Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 71
After Anzhi joined, more and more military cadets were drawn in, trickling into the screening room one after another.
Before long, the number of participants was pushing triple digits.
Lu Xiaofeng was grinning from ear to ear—the more people who got trapped in this, the happier he was.
Once the growth in numbers stabilized, he was afraid someone might leave, so he immediately started the screening.
—
Meanwhile, in the darkness, Anzhi was growing impatient.
“What the hell is Lu Xiaofeng up to? Is he seriously messing with me?”
Most people would find being surrounded by darkness unsettling, but for Anzhi, it only made the restless energy in her veins surge stronger, making her itch for a fight.
Just as her frustration was about to reach its peak, the scene around her began to change—silently, almost imperceptibly.
“What’s going on?”
Anzhi immediately sensed that something was off.
Her mental energy might be volatile, but it also gave her an unusually sharp perception. The moment the darkness started shifting, she could feel the change.
The surroundings were still pitch black, but something was different. She could sense something forming around her, like the game was quietly constructing itself. Was the trailer starting?
A dark environment… something stirring in the shadows… the psychological pressure built up subtly, making her instinctively more alert.
So when a sudden beam of light flashed before her eyes, her first reaction was to throw a punch—only to realize, to her shock, that her body wouldn’t respond.
Anzhi instantly understood—she was now seeing through the perspective of a character in the story.
“Her” body took a few steps back, and only then did she get a clear view of the situation.
A round-faced girl with shoulder-length hair was holding a flashlight under her chin, casting eerie shadows across her pale face. In the darkness, she looked almost ghostly.
The girl seemed pleased with the reaction she got, quickly breaking into a smile as she moved the flashlight away.
As if triggered by her movement, the entire scene abruptly brightened—like the moon had finally decided to cast its light upon the world.
Anzhi saw that the round-faced girl and “herself” were standing behind a massive archway. In front of them was a colossal stone tablet, exuding an ancient and imposing aura. Four bl00d-red characters were etched into its surface—
“Wenhe University.”
At the same time, the round-faced girl’s smug voice rang out:
“Alright, everyone, check it out! Our cameraman is still as timid as ever. Alright, we won’t—zzzt—”
Her voice suddenly distorted, glitching out in an unnatural way. Sinister background music seeped in, and the scenery ahead twisted like spilled paint, melting together in an unsettling, chaotic swirl.
For a few seconds, everything churned and warped in a nauseating display—until it suddenly snapped back to normal.
The eerie music swelled into a climax before gradually settling down, returning to something more… alive.
The scene had changed again.
This time, Anzhi found herself on a quiet, secluded path.
Towering pagoda trees lined both sides of the road. A breeze passed through, rustling the leaves. The fully immersive experience even let Anzhi catch a faint scent—cool and fresh, like the air after a rain shower.
The round-faced girl was gone. In her place stood a young man with a playful, roguish air, his hair tied back in a small ponytail.
He was holding up a strange stick-like object… with what looked like a thin brick strapped to the top?
What kind of weird combination was this? Anzhi was completely lost on current trends.
The guy didn’t seem to notice her confusion. He was busy talking loudly into the “brick.”
“Alright, family, what you’re looking at now is the most famous campus legend of Wenhe University—Yin-Yang Road!”
“They say that at midnight, students walking this road tend to disappear… Others claim that instead, extra people will appear—ones who don’t exist.”
His deliberately eerie tone set the stage as he narrated the legend.
The music shifted again—
Without warning, a sharp, rapid beat, like a frantic drumroll, crashed into the audience’s ears. The tension shot up in an instant, gripping the heart and plunging it straight into the abyss.
“Sh1t! What’s wrong with this soundtrack?!”
Anzhi flinched, startled—not scared, but definitely forced into paying attention.
The scene began flickering rapidly—voices, male and female, overlapping chaotically, each desperately trying to tell their own story.
“Welcome to Into the Legends! I’m your host from the Paranormal Research Club—”
“Huh? Someone in the chat asked why we changed our name? Oh, well… Our teacher said Into the Forbidden was too likely to get us banned, so we had to switch it up, hahaha…”
“Tonight, our club will split into two teams. At precisely midnight, we’ll start our paranormal investigation from both ends of the infamous Yin-Yang Road—and meet in the middle! Haha, with all of you watching the livestream, there’s nothing to be afraid of, right?”
As the girl playfully teased, An Zhi saw from her first-person perspective that six people, including herself, had split into two teams. At exactly 11 PM, they set off from opposite ends of the same road.
Without realizing it, An Zhi had completely forgotten her earlier frustration. She was fully focused on the scene in front of her when suddenly, in the upper-right corner of her vision, a comment floated by… Wait a minute, wasn’t the screening mode supposed to disable comments?
She froze for a second before realizing—it must be an in-game NPC comment.
【Feng isn’t here this time? Freshmen, you better be careful.】
Just as the comment finished, her entire view suddenly zoomed out, shifting to a bird’s-eye perspective of the road.
At both ends of the path, the unsuspecting streamers laughed and joked, their voices echoing down the quiet street. Meanwhile, beneath the towering pagoda trees, countless shadows were shifting, lurking unseen in the darkness.
A chill ran down An Zhi’s spine. Something about this road felt off, but no matter how hard she looked, it was just an old-fashioned path—nothing more.
No… something still wasn’t right! But what?
Before she could figure it out, the music took a sharp turn, and the scene suddenly changed. The eerie road was gone, replaced by a dimly lit building.
At the same time, a line of words appeared, written in bl00d-red strokes by what looked like skeletal fingers:
“An ancient forbidden game, played again and again—”
“Bixian1“
“Ugh, nothing’s even happening! This is boring—let’s just play Bixian instead!”
An Zhi jolted in surprise and glanced around with her peripheral vision. This time, there were four people, including herself, sitting in a dimly lit room. They were all staring intently at the pen held between their overlapping hands, as if waiting for something.
“Bixian, Bixian, you were my past life, I am your present life…”
As the low, hushed chanting continued, An Zhi suddenly felt an eerie force pressing against her hand. She immediately looked down—at some point, a fifth hand had appeared among theirs, gripping the pen and forcing it to scribble across the paper!
The music intensified once again, and the scene shifted.
Now, the view changed to a dimly lit hallway. The round-faced girl and another person—whose face was blurred—stood at the doorway of a room.
The faceless person sounded panicked.
“Junior! There’s a ghost! A real ghost!”
“Tch, you’re just scared.” The round-faced girl scoffed. “Quit screaming and tell me—where’s the ghost?”
With that, she kicked open the door—but the moment she saw what was inside, her eyes widened in horror.
Her mouth opened as if to scream, but no sound came out.
The music shifted again—no longer an urgent, pounding rhythm, but a slow, scratching sound, like nails scraping across something. It sent an unbearable chill down the spine.
Then, all the lights went out. Darkness swallowed everything.
Two seconds passed.
A single warm candlelight flickered to life, cutting through the darkness. Its gentle glow gave an illusion of safety, like all the dangers had faded away.
In the soft light, An Zhi saw the side profile of an elderly woman, her expression kind and warm.
But when she spoke, her tone was grave.
“You young ones… are in big trouble.”
The music swelled sharply for a second—then, silence.
In the pitch-black void, faint rustling sounds emerged—sometimes like footsteps tiptoeing across the floor, sometimes like something slithering along the ground.
In the suffocating darkness, the round-faced girl’s trembling voice rang out.
“Are… are you still there?”
An Zhi heard “herself” make a muffled sound in response.
Then—an ice-cold hand groped through the darkness and tightly grasped hers.
“You have to remember what I’m about to say! I… I have no choice but to trust you. Because, from the very beginning, one of us was never really…”
“Ahh—!”
The icy hand suddenly tightened, gripping her so hard it felt like her bones would shatter—!
T/L notes:
Dear readers! I hope you’re all enjoying the novel translations. I really wanted to stick to the usual update schedule, but unfortunately, I couldn’t keep up this month. For now, both advance and free chapters will be updated/unlock once a week—every Saturday—just for this month.
I’m really sorry about this! School has been super hectic, and I’m drowning in assignments and oral reports (which I honestly don’t enjoy… huhu 😭).
Despite everything, I hope you’ll continue to support my translations. Thank you for understanding!