The moment Quan Han realized something was wrong, not only did the footsteps vanish, but all the other faint rustling sounds around her also abruptly disappeared.
It was like someone had hit the pause button on the entire world—terrifyingly quiet.
She could even hear herself nervously swallowing.
Even though the room was clearly empty, it suddenly felt extremely crowded, like it was packed with people. A wave of unexplainable unease surged through her.
Quan Han’s face turned pale. She stood frozen, at a complete loss, and her urge to take off the blindfold hit its peak.
Her heart pounded against her chest, harder with each beat. She took a deep breath and cautiously lifted her foot to continue walking.
She had already decided—once she tapped Yu Wenlin, she’d be done with this game.
But before she could even reach the next corner, a sudden cough echoed in her ears.
The sound was faint and hoarse. It seemed to come from everywhere, yet also right beside her.
Quan Han’s face went completely white. A chill ran up her spine, and her legs gave out.
Why was there coughing again?! Wasn’t it her turn to walk?
That realization made cold sweat pour down her back. Her legs felt like they were made of lead, and she could only stand there in helpless panic, each second more torturous than the last.
Gritting her teeth, she made up her mind and quietly lifted her blindfold.
At first, everything was pitch-black. But as her eyes adjusted, the faint light filtering in through the curtains revealed a blurry black figure not far in front of her.
The figure looked like a man—tall and upright—just standing there silently, almost blending into the darkness. He had no idea how long he’d been there, but his entire presence exuded danger.
Quan Han’s breath hitched. Her pupils shrank in disbelief.
That... wasn’t Yu Wenlin.
It definitely wasn’t Yu Wenlin’s build!!
She instinctively stepped back—but then another cough rang out, right in her ear.
This time, she heard it clearly—the cough came from directly above her!
With her neck stiff, she slowly tilted her head upward.
In that instant, countless distorted human faces emerged from the ceiling.
The faces looked like they were pushing out of the ceiling itself, twisted and vague, with nothing but two gaping black holes for eyes—eyes that were bleeding.
Their movements were strangely uniform—they all covered their mouths with their hands, coughing now and then.
As soon as they noticed Quan Han’s gaze, their coughing stopped instantly.
A few seconds later, all those faces suddenly reached down toward her.
Her piercing scream rang out through the entire room.
The others immediately ripped off their blindfolds. With a click, the lights snapped on—and there was Quan Han, collapsed on the ground, unconscious.
No one knew what had happened. They quickly ran to find Yun Xialan and Wei Yangbing to ask what they saw on the monitor.
But both of them looked completely lost. They said nothing had happened. They had just heard the scream from inside the room and realized something was off.
However, when they all checked the footage together, they saw that after one round, the monitor glitched—and suddenly, a shadowy black figure appeared in the previously empty corner.
In the video, the man’s face was obscured. He kept his head down, walking slowly among them, and even made contact with every single one of them.
And this eerie figure stayed in the footage for quite a while. Not one of them had noticed anything strange at the time.
“But I heard coughing every single time,” Qi Mai frowned, sounding puzzled. “Wasn’t the whole point that not hearing coughing was the red flag? But I heard coughing every time.”
At that moment, Zhang Can suddenly spoke. “No, if it were really four people cycling through, each of us should’ve coughed. But now that I think about it, I only remember coughing once at the very beginning. Did any of you cough more than that?”
At those words, everyone suddenly realized—they had only coughed once too.
So all the other coughing sounds… weren’t from them.
In such an extremely dark and dangerous setting, their minds had been stretched so tight that they missed this detail.
They had subconsciously thought that hearing coughing meant everything was fine.
But they never expected… the coughing the whole time hadn’t come from people at all.
That ghost had been messing with them the entire time!?
【Hahaha I’m dying, they just kept playing tag with the ghost and didn’t notice a thing.】
【But seriously, that scared the sh*t out of me at first. All those faces… and they can even mimic human voices?】
【And that black figure Quan Han saw—wasn’t that Yu Wenlin, right?】
【Nope, Yu Wenlin’s not that tall. I’m telling you, that had to be Bo Jingmo.】
【Wait, for real? That was actually Bo Jingmo?? He didn’t even attack them?】
【Normally Bo Jingmo wouldn’t waste time playing games with them. I really thought he was about to go on a killing spree. But he just scared them?? Bo Jingmo, are you losing your edge or what?】
Back in the studio dimension, the filming system also fell silent after watching the scene unfold.
Something definitely felt off.
Just then, a woman’s amused voice rang out: “What’s the matter? Nervous?”
Yu Li leaned her head lazily against the couch, looking completely unsurprised by Bo Jingmo’s actions. She yawned, voice relaxed and unbothered.
“Really? I just thought you seemed kind of tense. I was wondering—if Bo Jingmo speedruns the script, what will your audience even watch?”
Hearing that last part, the filming system nearly crashed.
It tried to play it cool. 【What are you talking about? Speedrunning doesn’t affect me at all. It’s you players who won’t get your points.】
Yu Li raised an eyebrow, voice teasing and amused. “Is that so? But don’t players get points by completing the mission?”
The system froze internally. Wait… did this woman already figure it out?!
It quickly tried to change the subject, dropping the act altogether. It straight-up exposed its bias.
【Bo Jingmo can’t complete this mission. He’s the ghost. He can’t upload any videos. There’s no way he can meet the follower goal.】
Yu Li’s eyes gleamed coldly. She sneered. “Who says you need to upload videos to gain followers?”
…What did she mean by that?
But it didn’t take long before it understood exactly what Yu Li meant.