"Speak up, everyone's waiting."
"Give me a moment." Qing Ming was sweating from anxiety. He had come up with several excuses, but none of them held water.
Every second spent beside Chen Ge was torture for Qing Ming. He looked at Chen Ge with a pitiful expression, hoping the man would show some mercy—only to see Chen Ge pull out his phone and open the livestream.
"The livestream ban has been lifted. Perfect timing." Right in front of over a million viewers, Chen Ge played the evidence once more and "reconstructed" the entire sequence of events.
Chen Ge was a visitor who had come alone to challenge the haunted house at Virtual Future Park. Six haunted house staff members ended up unconscious, while he walked out perfectly fine.
The whole thing reeked of suspicion, but no matter how you looked at it, the real victim should have been Chen Ge.
Going up against a haunted house solo, on someone else's turf—he was the fish on the chopping board. Even if he had wanted to fight back, there was nothing he could do.
Yet reality was just that absurd. Virtual Future Park's employees had gone to Chen Ge's haunted house to cause trouble, and the haunted house's veteran fans had been placing bets on how many visitors would pass out this time.
Then the next day, the tables turned. Chen Ge went to visit Virtual Future Park's haunted house, and the internet was buzzing with bets on how badly he would be terrified. Who could have guessed that in the end, it was the actors who got knocked out in droves.
Those veteran haunted house fans learned their lesson from this whole ordeal: it didn't matter whether Chen Ge was entering his own haunted house or someone else's—as long as it was a haunted house, someone was bound to pass out. The man carried a daze aura like it was a permanent buff.
Chen Ge was chatting happily with the viewers when Qing Ming was on the verge of collapse. Fortunately, another manager from Virtual Future Park arrived just in time to rescue Qing Ming.
After much pleading and cajoling, they finally managed to pull Chen Ge inside the venue. Looking at the still-streaming Chen Ge, every one of them felt like crying but couldn't produce the tears.
"Sir, you've finished your tour. Our employees went to your haunted house to cause trouble, and they're despicable, yes, but they've already been punished for it. Once Liu Kang wakes up, we'll urge him to issue an apology statement as soon as possible." Qing Ming had already capitulated. All he wanted now was to get Chen Ge out of here as quickly as possible.
"So you're saying all the blame falls on Liu Kang alone?" Chen Ge stared at Qing Ming with a smiling expression. "I agreed to visit your haunted house alone, and that still wasn't enough for you—you brought in six actors to gang up on me. How ruthless can you people be? Is this something any decent human being would do?"
"The main issue is that you merged over forty scenes at once. We never anticipated a situation like that. They went in with you precisely to protect you in a roundabout way." Qing Ming racked his brain but couldn't figure out how to answer Chen Ge. He was normally a pretty sharp person, but whenever he faced Chen Ge, he found himself completely tongue-tied. "It's almost noon—how about we go grab some lunch first? Everyone cools down, and we discuss what to do this afternoon?"
"It's not even eleven yet. What lunch?" Chen Ge grabbed his phone and pulled Qing Ming over beside him. "Don't be nervous. I'm not an unreasonable person. As long as you give me a satisfactory answer, I won't hold a grudge."
Chen Ge took off the wristband. "Here, I'm returning your equipment first. I remember you said earlier that the clearance score would be displayed on the big screen outside."
"That's right." Qing Ming took Chen Ge's wristband and entered his personal ID into the central computer. A moment later, a number appeared that nearly short-circuited his brain—4,200 points!
"What's my clearance score?" Even Chen Ge was quite curious. Each completion of a Hell-level scene rewarded a hundred points, and he had merged forty scenes in one go.
"The computer seems to be glitching. I need to restore the data..." Before Qing Ming could even touch the computer, Chen Ge grabbed his hand.
"Do you have any shame at all?" Chen Ge could actually understand Qing Ming's position. The current number one on the leaderboard had a score of 105 points, which meant that without cheating internally, Virtual Future Park would need a very long time before Chen Ge's name disappeared from the rankings.
"Our allotted tour time is sixty minutes, and you've far exceeded that, so this score doesn't count." Qing Ming spread his hands. "We follow the rules here."
"It doesn't count because I went over time?" Chen Ge released Qing Ming's hand. "Then give me back the wristband."