Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 53
Ye Yuxi and Liu Yuling were searching the living room and dining area.
Simply searching felt a bit too dull, so Liu Yuling occasionally used the eerie environment and haunting soundtrack to stage her own little jump-scares, creating ripples of excitement for the livestream audience. Meanwhile, she multitasked, answering questions from the chat and chatting with Ye Yuxi.
For instance, earlier, a draft of cold air had blown in through a slightly open window.
Normally, for interstellar people with their hard constitutions, this kind of chill would be nothing. But Liu Yuling exaggeratedly shivered.
Feigning a spooked demeanor, she glanced around and then, in a mysterious tone, whispered three words to the audience:
“There’s a presence.”
Ye Yuxi: “…”
She had to admit, Liu Yuling nailed that one.
The once-calmed chat immediately came alive again, with messages flooding in as viewers immersed themselves in the first-person perspective, looking around the screen for “ghosts.”
This move left Ye Yuxi in awe.
A true pro streamer—Liu Yuling clearly knew how to maintain hype during a livestream. Ye Yuxi made a mental note to treat her senior to a big red envelope later.
If Liu Yuling knew her thoughts, she’d probably laugh herself silly.
These little tricks? She’d learned them from Ye Yuxi! From that legendary “Blue Sea University Courage Test,” where Ye Yuxi had staged fake hauntings to scare juniors out of their wits… Ye Yuxi had pulled off stunts far more masterful than this.
At that moment, the chat turned its attention to the game designer, “Miss Ye.”
“Seriously, this designer’s creativity is wild. How does she come up with so many detailed backstories? Just imagining the lives of the people in this house gives me the chills.”
Liu Yuling brushed her exposed arm as if warding off goosebumps, her expression the perfect mix of fear and beauty. The viewers, moved by her “distress,” started flooding the chat with virtual gifts to comfort her.
She recapped the task introduction, which was essentially a short but spine-chilling ghost story.
It went something like this: The father of the house bought a doll for his newborn daughter. But the eldest son kept claiming he saw the doll crawling around the house.
The father didn’t believe him and even scolded the boy. Then, one day after work, the father came home to find the doll—which had been placed on the bed—now lying in the cradle. Meanwhile, the baby girl who had been in the cradle was nowhere to be found.
The father searched for two whole days without success and eventually broke down.
When the authorities were notified, this obviously supernatural incident was handed off to specialists to determine if an evil spirit was involved.
To be fair, Liu Yuling’s fear wasn’t entirely an act.
She genuinely admired her junior for coming up with such eerie ghost stories. Just reading the script gave her chills. She wondered: didn’t Ye Yuxi ever get scared herself, working late into the night on these horror games?
To this, Ye Yuxi merely smiled faintly, keeping her wisdom to herself.
Of course, saying she wasn’t scared at all would be a lie. After all, she had to sit in these creepy virtual environments, painstakingly design the maps piece by piece, personally test the haunting soundtracks, and even serve as her own beta tester…
But whenever she imagined the joyful (terrified) faces of players experiencing her game, she felt a surge of courage!
“No need to imagine yourself as the owner of this house. They’re just pre-programmed data. We’ll have plenty of chances later to experience the ‘charms’ of that doll.”
Liu Yuling: “…What kind of encouragement is that? No thanks, I’d rather skip this ‘opportunity!’”
She was silently complaining in her mind when her expression suddenly changed. She quickly lifted her head and looked toward the entryway.
“What’s wrong?” Ye Yuxi also glanced over.
There was nothing at the entryway.
Liu Yuling hesitated before turning back. “Didn’t you hear it? Just now, it sounded like a little girl’s voice coming from over there. But it was so faint, I couldn’t make out what she was sayi—”
Her words abruptly stopped.
In the moment she turned her head, she saw what appeared to be a figure sitting on the sofa, less than five meters away.
“She” had long, curly, honey-colored hair and a smiling face with two dimples. Dressed in an adorably puffy dress, she looked like a little girl. Her small feet didn’t even reach the floor as she sat on the sofa.
She sat there silently, as if she had been there the whole time, watching the uninvited guests who had intruded into her home like a proper host.
The strange thought lasted only for a second. In the next instant, Liu Yuling blinked, and the sofa was empty again, as if the little girl had been nothing more than an illusion.
“Y…” Liu Yuling turned to her companion, her pupils slightly unfocused, as though she hadn’t fully recovered.
“The children in this household… are they all gone? Could their daughter still be here somehow?”
Ye Yuxi frowned.
“Are you out of your mind? The daughter of this household went missing—besides, this is a game map. Other than ghosts, there aren’t any interactive neutral or friendly NPCs. What did you see just now? A little girl?”
Liu Yuling finally snapped out of it, realizing how strange her earlier words sounded. She awkwardly touched her forehead.
“I think I saw a little girl sitting on the sofa… but it’s odd. I was sure I’d memorized her appearance when I saw her, but after she disappeared, my impression of her face became so vague… like I can’t describe her to you no matter how hard I try.”
As she spoke, a chill ran through her. “This game is way too creepy…”
Despite knowing it was just a game, the idea that a ghost could interfere with her perception left her unsettled. It created an indescribable sense of disorientation, as though the line between the game and reality was blurring.
Ye Yuxi’s lips twitched.
“It’s just some brain-muddling suggestion signals messing with you—if that’s the case, other games with monsters that have mental disruption mechanics would count too. What do you say to that?”
She reassured her further, “Don’t worry, there won’t be any lingering effects once you log out. The only reason it’s affecting you now is because your sensory synchronization is set too high. Lower it to 50% next time, and it won’t happen.”
Just then, Ji Yu and Wang Yuze came over from the other room, eager to share their unsettling encounter.
“Let me tell you guys, I just saw this super creepy doll in the baby’s room…”
As Ji Yu described it, Liu Yuling felt an odd sense of déjà vu.
“Wait, the doll you saw… did it have honey-colored hair? Blue eyes? A puffy dress?”
A vivid image seemed to flash through her mind, but just as she tried to grasp it, the memory faded away, slipping out of reach.