mix of ridicule and reluctant empathy, reframing the intruders not as villains but as architects of their own unraveling folly.
As the footage played on, unspooling its thread of revelations without pause, Chen Ge permitted himself a profound exhalation, a sigh that carried the ballast of mountains lifted from his shoulders, the tension coiled in his frame uncoiling at last in the face of this inadvertent vindication; amid the chaos of two collapsed intruders, he alone held the key to the truth's shadowed core, a silent guardian of the unseen. The Pen Spirit had indeed manifested in that fraught chamber, its presence a spectral intrusion that defied the mundane world's gaze, yet whether the entity's ethereal form eluded the camera's mechanical eye through some inherent otherworldliness or a cruel quirk of obstructed angles remained an enigma wrapped in relief—for in the end, no ghostly apparition marred the recording, supplanted instead by this tableau of uncanny disquiet, the pencil's autonomous frenzy standing as proxy for the horror that had transpired beyond the lens's reach.
The video pressed onward, its narrative arc curving toward revelations yet untold, drawing Chen Ge inexorably nearer to the screen, his posture leaning forward with the intensity of a predator scenting prey, for it was the ensuing sequence that captivated him most, the fragile thread of what transpired in the ritual's wake holding the potential to illuminate the labyrinth's deepest secrets. With Zhu Jianing's hasty retreat echoing into oblivion, Fei Youliang lingered in solitary vigil within the room's oppressive confines, the air thick with the residue of invoked presences, his form a silhouette etched against the dim flicker of emergency lighting. Then, as abruptly as a puppet's strings going taut, the man's manic scribbling ceased, the pencil dropping from fingers gone limp, the paper left as a testament to his unraveling, its surface a battlefield of frantic warnings now silenced.
Affixed to the breast pocket of his shirt, the camera maintained its unblinking vigil, capturing the stasis in merciless fidelity as the image held frozen for several interminable seconds, the frame dominated by the ceiling's cracked expanse overhead, a mundane vista rendered sinister by context, as if the very architecture conspired to withhold its secrets. Abruptly, the perspective lurched backward in a disorienting tilt—Fei Youliang's body yielding to collapse, his form crumpling to the floor in a heap that bespoke not mere exhaustion but a surrender to forces beyond the corporeal, the faint thud of impact lost to the recorder's audio but implied in the visual's abrupt finality.
"No one touched him, right?" a visitor interjected, the question slicing through the hush with the precision of doubt, eyes darting to confirm the isolation of the scene, while another echoed the sentiment with mounting incredulity, "Yeah, so why did he faint?"—their voices a chorus of rational anchors straining against the tide of the inexplicable, the crowd leaning in as one, breaths collectively held in anticipation of the footage's next revelation.
Merely ten seconds elapsed in the recording's timeline before the anomaly escalated into outright impossibility, the camera's viewpoint jolting into motion once more, not through any apparent external agency but as if propelled by an indwelling will: Fei Youliang, the man who had just succumbed to unconsciousness, rose unsteadily to his feet, his silhouette unfolding like a marionette jerked upright by invisible wires, the movement devoid of the grogginess typical of revival, replaced instead by a mechanical precision that bordered on the profane.
He lurched from the bedroom's threshold with a gait as erratic as a storm-tossed vessel, the camera affixed to his chest capturing the violent oscillations—shudders and sways that mimicked a figure relearning the rudiments of locomotion, tipping perilously left then right in a dance of precarious equilibrium, the corridor's walls blurring into streaks of shadow under the assault. For Chen Ge, who had shepherded countless visitors through fainting spells and frayed nerves over years of curating these nocturnal symphonies of fear, this defied every precedent in his extensive ledger of human frailty: a body, freshly felled by collapse, defying gravity and intent to ambulatory on its own, sans aid or awakening—such a resurrection whispered of influences that transcended the flesh, evoking the chill certainty of possession's grip.
Silently, Chen Ge held his tongue, though his gaze sharpened to slits, a storm of cognition brewing behind eyes that pierced the screen's veil; in the recesses of his understanding, this was no mere medical anomaly but the Pen Spirit's insidious reclamation, the entity weaving itself into the intruder's frame like smoke into lungs, commandeering the vessel for purposes veiled in malice. Gradually, as the seconds ticked by in the footage's unhurried march, Fei Youliang acclimated to his hijacked form, the initial stumbles smoothing into purposeful strides; a few heartbeats later, urgency infused his steps, accelerating into a fluid rhythm indistinguishable from that of any unburdened soul, the camera steadying as his posture aligned with predatory intent.
Navigating the junction where corridors converged in a cruciform of dim choice, the possessed figure pressed onward, oblivious or indifferent to the peril of interception; at that precise nexus, Chen Ge himself and the fleeing Zhu Jianing had only just breached the threshold of the adjacent toilet, their paths converging in a ghost of proximity—brushing past one another in the half-light like specters in mutual evasion, the encounter unregistered by the living but etched eternally in the tape's silent testimony, a near-miss that thrummed with the resonance of fates entwined by the unseen.
A chilling realization pierced through Chen Ge's mind like an icy shard, sending an involuntary shiver racing down his spine as he pieced together the implications unfolding before his eyes on the flickering screen: the Pen Spirit, that elusive and vengeful entity bound to the fragile rituals of ink and summons, had been desperately clawing its way toward freedom, seeking to slip the spectral chains that tethered it to the shadowed confines of the Haunted House and venture into the unsuspecting world beyond. The thought alone was enough to unsettle even his hardened resolve, a rare tremor of genuine unease coiling in the pit of his stomach, for in the labyrinthine depths of his experience with the supernatural, he knew all too well the havoc such an unbound presence could unleash upon the fragile veil separating the living from the restless dead. Had it not been for the unforeseen cascade of events that erupted in the footage's subsequent moments—a fortuitous intervention woven from the very fabric of the scenario's haunted architecture—the Pen Spirit might have succeeded in its audacious bid for escape, vanishing into the night like a wisp of smoke from a snuffed candle, leaving behind only echoes of regret and a trail of bewildered souls in its ethereal wake.
Within the grainy confines of the video, Fei Youliang's possessed form exhibited a startling acuity of awareness, his movements shifting from mechanical obedience to a sly, predatory caution as if the inhabiting spirit had attuned itself to the subtle rhythms of the living world; sensing the faint stirrings of human presence emanating from the nearby toilet—perhaps the muffled echoes of footsteps or the suppressed breaths of hidden observers—he veered his path with deliberate stealth, skirting the threshold of the lavatory like a shadow evading the dawn, his body hugging the walls in a tense arc of evasion before propelling him onward in a burst of renewed urgency toward the sealed classroom that loomed ahead like a forbidden sanctum. His objective crystallized with unnerving precision, unerring in its spectral intent; he navigated the room's desolate expanse with the familiarity of one who had traversed these spectral halls countless times in liminal dreams, his gaze locking onto the final row of weathered desks where faded school uniforms hung like desiccated relics of youthful innocence long corrupted, and without hesitation, he lunged forward to clutch one tightly against his chest, cradling it as if it were a talisman of lost connection, the fabric whispering against his skin in silent accusation. Yet, as he pivoted to depart, his eyes snagged on the innocuous paper box perched upon the lectern, its contents spilling faint glimmers of metallic name tags—twenty-four in total, each etched with the frozen identities of Mu Yang High School's vanished students, meticulously arranged by Chen Ge as a poignant memorial to the tragedy that underpinned the scenario's chilling narrative.
As though a floodgate of buried anguish had burst open within the vessel he inhabited, Fei Youliang's demeanor fractured in an instant, his features contorting with the raw terror of recollection, as if the mere sight of those name tags had dragged forth a torrent of horrific memories from the Pen Spirit's fragmented psyche—visions of fractured friendships, unspoken betrayals, and the inexorable pull of guilt that bound the dead to their unfinished elegies. In a frenzy born of panicked revulsion, he thrust the box onto the scarred surface of the table with such force that it skidded perilously close to the edge, the tags rattling like bones in a shaken urn, their inscriptions catching fleeting gleams of light that seemed to pulse with accusatory life; with trembling hands that betrayed the entity's inner turmoil, he rifled through the collection, his fingers dancing over the cool metal until they seized upon a single tag, its engraved name evoking a shiver of recognition that rippled through his stolen frame. He slipped it into the depths of his pocket like a stolen secret, a fragment of identity claimed in defiance of the grave, before whirling toward the exit in a desperate sprint, his breaths coming in ragged gasps that fogged the camera's lens, every fiber of his being straining against the inexorable pull of the domain he sought to flee—yet fate, or perhaps the lingering will of the bound, interceded with merciless finality, as the classroom's fractured door, hanging crooked on rusted hinges, swung shut of its own volition with a resonant thud that echoed like the slamming of a coffin lid, sealing him within the chamber's spectral embrace.
Then unfolded the footage's most profoundly disquieting revelation, a sequence that transcended the boundaries of mere hallucination or theatrical contrivance to plunge into the abyss of unadulterated otherworldliness, leaving even the most skeptical viewers grappling with the frayed edges of their sanity as they witnessed the impossible dialogue between a lone man and the void. Fei Youliang whipped around to confront the barren expanse of the classroom, his body rigid as a bowstring drawn to breaking, and unleashed a torrent of impassioned pleas that tore from his throat with the fervor of a soul bartering for redemption, his voice cracking under the weight of emotions that spanned lifetimes—grief, defiance, and a haunting plea for understanding that seemed to emanate not from the man himself but from the chorus of echoes trapped within the walls, their whispers layering his cries into a polyphonic lament that chilled the air in the viewing room.
"I also treat this classroom as our home, but I have my reason to leave; I have to explain this to Wang Xin!" he bellowed into the emptiness, his words laced with a desperate sincerity that painted him as both perpetrator and penitent, the name "Wang Xin" hanging in the air like a specter's unfinished sentence, evoking the spectral ties that bound the Pen Spirit to its circle of betrayed confidants. "Please let me go!" he implored next, dropping to his knees as if in supplication to invisible arbiters, his hands clawing at the air as though grasping for threads of mercy woven from the dust motes swirling in the dim light, the camera capturing the raw vulnerability of his imploring gaze fixed on corners where shadows pooled like gathered mourners.
"I promise to come back after I'm done!" came the next vow, delivered with a frantic earnestness that bordered on hysteria, his voice rising in pitch as if bargaining against the inexorable tick of some ethereal clock, the promise ringing hollow yet poignant in the context of eternal unrest, a transient soul's futile oath to honor the graves it sought to abandon. "Get away from me! I have to leave today! No one is going to stop me!" he snarled at last, surging to his feet in a whirlwind of fury, his arms flailing against phantoms only he could perceive, the defiance cracking into something feral as the classroom's oppressive atmosphere seemed to thicken, pressing down upon him like the weight of collective resentment from the unavenged.
Fei Youliang's maddened screams erupted from the laptop's speakers like thunderclaps in a confined storm, raw and unrelenting, shredding the fragile veneer of composure that had cloaked the earlier footage and plunging the gathered audience into a visceral maelstrom of discomfort, their faces paling as the audio assault battered against eardrums accustomed to scripted horrors rather than this unfiltered descent into madness. He roared his anguish at the unyielding emptiness of the classroom, his body convulsing with each outburst as if the very act of vocalizing his torment physically wrenched him asunder, the echoes bouncing off the walls in mocking repetition that amplified the isolation of his plight. "Let me go! Let me go!" he howled repeatedly, the phrase devolving into a guttural mantra of desperation, his voice fraying at the edges until it resembled the keening wail of wind through cracked panes, a sound that burrowed into the listeners' psyches and lingered like an unwelcome guest, stirring primal instincts of flight even as curiosity chained them to their seats.
The camera, battered by the escalating frenzy, trembled with ferocious intensity in its precarious perch, capturing the chaos in erratic bursts of motion that mirrored the intruder's unraveling—jerks and spins that blurred the frame into a vortex of shadows and desperation—before it was violently dislodged in what appeared to be the throes of an unseen struggle, clattering to the floor with a muffled impact that silenced the screams for a breathless instant, leaving only the harsh rhythm of labored breathing to fill the void. From this new, ground-level vantage, the lens framed Fei Youliang's visage in merciless high definition, a grotesque gallery of metamorphosis where his features twisted and reformed in rapid succession, eyes widening then narrowing in flickers of terror, rage, sorrow, and resignation that cycled like the masks of a deranged thespian; it was as if a legion of discordant personalities warred for dominion within his flesh, each expression a fleeting window into the Pen Spirit's fractured mosaic of memories, the man's face a battlefield where the living and the dead contended in silent, savage warfare, evoking gasps of horrified fascination from the onlookers who could scarcely process the multiplicity etched in every micro-twitch of muscle and vein.
Several seconds stretched into an eternity of suspended animation before the tempest within Fei Youliang subsided, his countenance smoothing back to a mask of eerie normalcy as if a switch had been flipped in the recesses of his commandeered mind, the warring spirits receding into uneasy truce, leaving behind only the hollow shell of the man he once was. With a faint creak that resonated like a sigh of capitulation, the classroom door eased open on its own, parting like reluctant jaws to grant passage once more, the hinges whispering secrets of accommodation as stale air rushed in from the corridor beyond. Without uttering a syllable—his lips sealed in the aftermath of his spectral outburst—he stooped to retrieve the fallen camera, his movements deliberate and devoid of the earlier frenzy, cradling it gently before reaffixing it to his chest with the mechanical precision of a marionette resetting its strings. Then, compelled by an invisible directive that brooked no resistance, he turned and shuffled toward the innermost sanctum of the Mu Yang High School scenario, his steps measured and automaton-like, descending into the labyrinth's throat where the boundaries between scenario and reality blurred into oblivion, the camera's unblinking eye trailing him into deepening obscurity.
At precisely that juncture, as the footage etched its indelible marks upon the collective consciousness of the room, Chen Ge's black phone stirred to life in his pocket with a vibration that hummed against his thigh like a summons from the abyss itself, a tactile omen that pulled his attention momentarily from the screen's hypnotic grip; with practiced subtlety honed from countless such interruptions, he withdrew the device into the shelter of his palm, its obsidian surface cool and enigmatic against his skin, and retreated several paces to the periphery of the throng, weaving through the press of bodies without drawing undue notice, though his eyes remained riveted to the laptop's glow, unwilling to relinquish even a fragment of the unfolding truth lest it slip away like mist at dawn.
While the spectral drama had raged unchecked in the adjacent classroom, mere inches separated by the thin barrier of a partitioning wall, Chen Ge had been ensconced within the dim, fetid confines of the corner toilet, his senses attuned to the minutiae of the scenario's nocturnal pulse—yet not a whisper of commotion had breached that fragile divide, no echo of screams or scuffles penetrating the gloom to alert him to the turmoil unfolding in tandem. It was as though, the instant the classroom door had sealed with its autonomous finality, the enclosed space had undergone a profound dislocation, folding inward upon itself to form a pocket dimension impervious to the mundane world's intrusions, a hermetic bubble where time and sound bent to the whims of the invoked dead, isolating the confrontation in a realm accessible only to those who danced on the knife's edge between life and legacy.
The video persisted in its inexorable progression, unspooling the final threads of its narrative with a deliberateness that heightened the anticipation coiling in the viewers' chests, as Fei Youliang's form, still encumbered by the awkward rigidity of partial possession, advanced with ponderous, intentional strides toward the scenario's central abyss—the ancient well that squatted at the heart of Mu Yang High School like a cyclopean eye gazing upward from forgotten depths, its stone rim weathered by phantom rains and inscribed with the faint scars of spectral clawings. He mounted the edge with a precarious balance that teetered on the brink of oblivion, his toes curling against the cold lip as if testing the void's appetite, and in a voice fractured by internal schisms, he commenced a soliloquy that wove empathy with existential dread, addressing not the well but the invisible assembly of regrets that shadowed his every breath.
"Are we going to jump?" he murmured first, the question laced with a suicidal cadence that hung heavy in the stagnant air, his gaze plunging into the inky maw below where unseen currents seemed to beckon with liquid promises of release, the words evoking the precipice of despair that had claimed so many within the legend's lore. "I can understand Chen Yalin's pain; she has her own reason," he continued, his tone softening into a confessional hush, invoking the name with a tenderness born of shared culpability, as if peering through the well's mirror to confront the ghost of decisions irretrievable, the entity's borrowed empathy painting a portrait of nuanced tragedy amid the horror.
"If I were in her position, I believe I would do the same thing. After all, Wang Xin was her best friend," he added next, the admission rolling forth with a philosophical resignation that humanized the spectral actor, his free hand tracing idle patterns on the stone as if mapping the contours of loyalty's fatal fractures, the invocation of friendship a thread that stitched the entity's fragmented narrative into something achingly relatable, stirring uneasy nods among the audience who glimpsed the universality of betrayal's sting. "Then, shall we give her another chance?" he posed at last, the query tentative and laced with tentative hope, a plea suspended between judgment and absolution that seemed to weigh upon the well's silent judgment, his body swaying slightly as if the void below whispered its counsel in response.
Fei Youliang dismounted from the well's treacherous perch with a deliberate retreat, his form descending back to solid ground as the internal tempest quelled once more, his expression draining into a vacant slate that betrayed no remnant of the prior turmoil, the blankness a void where personalities had clashed and now slumbered uneasily. With a subtle cant of his head, as if yielding to an inexorable fatigue that seeped from the marrow outward, he crumpled to the floor in a boneless heap, the collapse silent and final, his body splaying across the dust-moted tiles like a discarded effigy, the camera's feed capturing the inert sprawl in stark, unflinching detail as the minutes ticked by in anticipatory hush. Approximately four minutes into this interlude of stillness, the footage captured Chen Ge's timely arrival, his silhouette materializing from the corridor's gloom like a beacon of reluctant intervention, drawn by instincts sharpened to the scent of peril in his domain.
The camera had borne faithful witness to the entirety of the ordeal, its lens an impartial chronicler that preserved every nuance of the supernatural tableau for posterity, and as the recording transitioned to Chen Ge's entrance, it laid bare the immediacy of his response—the first-aid maneuvers executed with a blend of clinical efficiency and genuine concern, his hands steady as they checked vitals, positioned the fallen man for recovery, and administered aid without a trace of malice or delay, transforming what could have been a scene of accusation into an irrefutable testament to benevolence amid the bizarre. Onlookers in the viewing area watched transfixed as the Haunted House owner knelt in the frame, his actions a bulwark against the encroaching doubt, the footage underscoring not culpability but compassion in every measured compression and murmured directive, a narrative pivot that reframed the chaos as the byproduct of the intruders' own reckless invocations rather than orchestrated harm.
"The boss didn't do anything wrong. If anything, he was trying to save your friend," one visitor declared with fervent conviction, the words cutting through the stunned silence like a clarion call, rallying the crowd's sympathies as heads nodded in vigorous affirmation, the revelation washing away the residue of earlier suspicions in a tide of collective exoneration. "We almost blamed an innocent person!" another exclaimed, the admission laced with a sheepish edge that bordered on remorse, voices rising in a swell of apologetic murmurs that echoed the shift from adversaries to allies, the room's atmosphere lightening as the truth's weight settled unevenly upon those who had borne false witness.
The representatives from Qin Guang's studio stood utterly bereft of retort, their meticulously prepared arsenal of insinuations crumbling into dust under the onslaught of unassailable evidence, faces flushing with the sting of exposure as they averted eyes from the screen's damning clarity, the silence that engulfed them a profound capitulation that spoke volumes of their narrative's collapse. By this point in the unfolding drama, Chen Ge had withdrawn fully to the crowd's outer echelon, positioning himself at a vantage where he could observe without intrusion, and with a subtle flick of his wrist, he stole a glance at the black phone cradled in his hand, its screen aglow with an ethereal notification that pulsed like a heartbeat from the beyond.
"Dear Specter's Favored! Congratulations on triggering the Hidden Mission at 2-Star Scenario, Mu Yang High School—The Pen Spirit's Wish!" the message proclaimed in stark, luminous script, its words a cryptic laurel that unfurled across the display with the gravity of destiny's summons, hinting at layers of unresolved longing woven into the entity's spectral tapestry, a challenge that beckoned Chen Ge deeper into the enigmatic weave of his haunted legacy, where wishes of the dead intertwined with the perils of the living in an eternal, intricate dance.