Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 28
“Is that you, Qiu Zi and Senior, inside?”
The voice belonged to Ah Fei.
Qiu Zi’s eyes lit up, recognizing him faster than Liu Yuling did.
However, it seemed she wasn’t about to give up on her plan to give him a scare. She didn’t open the door right away.
Oddly, the person outside didn’t push the door open either.
Just as Liu Yuling started to suspect that Ah Fei might have realized he was being set up for a prank, his voice rang out again.
“Qiu Zi, Senior, don’t mess around. Senior Li Hua and Senior Wen Qian are waiting for you at May Bridge. Let’s head out quickly.”
Liu Yuling frowned.
“… Weren’t we supposed to have a meeting?”
Ah Fei’s tone remained calm. He usually came across as a boisterous young man, but now he sounded unusually composed.
“Senior Wen Qian said they forgot to clean up after rehearsal earlier. Let’s go help tidy up together.”
“What the heck…” Qiu Zi deflated like a punctured balloon.
Grumbling under her breath, she pulled the door open—
Standing outside was indeed Ah Fei.
Just as she was about to step out, Liu Yuling’s quick reflexes stopped her.
“Don’t go out!” she exclaimed, her tone so sharp it cracked.
Both Qiu Zi and Ah Fei stared at her in shock.
“What’s wrong, Senior?”
Liu Yuling pressed her lips tightly together, cold sweat dotting her forehead.
What was that?
What on earth was that?!
The moment Qiu Zi opened the door, Liu Yuling saw something utterly horrifying—
The Bagua mirror hanging on the door reflected a white beam of light that captured Ah Fei’s image.
However, the Ah Fei in the mirror was far from normal. His face was ghastly pale, his eyes sunken, and his facial orifices oozed blood—a walking corpse!
Viewers following Liu Yuling’s first-person perspective nearly toppled over in their seats, scrambling to exit the view.
[What the hell?! This game won’t stop until it scares me to death, huh?!]
[Wait a second! If that thing isn’t Ah Fei, why is it pretending to be him? Could it be that the formation actually works?!]
As the mirrored Ah Fei moved in perfect sync with his real-world counterpart, his cracked, purplish lips moved soundlessly. Liu Yuling felt chills run down her spine.
And then, as if to mock her, the system chimed in.
Ding! Congratulations, player, on unlocking the achievement—‘Joking Ah Fei.’ Please keep up the good work~
What kind of sick achievement was this?!
Suddenly, Ah Fei’s face split into a sinister grin, his lips stretching unnaturally to the corners of his ears.
Simultaneously, thick, black liquid began dripping from the voids of his eye sockets.
“Ah, so you’ve figured it out.”
His once lively voice turned hoarse, as if his throat had been parched for days.
Finally realizing something was very wrong, Qiu Zi followed Liu Yuling’s gaze to the Bagua mirror. Her eyes widened in terror.
She spun around, grabbed Liu Yuling’s arm, and yanked her back into the office, slamming the door shut with a loud bang.
Barely a second later, a massive force pounded violently against the door.
From outside, Ah Fei’s cold, eerie voice called out,
“Senior, Qiu Zi, why did you shut the door all of a sudden? Come on out. Let’s not keep the seniors waiting!”
“Go to hell!” Qiu Zi yelled, her voice brimming with fury. “You damn ghost! How dare you impersonate Ah Fei—do you think we’re stupid enough to follow you? If you’ve got the guts, come in and drag us out yourself!”
[Wow, this girl’s got guts. But what if she really angers it and it does come in to drag them out? What then?]
[Don’t panic. If it could break in, it would’ve done so already. Why else would it pretend to be normal and knock on the door? And by the way, I’ll never mock those talismans again—they’re literal lifesavers!]
Liu Yuling clearly had the same realization.
She worked hard to steady her voice.
“Qiu Zi, calm down. The exorcism formation we set up seems to be working. It can’t get in.”
As soon as Liu Yuling finished speaking, the pounding on the door intensified. The fragile wood seemed ready to splinter at any moment.
Qiu Zi started to panic.
“But staying holed up in this office isn’t a solution either!”
Liu Yuling pondered for a moment, then decided to check the front door instead of the back, where the relentless banging continued. She wanted to see if they might have a chance to sneak out.
Of course, she wasn’t foolish enough to open the door directly. Carefully, she leaned against the peephole—a circular piece of glass that allowed her to glimpse outside.
Pressing one eye against the glass, she realized that the view was pitch black. She couldn’t see anything.
…Wait. Why was this patch of darkness moving?
Before she could process it, she was met with a hollow, empty eye socket staring right back at her from the other side!
“!”
She stumbled back in shock, falling to the ground as her breathing became erratic.
Qiu Zi rushed to help her up.
“Senior!”
“I’m fine,” Liu Yuling managed to say as she wobbled to her feet, though her legs still trembled.
At that moment, whatever was outside stopped pretending. Loud banging erupted from both the front and back doors simultaneously!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Qiu Zi’s face turned pale.
“What’s going on? Wasn’t there only one of them?”
“I don’t know. But now, neither the front nor back door is an option,” Liu Yuling said grimly. They were completely trapped in the office.
Some viewers who had dared to stay in first-person perspective cursed as they hastily switched to third-person view, their faces ashen.
[What the heck? Can that ghost split itself?]
[I almost lost it when I saw that eye socket staring back at me.]
[Classic scare move: peeping through a hole only to meet a ghost’s gaze. Timeless and effective.]
Watching the flood of panicked comments, Ye Yuxi, the game designer, was thoroughly satisfied. This was the exact thrill she had wanted to recreate—the kind that had haunted her memories for years.
The scarier it got, the more players wanted to keep watching. That was the masochistic charm of horror enthusiasts.
The office served as a temporary safe room, but Ye Yuxi had no intention of letting the players waste too much time here.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be forced out soon enough,” she murmured with devilish glee, her eyes fixed on Liu Yuling’s pale face on the screen.
In the game, the banging had escalated to full-on ramming. After realizing the doors weren’t going to open, the creature outside had resorted to slamming itself against the barriers.
The door panels now trembled violently, looking ready to collapse at any moment.
Meanwhile, Qiu Zi was frantically dialing the other group members on her phone, only to be met with busy tones.
She tried every number, but eventually concluded that the communication signal had been completely cut off.
Oddly enough, the intense pressure of the situation seemed to calm Liu Yuling. Knowing that the ghost couldn’t get in immediately helped her fear subside a little.
Of course, the presence of a seemingly reliable NPC, Qiu Zi, was a huge comfort. If she were alone, she might have completely lost her nerve.
And then, her “reliable” companion said something utterly outrageous.
“Senior, let’s take the materials from the exorcism formation!”
“?!” Liu Yuling stared at Qiu Zi in disbelief, wondering if she’d gone from reckless to outright suicidal.
[What the heck? Is this NPC possessed?]
[So not only do players have to deal with constant danger, but now they have to watch out for incompetent teammates too?]
Qiu Zi quickly explained her reasoning.
“We can’t just stay stuck in here—we’re completely passive! But we already know these exorcism materials work. Why don’t we take them and use them to drive the ghost away from the door? Then we can head out and look for the others.”
“At the very least, if we get outside and regain signal, we might be able to call for help!”