This time, Shu Yuxin had truly reached her limit.

She was naturally a very timid person, so in her daily life she would actively avoid things that might scare her, such as horror movies and horror novels. While this meant she hadn’t been frightened for a long time, it also meant her resistance to fear had never been trained and remained at the same level—assuming such resistance could even be trained at all.

So bringing someone like her into a haunted house of this level was really pushing her too hard. In her current state, she simply couldn’t continue anymore. This wasn’t a matter of trying to act brave—when fear accumulates beyond what a person can bear, real problems can arise.

In the corridor, the young couple also didn’t continue forward. After “calling” for security, the two of them squatted down to rest. The girl was still hiding tightly in the boy’s arms, clearly not having recovered from her earlier fright, while the boy seemed to have bounced back fairly quickly and was already scrolling through videos on his phone.

Jiang Zixuan stood there thinking for a moment before making a decision. He gently set Shu Yuxin down, then patted her shoulder, trying to keep his tone light. “Alright, we’ll wait here too.”

Shu Yuxin nodded, then grabbed his wrist.

For her, every second spent here was torture.

The security guard arrived a few minutes later, holding a flashlight. As soon as he came over, he waved at the four of them. “Come on, I’ll take you out.”

The four of them didn’t hesitate. As soon as they saw the guard, they stood up and followed him.

Jiang Zixuan hadn’t read the rules beforehand, so he wasn’t familiar with the procedure. As he followed the guard with Shu Yuxin, he glanced at her silent figure behind him and asked, “Excuse me, since you’re taking us out, will we still run into any scary stuff on the way?”

The guard was a man in his forties, slightly overweight. As he led them along the shortest route with practiced ease, he laughed and said, “If I’m taking you out, you won’t encounter any active scare attractions along the way. Otherwise, there’d be no point in having security escort you out, right?”

“Uncle, do you usually have a lot of visitors who need to be escorted out of this haunted house?” the other boy asked curiously.

“A lot! Of course a lot! Just yesterday, I escorted more than a dozen young people out. When there are especially many visitors, even having over ten security guards isn’t enough.”

“Oh, that’s good,” the boy laughed. “Knowing there are so many people with courage about the same as ours makes me feel relieved.”

Hearing this, the guard chuckled along, then added, “This haunted house is indeed pretty scary. Sometimes even we get scared… A few months ago, a young guard we just hired was helping escort people out. He couldn’t even last half a month and quit—didn’t even take his pay.”

“Hahaha, then how can you keep doing it, Uncle?”

“If I don’t do it, where would the money come from?” The guard sighed dramatically. “Sigh… making a living really isn’t easy these days…”

Just as the boy was about to say something more, the guard led them into another scare room. The scene inside made all four people behind him freeze, and the boy instantly forgot what he was about to say.

The room was a storage area at the end of the corridor, filled with scrap metal and junk. The only light source was a lamp hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room, its light just as dim as in the previous rooms, creating a heavy atmosphere of horror.

However, in such a room, there was a girl sitting on a battered old table, playing on her phone.

She was wearing a pink nurse’s outfit stained with grime and blood, with dirty bandages wrapped around her arms. From the body alone, she looked quite creepy. But her face had no makeup at all and looked just like that of a quiet girl you might see anywhere in a university library. The stark contrast left everyone momentarily unable to react.

The guard seemed used to this scene. He sighed helplessly and said, “Can’t you play games a bit less? Every time your phone runs out of battery, I’m the one who has to charge it.”

The girl looked up at them briefly, then lowered her head to continue playing. “What else am I supposed to do if I don’t play games? I stay here all day—it’s boring as hell.”

“What if visitors come? Where’s your mask?”

“I’ll deal with it when they come. Brother Liu will tell me, and I’ll put on the mask then. Hardly anyone walks this route anyway. Playing games for a bit is fine.” She waved her hand indifferently.

The guard sighed again and led the four of them away. “Pay more attention next time. If something goes wrong, your pay gets docked again.”

“Got~ it~!”

After leaving the room, perhaps feeling the atmosphere was a bit awkward, the guard explained, “Once visitors ask us to escort them out, it’s basically the same as leaving the haunted house. The actors inside won’t scare you anymore. When there are no visitors, they like to pass the time like this…”

“Figured as much, figured as much…” the boy nodded slightly, looking a bit gloomy.

Thinking that they had been scared half to death by people like this made him feel that his courage was truly pathetic.

Shu Yuxin’s complexion had improved somewhat, but she was still walking with her head lowered, letting Jiang Zixuan lead her, seemingly lost in thought.

After thinking for a moment, Jiang Zixuan leaned closer and whispered, “See? The ones who scared you before were people just like that. There’s nothing to be afraid of, right?”

Shu Yuxin nodded distractedly.

It didn’t take long for the guard to lead them to the “exit” of the haunted house—a large room near the hospital lobby set. Finally, the lighting wasn’t the dim, flickering junk lights from before, but normal fluorescent lights. The room only had a few rows of chairs, meant as a resting area for visitors who had finished the haunted house.

Shu Yuxin and Jiang Zixuan were the last to come out. Yan Zhikai and the others had already been waiting inside for quite a while. As soon as they saw them, everyone stood up. Peng Xiaoxiao was the first to greet them. “You finally made it out! How was it?”

“Not bad,” Jiang Zixuan replied with a smile, waving at them.

Before coming out, the two had already let go of each other’s hands, making it look as if nothing had happened. Shu Yuxin followed behind Jiang Zixuan, her gaze still fixed on the ground, her expression blank and posture aloof.

This time, Peng Xiaoxiao wasn’t deterred by her demeanor. She leaned close to Shu Yuxin’s ear and asked with a grin, “Hehe, how did the alone time go?”

“Mm…” Shu Yuxin slowly nodded, then said nothing more.

Peng Xiaoxiao froze, then waved her hand in front of Shu Yuxin’s eyes. “Hey? Yuxin?”

“Mm…” was still the only strange response she got.

“She’s probably been scared silly. Let her recover for a bit,” Jiang Zixuan couldn’t help saying as he turned back.

He had never seen Shu Yuxin like this before, and it worried him.

“Oh…” Peng Xiaoxiao also realized something was wrong. She stared at Shu Yuxin for a moment, then obediently returned to the others.

Yan Zhikai helped return their tags to the security staff and then slowly walked over. “This haunted house is way scarier than last time. They even brought in holographic projection. I really didn’t see through it at first.”

“If you could tell at a glance, it wouldn’t be scary,” Jiang Zixuan replied, then looked at Peng Xiaoxiao. “By the way, did you guys get scared at all?”

“Of course not! This level is nothing!” Peng Xiaoxiao shook her head immediately.

“So brave?”

“She really is pretty bold,” said the security guard who had been sitting nearby collecting tags, finally unable to hold back. “It’s one thing that she herself wasn’t scared—but the key is that she actually scared two of our girls to tears. Old Cheng is still comforting them right now.”

Yan Zhikai also walked over, took a big gulp of his bottled water, and added, “Yeah, thanks to her, we were escorted out halfway through.”

“How could we not escort you out quickly?” the guard said helplessly. “If you end up scaring more people, what are we supposed to do? You can play freely without responsibility, but if something goes wrong, it’s our pay that gets docked.”

Peng Xiaoxiao stuck out her tongue sheepishly. “Hehe… I saw that they didn’t notice me approaching, so I wanted to scare them a bit… I really didn’t expect to make them cry…”

“Those two girls are working part-time for the National Day holiday,” the guard said even more helplessly. “They’ve only been here for two days…”

“Part-time?” Peng Xiaoxiao exclaimed. “Are you still hiring?!”

Security guard: “…”

“Alright, that’s enough. Stop tormenting them,” Yan Zhikai said, waving his hand as he headed toward the exit first.

As they left, Jiang Zixuan couldn’t help glancing at Shu Yuxin again.

She was still staring at the ground in a daze, seemingly lost in thought. She couldn’t hear what others were saying, as if cut off from the outside world. Yet she could accurately follow behind him, maintaining a distance of exactly one step—not too close, not too far. When he walked, she walked; when he stopped, she stopped.

Like a doll with auto-follow enabled.

Stepping back into the sunlight felt like being reborn. It was already noon, and the amusement park was growing more crowded. Even the relatively secluded path leading to the haunted house was filled with visitors, most of them heading toward it—no telling how many would end up as frightened as Shu Yuxin later.

“So, are we still going to play anything else?” Zhang Houlin suddenly asked, having been silent until now.

Yan Zhikai let out a breath and looked back at them. “I think, given the situation, we probably can’t continue playing.”

Jiang Zixuan followed his gaze and saw Wei Zhanpeng at the back of the group.

Although the guy was staring straight ahead, his eyes were unfocused, his expression vacant, like some lost child who had wandered out of nowhere—only missing a string of drool at the corner of his mouth.

Jiang Zixuan twitched the corner of his mouth.

He had been paying most of his attention to Shu Yuxin earlier and hadn’t even noticed that there was another wooden dummy among them.