"Did you guys notice the background music seems to have changed?" Bai Buhui looked at the still-bickering visitors and spoke for the first time. His voice was deeply unpleasant, sounding utterly indifferent to everything.
"That means the game has started, right? Time is limited — let's stop dawking at the entrance and get inside to find those oil paintings." The short-tempered little guy walked at the very front, eyes filled with nothing but curiosity and not a shred of fear.
"Buhui, don't mind him. This brother of mine speaks his mind." Liu Kang stood in the middle of the group, the sheer number of visitors giving him a sense of security. "You can call him Little Ghost. The tall, skinny one next to him is Big Ghost. And the girl behind him wearing the short skirt is Ghost Girl. These three do outdoor adventure livestreams on our platform — they've slept in graveyards before, did a broadcast from a morgue."
"Livestreamers doing outdoor content?" Bai Buhui glanced at the short guy and nodded. "I think I've watched their streams when I was bored. Pretty boring, honestly. What about the rest?"
"Everyone who came with me this time is seriously impressive." Liu Kang gave Buhui a brief rundown of the people around him.
"The cameraman's nickname is Fierce Man. He used to be a dedicated cameraman for wilderness survival shows. Black bears, Siberian tigers — none of them fazed him, let alone some little haunted house."
"The one holding the phone is my assistant. He's not exactly brave, but he's ride-or-die with me. We go everywhere together no matter what."
"The bald one is Liu Guangming — the bravest guy on our company's security team. And this guy's luck is insane. He's brushed past death more than once — bystanders got hurt, but somehow he came out completely fine every time."
"Those three students are paranormal enthusiasts. Don't let their age fool you — they've produced several dare-challenge videos that are huge on foreign websites. They know all kinds of campus legends and supernatural stories inside and out. There's basically nothing that can scare them."
Liu Kang introduced everyone with great enthusiasm, clearly in high spirits. But Buhui's frown only deepened as he listened, and in the end he didn't even wait for Liu Kang to finish naming the three students — he cut him off directly: "A challenge broadcast live across the entire internet, and this is who you brought?"
"Isn't this enough? They're all professionals." Liu Kang was rather smug, wearing a smile and maintaining a confident, unflappable look in front of the camera.
"Professionals? Them?" The corner of Bai Buhui's mouth twitched slightly. He really wanted to bring up that time Virtual Future Park had explored
After a moment's consideration, this was being livestreamed across the whole internet after all, and Buhui didn't want Liu Kang to lose face, so he didn't say it outright. Instead, he offered a gentle suggestion: "Just forget about completing the tasks. This haunted house is honestly pretty boring. Just wander around and get through this dull hour, and that'll be enough."
Bai Buhui was Virtual Future Park's representative. The reason they had agreed to take on Chen Ge's haunted house challenge was that Chen Ge had made such extravagant claims — as long as even one of them could still speak normally, or even say something against their will that the haunted house wasn't scary, they would win.
It was their own mouths — they could say whatever they wanted, couldn't they?
Eleven people taking on the challenge at once. Virtual Future Park believed the odds of losing were virtually nonexistent.
"Bro, are you kidding me? We're here to bust a fraud. If we don't complete the mission perfectly, the viewers won't be happy." The short guy looked down on Buhui a little, finding his tone annoying and passive-aggressive.
"You don't understand…"
"Little Ghost is right. If we don't complete the mission, how can we call it debunking?" The woman in the short skirt cut in before Buhui could finish. She had a great figure, dressed revealingly, and kept finding reasons — intentional or not — to walk in front of the camera, letting Liu Kang's viewers get an eyeful.
Little Ghost was hot-tempered, Ghost Girl was flashy, and Big Ghost, the tallest of the three, was the quiet type who barely said a word.
Bai Buhui had his own plan, but nobody would listen to him, so he had no choice but to appeal to Liu Kang: "Liu Kang, we need to play it safe. We just need to stall through these sixty minutes, however we can."
"Sure, whatever you say." Liu Kang's attention was entirely on his livestream viewer count — nearly a million concurrent viewers. He was absolutely thrilled. At his level, it was extremely difficult to grow his follower count by a significant margin, but this debunking challenge had shown him hope.
The flood of "Kang Bro is such a man" comments filled his screen, lifting Liu Kang high. He truly felt invincible now — nothing in the world could scare him.
"Since we've come in to take the challenge, we can't just skip the missions entirely. But we shouldn't rush headlong into things either, or we'll end up being led around by the nose by the haunted house owner." The three students from the back of the group walked up. The one in the lead stood over six feet tall, neatly dressed in casual attire. "Allow me to introduce myself — my name is Lan Dong. I'm an occultism enthusiast. I've been fascinated by ghosts and spirits since I was a kid…"
"Nobody asked what you're into, and you don't need to tell me." Buhui was in a terrible mood. Looking at the teammates around him, he even felt a surge of frustration. "I shouldn't have trusted Liu Kang. I should have brought my own people in. No — I should have replaced everyone with staff from our park."
"Fine, then I'll keep it brief." Lan Dong shifted his tone. "We need to find thirteen oil paintings within one hour. This set stretches farther than the eye can see — it's clearly enormous. If we want to complete the mission successfully, we should split up and cover more ground."
"Absolutely not!" Buhui nearly swore. "There's safety in numbers. Nobody splits up — we all stay together!"
"I was just making a suggestion. No need to get so worked up." Lan Dong was a little annoyed himself. He glanced at Liu Kang. "Kang Bro, your friend here is quite intense, huh?"
They hadn't even started exploring and Liu Kang's group was already on the verge of a falling-out, hardly inspiring confidence. The five visitors trailing at the very back conferred among themselves for a while before finally approaching.
"We've heard this haunted house is terrifying. Would it be okay if we explored together? You could take us five along." A senior student from Hanjiang Medical College spoke softly. He and Lan Dong were both young, so it was easier to communicate. "Of course, no problem. But honestly, this haunted house is just so-so. It's all in your head…"
Liu Kang cut a righteous figure in front of the camera, but before he could finish his lecture, Buhui spoke up again: "We can't bring them along!"
"Didn't you just say there's safety in numbers?"
"One of these five might be an employee of the haunted house. Taking them with us is too dangerous." Bai Buhui was one of the designers behind Virtual Future Park's horror attractions. With information from his colleagues, he knew all of Chen Ge's tricks.
"If you don't want us along, fine. No need to make up scary stories." A middle-aged man among the five visitors took the woman beside him by the hand. "Yue, let's go. I don't need to tag along with these people anyway."
The middle-aged man led his girlfriend and walked away. The two medical students looked reluctant but didn't cling to Liu Kang's group either, hurrying to follow the couple out.
The group of five was now down to a single person — someone who, in the sweltering heat, wore a thick coat and long pants, bundled up head to toe. Hands stuffed in his pockets, he didn't join anyone and chose a direction on his own, disappearing down the path alone.
"Buhui, relax. Even if they are haunted house employees, so what?" Liu Kang put on a carefree show in front of the camera, though a note of displeasure toward Buhui had already crept into his voice. After finishing his remark, he turned to the camera to explain: "My buddy here doesn't have much of a stomach for scares, and with the whole internet watching live today, he's a little on edge. Please bear with him, everyone."