Chapter 727: Mannequin Numbers and the Horrifying Prison
Their time had not stopped or repeated, and yesterday’s memories had not disappeared. There was no time loop.
Under these conditions, their time was still moving forward, so they still had to complete the clearance task within the remaining six days.
Xu Ruosi had the same thought. She put away her display item and said, “We just need to clear the instance and leave early.”
The group of seven arrived at the mannequin building. Looking up, they first saw a mannequin with its pale head wedged right under the lower edge of a glass window, giving off an inexplicable feeling of being watched.
“These mannequins aren’t going to come to life too, are they?” Xie Ling muttered quietly.
Xu Huo and Long Aotian had already walked in first. These mannequins looked much more normal than the wax figures, not posing in any strange positions. Most were displaying clothes and accessories, wearing wigs.
“These mannequins are really lifelike,” the middle-aged man said.
The long-curly-haired female player had already started dismantling one, but they were just ordinary plastic mannequins, only one or two sizes larger than normal people.
“They all have numbers,” Xie Ling said, picking up a tag hanging from a mannequin’s finger. “C201.”
“There’s a 202 here,” Long Aotian said, searching nearby. “The numbers seem to be consecutive. Does that have any special meaning?”
“There are similar numbers at the cemetery too,” said the male player following the long-curly-haired woman. “Most of the tombstones in the Decapitated Cemetery don’t have names—they’re all numbered with letters and digits.”
“What does that mean? Are the graves burying mannequins?” the middle-aged man couldn’t help asking.
The male player shut his mouth and stopped talking as soon as he heard the question.
The middle-aged man’s expression soured. Xie Ling quickly smoothed things over. “Everyone wants to clear the instance as fast as possible. Wasting time on arguments isn’t worth it. Let’s get to know each other and put aside what happened earlier for now.”
With an olive branch extended, the three of them temporarily dropped the matter, and Xu Huo’s group learned their names.
The long-curly-haired woman was Xiao Ling, the male player was Yu Guangnan, and the middle-aged man was Liu Chengyi.
After the introductions, Yu Guangnan continued explaining the situation at the Decapitated Cemetery.
Yesterday, Xiao Ling had led them to dig up graves. Most of the coffins they unearthed contained mannequins, all with similar deaths—decapitation. They were extremely lifelike. Every mannequin had been neatly severed at the neck, then the head and body were stitched back together to mimic the burial of real corpses. The numbers hanging on the mannequins matched the engravings on the tombstones.
“Considering this place is originally an amusement park, it’s not strange to use mannequins,” Xiao Ling said. “I just don’t know what connection the cemetery has with this mannequin building.”
“Did you find any real bodies?” Xu Huo asked at this point.
“Yes,” Xiao Ling replied readily. “But they had already rotted down to bones. Besides the neck bones, there were multiple fractures all over the body—hardly a single intact bone. They weren’t old either, so they must have suffered torture before death.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I can tell the age of the fractures,” Xiao Ling said. “Every finger and toe bone on the three skeletons we dug up had been broken at different times. Ordinary people wouldn’t be unlucky enough to break bones every couple of days. I can’t think of any other reason besides torture.”
“Could it be human experimentation?” Xu Ruosi suggested.
Xiao Ling glanced at her but didn’t respond.
“Probably not,” Xie Ling said. “Human experiments wouldn’t involve repeatedly breaking bones. Besides, wasn’t that merchant trying to solve a genetic disease? The direction doesn’t match.”
“You didn’t dig up all the graves, did you?” Long Aotian’s focus was different from the others.
“Over a hundred graves—I’m not an idiot,” Xiao Ling said, touching her injured arm.
“Do you remember the largest number?” Xu Huo asked while inspecting the mannequins inside the shop.
Xiao Ling and Yu Guangnan thought for a moment. “Over a hundred. We didn’t pay attention to whether all the numbers were accounted for.”
“Do you think they’re related?” Xiao Ling asked.
“The mannequins in this building and the numbers at the cemetery might be connected, possibly buried in numerical order,” Xu Huo said. After checking both floors, he noticed some numbers were missing. Thinking about the three wax figures that had run out of the Wax Museum that morning, he suspected these mannequins could also move.
However, the wax figures that escaped from the Wax Museum were ghostly characters from urban legends—one was the middle-aged man Xu Ruosi had mentioned who follows behind people, and the other two were the twins Xie Ling had talked about. He wondered if the missing numbers among these mannequins had any special meaning.
After thoroughly checking the entire building and finding nothing unusual, the group moved on to the adjacent Mad Prison.
The layout here was more or less unsettling. The dark, aged decor carried a rotting smell. The mottled floors and wall panels looked like they had been soaked in some kind of liquid, appearing filthy and hard to clean. From the entrance, layer after layer of iron doors were locked. The individual cells were too dirty to step into—used tissues, strange unidentified liquids, and yellowed toilets with clogged waste that hadn’t been flushed.
It was too realistic. Just looking at it made you smell it.
Further in, there were rooms holding “prisoners,” all played by mannequins, with the “guards” beating them also being mannequins.
The mannequins included both men and women. Besides private torture, there were scenes of rape, bribery, and more. The further they went, the worse it got. The guard mannequins not only abused and tormented the “prisoners” but also randomly selected people for execution methods like beheading, electric chairs, and forced poison ingestion.
Most of the players present felt somewhat uncomfortable. Xu Huo walked to the end of the prison and then turned back. He stopped in front of the two “female prisoners” pinned to the ground, kicked away the mannequin on top, and lifted the “female prisoner’s” clothes.
“Using a pregnant woman’s image for this kind of setup—whoever designed this venue is truly disgusting,” Xu Ruosi said, turning her face away.
Xu Huo, crouching in front of the mannequin, had a grim expression. The Wax Museum had depicted a mass epidemic event, and there were real bodies buried underground. This suggested that the scenes in the Mad Prison might also have been based on real events.
Looking closely at the “prisoners’” clothes, they weren’t prison uniforms but more like everyday wear. Most of the “guards” were dressed in white tops and pants, which didn’t fit the prison setting either.
“Maybe we should dig underground to see if there are any bodies?” Xie Ling, sensing something, suggested.
Although Xu Huo thought it unlikely there were bodies here, he glanced at the “female prisoner’s” swollen belly and agreed to the proposal.
The group tore up the floorboards but found no remains. However, just as they were about to leave, the Mad Prison’s main door suddenly slammed shut and locked automatically. Several iron chains extended from the lock mechanism, covering the entire prison building in the blink of an eye.
At the same time, several players appeared outside the door. They stood at varying distances on both sides of the street. One of them, fat and burly, looked at Xiao Ling with a drooling expression. “I told you someone would get here before us. Look at that little lady—her skin is so tender. She must taste great!”
(Chapter End)