Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 49
Just before Ji Yu was about to dash out of the eerie house, he suddenly heard a snapping sound.
He instinctively tried to turn around but found his body completely immobile.
His body suddenly felt ice-cold, as if struck by hypothermia, and his feet seemed to sink into cotton, completely numb.
Several seconds passed before his screen went black, and the words “Player’s Character Has Died” appeared. Only then did he fully comprehend what had happened.
“What the hell?! I DIED?!”
Ji Yu raised his voice, venting his terror into the empty void. After ranting for a while, he deflated with a sigh.
Then it hit him—if he had died, the snapping sound and strange sensations he’d experienced earlier must have been…
… Thank goodness he had set the pain sensitivity to zero beforehand.
Meanwhile, the three still upstairs snapped out of their daze and rushed down.
Leading the way, Liu Yuling suddenly felt her foot step into something sticky. She froze for a moment, looked down, and her face immediately turned ashen. Covering her mouth, she fought the overwhelming urge to vomit.
It wasn’t that she was too fragile—it was just that the scene before her was unbelievably grotesque.
The light from the kitchen illuminated the horrific sight on the first floor with brutal clarity—
Half a corpse was hanging on the wooden door leading outside.
Yes, just half. It had been severed cleanly at the waist, leaving bl00d pooled across the floor. Liu Yuling, in her haste, had stepped right on the edge of the crimson puddle.
The dead person’s legs stood unnaturally rigid against the door, as if impaled there like upright chopsticks. Instead of dangling lifelessly, they remained stiff, as though the victim were still trying to kick and struggle.
“Is that Li… Liver Bro? He got cut in half?” Wang Yuze prided himself on having a strong stomach, but even he felt a wave of nausea that he barely suppressed.
As a military academy student who had yet to see real combat, he thought he had seen his fair share of bloody virtual corpses. But this? This was beyond anything he’d imagined.
Ye Gou, so this is your true power? I knew it—you’re a deranged game designer.
Ye Yuxi felt a faint itch in her nose but stifled the urge to sneeze. It felt too inappropriate given the gravity of the moment.
Liu Yuling, having overcome her initial disgust, cautiously circled the corpse. After careful inspection, she confirmed that the other half of the body was likely outside the door.
From this perspective, it looked like Ji Yu had been cleanly bisected the moment he stepped outside, as though struck by a falling guillotine. Except this was far more horrifying than any medieval execution device.
At least a guillotine left a clean beheading. In Ji Yu’s case, his whole body had been pinned to the door like some salted fish on display…
“Um…” Liu Yuling turned back stiffly and asked her remaining two companions,
“So… are we leaving Liver Bro’s corpse here and continuing to investigate, or…?”
As someone entrusted to protect Ji Yu by his roommate—and as the group’s “pro gamer” with all eyes on him—Wang Yuze didn’t hesitate to follow his instincts.
“What’s there to investigate?! Someone’s DEAD! Let’s just get back to the car!”
Without sparing another glance at his teammate’s corpse, he displayed the utmost decisiveness. With a swift elbow strike, he shattered the first-floor window. Using the frame as leverage, he vaulted outside with the agility of a leopard, sprinting toward the RV parked by the roadside without looking back.
A gust of cold wind blew through the broken window. Liu Yuling, who had been staring dumbfounded at Wang Yuze’s retreating figure, snapped back to her senses. She too avoided looking at the corpse again, steeling herself for the next move.
What a joke! Her teammate had already run off—why would she stay behind?
Just as Liu Yuling was about to follow suit and escape through the window, a pair of hands suddenly pressed down on her.
She jolted in fright, ready to retaliate with an elbow strike, but froze when she saw Ye Yuxi’s familiar deadpan face.
“…You want to stay behind?” Liu Yuling asked in disbelief. Could her junior really be this bold? If so, wouldn’t she have to stick around too, just to save face?
She was already wearing a pained expression in anticipation.
“Not at all,” Ye Yuxi grinned and pointed to the camera in Liu Yuling’s arms. “But shouldn’t we take a picture of Liver Bro’s… peculiar death? It might count as evidence of the vengeful ghost for the mission.”
Liu Yuling: “…” Ye Gou, you absolute madman. Only a designer like you could come up with such a morbid strategy.
The livestream chat was utterly floored by this turn of events, spamming lines of question marks in confusion.
【? I thought the atmosphere would get terrifying after seeing the body, but why is this kind of funny?】
【Miss Y, I really thought you were the compassionate one. Turns out you just want to make the most out of his corpse…】
【No words. Liver Bro, you died so tragically! @CodLiver】
【But don’t worry, Liver Bro. Your death was meaningful! Your sacrifice will earn your teammates some money. @CodLiver】
Forced to log off after his in-game death, Ji Yu finally reconnected to the game space, only to witness the carnage through third-person view.
Stop tagging me! Stop tagging me! I saw everything!
Yes, Ji Yu knew his teammates were cold, heartless, and merciless. But it was precisely their ruthlessness that maximized their earnings for the “Streamer Invincible Squad”!
He tried to console himself, but watching his three teammates efficiently get into the RV and drive off, leaving his bisected corpse stuck on the door—eyes wide open in indignation—still left him feeling bitter.
They just left him there?! The least they could’ve done was cover his body with a cloth, damn it!
One minute later, Ji Yu respawned at full health in the RV’s familiar control room, now face-to-face with the very teammates who had abandoned his body.
For a few seconds, they simply stared at one another. Then Ji Yu, overwhelmed with indignation, pounced on Wang Yuze, ready to throttle him.
“Yuze Bro! I’ve called you ‘Yuze Bro’ for so long! And yet when danger struck, you were the first to ditch me!”
Wang Yuze could easily push the frail support member off if he wanted to, but fearing he might hurt Ji Yu—and feeling a tad guilty—he endured it. Instead, he unleashed a round of verbal deflection disguised as consolation.
“Liver Bro, it’s not that I didn’t want to save you, but your body was already cold! What could I possibly do? Fight the vengeful ghost to the death? Then how would we finish the mission? It’s better to honor your memory by completing the task and earning more cash!”
“…Thanks for your concern, but there’s no need to talk about honoring my memory—I’m still alive!”
Ji Yu turned his head to glare at Sister Yu and Miss Y with righteous fury, but his momentum faltered when he noticed the task report in Ye Yuxi’s hand.
“This time, after submitting your death photo and the temperature readings, the mission completion rate reached 60%. In other words, we earned 60% of the bounty, which is enough to buy the ghost-repelling talisman you’ve been dreaming about.”
Ye Yuxi beamed as she opened the exchange shop and dangled the option in front of him.
“Want to redeem it?”
“…Redeem!”
After all, this money was earned at the cost of his gruesome death. He resolved to immediately slap one of those talismans on himself the moment it arrived!