At seven in the evening, after taking two wrong turns, Liu Dao finally pulled up to their destination with
"Get out. I'll take you to meet the rest of our team." Liu Dao parked the car and ducked into the adjacent woods.
"Are we practically in the county area already?" Chen Ge checked his backpack, grabbed everything, and climbed out of the car.
The highway hadn't been maintained in years. It was riddled with potholes and littered with loose stones, as though someone had deliberately tried to block this road and keep people from passing through.
The trees lining both sides of the road appeared to have been planted deliberately long ago — tall, straight, and densely overgrown.
Stepping among them, the canopy blotted out the moonlight entirely, letting not a sliver of light through. The effect was faintly eerie.
Night had fully fallen. Chen Ge switched on his flashlight and followed Liu Dao, walking for over ten minutes without emerging from the woods.
"Bro, you're not lost, are you?" Chen Ge looked around for a while without spotting any sign of habitation.
"Don't worry, don't worry." Liu Dao made a phone call, then veered toward the other side of the woods. "This area is extremely complex — there's nothing to use as a landmark, so you can get turned around in the blink of an eye. When you head into the hospital alone for the stream, keep your bearings. It's best to mark the tree trunks as you go."
A few more minutes of walking, and they finally emerged from the woods. On a gentle slope ahead, they spotted a large civilian-grade tent.
"This is the only open ground nearby, and the spot with the best signal." When the people inside saw Liu Dao approaching, they all came out.
"Liu, what took you so long? We're already short-handed as it is — you trying to work me and Sister Li to death?" The complaint came from a young man with a buzz cut whose head resembled a teapot lid. He looked to be in his early twenties at most, casual and easygoing.
"Calling someone who's directionally challenged and then sending him to pick people up — that's asking for trouble." The speaker was Sister Li. Her skin was rough, and her build was sturdier than most men's.
To break the awkwardness, Liu Dao pulled Chen Ge forward. "This is the streamer who's going solo against the Third Psychiatric Hospital — Chen Ge. There's still some time before the broadcast, so walk him through the streaming equipment and shooting techniques."
"He's Chen Ge?" Sister Li pushed Liu Dao aside and looked Chen Ge over together with the buzz-cut youth. When they took in his current appearance, a flicker of surprise crossed their eyes.
Isn't this supposed to be a spirit-hunting stream? Why'd he bring a chicken?
They really wanted to comment on his getup, but since it was their first meeting, they held their tongues.
"I'm Zhang Ping, and this is Sister Li. Tonight the two of us are handling the live broadcast relay." Zhang Ping led Chen Ge inside the tent, which was packed with equipment. He explained the uses of the various items, then had Chen Ge open the black leather case and walked him through filming techniques and precautions step by step.
Outside the tent, Sister Li watched the scene unfold, growing uneasy. "Lao Liu, are you sure this kid can pull it off? We burned the recommendation slots of two streamers with a hundred thousand followers just to get him a Tier 2 page promotion. The platform is clearly afraid of ticking off Qin Guang, and they're obviously not betting on us."
Liu Dao lit a cigarette. Platform recommendation resources were divided into five tiers — Tier 1 being the best, Tier 5 the worst. A Tier 2 page recommendation was the best they could possibly secure for a newcomer.
"He gets one Tier 2 recommendation. Qin Guang is running three Tier 1 recommendations simultaneously, plus a banner ad on the front page. They're not even in the same league." Sister Li had never been optimistic about Chen Ge, and that feeling only intensified after meeting him in person. To become a breakout streamer, you either had to be strikingly beautiful, possess an utterly distinctive speaking style and personal flair, or have some extraordinary talent. Chen Ge seemed to have none of those things. He gave off an air of complete ordinariness. Neither flashy nor eccentric, he looked calm and reserved — more like a surgeon than a streamer.
"You're only seeing the surface. If you actually talked to him for a while, you'd discover there's something uniquely captivating about this man. He has a completely different understanding of horror and terror compared to ordinary people." Liu Dao recalled his first conversation with Chen Ge. During that exchange, Chen Ge had led him around by the nose — he'd had no initiative whatsoever — and in his mind he'd been screaming that he'd met a true "psycho."
After reflecting on it later, he realized their ways of thinking simply didn't operate on the same plane.
"I'm still not convinced. This time, our investment is likely to go straight down the drain." Sister Li sighed. "There's another thing, too. When we helped him secure recommendation channels, we're definitely going to earn Qin Guang's grudge. The platform is pushing Qin Guang toward becoming a top-tier streamer right now. Once he becomes the platform's flagship, the rest of our guild's streamers will have an even harder time."
"Show some faith in Chen Ge, will you? To put it bluntly, those last two streams of Qin Guang's were just copycats. The one we recruited is the real deal." Liu Dao gestured for Sister Li to keep her voice down.
"It's not that I don't believe in him — there's no script, no props, no actors. What's the point of him just streaming bare like this? Are the viewers going to buy it?"
"I'm not going to argue with you. Just don't let anything go wrong tonight. Do your job, and that's all I ask." Liu Dao composed his expression and entered the tent. He greeted Chen Ge, pulled out a laptop, and opened a saved webpage. "Chen Ge, take a look at this."
Chen Ge initially thought it was a script, but after reading through it, he realized it was a collection of news articles.
"We designed scripts ourselves in the past, but it's easy for them to feel contrived and stiff. Better to just let you wing it." Liu Dao pointed at the articles on the screen. "These are the three topics most discussed by netizens about the Rehabilitation Center. First — the missing director, whose fate remains completely unknown. Second — the strange noises coming from the dormitory building late at night, as if someone still lived inside. Third — the mysterious blood-written messages that appear from time to time. You might see them at night, but when you return during the day, everything is back to normal. If you do your investigation stream along these three angles, the effect should be better."
Chen Ge nodded and carefully read through all the articles, forming a general picture of the strange occurrences at the Rehabilitation Center.
"Let's eat first. We can go over the details afterwards." Sister Li pulled several boxed meals out of an insulated container and distributed them to everyone present.
At nine-thirty in the evening, Liu Dao stepped outside to make a few phone calls. When he returned, he told Chen Ge they could begin.
Zhang Ping took out the streaming equipment piece by piece from the black leather case while Chen Ge made his own final preparations. He opened his shoulder bag, enduring everyone's looks of complete bewilderment, and snatched the jacket out from under the white cat's paws to put it on.
The jacket still carried the little cat's scent. Once inside the dormitory building, the white cat would only follow him if he was wearing it.
"Why are you all staring at me?" Chen Ge stuffed the cloth doll into his jacket pocket and let the white cat loose. "It's perfectly normal to bring a rooster, a doll, and a white cat on a spirit-hunting stream, isn't it?"