Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 84

“Holy—!”

Liu Yuling, who had been watching the livestream with the rest of the viewers, rubbed her eyes in disbelief, suspecting that the demo version she played was a fake.

She quickly muted the camera feed before turning to ask the person sitting in the shadows.

“Yuxi! Did you… tweak the game or something?”

She remembered clearly—the Yin-yang Road used to enter the game was just for show. So why did it suddenly become a full-blown haunted zone?!

In the dim corner of Liu Yuling’s virtual studio, just beyond the camera’s reach, Ye Yuxi sat motionless, her hands neatly folded beneath her chin. The way she held herself—deliberately still, perfectly composed—evoked the image of a final boss waiting at the end of the game.

Her voice was calm and deep. 

“You remember I’ve been busy updating the game recently, right?”

“Yeah, you said you were optimizing the experience for different player types and decided to split Campus Nightmare 2 into multiple difficulty modes…”

Lately, Liu Yuling had been tied up helping the studio file for patent certification, so she hadn’t had time to test the game herself. Everything she knew was secondhand.

Suddenly, her eyes widened as something clicked. 

“Wait a sec—don’t tell me…”

Ye Yuxi chuckled.

She had originally divided the game into three modes:

• • A Tourist Mode, designed for players who just wanted to explore the eerie nighttime campus atmosphere without triggering any plot. This was in response to feedback from traditional culture enthusiasts. Since it didn’t touch the story, it wouldn’t spoil anything for players in harder modes.

• • A Standard Mode, for casual or more timid players. This version featured toned-down horror elements and puzzles but capped exploration at 60% and made it impossible to reach the true ending.

• • And finally, the Hard Mode, her original uncut version of the game—pure, undiluted nightmare fuel.

But when she presented these options to the two military academies, the First Military Academy demanded something more:

“Miss Ye, please raise the difficulty a bit!”

“That’s right, the game is just so-so to begin with. You think we can’t handle it?”

Ye Yuxi: “……”

And just for fun, she had quietly swapped the demo on DouDou to the Standard Mode, deliberately misleading players with a tamer experience. The goal was simple: lure them in, then crush their expectations.

After breezing through the watered-down demo, the cadets—overconfident and unprepared—had likely made all sorts of erroneous assumptions about the game. But that wasn’t her fault.

This was technically a student-organized match, with no official involvement from either school. Otherwise, no way would the administration have allowed their students to do something as stupid as demand a higher difficulty.

And so, under pressure from the promotional partners, a brand-new nightmare was born:

“Abyss of Fear” Mode.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t even meant for public release—it was a tailor-made hellscape designed for those thrill-seeking cadets. When she rolls this version out on the platform, she intended to place a warning up front: “Play at your own risk. Developer bears no responsibility for psychological consequences.”

Silently thanking herself for having implemented emergency exit failsafes, Ye Yuxi remained composed. She gestured toward the console.

“Stop slacking. You’ve got a commentary role to do.”

Liu Yuling shrugged and turned the camera feed back on.

“Campus Nightmare 2, the newest release by hit game designer Miss Ye, builds on its predecessor with major upgrades—including an amplified fear factor!This is a true test of nerve and strategy. The question is: who will emerge victorious?”

—

Inside the game, Liu Mang clearly hadn’t expected something like this right at the start. He’d let his guard down completely.

As the wailing voice rang in his ears and the music suddenly spiked, cold sweat drenched his back.

“Let go of me!!” he shouted, thrashing wildly as he tried to shake off the cold grip on his left ankle. The force of his struggle nearly dug up all the surrounding dirt!

Then Wang Ke cautiously leaned over and glanced at the thing Liu Mang had just yanked from the ground with brute strength.

“Uh… Mang-ge, I don’t think it moves.”

Liu Mang: “……”

He forced himself to calm down, crouched down, and pried the skeletal hand from his ankle. Sure enough, it was just a lifeless corpse—well, maybe it had moved once, but after that, it hadn’t done anything.

He’d panicked so hard earlier that he didn’t even notice.

Elsewhere, other arrogant First Military cadets who had also skipped the demo fell into the same trap. One particularly skittish three-man squad even got so spooked they disconnected from the game entirely.

Meanwhile, the players who had played the demo knew this path was just a horror setup and rushed through it without incident—some even skipped the final jump scare with the skeletal hand and were already chatting with NPCs.

—

Back outside the game, Liu Yuling glanced at the now-darkened blue screen and grinned even wider.

“Looks like the First Military Academy is off to a rough start. One squad’s already out. And while fan-favorite Mang-ge survived, his opening was anything but smooth—SAN points: minus five.”

“Will they really be able to live up to their bold declarations and finish the game in one go? Well then, let’s wait and see!”