Horror Movie Set: This extra is too good at playing the tricks.

Chapter 5: The Debriefing Meeting in the Safe House

A bolt of lightning struck outside the window, illuminating the dimly lit, unfinished room and making Lin Xiaoxiao's face appear ghostly.

"Don't look at me like that." Lin Xiaoxiao casually patted the cement bag next to her, her posture so practiced that she didn't look like a female college student at all, but more like a director giving orders on a film set.

She raised her wrist and pointed to her wrist where she wasn't wearing a watch.

"Here is a countdown that you can see. According to the underlying logic of the script world, whenever a fatal chase is triggered, if the player can successfully hide in the safe house, they will be completely safe for thirty minutes."

Her voice echoed in the empty room: "For the next half hour, nothing from the outside can get in, and the rules inside won't be triggered. The so-called OOC penalty is temporarily ineffective. Everyone, let's tear off that fake face; it's exhausting."

Chen Feng leaned against the wall, his arrogant aura instantly crumbling.

He wiped the cold sweat from his face, and the muscles that had been tense with fear relaxed, only to be replaced by a feeling of utter exhaustion.

Master Zhang plopped down on the ground, casually tossing the string of patina-covered beads in his hand with a crisp sound.

"What kind of ridiculous difficulty is this! It's already this bad right from the start... I've been to two dungeons, and I've never seen one that's this hard to beat right from the beginning."

Lu Dan leaned against the door, peeked through the peephole at the dark corridor outside, then turned around and looked at Lin Xiaoxiao.

"Lu Dan, the top designer." Lin Xiaoxiao tilted her head, a smile curving her lips. "I've heard so much about you. I've seen your interview photos on industry forums in the real world. You once said something like, 'The greatest terror is the dislocation of life.' That move you just made was truly brilliant."

"You flatter me." Lu Dan said expressionlessly, his fingers unconsciously gripping the cold brass key in his pocket. "Since we're all so-called designers, let's speak frankly."

There was a moment of silence.

"This script can be considered as written by me, or it can not be."

Lin Xiaoxiao sighed, her eyes becoming somewhat deep.

Lu Dan frowned. What does it mean to be both "can be considered" and "cannot be considered"?

Lin Xiaoxiao took a lollipop out of her pocket, tore open the wrapper, and put it in her mouth.

"Qingyu Old Building" was indeed a discarded draft of mine, but when I was designing it, it could only be considered a low-end C-level version at best.

Chen Feng, seizing the opportunity, chimed in: "How could it be C-level? C-level isn't that scary!"

"That's the problem." Lin Xiaoxiao crunched the candy in her mouth, making a crisp sound. "The system has tampered with my script. It has strengthened the original vengeful spirit into a vengeful ghost and changed the conditions for passing the level."

At this moment, Master Zhang, who had been silent all along, suddenly interjected: "Since you wrote the book, you must know how to get out! Don't hide anything; if I die, you won't survive either!"

"Shut up, you idiot."

Lin Xiaoxiao gave him a cold glance: "If this were the original script, I would have already led you through the game, but now..."

She paused, her gaze sweeping over everyone before finally settling on Lu Dan: "If you want to survive, you need to figure out our current situation first."

"Mr. Lu, why do you think there are only four of us alive in this case?"

Lu Dan pondered for a moment, his brain working at lightning speed.

"Logically, the main characters in these kinds of exploration-based horror stories are usually fixed—a policeman, a master, a reckless female student, and a random passerby. If this is also some kind of role-playing game, then..."

He suddenly raised his head, his pupils shrinking slightly: "There should have been real Chen Feng, Master Zhang, and Lin Xiaoxiao in this world."

Bingo.

Lin Xiaoxiao snapped her fingers, but there was no smile on her face: "This is the background story I'm going to tell you, or rather, the original truth of this script."

Her voice was low as she began to tell the story buried by the system: "In my original setting, I was a sophomore at Qingyu University. Six days ago, my roommate Mengmeng came to this legendary haunted house, 404, alone in order to attract viewers to her live stream."

"Mengmeng is a very vain girl. She stole a pair of designer red high heels that I had saved up to buy, wanting to wear them in a photoshoot."

"That was the beginning of the nightmare for this building; Mengmeng disappeared."

"Three days later, the real criminal police officer Chen Feng received a report. He and a well-known local feng shui master, Master Zhang, took me back into the building because I was still upset about losing my shoes."

At this point, Lin Xiaoxiao pointed to the concrete ground beneath her feet: "You think we were the first to come and rescue people? No."

"The real detectives, Chen Feng and Master Zhang, entered four days ago."

"According to the original plot, they would go through a fierce battle, and in the end, Chen Feng would physically break through the door, while Master Zhang would suppress it with an array, successfully rescuing Mengmeng who was trapped in the other dimension, achieving a happy ending."

Lin Xiaoxiao's eyes became vacant, and her tone was sinister: "The system increased the difficulty. In that battle they should have won, they lost."

Lu Dan felt a bone-chilling cold creep up his spine.

This is the real horror. They are now playing the role of a group of doomed substitutes, dressed in the clothes of the dead, walking on the paths of the dead, trying to accomplish a task that even the real elites could not complete.

Lu Dan took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down: "The role we are playing now is actually the suicide squad in the second cycle. The system has made us take their place."

"Yes." Lin Xiaoxiao nodded. "And because the original main characters died so tragically, the female ghost in high heels not only recovered her limbs, but even evolved. She's no longer a bound spirit; she can leave 404."

"Then what I did just now..." Lu Dan smiled bitterly.

"Your move accelerated its evolution, but it was also the only solution. If we hadn't done that, we would have been wiped out in the bedroom." Lin Xiaoxiao glanced at her wrist. "There are 12 minutes left."

"What do we need to do in these 12 minutes?" the player pretending to be Master Zhang asked tremblingly, clearly terrified.

"Find a way to survive." Lu Dan answered for Lin Xiaoxiao, his eyes searching around the unfinished room 403. "Since this room has been designated as a safe house, it means it has special significance in the plot. The designer wouldn't arrange a room with no connection as a shelter."

"Smart." Lin Xiaoxiao nodded approvingly. "In my original setting, a peeping tom lived in 403. He drilled a hole in the wall specifically to spy on the female resident of 404."

All the flashlight beams instantly focused on the wall adjacent to 404.

It was a load-bearing wall with a rough surface covered in dust.

However, about 1 meter above the ground, there was a spot covered by yellowed newspaper.

Lu Dan walked over, reached out and tore open the newspaper, revealing a hole the size of a finger at the back.

"Through this hole, you can see the interior of room 404 from a different perspective, and maybe you can see something different," Lin Xiaoxiao said. "I don't know what I can see, because in my script, even at the end, the owner of this room is still at large."

"Who's coming to see it?"

Chen Feng took a step back, his hand holding the gun trembling. This classic suicide scene in horror movies is practically an ironclad rule that anyone who watches it is doomed.

Lu Dan stared at the dark hole. If he were the designer, what would he have placed on the other side of the hole? A bloodshot eye, or a figure combing their hair?

"I'll do it."

Lu Dan said calmly.

This wasn't bragging; he had a spare key he'd brought from room 404, which might be a crucial item. Besides, as a random passerby, he'd already been marked, so whether he looked at it or not, the result would be the same.

More importantly, he needed to verify a hypothesis, a hypothesis about why he was chosen to be just a passerby.