A rocket-like rise in popularity was something Chen Ge had never anticipated, even in his wildest imagination. Just hours earlier, he had been an unknown newcomer struggling to hold onto a modest audience; now, the viewer count was surging past numbers that belonged to established platform stars. The sheer velocity of the climb felt almost unreal, as though the livestream had tapped into some hidden current of curiosity and adrenaline that refused to let go.
I've already given Qin Guang the warning, but he refused to listen, so I can't be blamed for what happens next, Chen Ge thought quietly. Thankfully, Mu Yang High School isn't that dangerous, and the ghosts there aren't particularly evil or malicious, so he should be fine in the end. Despite everything, Chen Ge still felt a flicker of kindness toward his rival. Hopefully, Qin Guang would recover quickly from whatever accident had befallen his team and think twice before plagiarizing other people's content again. The consequences had already proven far more severe than anyone could have predicted.
Chen Ge seized the unexpected surge in attention as a golden opportunity to promote his Haunted House. He believed—hoped—that many of these new viewers would remember the name Western Jiujiang's House of Horrors long after the livestream ended. Popularity was like rising bread dough: once it began to expand, it would continue to grow rapidly in the foreseeable future. A steady stream of curious visitors should soon arrive at his door, drawn by the viral authenticity of tonight's broadcast.
"Chen Ge, I'll need to talk to you about drafting a new contract," Liu Dao said, his voice still buzzing with excitement. "Also, I have one very important question to ask." He did not hang up immediately; the pressure on him as the studio manager was palpable. "You arranged this entire livestream yourself, right? The whole setting is controlled and operated by the team at your Haunted House?"
Liu Dao still did not know very much about Chen Ge, even though they were now business partners. He knew Chen Ge owned a Haunted House, so it wasn't unreasonable to assume the boss had access to professional actors and the skills to design the most authentic scary experiences possible. For someone who did not believe in the occult, Liu Dao needed a logical explanation when faced with events that appeared genuinely supernatural.
"I suppose so," Chen Ge gave a deliberately vague answer. He did have a small team back at the Haunted House, but aside from Xu Wan, the rest of the "cast" could never be revealed to anyone outside his inner circle.
"I knew you weren't in there alone," Liu Dao sighed with visible relief. "Earlier, the camera on your wrist fell off during the fight. After you ran out, the camera on the floor suddenly started moving on its own. When Sister Lee saw it, she thought an actual ghost had arrived and taken over the feed."
"What?" Chen Ge whipped his head down to look at his wrist. Indeed, the small camera was missing—likely knocked loose during the violent struggle with the nurse-thing.
"Look, it's moving again right now!" Liu Dao's voice rose with renewed excitement.
Chen Ge quickly silenced the chat log to reduce distractions and turned his attention to the small inset video window on his phone. The feed corresponded to the fallen wrist camera. The image was jerking forward in uneven bursts, as though the camera were dangling from something—most likely still hooked on the torn nurse's outfit. And it was moving directly toward Chen Ge's current position!
"It's still alive after the punishment I put her through?" Chen Ge whispered, stunned. "Is it because of the unique environment here? The Third Sick Hall is amplifying her somehow?"
Liu Dao, unaware of the true seriousness of the situation, offered what he thought was helpful advice. "You'd better contact your friend quickly and tell him not to appear on camera again. This kind of thing builds suspense—viewers love the anticipation of something just out of sight."
"What anticipation?!" Chen Ge hissed after hanging up. He immediately turned and sprinted up the stairs, heart pounding. The livestream now showed two simultaneous angles: one from the chest camera running away at full speed, the other from the wrist camera relentlessly pursuing him from behind.
This dual-perspective chase was something entirely new for both the viewers and Chen Ge himself. He burst back into the third-floor corridor, feet pounding against the cracked tiles. After sprinting only a few meters, he lowered his head to glance at his phone screen again. In the inset feed, he could clearly see his own back—his running figure from behind, captured by the camera now only meters away.
"She's caught up to me!"
With no reliable way to permanently destroy or banish the nurse-thing, Chen Ge made a split-second decision. He dashed into the stairwell and flew down to the second floor, hoping to lose her in the maze of hallways. After several frantic turns and direction changes, he finally shook her pursuit. The moment the sound of her staggering footsteps faded, he doubled back and raced down to the first floor.
The nurse-thing moved on pure instinct. After losing sight of Chen Ge, she reverted to her original routine: slowly, methodically inspecting every room along the corridor one by one, as though searching for something—or someone—she could not name.
The nurse is different from a mirror monster, Chen Ge realized as he crouched in the shadows. She has no real will of her own. It's as if she has completely melded herself with the environment of the Third Sick Hall, becoming an extension of the building itself.
Once he was certain she had moved far enough away, Chen Ge emerged from his hiding place. This level—the first floor—was where everything had begun. The stench here was now even thicker, almost a physical presence that coated the back of his throat with every breath.
The corridor on the first floor looked fundamentally different from the levels above. In the cracks between tiles, pale, worm-like shapes appeared to wiggle faintly, as though something alive were moving just beneath the surface. Faded red bruises mottled the walls in irregular patches, and when Chen Ge peeled away a small section of loose paint, he discovered that the crimson discoloration had soaked deep into the concrete itself. The texture felt disturbingly organic, like the bruised skin of a living person stretched over the building's bones.
"The director's letters mentioned something similar," Chen Ge whispered, "but he said the weird changes were limited to the walls adjacent to Room 3." Now the corruption had spread far beyond that single room. The entire first floor felt like it was slowly bleeding from the inside out.
There were ten rooms on the first floor, each one corresponding precisely to one of the ten patients originally documented in the Third Sick Hall. Chen Ge edged closer to the door nearest to him—Room 10. Unlike the standard wooden or lightweight patient doors found on other floors, this one was constructed entirely of thick, heavy steel. It resembled the entrance to a high-security prison cell far more than any hospital sickroom. Chen Ge tested it carefully: he pushed, pulled, tried the handle, even wedged the claw end of his hammer into the seam and pried with all his strength. The door did not move even a millimeter.
"The quality is still excellent," Chen Ge muttered under his breath, half impressed, half frustrated. "Even after so many years of abandonment, there are no signs of rust, warping, or loosening. Whoever built this door made sure it would last."
The patient once confined behind that steel door had been known simply as "the Devil." Doctor Gao's old records had suggested that the man probably would have died long ago from the severity of his condition alone. Yet Chen Ge had already encountered several former Third Sick Hall patients that night—some still disturbingly alive, others reduced to lingering echoes. Exceptions to the rule seemed disturbingly common in this place. It was entirely possible that Patient Number 10 still waited somewhere inside that sealed room.
Rooms 8 and 9 were protected by identical steel doors—solid, unyielding, and clearly designed to contain extreme threats. Chen Ge did not waste time attempting to force them; the noise would echo like thunder through the empty corridors and bring every hostile thing in the building running. This was no moment for sightseeing or curiosity. He hurried past them and moved directly toward Room 3.
The wall surrounding Room 3 was peeling in long, ragged strips. Something dark and viscous—looking suspiciously like blood—appeared to be leaking slowly from beneath the cracked plaster and concrete. The crude pillow dolls lay half-exposed beneath the scattered mattresses along the corridor, their painted faces staring blankly upward. Their limp, stuffed limbs protruded at odd angles, giving the unsettling impression that they might reach out to grab his ankles at any second if he came too close.
Every corner and stretch of wall on this floor was marred by deep, bruise-like discolorations—dark red patches that looked almost organic, as though the building itself were suffering from internal hemorrhaging. When Chen Ge cautiously touched one of the larger marks, thin, vein-like lines seemed to pulse faintly beneath the surface for just a moment before fading again. The sensation was deeply wrong; it felt less like touching a wall and more like brushing against living, feverish skin.
The stench in the air had grown unbearably thick and pungent, coating the inside of Chen Ge's mouth and throat with every breath. He forced down the rising nausea and pressed forward until he finally stood before Room 3.
The door itself was completely drenched in blood—fresh enough that it still glistened wetly under his flashlight beam. It stood half-open, swaying slightly on its hinges as though someone had left in a hurry. A faded "No Entry" sign dangled crookedly from the knob, swinging back and forth like a warning that had long since lost its authority.
"This is the 'door' that ruined the entire hospital," Chen Ge whispered, the words barely audible even to himself.
Only when he stood directly before it did the full weight of his situation crash down on him. Every cell in his body screamed to turn back, to run, to abandon this place and never return. The cleaver in one hand and the hammer in the other suddenly felt like pitifully inadequate toys against whatever waited on the other side. Yet beneath the terror, another voice—quiet, insistent, almost pleading—urged him forward. It whispered that the answers he had spent the entire night chasing were waiting just beyond that blood-soaked threshold.
With every hair on his body standing on end, Chen Ge finally stopped directly in front of Room 3. In the pitch-black corridor, the single half-open door sat quietly amid walls that seemed to bleed. It felt like the beating heart of the entire Third Sick Hall—everything else in the building revolved around this one terrible point.
Will this same fate eventually happen to the door inside my Haunted House if I leave it unchecked? The thought sent a fresh shiver down his spine.
Chen Ge leaned forward and peered through the narrow gap into Room 3. Everything visible inside—ceiling, walls, the outline of a bed frame—was drenched in the same deep, arterial red. The color seemed to throb faintly, as though the room itself had a slow, labored heartbeat. Even this small opening felt like a separation between two drastically different worlds: the decaying but still recognizable reality of the hospital on one side, and something profoundly wrong, profoundly other, on the other.
He reached out slowly, intending to push the door fully closed. But the instant his fingers brushed the blood-slick surface, a familiar sound reached his ears.
He had heard it before—many times—inside his own Haunted House. It was the unmistakable noise of something heavy being dragged slowly across the floor.