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

Chapter 6 Best Viewing Spot

Lu Dan brought his eyes close to the tiny hole, moving very gently, like an old hunter afraid of disturbing his prey, or a lecherous old man about to spy on his neighbor—after all, in this damn horror story, the line between the two is horribly blurred.

The walls were cold, and a musty smell crept into my nostrils through the hole, like the gap under a coffin lid that had been there for years.

His vision was instantly stretched, and through the opening, the entire view of 404 unfolded before him.

There was no bloody carnage as I had imagined, nor was there a screen full of jump scares.

The female ghost, whose legs had been restored, had somehow returned from upstairs to the altar in the living room.

Like Cinderella trying on new shoes, she dangled her newly grown, blackened, and rotten feet, repeatedly putting on and taking off the broken red shoe.

"It doesn't fit...it still doesn't fit..." she muttered, her voice coming through the wall with a hint of nervousness.

Scattered under the offering table were more than a dozen human feet that had been forcibly torn off.

Some were wearing leather shoes, others were wearing sneakers, looking like discarded, broken parts.

Lu Dan pulled his neck back and rubbed his sore eyes.

"How is it?" Lin Xiaoxiao asked from behind. "What did you see? Is it sharpening its knife, ready to pounce on the pigs and sheep?"

"It's worse than that." Lu Dan gave a helpless smile. "It's like a Cinderella audition, except this version of Cinderella, if she doesn't like the fit, won't cut off her feet to fit the shoes, but will just cut off the prince's feet to try it out."

The atmosphere in the room instantly plummeted to freezing point.

"What do you mean?" The fake Chen Feng still gripped the pistol tightly, his eyes filled with rage.

"It's obvious that this woman is a perfectionist."

Lu Dan pointed to the next room, "She's not happy with her current feet. According to the collecting tropes in horror movies, this won't end unless she finds the perfect pair of feet, or tries on every single one of everyone's feet."

The fake Chen Feng's face turned even uglier, and he subconsciously shrank his legs.

Seeing this, Lu Dan's taut string suddenly plucked an absurd yet reasonable note, and he finally understood the system's wicked joke.

"Now I know why I'm just a nobody," Lu Dan suddenly said, his tone tinged with self-deprecating realization.

Lin Xiaoxiao raised an eyebrow: "I'd like to hear more, top designer."

"In the original script, all the spotlights were on the protagonist."

Lu Dan pointed at Chen Feng, and also at the trembling fake Master Zhang, "What does being the protagonist mean? It means you have to push the plot forward, you have to court death, all the hatred is on you, you are slaves bound by the script."

Lu Dan took out his key from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers.

"But passerby A is different."

"The extra is the background character who should be off work after delivering food, the cannon fodder in a disaster movie to highlight the heroism of the protagonist. Because of this, the extra sometimes has more freedom than the protagonist."

Lu Dan chuckled softly, his eyes sharp: "The system isn't belittling me; it's protecting the integrity of the plot. If I were in charge of the script, the whole thing should have ended five minutes ago."

"So it gave me a god-like, edge-of-the-road position—the best viewing spot. As long as I don't actively jump onto the stage, theoretically I'm the safest."

Lin Xiaoxiao paused for a moment, then a glint of surprise flashed in her eyes: "A closed logical loop. Since you're safe, then we..."

Lu Dan interrupted her, his gaze turning deep: "I am safe for now, but you, especially this Officer Chen, have never been safe."

The fake Chen Feng, feeling uneasy under Lu Dan's gaze, roared, "What the hell do you mean? I'm in a safe house right now!"

"The rule of a safe house is to keep out vengeful ghosts from outside." Lu Dan's voice was soft, but every word was piercing. "But what if the ghost is already attached to you before it even enters the house?"

He pointed to his own shadow, then to Chen Feng's shadow: "Do you remember when we were at the stairwell?"

"The little black snake that was originally attached to me disliked my lack of screen time and malnutrition, so it came after you. You are the righteous and yang-abundant criminal police captain."

All eyes immediately focused on Chen Feng's left leg.

By the light of a flash of lightning outside the window, a chilling scene came into view.

Chen Feng's left leg had swollen up at some point, as if a lump of fermented dough had been stuffed inside. Black veins crawled all over his exposed ankle like tree trunks, and the ankle was breathing in a strange rhythm, contracting and expanding.

The fake Chen Feng lowered his head, his pupils dilating instantly.

He couldn't feel any pain, only that his legs felt heavy, as if they were filled with lead.

He reached up and rolled up his trouser leg, and a blurry human face slowly emerged from beneath his skin. The face had only one eye, which was staring intently at everyone in the room through that thin layer of skin.

It grinned and smiled silently.

"Hold!"

The fake Chen Feng let out a fierce scream, and the most primal fear of humanity when facing its own alienation overwhelmed him.

He frantically pounded his legs with the butt of his rifle, producing a series of dull thuds.

"it's useless."

The fake Master Zhang, however, calmed down. "This is a demonic fetus... it's using you as a breeding ground. This safe house... it protects against outsiders, not insiders!"

Chen Feng's leg suddenly twitched violently, and the face looked as if it was about to burst through the skin.

Even more terrifying was that his feet began to deform, his bones crackled and popped, his toes were melting, and his heels were elongating.

The rough, large feet of a man are being forcibly reshaped by some force, becoming slender and pale, with a high arch—the feet of a woman who can perfectly fit the size of a red high heel.

"It found that none of the shoes it tried on next door fit," Lu Dan said rapidly, watching the scene unfold. "So it decided to have a pair custom-made?"

Lin Xiaoxiao reacted the fastest, pulling open the door to room 403.

"We can't go out! We can't go out! That's its territory outside!" the fake Master Zhang cried out.

"Staying here is tantamount to waiting to die! Chen Feng is already crippled; he'll soon become that thing's leg!"

In the blink of an eye, an unexpected change occurred.

Chen Feng suddenly stopped trembling. He slowly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes now rolled back, and a bizarre, extremely distorted smile appeared on his face.

"These shoes are really nice."

He spoke in a high-pitched, female voice.

The next second, Chen Feng pounced on Lu Dan, who was closest to him, with movements as fast as a cheetah, completely unlike a person with a mutated leg.

The gust of wind rushed towards him, but Lu Dan did not retreat. In fact, at that moment, his mind was clearer than ever before.

As a designer, his greatest strength lies in finding the one and only bug in a dead end.

Since 404 is a ghost town, and 403 has already fallen, the corridor is a hunting ground...

Lu Dan suddenly turned to the side, barely avoiding Chen Feng's claw, but his clothes were torn in the process.

Instead of running towards the door, he sprinted in the opposite direction, crashing directly into the wall connecting rooms 403 and 404—or more precisely, into the hole through which he was peeping.

"What are you doing?" Lin Xiaoxiao shouted anxiously.

Lu Dan gripped the spare key to 404 tightly in his hand, a maniacal smile curling at the corner of his mouth: "Who says a key can only open doors? This wall was originally thinned by that peeping tormentor to see 404; it's the weakest point."

He raised the key in his hand, its tip gleaming coldly in the darkness—it was clearly a chisel!

"Open it!"

Lu Dan used all his strength to forcefully insert the key into the crack next to the peephole, and then used the momentum of his body to pry it open.

The hollow brick wall, already strained under its weight, was punched open by him, creating a hole half a meter wide, sending dust flying everywhere.

Beside the altar in room 404 across the street, the female ghost holding a high-heeled shoe slowly turned her head, looking at Lu Dan who suddenly emerged from a hole in the wall with a bewildered expression.

At this moment, the air seemed to freeze.

This is probably the most awkward meeting in the history of horror films.