The person Liu Xianxian had been waiting for never showed. She walked along the campus path like a lost soul, oblivious to
"If she goes back to her dorm, what then? Stand guard outside?" Chen Ge surveyed the area around the female dormitory. There were spots where someone could hide, but if he got caught, he'd definitely be labelled a pervert.
He watched Liu Xianxian enter the first floor of the female dormitory and disappear into the hallway.
"Following her in is obviously out of the question, but leaving now would probably mean failing the trial task." Chen Ge mulled it over, then headed toward the sealed teaching building. "According to the phone ghost's description, Ma Ying and Liu Xianxian leave the dorm every night around one or two in the morning. Today should be no different. I just need to find a spot where I can see the dormitory entrance and lay low. Nobody will come to the sealed teaching building at night. The view is wide open, and I won't have to worry about security guards spotting me."
Chen Ge slipped into the sealed teaching building with practiced ease. He went up to the second floor, tossed his backpack on the ground, and silently watched the female dormitory.
"This feels a bit inappropriate, but nobody would think someone would be lurking in an abandoned teaching building."
Leaning against the wall, Chen Ge pulled out his phone and started scrolling. "I should've brought the white cat along. Keeping watch like this alone is way too boring."
He looked up his haunted house online, skimmed through the latest reviews and articles, then logged into a short-video platform.
The moment he came online, his inbox was overflowing. When he opened it, he was surprised to find that most of the messages were people demanding updates on his comic.
A quick glance showed that five or six out of every ten messages were related to the horror comic.
"
After uploading Yan Danian's comic to the platform, Chen Ge had never bothered checking on it again. He hadn't expected to find over ten thousand comments beneath the comic today.
Many people mistakenly believed Chen Ge was the comic's author, praising him for being so multi-talented — not doing livestreams or short videos, yet still managing to draw such impressive comics. They called him a real "ghost" of a talent.
"It's a good thing I didn't upload everything at once." Chen Ge scrolled through his phone. He had organized Yan Danian's comics into a collection called "Ghost Guests of the Spirit Building," and what he'd uploaded the other day was only the first part.
He checked his inbox, skimming through it broadly. No comic publishing houses or comic platforms had reached out.
"Looks like my influence isn't quite there yet. But having so many people enjoy it — Yan Danian should be pretty happy about that."
Chen Ge thought of Yan Danian's standard middle-aged man's face of quiet despair — so dejected that even ghosts couldn't bear to bully him. It was honestly a bit pitiful.
He took the comic album from his pocket and softly called out Yan Danian's name.
Perhaps it was because the previous few times, Chen Ge had always summoned him at the most dangerous moments, completely shattering whatever beautiful visions of life Yan Danian had harbored.
This time, after calling out more than a dozen times, the middle-aged man sitting in the corner of the comic album finally turned around — very reluctantly.
"Uncle Yan, look at how many people love your comic! Over ten thousand comments, and they're all begging you to update! They're all your fans!"
Chen Ge held his phone screen in front of the comic album, scrolling through the comments. For the first time, an expression crossed Yan Danian's face — he looked genuinely startled.
He could hardly imagine that his comic would one day be enjoyed by so many people.
"Uncle Yan, don't get too excited — this is just the beginning. More and more people will come to love your work. Countless comic platforms and publishing houses will come calling. Your comics might even get adapted into anime and movies."
Chen Ge didn't actually know much about any of this. He was just talking it up, painting a beautiful blueprint for Yan Danian, all to set the stage for what he was about to say next.