Chapter 720: Indistinguishable Clues
No matter what instance it is, the risks multiply exponentially at night. Since they haven’t even figured out the basic mechanics of the Wax Museum, it’s best not to linger here.
For different reasons, both Xie Ling and Bai Wenxian agreed to leave. This time, they didn’t delay and directly used props to destroy the walls of the Wax Museum.
Unfortunately, just like underground, the props’ attacks were ineffective against the Wax Museum, at least against the outer walls of the venue.
“Hehe!” A child’s laughter came from ahead again, as if luring them forward.
“What’s going on? We can’t leave once we’re in?” Xie Ling was both scared and angry. She worried that the ghost stories the players told would become real under the instance’s power.
“Let’s sort this out,” Xu Huo said. “When you came out, there were two wax figures in the lounge, one holding a clue envelope, so you thought either Xu Ruosi or Long Aotian had also obtained a clue.”
“I think it’s Xu Ruosi,” Xie Ling said. “Long Aotian’s story was pretty average.”
“Let’s set aside the quality of his story for now,” Xu Huo continued. “Among the eerie events we encountered after coming out, none matched Long Aotian’s story.”
“Could it be that only after successfully completing a horror challenge do the things from the story appear in the Wax Museum?” Xie Ling thought for a moment. “What kind of weird mode is this? Is having the ghosts from your own story come to kill you supposed to be a reward?”
“I broke the rules when I came out, so there was no clue wax figure, but the woman in the red dress from my story still appeared,” Bai Wenxian said. “This shows that whether a horror challenge succeeds or not doesn’t correspond to the events in the Wax Museum.”
“You saw the woman in the red dress too?” Xu Huo looked at him. “Where?”
“Near the entrance,” Bai Wenxian said. “When I left alone.”
“I also saw the woman in the red dress once when I left,” Xu Huo said, pretending to think. “Why didn’t the ghost from Long Aotian’s story appear?”
If the success of a horror challenge truly didn’t correspond to the eerie events in the Wax Museum, it was strange that only Long Aotian’s story hadn’t become real.
“Maybe the ghost in Long Aotian’s story wasn’t representative,” Bai Wenxian said. “A ghost from a salt field—they couldn’t exactly make it demonstrate salt-drying on the spot.”
“Better to have one less than one more,” Xie Ling said. “Besides, the key issue now isn’t the number of anomalies.”
“To find a way out, we have to consider every minor clue,” Xu Huo said. “The fact that Long Aotian’s ghost didn’t appear could also be due to the limitations of the Wax Museum itself. We haven’t seen all the ghosts from the stories appear simultaneously.”
“You mean, it’s possible they could all appear at once!” Xie Ling’s voice rose sharply.
“That possibility can’t be ruled out,” Xu Huo said after a moment’s thought. “Since we can’t get out, let’s first find Xu Ruosi and Long Aotian.”
The two were likely in trouble. Xie Ling asked suspiciously, “Could they have ended up in the cremator?”
“There were no bones in the cremator,” Xu Huo said. Besides, time didn’t allow for that. “Don’t you have a prop for detecting soil properties? Can you try it on the walls?”
He looked at Bai Wenxian, who replied, “This prop can only be used under certain conditions. I’m not sure if it can detect whether there are bodies behind the walls.”
As he spoke, he took out the prop, dug a small hole in the wall, and inserted one end. The prop showed no reaction.
Xu Huo also tried his Food Identification Fork, but it was equally useless on the wall.
“Even if someone died, they probably wouldn’t be sealed into the walls,” Xie Ling said. “The room size hasn’t changed compared to before, and the outer walls can’t even be damaged by props. It’s unlikely they’re hiding bodies.”
“Could the Wax Museum be using the elevator to move the bodies away?” Bai Wenxian speculated. “Like the two corpses above the horror room.”
“The movable range in both spaces should be limited,” Xu Huo said. “I’ll go back and check. You two keep an eye on the main entrance. Whether we find the bodies or not, splitting up might reveal something different about the Wax Museum.”
“Wait, I’ll go with you,” Xie Ling quickly 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 entered first and found a new spot to sit down.
“What are you…” Xie Ling stared at him in shock, but by then, the entire room began to descend again, the lights went out, and the wax figures lit up once more.
“I’m going to tell a story about a human-skin ghost,” Xu Huo said, sitting beside the flickering flames with his hands crossed on the table.
Xie Ling was speechless and horrified. “Isn’t there already enough horror in this Wax Museum?”
Xu Huo invited her, his only audience, to sit down. He placed the “Similarity Scanner” on the table and, after glancing at the number and positions of props it displayed, began to tell his impromptu “human-skin ghost” story.
Xie Ling sat across from him, her face twitching as she listened to the story. “Is that story true?”
“Fake,” Xu Huo said, his gaze sweeping over the Similarity Scanner. Only when the room rose and stopped did he leave his seat first.
Exiting the horror room, the lounge was pitch black, but that wasn’t a problem for him.
The entire lounge was empty. There were no wax figures delivering clues, and Bai Wenxian hadn’t returned.
Xu Huo signaled Xie Ling to hand him the envelope and letter again.
“This clue is probably just a scare tactic, like the story I told,” Xie Ling said. “Besides, there’s no such doll in the Wax Museum.”
Xu Huo had previously suspected the clue was fake, but now he was starting to believe it might be real.
When he and Bai Wenxian came out, there were no wax figures outside. This time, he told a story alone, and Xie Ling came out with him—also a rule violation—yet there were still no wax figures outside. This strongly suggested that the horror room indeed gave clues based on the stories the guests told.
Regardless of what the clue pointed to, the Wax Museum and the horror room operated under a certain mechanism.
“Keep it safe.” He returned the letter to Xie Ling. “Let’s find Bai Wenxian first.”