Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 6
Li He stared at the red circle on the ground, watching the candle flames flicker with the breeze, unconsciously swallowing hard.
It was difficult to describe the feeling surging in his heart at that moment, but one thing was certain—he was a hundred percent unwilling to step into that eerie circle.
In the Interstellar Era, people were straightforward and bold, living by the motto: If you don’t agree, fight it out. The clash of fists, the mingling of blood—that was the eternal rhythm of their games. Even though Li He majored in horror game design, he enjoyed playing a few rounds of FPS games in his free time…
Ahem, getting sidetracked.
The candles on the ground and the bells hanging from the red strings on the trees were clearly not firearms, but they gave him an indescribable sense of unease—perhaps a feeling of disharmony.
He had rarely experienced this kind of spine-tingling sensation and couldn’t find a precise word to define it.
What he could say, however, was that if this was Ye Yuxi’s interpretation of another type of horror element, then in his opinion, she had nailed it.
It wasn’t just in-game Li He feeling the tension. Even the students outside the game noticed the unease and began to chatter.
“What are those things even for?”
“I think I saw something like this in a museum.” A knowledgeable girl adjusted her glasses. “The white sticks on the ground seem to be called candles, an ancient human tool for illumination.”
“That’s odd. Is this game set in a pseudo-historical era? Why do these items feel so… unsettling?”
“Senior Ye, what are those NPCs even doing in there?” someone couldn’t help but ask the designer directly.
Ye Yuxi intentionally drew out her reply, her tone chilling and ominous:
“They’re performing an ancient summoning ritual. Actually, the players’ personal terminals contain the game’s concept notes. They could have found all this information if they bothered to check.”
Of course, those two had charged into the game without so much as glancing at their terminals, blindly rushing ahead. She couldn’t figure out how these two, with such reckless gaming habits, managed to get into the design program.
Meanwhile, Li He, oblivious to Ye Yuxi’s complaints, hesitated for a moment before deciding to follow the NPCs’ instructions.
So many classmates were watching. It’d be too embarrassing to stand around hesitating, stuck on a simple task.
Fixing his eyes on the two-decimeter-tall white candles, he briefly considered his options. To avoid the flames catching his pants, he leapt into the circle with a perfect arc.
Pulling off the move with flair, he was just about to whistle in self-satisfaction when he noticed the expressions of the two male and two female NPCs around him—each wore a look of utter terror.
“Senior… what are you doing?!” one of the boys cried out, his voice shrill with panic, nearly breaking.
“Huh?” Li He was baffled.
What now? Are you telling me you even care which foot goes in first?
But the NPCs’ strange reactions made him uneasy as well. His gaze instinctively darted around the area.
Just as his nerves stretched taut, a sudden gust of cold wind blew through, extinguishing all the candles in a single breath.
This stretch of the path had two streetlights, but their illumination was dimmed by the towering trees nearby. The wind snuffing out the candles only deepened the shadows, leaving visibility limited to the range of their flashlights.
“It’s just the wind; don’t panic,” another boy’s voice reassured them.
But instead of calming down, Li He felt his heart twist tighter.
What was going on? There was nothing unusual here, so why…
“W-wait a second!” The female NPC’s cold, trembling voice suddenly broke the silence.
“What… what is that?”
Li He instinctively swung his flashlight in the direction she was pointing—toward the stone steps opposite the way they had come.
Earlier, he’d shone his flashlight over that area multiple times and seen nothing. But now, under the flashlight’s beam, a faint silhouette of a woman had appeared!
Li He’s heart instantly jumped into his throat.
Who was that? She wasn’t there a second ago, so how had she appeared so suddenly? Was it a trick of perspective?
Was she this game’s killer? But why was she just standing there, unmoving? Shouldn’t she be brandishing a weapon and chasing them by now?
As these thoughts raced through his mind, a loud, frenzied ringing of bells—jingle-jingle-jingle—suddenly echoed around him.
Li He immediately turned his head and saw the bells hanging on the red threads jingling madly. Strangely, they hadn’t made a sound earlier, even when the wind blew out the candles, yet now they were ringing on their own, with no breeze in sight!
Beside him, he clearly heard Qiu Zi gulp nervously.
“Oh no, the legend is real…”
What legend?
Li He turned back, about to ask, but froze in shock. The figure standing at the top of the stone steps flickered like a glitching image. When it solidified again, it appeared noticeably larger.
No, not larger—it had somehow moved several steps closer, as if teleporting down the stairs in an instant!
What the hell?!
Li He felt his scalp tingle.
He’d seen killers who could sprint at terrifying speeds and zombies with bizarre gaits, but he’d never encountered one that could teleport.
He instinctively started looking around for a weapon when a clear, decisive voice of a female NPC rang out near his ear:
“Run!”
By the time he turned his head again, the four NPCs had already vanished without a trace.
Li He: “…”
That one player-favorite line echoed in his mind: Huh?
Wait, you all just ditched me? Not even going to consider taking me with you?!
The system interface popped up again, automatically switching to the tasks panel.
The pinned task had been updated to:
Escape from the Female Ghostly Senior.
Female Ghostly Senior? Ghostly… as in a ghost? Was this a name? Or a new nickname for the killer?
Looking around, Li He couldn’t find anything to use as a weapon. He glanced at the figure that was drawing closer and gritted his teeth before turning to run.
However, as soon as he dashed up the stairs behind him, he froze in disbelief.
Wait—did he just run the wrong way? Why was there a blurry, distorted figure of a woman ahead of him?!
It wasn’t just Li He who was shocked—the students watching from the third-person perspective were stunned as well.
“Li He’s sense of direction can’t possibly be this bad… Right? He ran the wrong way while escaping?”
“No, he didn’t.” A bespectacled girl furrowed her brow. “There’s an enemy coming from behind as well.”
Ye Yuxi said nothing, only smiling faintly.
Didn’t they say the chase scene was too monotonous? Time to let them experience the upgraded two-way pincer pursuit!
Meanwhile, Li He wasn’t exactly clear about his own mistake. Had he really turned too sharply and accidentally gone the wrong way?
Uncertain, he immediately turned in another direction and continued to run blindly. But just as he was about to step onto another set of stairs, he skidded to a halt.
On the first step ahead of him stood a twisted, misshapen woman in a flowing blue dress.
As the woman moved toward him in an unnervingly awkward posture, Li He felt his breath catch, his chest tightening painfully. He whipped around, only to despair when he saw yet another figure gracefully approaching from the opposite direction.
“Damn it! Both ends are blocked—this stupid game doesn’t want me to survive, does it?!”
That brief second of hesitation was all it took for Li He to feel a chilling sensation on his back.
A cold hand gently patted his shoulder.
His entire body froze.
Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around… Damn it, just move your legs and run!
But his feet felt rooted to the ground, refusing to obey him.
The icy hands tightened their grip, forcibly twisting his body around—
And then he saw it.
A face that defied description, impossibly strange and horrifying, was inches away from his own.
It was an exceptionally beautiful woman’s face, with arched brows and almond-shaped eyes, delicate and lovely.
The problem was that her exquisite features were entirely painted on—this was no real face!
The woman smiled sweetly at him. Her painted mouth, originally flat and wooden, split apart grotesquely, revealing a cavernous maw filled with gleaming white teeth…
“Aaaaahhhhh!!!”
Real Author’s notes:
Fun fact: Li He’s ordeal is entirely based on the author’s real experience playing “The Bridge Curse” After seeing a ghostly figure ahead, they turned in the opposite direction, only to run straight into another. Thinking they’d accidentally reversed their mouse movement, they changed direction again… and ran straight to their doom.