“I’ll do it! I’ll start the stream right now!”
Yu Duanhong screamed like a panicked marmot. The knocking on the door felt as if it were pounding directly against his skull, and his sanity was beginning to snap.
Whatever allure there was in mystery, supernatural powers, or immortality seemed pale and hollow in the face of the imminent threat of death.
He craved the supernatural, but he had to stay alive first.
Fear overrode his excitement, and Yu Duanhong instinctively followed Yue Shi’s instructions.
He scrambled to his computer desk, his hands shaking as if he had Parkinson’s. It took several attempts just to plug in the camera’s data cable.
The screen lit up, reflecting his deathly pale face.
He didn’t look much different from a ghost himself right now.
Shivering, he clicked open the streaming software and created a new live room.
A title?
His mind was a chaotic mess; he only remembered Yue Shi saying the title had to be explosive enough.
His fingers hammered the keyboard, acting on their own:
【Next door to a murder house, late-night stream, a vengeful ghost is after my life!!! Streamer risking it all for a sneak peek, come if you dare!!!】
The description was even more blunt: “The streamer lives in the Hive Apartments. Someone just died in the building today—an unnatural death. Now, something terrible is knocking on my door...”
He set it for a site-wide recommendation, chose the highest bitrate, and turned on night-vision mode. Then, he clicked ‘Start Stream’.
Watching Yu Duanhong’s smooth execution of the setup, Yue Shi clicked his tongue inwardly. The boy acted terrified, yet his hands were incredibly steady; he hadn’t made a single typo.
Was it intentional, or just an accident?
The stream began, and Yue Shi’s figure vanished into thin air within the room.
Yu Duanhong looked shocked, but before he could say anything, Yue Shi reminded him that he was still in the room.
Initially, the live room only attracted a few night owls drawn in by the title.
【User: Fairy, Fly with Confidence: Clickbait? Is this another scripted play?】
【User: Melon-Eater: Hive Apartments? Isn’t that the building where something happened this afternoon? Does the streamer actually live there?】
【User: Pro Fake-Buster: The camera is shaking like he’s got Parkinson’s. Your acting needs work, kid.】
【User: Gramps Orange-Slice: Great, now I know where the streamer lives.】
Yu Duanhong didn’t have the heart to read the bullet comments.
He adjusted the camera angle so it could capture both his terrified face and the door where the constant knocking originated.
Then, he grabbed his phone and fixed it to a selfie stick, preparing to use it as a second camera angle.
Thump, thump, thump!
The knocking came again.
This time, it was accompanied by the faint sound of fingernails scratching against the wood, a sound that made one’s scalp tingle.
“It’s here, it’s here! That ghostly thing is back!”
Yu Duanhong turned to the camera, giving a performance of a lifetime. His voice carried a sob and an unmistakable terror.
The reaction was so authentic that even the first batch of viewers was stunned.
【User: Ghost Sheep Phantom Pregnancy: Wait, that look on his face... that doesn’t look like makeup.】
【User: Forging City Veteran: Something definitely happened at the Hive Apartments. The police tape was only taken down this afternoon.】
【User: Script Appraiser: Marking this. Let’s see where this goes.】
The number of viewers began to climb slowly, quickly reaching three digits!
There were over a hundred people watching live!
Yu Duanhong pinched his thigh hard, his eyes glued to the door.
“I... I don’t know what’s out there.”
“I just got back from giving my statement at the police station, and then it appeared outside. It’s been knocking the whole time!”
Thump!
This time, the knock was exceptionally heavy. Dust shook loose from the doorframe.
Immediately after, the doorknob began to turn—extremely slowly.
“Ah!”
Yu Duanhong let out a short cry and recoiled, nearly knocking over his chair.
【User: My Bed Moved, I’m Out: Holy s**t, the doorknob moved! I saw it!】
【User: Humble Sinner: Maybe the lock is just broken? Don’t scare yourself, streamer.】
【User: Supernatural Fanatic: Recording this! If this is real, it’s insane!】
【User: Pro-Gamer Elder: Call the police! Are you stupid? Why are you streaming? Call the police!】
【User: Womb-Vegan Baby: The streamer’s acting is so fake. This is definitely scripted, right? His expression is so forced and over the top.】
“The police, right, call the police!”
Yu Duanhong seemed to wake from a dream, fumbling for his phone.
However, the signal bars on the screen were empty; even emergency calls wouldn’t go through.
“There’s no signal! I had one just a moment ago!” He wiped away non-existent tears, his voice sounding like he was on the verge of a breakdown.
The viewer count quickly surpassed a thousand, and the bullet comments flooded in.
【User: Signal jamming? Classic horror movie trope.】
【User: Doesn’t look like acting. That hand tremor is too real.】
【User: If the phone has no signal, what are you using to stream?】
【User: The doorknob stopped, look!】
Sure enough, the slowly turning doorknob had abruptly stopped after rotating about a third of the way.
Yu Duanhong’s heart pounded wildly. As his fear receded slightly, excitement surged again.
He didn’t dare breathe. The room was deathly silent, save for the hum of the computer fan and his own heavy panting.
Yue Shi, still hidden, whispered in Yu Duanhong’s ear: “This ghost seems to be a rule-based ghost. It has a killing rule. Find its rule, and as long as you don’t trigger it, you’ll be safe—you might even be able to counter it.”
Yu Duanhong covered his mouth, tears welling in the corners of his eyes, and gave a slight nod.
Such a subtle movement looked very strange to the viewers in the stream.
【User: Who is he nodding to? Is there someone else in the room?】
【User: Definitely self-directed. He has an accomplice.】
【User: Look at his eyes; he doesn’t look like he’s faking it. If this is acting, he’s better than any of those idol actors.】
Thump, thump, thump.
The rhythm of the knocking changed. It became slower, more sluggish, with longer intervals between each sound, carrying a heavier sense of pressure.
At the same time, the temperature in the room began to drop noticeably.
Yu Duanhong’s breath turned into white mist.
【User: It’s getting cold? How the hell did he pull that off?】
【User: Is this for real?】
【User: Look through the peephole, streamer! Don’t be a wuss!】
“Look through the peephole?” Seeing the comment, Yu Duanhong shook his head frantically and whispered into the microphone:
“No, I can’t. If I look, I might die. Don’t forget all those horror movie characters who die because they did exactly that.”
“But... if you guys really want me to look, I guess I could... if you help give me some courage.”
His hint was obvious.
The bullet comments were full of insults, but plenty of gift effects started appearing.
Looking at the big rockets being sent, Yu Duanhong struggled to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching upward.
The production value of this stream wasn’t actually that great because it was so rushed. He hadn’t expected the data to be this good; the viewer count was still rising.
Yue Shi’s voice rang out again, urging him: “Don’t worry about these petty gains. The comments are right. Use your phone camera to look through the peephole. Don’t look with your eyes directly. You need to deduce the ghost’s killing rule.”
‘Petty gains?’ Yu Duanhong roared inwardly with indignation. A poor man like him relied on these ‘petty gains’ just to survive!
“I’m still a bit afraid to look,” Yu Duanhong said, pretending his legs were weak.
The complaining comments increased, but the gifts kept flowing.
Seeing this, Yu Duanhong clicked his tongue. Was this the secret to traffic? Manipulating the audience’s emotions was the way to get tips!
Yue Shi shot him a glare. Was this guy a natural-born performer?
Seeing the audience grow impatient and having milked enough gifts, Yu Duanhong finally stood up and walked forward.
He held up the phone with the camera on, moving like an elderly person with bad joints, inching toward the door as if looking at it too closely would cause it to explode.
The viewer count soared to five thousand. Gifts continued to trickle in, though most comments were now urgings and tense screams.
The phone lens slowly approached the peephole.
The screen showed a blurry darkness before it gradually focused.
On the other side of the peephole, the hallway sensor lights seemed to be broken; it was pitch black.
But in that thick darkness, a darker humanoid silhouette could be seen standing silently outside, almost pressed against the door.
Suddenly, the head of the silhouette seemed to move.
Immediately after, an eye abruptly appeared in the camera’s view!
It was not the eye of a living person.
There were no whites; the entire socket was a murky, bloodshot, dark yellow. The pupil was a tiny black dot, staring straight ahead as if it could see through the peephole and the phone screen into Yu Duanhong’s very soul!
“Ah!”
Yu Duanhong was startled.
This time, he was genuinely terrified. The phone flew out of his hand and hit the floor with a clatter, screen-up. The stream view spun wildly before settling on the ceiling.
But that horrific eye had already been broadcast clearly to everyone!
The live room instantly exploded.
【User: I saw it! The eye! That was not a human eye!!!】
【User: Recorded! That is definitely the real deal.】
【User: I’ve called the police. Hang in there, streamer!】
【User: Run! Get out through the window!】
【User: Run where? This is the third floor and there are security bars!】
【User: Keep the gifts coming! Give the streamer some courage!】
【User: Are the people above me all hired shills? It’s just an eye. It could be a prop!】
Gift effects flooded the screen again. The viewer count broke ten thousand and was still skyrocketing.
Screenshots and screen recordings were spreading across the internet at an incredible speed.
Yu Duanhong clutched his chest, panting heavily. The moment he made eye contact with that eye outside the door, he felt a lethal sense of crisis.
In that instant, he truly thought he was going to die.
Fortunately, he didn’t.
Yue Shi had mentioned this was a rule-based ghost with a killing rule. Yu Duanhong didn’t know the different types of ghosts, but with his intelligence, he understood what Yue Shi meant.
He turned his head and whispered, “Is making eye contact with the ghost the killing rule?”
“It could be,” Yue Shi said calmly.
“Huh?” Yu Duanhong was dazed. Then, thinking of something, he hurriedly asked:
“Could looking at the ghost indirectly through the stream also trigger the rule? The viewers won’t be in any danger, will they?”
Yue Shi replied, “Wouldn’t that be for the best?”
Yu Duanhong choked on his words. Kind-hearted as he was, hearing this made him feel uneasy.
But that unease quickly vanished.
He picked up his phone and scrambled backward on all fours, away from the door.
He slumped onto the cold floor, his back against the bedframe, shaking like a leaf in the wind.
The stream camera remained pointed at the door.
It was very quiet outside now.
But this silence was more suffocating than the constant knocking; it was the dead calm before a storm.
Time passed second by second, each one feeling agonizingly long.
The viewer count was nearing thirty thousand, and the bullet comments were scrolling at a frantic pace. Some believed, some doubted, some offered advice, and some were just there for the show.
Yu Duanhong’s nerves grew tighter and tighter.
Bzz... zzt.
The sound of faint, intermittent static suddenly came from the computer speakers.
The screen flickered irregularly.
Then, a distorted, warped voice began to speak through the speakers in fragments:
“Open... the door...”
“Let... me... in...”
“Don’t hide... inside... I know... you’re home...”
The ghost had hacked into his computer!
Yu Duanhong felt like he’d been struck by lightning; his pupils dilated in shock.
The bullet comments in the stream went blank for a split second before resuming at an even more frenzied pace.
【User: What’s happening? Is the computer infected?】
【User: An evil spirit. It’s definitely an evil spirit.】
【User: Streamer, did you piss someone off?】
【User: Answer it! Maybe you can communicate. Use love to change it! If not, use a hook to warm it up!】
Yu Duanhong froze for two seconds, then tilted his head slightly. He screamed hoarsely, “No! I can’t answer!”
“I can’t let it in! I can’t respond to it in any way!”
It was unclear if he was talking to himself or responding to the comments.
Yue Shi stood by, acting as a narrator as he summarized: “Making eye contact, opening the door, responding to its call—all of these can be killing rules.”
“A ghost’s curse can even spread through media. Television, the internet—they are all its channels of transmission. Your current stream is no exception.”
As if to prove Yue Shi’s point, several bullet comments with a bizarre format and a blood-red color suddenly drifted across the stream. The sender IDs were strings of garbled code:
【So noisy.】
【I see you all...】
【Open the door...】
The comments flashed by, but they made every viewer’s skin crawl!
【User: What were those comments?】
【User: Did it enter the live room?】
【User: Where are the moderators? Ban it!】
An atmosphere of panic began to spread through the stream.
Those blood-red comments were not something that could be done with mere special effects.
Some people were so frightened they left the stream immediately.
Others insisted it was a script or some high-tech effect. Even if there was a ghost, they believed it couldn’t possibly travel through the network to get them.
Thump!
The knocking sounded again, softer than any time before.
After this knock,
Creak.
The door was pushed open a crack.
A wave of frigid, rotting stench seeped in through the gap.
Yu Duanhong watched as the gap grew wider. His mouth hung open, wanting to scream. He prayed desperately that with Yue Shi there, he would be okay.
The door swung fully open.
Darkness began to invade the room.
The ghost was inside!
Before Yu Duanhong could ask Yue Shi for help, he felt a freezing sensation on his ankle, as if he were being gripped by a dead man’s hand!
The chill spread upward, his muscles turning stiff and his blood freezing.
A wave of cold, dead silence surged violently into his body!
“Aaaagh!”
Yu Duanhong felt an excruciating pain all over; his soul felt as if it were being torn apart.
In the live room, the viewers could only see Yu Duanhong’s face contort into a hideous mask as he convulsed and struggled on the floor, his eyes rolling back as he let out a harrowing scream.
Patterns resembling livor mortis began to emerge on the surface of his skin.
【User: He’s convulsing! Is he having a seizure?】
【User: Look at his skin! He’s starting to look more and more like a corpse!】
【User: I’ve already recorded this. This is definitely a haunting.】
Yue Shi watched the scene silently, and the black cat on the windowsill watched with great interest.
“If you can endure this, you will obtain the supernatural power you’ve been dreaming of.”
“If you can’t, you will simply become a corpse.”
Rate on N.U.
