I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 165 - 165 164. Breaking the Comfort Zone_1

Chapter 165: 164. Breaking the Comfort Zone_1 Chapter 165: 164. Breaking the Comfort Zone_1 As the film progressed into the latter half, Bai Qiquan wiped the sweat from his body with his free left hand.

It was clearly a somewhat chilly autumn, clearly inside an air-conditioned movie theater, but Bai Qiquan was already drenched in sweat.

All of it was sweat induced by fear.

Just now, when that character holding a saw suddenly popped up a head, almost everyone in the movie theater let out a scream.

Bai Qiquan estimated that if it weren’t for being in a public setting, some of the girls and even some of the boys might have let out screams sharp enough to hurt the eardrums.

Take the person next to him, for example.

Pang Zhen was curled up in her seat, her head pressed tightly against the back of the seat, her eyes squinted, attempting to avoid those horrifying scenes.

However, “Cry” was not a film that relied only on terrifying visuals to scare people, or rather, it didn’t rely solely on such images to scare its audience.

Mere footage of Lu Ban walking down the hospital corridors with a flashlight from a first-person perspective was already frightening enough, making Pang Zhen feel as if she had really arrived at that abandoned hospital, with the scent of medicine and dust in the air, along with some indescribable strange odors that sparked the imagination.

In such an atmosphere, would you say that the visuals were terrifying? Not necessarily, it was more about the ambiance, a buildup of psychological suggestion.

Add to that the collective perception of the audience in the theater, what truly frightened the viewers was their own imagination.

While Bai Qiquan took pleasure in others’ misfortunes, he himself was not having an easy time.

The mere thought of someone exploring an abandoned hospital in the dead of night was frightening, not to mention the appearance of a doctor, looking as though sewn together like a corpse, wandering in the corridors—that was a bona fide chase scene from a horror game.

Soon, Bai Qiquan saw a figure dressed like a worker wandering in the corridor; the camera followed and Bai Qiquan recognized at first glance that this was the missing construction site manager from before. Then, as the camera followed this zombie-like figure into a room and saw the large pit dug up on the ground and the corpses of workers in the pit, he too could hardly bear it.

Because of the preceding atmosphere, he had watched the film with utmost seriousness, so the first thing that came to mind was the ritual of “living pillars” mentioned in the recording.

“These workers were walled into the building, they were sacrifices!”

Gradually, Bai Qiquan understood everything.

Perhaps this hospital was some kind of enormous sacrificial site or had been built for some nefarious ritual!

His curiosity overcame his fear, and although his whole body was covered in goosebumps as if those numb corpses were right in front of him, he still continued to watch.

Everyone has a different threshold for fear.

Some are terrified at the sight of blood-soaked imagery, while others might flash a V-sign at Sadako; but for Bai Qiquan, it wasn’t entirely the scenes that frightened him at that moment, but the atmosphere.

The hospital, intended to heal and save, was actually harboring dark secrets, even using the sacrifice of innocents as its foundation, and within the walls of the wards, those workers who died terrible deaths were bound within—it was quite spine-chilling to contemplate.

This was the terror brought on by contrast.

Why do some people find amusement parks at night, deserted schools, or abandoned hospitals spooky? Because these places usually give the impression of being bright, joyful, open, and vibrant, places that soothe people’s minds.

Horror works by transforming these places into eerie and dangerous locations, thoroughly shatter people’s sense of security and can generate a much stronger sense of horror.

This is also why Sadako would crawl under the blankets, given that the old thinking for many was to hide under the blankets when in doubt, as if nothing happened as long as the head was covered by the blanket; Sadako’s action shattered this notion and really scared people.

While Bai Qiquan was still curious about the secrets of the hospital, the sound of the elevator operating caught his attention.

Ding—

With the sound of the elevator arriving, everyone in the venue shuddered, with some even yelling out.

From the elevator, a doctor not wearing a mask walked out.

Bai Qiquan recognized that this was the hospital’s dean, Zhao Gongping!

He originally moved haltingly like the other doctors in the corridors.

But just as he passed by Lu Ban, this zombie-like figure suddenly turned his head, his expression fierce, and pounced with a scalpel in hand!

“Hiss—”

Unable to help himself, Bai Qiquan gasped as he felt Pang Zhen gripping his hand even tighter.

What followed was a breathless struggle, the shaky camera seemed chaotic, but it faithfully depicted the critical fight between two individuals; in the end, Lu Ban shattered the dean’s head with a cudgel.

Gazing at the corpse on the ground, as the camera zoomed in, Bai Qiquan discovered that what flowed out of the dean’s skull was actually gray cement slurry.

At the same time, Lu Ban took off running, heading up to the fifth floor.

He avoided the dean, who had somehow reappeared from who knows where, and entered room 502.

Here, Lu Ban found some records.

As those words accompanied him, the screen gradually yellowed.

Bai Qiquan saw the young dean and a foreigner, saw their acquaintance, and their experience of founding this hospital, without a doubt, these people had touched the taboo and evil ritual in pursuit of bringing back the dead, and had already sunk into it.

All the puzzles were now explained; now, only one suspense remained, what was at the end of the fifth floor corridor.

At this moment, Bai Qiquan, just like Lu Ban in the film, had no choice but to enter that room.

Afterward, he saw it, in a container, gray and white like cement, writhing, with countless eyes and mouths, a ghastly and blasphemous monster.

An eerie song began to play, the sound echoing in the cinema, causing goosebumps, the mere listening was somewhat disturbing, the discordant melody irritating the eardrum, involuntarily making one want to cover their ears.

The container shattered, and the cement-like monster began to spread, to swell, to devour everything.

Lu Ban attempted to escape, but the spread of the cement was simply too fast, and he was almost engulfed, to become one of those monsters with heads filled with cement.

Bai Qiquan was somewhat anxious; although according to the rules of movies, the protagonist shouldn’t die, this film hadn’t been playing by the rules so far, and he thought maybe the protagonist would die in the end.

Then, he saw Lu Ban crawl into the elevator, where there was a little girl.

“This mirror can reflect the eerie beings, it is… it is the portal that connects two worlds…”

The Lu Ban in the movie seemed to understand something, dove into the elevator, and closed the doors.

The big screen plunged into darkness, and in this darkness, Bai Qiquan heard an extremely gentle voice, like a mother telling a story to her child, narrating her own tale.

She talked about her love for her child, the life in the hospital, her poor health, in that room forever filled with golden sunlight, she was filled with hope for new life.

But at this time, Bai Qiquan already completely understood what her role in this story really meant, what she was nurturing.

He wanted to make a sound, but felt a raspy sensation in his throat.

At his side, his more emotional girlfriend Pang Zhen had already started sobbing, and the sound of sniffling rose and fell in the cinema, the mother’s loving confession now like sharp knives, stabbing into the hearts of the audience repeatedly.

Finally, at the moment of childbirth, as the dean’s maniacal laughter echoed, when the camera swiveled to the gaunt pregnant woman, to the cement-like gray creature, a Cry was heard.

At the same time, Lu Ban made contact with the outside world, and initiated the explosives.

Boom, boom, boom—

Among the newborn’s cries, the sinful hospital collapsed with a roar.

At that moment, Bai Qiquan even forgot he was watching a horror film.

He just felt a mix of complex emotions brewing inside, fear, regret, and relief.

He feared because of the immersive atmosphere the film had created.

He regretted because the good people didn’t end up with a good fate, and the punishment for the bad was always a step too late.

He was relieved because this was just a movie, reality at least wasn’t this dark.

In the film’s end, in the newborn morning light, amid the cries of a newborn, Lu Ban stood atop the ruins of the hospital, leaving behind only a blurry silhouette.

*

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