"I don't know why the comedy we shot ended up breaking horror-movie records, but we were genuinely trying to make a comedy from the start." Chen Ge forced a rueful smile. It was one of those happy accidents — and the fact that the original author had become a ghost was the biggest stroke of luck. Not only that, the ghost was extremely satisfied with Chang Gu's work, believing he had captured the very soul of the comedy.
The original author was happy, the director was happy, the audience was happy, the production company was happy — everyone was happy. Chen Ge still felt a little weird about it, but gradually he chose to accept the situation. "Director Luo, this is just a concept teaser. If your friend wants to go into deeper collaboration with us, we can sit down and have a proper talk."
"He's been thinking the same thing. I'll send you his contact info later — you two can work it out between yourselves."
"Sounds good."
"Seize this opportunity. The film blowing up is excellent publicity for us. If the web series can sustain this kind of buzz going forward, it'll be more effective than any ad campaign."
Director Luo hung up. Meanwhile, the online legend of this comedy-that-was-categorized-as-horror continued to spread.
Chen Ge had originally hoped to leverage the haunted house's popularity to boost the web series, maybe trick a company or two into coming to the table for partnership talks. What he hadn't expected was that within just a few hours, the attention the film attracted would start feeding back into the haunted house itself.
People who had never touched a haunted house or a horror game were suddenly showing interest. After all, a haunted house that could produce a comedy was practically unheard of anywhere in the world.
The comedy produced by the haunted house gradually became a meme on the internet. The countless "goofs" in the footage were treated as masterpieces, even being listed as required study material in horror-film analysis.
That casual, offhand sense of dread — the more you thought about it, the scarier it got — kept viewers tossing and turning well past midnight. More and more people started dissecting and discussing the comedy.
The original author's source material was rock-solid. Every clue and psychological shift had been rendered with meticulous precision, and Chang Gu's filming was nothing short of perfect. The nightmare world and the real world ran on two parallel tracks, and the abundance of imagery and metaphor could be interpreted in countless different ways.
All told, the online comedy produced by the haunted house had become a massive hit, and countless viewers were eagerly anticipating the next installment.
Chen Ge had been up all night but was still wide awake. He and Chang Gu took turns checking every major video platform — the numbers on every site were still climbing.
The haunted house employees were excited too. They didn't fully grasp just how popular the short had become, but every time they spotted themselves in the footage, they beamed with pride.
The staff chattered away nonstop, and listening to them on the side gave Chen Ge chills down his spine. During filming, many of the employees had snuck in to join the fun, appearing in all sorts of ways — the possibilities were limitless. A face hidden in a cup of tea, a squat shadow lurking beneath a desk, a severed hand floating behind a door…
None of these details were noticeable unless you watched very closely. As the online buzz continued to intensify, Chen Ge decided to get ahead of any potential backlash and openly admitted on his social media that he had hidden one hundred easter eggs throughout the short, challenging viewers to find them all.
The hype was already through the roof, so there was no point "playing dumb" anymore. He told the audience flat out — every single subtly terrifying shot they noticed was an easter egg deliberately planted by the haunted house.
That announcement pulled in yet another wave of viewers.
"This blew up way too fast. I'm completely unprepared."
Chen Ge stared at the explosion of messages in his inbox. Some people were organizing group trips to the web series' filming locations. Others were planning to set foot inside a haunted house for the very first time tomorrow, purely because they wanted to meet the lead actor. There was even a talent agency with an incredibly sharp nose for trends that sent him a message saying they wanted to sign笔仙 as a performer.
There were too many messages to even begin replying. Chen Ge glanced at the sky, which had already turned a pale gray, and put his phone away. "Another all-nighter."
After grabbing a brief nap, Chen Ge got up in a hurry to open for business.
Today, Xu Wan and Xiao Gu and the rest of the staff arrived unusually early. The moment they saw Chen Ge, they rushed over. Xiao Gu was the most worked up — he was practically stuttering as he held out his phone. "Boss! Did we really shoot this movie? When I scrolled past it last night, my brain just short-circuited."
"We really did."
"When did you even film it? That's insane!"
"What do you think I've been doing every night when I don't sleep? Filming this thing took an enormous amount of effort and a ton of time. Thankfully, looking at the results, every bit of it was worth it." Chen Ge cut off further questions from Xiao Gu with a wave of his hand, telling them to go get into makeup and prepare for the day's visitors.
At nine in the morning, New Century Paradise opened its gates and visitors poured in. While they queued up, the haunted house's comedy was the center of conversation — even two completely unrelated groups of strangers could end up chatting animatedly about it.
"Today's crowd is even bigger than the last few days. What's going on?" Uncle Xu, worried something might go wrong, hurried over to find Chen Ge.
"Uncle, don't you go online? We put out another ad, and it's working pretty well." Chen Ge helped sell tickets outside, watching one visitor after another file in, feeling genuinely happy from the bottom of his heart.
But he hadn't let the excitement go to his head. While selling tickets, he was also keeping a close eye out for anyone who might come to cause trouble.
Today, the number of people coming to attempt the four-star Spirit-School of the Dead scenario had multiplied several times over. This scenario could accommodate at most twenty visitors per run, and nearly every session was packed to capacity. That caught Chen Ge's attention.
The visitors drawn in by the web series were mostly first-timers — they needed to start from the one-star scenarios and work their way up. The ones tackling Spirit-School of the Dead, on the other hand, were mostly seasoned veterans.
That in itself was nothing unusual, but Chen Ge noticed a particular group buying tickets repeatedly, running Spirit-School of the Dead over and over again without pause, as if they had a personal vendetta against the scenario.
After paying heavy prices — mentally, financially, and physically — this large group managed to explore roughly seventy to eighty percent of the Spirit-School of the Dead. Of course, they were still a long way from clearing it.
To protect the visitors, Chen Ge pulled the most brutally difficult tasks out of the lottery box — things like finding all thirteen oil paintings, locating the president of the Red-Clothing Society, uncovering the secret of the old principal's disappearance, and so on. These tasks had been designed specifically for people who came to tear the place apart. Regular visitors would almost never draw these "instant death" assignments.
The group drew only easy and medium-difficulty tasks, but even that alone pushed them to their breaking point. After the last person collapsed, people within the crowd stepped forward to carry them out.
It was clearly a team trying to conquer Chen Ge's haunted house — but they had wildly underestimated just how difficult it was.
After the crew that kept hammering Spirit-School of the Dead finally left, a different group showed up in the afternoon. They appeared to be sharing intelligence. The maps and scare-point locations that the first group had exchanged "lives" for provided enormous help to the ones who came after.
These unusual visitors also caught the attention of the haunted house staff. Old Zhou even ran over specifically to ask Chen Ge whether they should ramp up the difficulty.
Chen Ge flat-out refused. Out loud, he lectured Old Zhou that a game only becomes compelling when clearing it is actually possible.
In reality, what he was thinking was that he wanted the group to grow complacent — that way, the Prenatal Cursed Realm scenario would truly have its moment to shine.
The haunted house opened at nine in the morning and closed at six in the evening. Spirit-School of the Dead was sold out for every single session. That group's desperate exploration never quite managed to clear it, but they seemed to have produced a complete map of the Spirit-School of the Dead's east and west campuses.
As long as you had the map, knew the scare-point locations, and didn't draw some unlucky task involving a hidden scenario, clearing it was only a matter of time.
The sky had gone dark. After the last visitors left, Chen Ge sat on the steps outside the haunted house's entrance.
"The comedy buzz from the haunted house shoot was still climbing, and this was just a concept teaser. If they actually kept releasing web episodes going forward, then not just the haunted house's comedy — even New Century Paradise itself would become famous. Ma Feng was probably feeling threatened, which is why he was so desperate to clear my haunted house and blunt my momentum." Chen Ge glanced at the revenue figures on his ledger and felt the corners of his mouth start to curl upward.
The Spirit-School of the Dead could hold twenty visitors per run, with each session lasting roughly forty minutes — though most visitors rarely made it the full forty. Averaged out, each run came to about thirty minutes.
Tickets were forty yuan, so Chen Ge earned eight hundred per session. Today alone, the Spirit-School of the Dead had run twelve sessions.
Normally, almost nobody challenged four-star scenarios like this. Just gathering enough people took forever. The real money came from the low-star scenarios. The high-star ones were reserved for hardcore players — compared to earning revenue, they were more of a symbol.
"Hope those people come back tomorrow."
After tidying up a bit, Chen Ge slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed to the puppet workshop. He paid the owner a portion of the cost upfront, then promptly shooed him out the door.
Locking the front gate behind him, Chen Ge summoned his vengeful-ghost employees and put them to work helping him craft the plastic black-fog monsters.
They worked deep into the night. Chen Ge then had Tang Jun bring the Route 104 spirit bus around and transported all the completed black-fog monsters back to the haunted house.
Chang Gu had come up with new ideas and was in the process of prepping a new short. Chen Ge, together with a handful of employees who had nothing else to do, started setting up the Prenatal Cursed Realm scenario.
After inspecting everything several times over, he didn't step out until four in the morning, once he was certain there were no hidden hazards.