Will Definitely Come in Handy Next Time

"Two million views already. That was fast."

Lu Ban shifted his gaze away from the shoulder of the girl he had just seen. The twisted, bizarre system text abruptly vanished, turning back into the print on her clothes.

While eating, Lu Ban had discovered that he did not need to open his phone. He only needed to check his system panel to see the view count, so he casually glanced at it before leaving.

The weather was nice and the sunlight bright. Lu Ban quickly forgot about the girl he had just encountered and took the subway to Jiangcheng City Library.

Jiangcheng City Library was only one subway stop away from the old streets in central Jiangcheng City. A little farther on were North Lake and Bell Mountain, making it a quiet retreat amid bustling, prosperous streets.

There was a university near the library, so quite a few youthful college students could be seen moving about the library in twos and threes, studying.

Lu Ban bought a pen and notebook at the entrance. After registering, he entered the library, picked out two books on folklore, then thought for a moment before heading to the film section and borrowing two analytical works on film and television. He found a seat with good sunlight and began reading seriously.

From this angle, with this lighting, and with that face, he had the fresh, youthful beauty of Fujii Itsuki's first encounter with Fujii Itsuki in Love Letter, enough to make any innocent young girl's heart flutter.

Provided one ignored what Lu Ban was writing.

"Principles of Horror: ① Horror is a program. Information is delivered in stages to lay the groundwork for horror; ② The audience does not need to identify with the protagonist; ③ Do not explain things. Once there are causes and consequences, it stops being scary. Horror is unreasonable."

This was a theory of horror he had learned in class in his previous life, proposed by the famous screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka. The man had long hair and looked thoroughly artistic. His representative works were familiar to everyone, such as Ultraman and Digimon. He was especially skilled at slipping horror into works meant for children.

He had written around twelve principles of horror. Lu Ban only remembered six of them; the rest were conclusions drawn from what he had experienced last night.

The reason he was studying this was because he felt that the director profession in his system might really be that of a horror film director.

Perhaps in the future, he would have to explore all sorts of strange and terrifying places, then turn those experiences into short films.

If that was the case, Lu Ban naturally had to study how to make people feel even more frightened.

There were not many dedicated people like Lu Ban these days.

He flipped through this world's books on film theory and found that its development of horror and thriller films was indeed somewhat behind. Most were still stuck in the formula of Western horror films with blood flying everywhere, and the East Asian model of psychological horror had yet to take shape. There was great potential in making horror films.

Lu Ban was not studying these things solely to make movies. More importantly, he was preparing for possible future missions.

What people valued most was a sense of security, while the things Lu Ban encountered stripped that sense away, dragging people into the unknown and producing fear.

The best way to eliminate fear was to face it. Lu Ban firmly believed that.

Just as he was reading intently, however, the area beside him was not very quiet.

A girl was seated next to Lu Ban, holding a textbook on engineering mechanics. Earphones hung from her ears, and her phone was playing a video.

Normally, this would not have been worth noticing. Aside from Lu Ban, everyone sitting at his table was female. There was nothing unusual about it.

However, the girl's earphones were rather poor quality, leaking sound.

Lu Ban glanced over and saw that the video on her phone screen was precisely his own.

"Hm?"

Lu Ban frowned, realizing that things were not so simple.

Because the audio from the girl's earphones was definitely not the original audio from his video.

Though it was a little impolite, Lu Ban still watched for a while.

Wait.

There was something wrong with this video too.

In the video the girl was watching, Lu Ban kept getting up from the bed and lying back down, over and over, as though the footage were skipping. Combined with the clown's face appearing from time to time and Lu Ban's slightly stern expression, it was not scary at all. Instead, it seemed rather ridiculous and funny.

More importantly, the background music was Good Luck.

Lu Ban felt that no matter how terrifying a video was, pairing it with Good Luck probably would not make anyone afraid.

Clearly, some technically skilled Uploader had turned Lu Ban's video into a ghost remix video.

It had only been half a day, yet people were already riding the trend this fast.

Lu Ban felt that the video industry was truly too competitive these days.

"Excuse me, could I ask what this video you're watching is called?"

He lightly tapped the girl beside him on the arm and waited until she took off her earphones before politely asking.

"Ah, huh? Oh, this, this is—eh???"

The girl was flustered, apparently not expecting Lu Ban to strike up a conversation. But as she fumbled about, she realized that this handsome guy beside her looked a lot like the person in the ghost remix video she had just been watching!

She looked at her phone, then at Lu Ban.

They were completely identical.

It felt like listening to Loop and then running headlong into Teacher Ge Ping, or looking up from a Golden Fertilizer ghost remix to see Captain Tosen, or discovering that while a professional team was brainwashing you, six men in black suits had lifted up your chair.

It was hard to put into words.

"That's me."

Lu Ban guessed why she was so surprised and promptly answered.

The other women at the table all turned to look over, perhaps thinking Lu Ban was some kind of celebrity.

"May I take a look?"

Lu Ban asked politely again.

"Y-yes, of course."

Still dazed, the girl handed her phone to Lu Ban.

Lu Ban took her phone, then directly picked up one half of the earphones and put it into his ear before pressing play. The two of them each listened through one side of the earphones, forming the sort of scene that only appeared in romance dramas set during student days.

Envious, jealous, resentful.

The girl seemed to sense the gazes of the other women around them.

Lu Ban did not care at all. He watched the ghost remix video carefully to the end, removed the earphones, and returned the phone to her.

How should he put it? Seeing himself turned into a ghost remix did not leave Lu Ban entirely unmoved.

It was quite interesting, actually.

Just by repeating a few simple shots and pairing them with contrasting music, it somehow stopped being scary.

Thinking carefully about it, last night's mission did not seem to have required that he refrain from playing music.

If he had played Good Luck at the time, perhaps he would have been safer?

Lu Ban felt that he had learned something.

This would definitely come in handy next time!

Besides mastering a brand-new technique for dealing with strange incidents, Lu Ban had made another discovery.

He saw the words in the film theory book twist and transform into what looked like mission progress.

Mission Requirement: Publish a video work online and obtain enough views to complete the mission.

Publish a video work: 1/1

Obtain views: 3318037/5000000

"From this moment onward, let the world feel terror."

His view count had surged dramatically during the time he spent studying.

And the trigger seemed to be that ghost remix video?