"Someone was indeed hiding here just now." Caleb rubbed some black soil from the footprints with his finger and examined it. The footprints left by the peeping entity were charred, as if its feet had high-temperature flames, directly scorching two footprints into the ground. To be able to do this, the other party seemed to truly be beyond the scope of humanity.
"How is it? I wasn't lying to you, was I? I saw it clearly; it's not human at all!" Ginger said decisively: "This scene is indeed supernatural. Darn it, I'm not good at dealing with supernatural events." Ginger seemed unable to accept the supernatural direction of the plot. Moreover, after being startled, her spirits looked a bit down, and her previous self-hype was completely gone.
"That scare just now gave me 'Real Fear,' and now I'm afflicted with a 10-minute 'Soul Weakness' status." Ginger covered her face with a bitter expression and said: "How embarrassing! I've never been so frightened before this. It's over; my rating for this game will definitely be terrible..."
The 'Soul Weakness' negative status only appears when a player triggers 'Real Fear.' It temporarily reduces the effectiveness of the player's three stances and makes the player mentally sluggish, as if they had pulled two all-nighters in a row.
Caleb had never experienced the game system's 'Real Fear' and couldn't empathize with Ginger's 'Soul Weakness' status.
"You said this ghost disappeared immediately after seeing me approach? Can we infer from this that it's afraid of being seen by multiple people? Or perhaps, when it's seen by multiple people, its abilities fail?" He hadn't seen anything when he rushed over; the ghost disappeared very promptly, giving the feeling that it was deliberately avoiding Caleb.
"Probably. It almost touched my neck just now, but when you came over, it immediately stopped its attack," Ginger said with some lingering fear: "I think it will appear again. We'd better not separate from now on."
"Then what's with this birdcage?" Caleb pointed to the broken birdcage on the ground and asked, "This thing doesn't quite fit the scene, does it?"
"That's what I thought, so I went to check it out, and the result... sigh~"
Caleb bent down to examine the broken birdcage and found a black feather at the bottom of it. Unfortunately, he had no research on birds, and a mere feather didn't reveal any clues. So he had to give up and continued walking forward with Ginger.
After a few steps, a dark, gloomy basement entrance appeared in front of the factory.
"Should we go down?" Ginger asked for Caleb's opinion.
Caleb nodded and said, "Let's go down and see. Maybe we can find some useful clues." Ginger was currently in a state of mental sluggishness, her thinking slow, unable to perform her usual keen analysis and deduction. She could only follow Caleb like a shadow.
The two walked down the entrance stairs, and after only about half a flight, a closed iron door appeared in front of them. A power supply symbol was drawn on the iron door. Caleb reached out and pushed, but the iron door didn't budge.
"It seems we need a key to open the door." Ginger gestured for Caleb to look at the keyhole on the door. "This should be the factory's power control room. If we can get in, we should be able to restore the factory's power supply."
"Let's go. The key should be hidden somewhere in this scene." If they couldn't get in for now, lingering here would be a waste of time.
The two returned to the top and continued walking along their previous route for another twenty or thirty meters. A small door leading out of the factory appeared in front of them. After crossing the factory, by the light of the moon, they could vaguely see a tall archway standing not far away.
"That must be the escape gate, right?" The archway was located at the end of the road and had a unique design. Its prominence suggested it could only be the escape gate.
"All aspects of this scene are clearly set in the 1970s or 1980s, but this escape gate uses a very advanced password lock?" After approaching the escape gate, Ginger stepped forward to examine it and immediately exclaimed. "Seriously? Not only is the plot supernatural, but even the settings are starting to be inconsistent." Ginger's face showed disappointment. "It feels like a mess."
After a burst of complaints, she realized Caleb wasn't listening again. This guy had discovered something else and was walking towards an area filled with containers on the right, engrossed in his own thoughts.
"Hey, hey, didn't I say not to act alone..." There was nothing she could do about this self-willed guy. Ginger looked helpless. Her 'Soul Weakness' status still had about three minutes left, and the feeling of mental disorientation continued to plague her, preventing her from concentrating.
Foggily following Caleb, Ginger found him standing in front of a wooden board lying on the ground, stroking his chin and examining it.
"Is there something wrong with this board?"
"Look, there's another identical board over there." Ginger followed Caleb's direction and noticed a thick wooden board standing firmly at the junction of a container and a stone.
"Nothing wrong with it, is there?" Ginger was puzzled.
"This board was originally placed in that position." Caleb pointed to the board on the ground, then to the junction of the two containers. On the ground at that junction, traces of something heavy having pressed down were still visible.
"Did someone move it to this position?"
"No, not entirely. Someone did move its position, but that's not the main point. The main point is the purpose of their doing so," Caleb analyzed: "If I'm not mistaken, the purpose of moving this wooden board is the same as the purpose of moving the telegraph machine in the cabin at the beginning. Although I still don't know what this purpose is, if we can return all these items to their original places, we should discover something."
Upon hearing this, Ginger squatted down and tried to lift the board. But the board was very heavy. She gritted her teeth and used all her strength, but could only lift one end of the board about ten centimeters.
"No, it's too heavy!"
"...This obviously requires four people to move it, right?" From its size, it was clear the board couldn't be moved by one person, yet Ginger inexplicably went to move it. Caleb swore he never wanted to experience this status.
"Oh? I think I did something stupid." Ginger realized belatedly, looking exhausted, her framed glasses constantly sliding down her nose.
Caleb was about to tell her to go back and meet up with their teammates. But just then, he suddenly noticed a gaze coming from behind a container not far ahead, looking in their direction.
He looked in that direction and immediately saw half a charred, sinister face peeking out from behind the container. That half-face wore a sneer, and its blood-red eyes held a clear sense of provocation.