Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 99

It’s common knowledge that whenever someone speaks, there’s always a flow of breath.

An Zhi’s five senses had already been honed to the limits of human ability. At close range, she could even use subtle air currents to determine the positions of nearby enemies or teammates.

In the game, she had set her sensory synchronization to 100%, so she still retained this sharp perception.

But ever since stepping onto Yin-Yang Road, it felt as though a silent fog had settled over her senses, muting part of her perception.

Only now—sitting in this relatively safe room, surrounded by the soft and steady sound of four people breathing—did An Zhi finally realize something was off:

There were clearly five people in this room.

So why… could she only sense four breathing presences?

Her mind wavered slightly. Resolving herself, she slowly turned her head toward the girl with the double braids—

A pair of pitch-black eyes were staring straight at her.

As if they had been waiting for this moment all along.

The girl’s mouth stretched unnaturally wide—almost to her ears—into a “friendly” grin.

In that instant, An Zhi felt her heartbeat stop.

But a second later, it resumed—slow and heavy, like the thud of a war drum echoing in her ears.

In the stillness of the room, where the only sound was the girls softly chanting the ritual, her own thunderous heartbeat rang loud and clear.

Once… twice…

By the fifth beat, An Zhi had regained her composure.

She turned to the grotesque, no-longer-human face and flashed a perfect smile—

Then slowly turned her head back around, eyes falling on the four trembling hands holding the pen, as if nothing had happened.

As the group repeated the chant for the third time, the pen they held began to shake violently.

An Zhi immediately sensed it—this force wasn’t coming from any of the people present.

No.

It came from a fifth hand, one that had silently joined in, unnoticed.

The moment she realized this, her vision began to blur and distort.

The pink table mat beneath them decayed in an instant, the sickly-sweet smell of rot filling her nose.

The dorm room, once warm under the flashlight’s glow, faded into a dreary, abandoned ruin.

But worst of all—among the four living, human hands holding the pen, one had suddenly turned bloody and decayed, thick black ichor oozing from it and dripping onto the white paper.

And from somewhere—nowhere—a fifth hand had slithered into the group.

It gripped the pen near the tip with a seemingly gentle yet inescapable force, and slowly began to draw a circle on the paper.

An Zhi’s gaze sharpened.

This hand had large joints, waxy yellow skin—it looked like a man’s hand.
And from her angle, she could vaguely tell it was reaching from between Ah Yuan and Zhang Wen.

She hesitated for two seconds, then calmly raised her eyes and looked toward them.

There—between the two girls—stood a deathly pale man, silently appearing as if conjured from thin air.

His eye sockets were hollow, as though his eyeballs had been gouged out. Thick black bl00d dripped endlessly from them.

And on his head was a black baseball cap—one An Zhi recognized instantly.

It was that guy—the baseball cap NPC who had mysteriously disappeared on the Yin-Yang Road.

Now, he had returned—looking very much like a dead man.

Near the door, Sheng Qingye had already raised her guard to the max. While filming the game session, she kept an eye on the surroundings.

She was the first—other than An Zhi—to spot the man’s sudden appearance, and her expression changed drastically.

So it was him! The nameless baseball cap NPC.

Ever since he mysteriously vanished on the Yin-Yang Road, this was the first time he reappeared—as a ghost!

She was beginning to understand now: this so-called Pen Fairy game was really a ghost-summoning ritual.

Which meant… that baseball cap guy was a ghost all along. He had infiltrated their team before this death game even began.

She steadied her breath and turned to look at Ah Yuan and Zhang Wen’s faces—only to find, to her shock, that neither of them had noticed the ghostly man standing between them.

They were focused on the circle forming on the paper, tense yet excited.

Ah Yuan cleared her throat and asked the first basic question to start the ritual:

“Pen Fairy, are you male or female?”

An Zhi slowly looked at the baseball cap man crouching beside her—

And watched as he carefully wrote out a single character on the page: ❔ (a question mark).

So they really can’t see him, huh?

Even the guy in the baseball cap seemed speechless for a couple of seconds before slowly writing down the word: 

“Male.”

Right after that, Ah Yuan pulled an exaggerated expression.

“Wow, it’s actually a rare male Pen Fairy! I wonder if he’s handsome or not. Alright, for the second question…”

An Zhi immediately realized she was about to tempt fate and decisively interrupted the summoning.

“Pen Fairy, may I ask—are we currently safe?”

The pen they were holding gave a slight tremble.

Ah Yuan glanced at An Zhi in surprise, thinking to herself: The sponsors clearly asked us to find out how the Pen Fairy died, and here she is wasting time with some vague nonsense. What if this ruins the livestream’s momentum?

To this moment, Ah Yuan still had no idea there was a real ghost involved. She just thought the room felt a bit chilly—not exactly normal for August, sure, but not too suspicious.

As for the pen drawing circles by itself… Yeah, she’d noticed earlier that it moved even before she applied pressure. But she figured it was just someone else pushing harder.

As a firm believer in materialism, Ah Yuan wouldn’t be scared even if a ghost really appeared—as long as no one actually died. And in this case, she hadn’t seen anything at all.

Under An Zhi’s sharp gaze, the man in the baseball cap moved his lips, as if trying to say something. But in the end, he simply manipulated the pen and wrote a single word:

“No.”

An Zhi’s lips moved slightly.

Across from her, the two NPCs let out what might have been fake—or real—gasps of shock. Meanwhile, the twin-braided girl beside her let out a low laugh, laced with what sounded like mockery.

An Zhi knew perfectly well they weren’t safe. In this game, there was never a moment of true safety.

In fact, she had a hunch that if she asked, “Is the source of danger the twin-braided girl sitting beside me?”, she might very well receive a yes.

But if that ghost got provoked and went on a killing spree, then what?

So, after a brief moment of thought, she decided to ask something more roundabout.

“Pen Fairy, how can we get out of danger?”

This question was phrased with intention—it couldn’t be answered with a simple yes or no. She also hoped to test the Pen Fairy’s intelligence and abilities.

The baseball cap man lowered his head slightly, revealing a deep, bone-exposing wound at the back of his neck.

For some reason, An Zhi suddenly sensed an overwhelming sadness and despair emanating from him.

Then, under his control, the pen began to slowly write out a line of text:

“Leave Wenhe Ghost School before 2 a.m. This is the only path to survival.”

At that moment, both An Zhi and Sheng Qingye simultaneously triggered the main quest.

Ding-dong—

“Congratulations, players. You have triggered the main quest: Escape from Wenhe Ghost School. If you haven’t left by 2 a.m., it seems… you may never leave again. Heehee~”

Game Tip:

1. Skipping side quests and heading straight for the main quest will still allow you to clear the game, but the side quests may contain clues vital to completing the main one~
2. The campus is full of danger at night. You may need reliable allies. But be careful—after all, you never really know who’s telling the truth… or if anyone is.
3. You must leave the ghost school through the correct method. Otherwise, if you stumble into another trap… well, good luck.

Words are full of lies. Minds are riddled with shadows. Every being speaks, but each wears a different face. Can you really sift through all the noise, find the truth… and grab hold of your one way out?

There was so much information this time that An Zhi quickly unlocked her phone with her free hand. Sure enough, her memo app had automatically updated, listing all the new tasks.

Only after confirming that everything had been recorded did she finally let out a breath of relief.

But just then, she felt a powerful force in her left hand—the one holding the pen. Something was forcing it to move, dragging the pen violently across the page.

She looked up—and saw the shocked and fearful faces of the others.

Then her eyes dropped to the paper, where line after line had been scrawled out in what had somehow become bl00d-red ink—

“Don’t trust Brother Feng! Don’t trust Brother Feng! Don’t…”

CRACK!

The pen snapped.