Both Qin Guang and Chen Ge's livestream rooms had been shut down at the same time. Now that Chen Ge had returned, Qin Guang had vanished without a trace, and a flood of curious viewers poured into Chen Ge's short-video comment section, desperate to know what had happened that day.
The true situation inside the Third Ward was something Chen Ge hadn't even disclosed to the police, let alone his audience. He typed out a few replies and was about to go offline when his phone suddenly buzzed — it was Liu Dao calling.
They had been partners once, after all, so Chen Ge didn't decline. He exited the short-video app and picked up.
"Chen Ge, has the platform notified you about when your livestream room will be unbanned?"
"No notification yet, but it should be soon. What's up?" For Chen Ge, livestreaming was just a promotional tool — he didn't really care about it one way or the other.
As the Haunted House grew more famous, he increasingly wanted to turn the livestream into a community hub for fans — posting daily clearance progress, teasers for new scenes, and the like.
"Here's the thing — our last collaboration was a huge success, and I want to do something similar, but easier to control." Liu Dao clearly hadn't given up. His last partnership with Chen Ge had been the most vindicating day he'd had since his falling out with Qin Guang's studio.
"What kind of show?"
"I'd send a few of my top streamers into your Haunted House to do a live broadcast. What do you think — feasible?" Liu Dao was eager to hear Chen Ge's answer. He had probably done all his homework before making the call.
"Pretty feasible, actually, but the timing's not right. I'm afraid you'll have to wait a while longer."
"Don't worry, we'll pay you a number you'll be happy with. Besides, the livestream would be free promotion for you too, right?" Liu Dao was a smooth operator who had clawed his way up through every corner of the industry. He understood Chen Ge's concerns. "And you don't need to worry about us leaking the interior scenes. They'd be streaming on their phones the whole time — the image quality won't be great."
"I don't have enough haunted scenes ready yet. Let me think it over and get back to you."
Chen Ge didn't want to expose too many details about certain scenes in the Haunted House, so he politely declined.
There were plenty of walkthrough guides for the Haunted House floating around online, but reading a guide and actually being there were two completely different experiences. Some terrors could only truly sink into your bones once you had lived through them.
He had barely hung up and put the phone down when it rang again.
At first he assumed it was Liu Dao calling back, but a glance at the caller ID told him it was Captain Yan.
"Every time he calls me, it can't be good," Chen Ge muttered — unaware that the man on the other end had a similar reaction when he saw Chen Ge's name light up his screen.
"Captain Yan? What's up?" Chen Ge was lying on his bed, perfectly relaxed. He was in a good mood tonight.
"I heard from Captain Li that you went to Lincun Village last night?" Compared to Chen Ge, Captain Yan's voice was stone-cold serious. Whenever he spoke in that tone, it meant things were dire.
"Is something wrong with that village?" Chen Ge sat bolt upright. He hadn't paid much attention to Lincun Village at the foot of the mountains before — he had even been planning to trek deeper into the range and check out the Living Coffin Village.
"Stay away from Lincun Village. Especially avoid going there at night." Captain Yan seemed to have already spoken with Captain Li and knew about some of the things Chen Ge had encountered there.