Once he finished recounting everything, Heshan on the other end of the line was dumbfounded. This straightforward college student who had clawed his way out of a mountain village and into medical school never imagined that the first time he actually spoke to an online friend, they'd be discussing a family massacre.
"You're inside that haunted house right now?"
"Yes."
"The landlord next door might be the murderer from five years ago?"
"Mm."
"I'm… a little overwhelmed. Give me a second to think." Heshan clutched his phone. The two ends of the call might as well have been two completely different worlds. His dorm was alive with the roar of PUBG and League of Legends, while the other side was dead silent, choked with a suffocating kind of tension.
"Boss, I really think you should call the police. I know you don't have proof, but compared to filing a false report, your own life is what matters most."
Heshan was telling the truth, but Chen Ge had his own reasons. The haunted house survival challenge was a task handed down by the Black Phone — he was required to spend the night here. But if the police got involved, there was a very high chance the task would fail. This involved unlocking a brand-new horror scenario, and just giving up felt like a waste. "It's not time to call the police yet."
"The main thing right now is your safety. How about this—" Heshan paused, then continued. "Turn on your phone's location sharing, and don't hang up the whole night. I'll listen for any sounds on your end. The moment anything happens, I'll call the police for you immediately."
Keeping the line open was a decent approach. Chen Ge glanced at his phone — the short-video page was still open, and a recruitment ad for PUBG streamers was cycling on screen.
An idea sparked. Better than just keeping the call going, Chen Ge thought of something more reliable. "I could livestream from the haunted house. If something happens to me, the viewers in the chat can call the police for me, and the footage saved from the stream would serve as the strongest evidence. If nothing goes wrong, even better — I can use the livestream to attract more attention and build a reputation for my haunted house."
That one short video from last night had brought him nearly a thousand new followers, and the next day his haunted house visitor count had surged several times over. Chen Ge had already tasted how sweet that could be.
Besides, his entire reason for entering the haunted house was to earn the task reward and help his haunted house grow. A livestream would let him complete the mission while keeping himself safe, all while drawing in traffic and gaining followers. Why wouldn't he do it?
"Fragrant wine still fears a deep alley. I don't have the money to blanket the market with ads, but I can leverage livestreaming and short videos to draw more eyes."
What Chen Ge lacked was distribution and an audience. Content? He wasn't worried about that in the slightest.
That guy from the production studio had an unpleasant tone, but he'd said one thing right — modern people crave faster entertainment and stronger thrills. And across the entire platform, was there anything more compelling, more thrilling, than a livestream of someone staying overnight in a haunted house while going head to head with a killer?
Traffic first, content king. Compared to every other streamer out there, Chen Ge had one advantage none of them possessed.
Everything he filmed, everything he experienced — it was all real. No scripts. Not even he himself knew what would happen next.
He was completing the Black Phone's tasks. The livestream was simply along for the ride, recording it all.
"Heshan, I'm hanging up now. Come to my livestream channel in a bit — the room name is the same as my short-video profile ID."