Are You Alive?

Lu Ban was woken by his phone ringing.

He usually slept well, sleeping straight through until dawn and never carrying fatigue or stress over to the next day. Even the doctor said he was very healthy.

He glanced at his phone. It was the second call. The caller had good timing, and Lu Ban answered quickly.

"Hello?"

The caller ID showed his college class monitor, a top student and a girl. Embarrassingly, Lu Ban remembered that over four years of college, he probably hadn't said more than thirty sentences to her—and plenty of those had been "Okay," "Sure," and "Got it."

After graduation, Lu Ban had barely kept in touch with any of his classmates. Only this class monitor sent him a message every couple of weeks to check in.

"Is this Lu Ban? It's Feng Yu. You haven't run into any trouble over there, have you?"

Hearing that soft, delicate voice, like a nightingale singing, Lu Ban frowned slightly.

His situation probably counted as having run into trouble, but not entirely.

"No. What's wrong?"

"You really haven't run into any trouble?"

Her voice sounded somewhat cautious, as though she knew something.

"If I had to mention something, I got caught up in a nude chat scam before. But I keep myself clean, so I didn't fall for it. I even reported them afterward. The police said I did a great job."

Pfft—

Lu Ban heard a soft laugh from the other end of the call.

"Looks like you really are fine. When I saw that video, I thought you'd actually gone looking for death. Thinking about it now, those were all special effects, right?"

Her cheerful voice left Lu Ban slightly confused.

"Video? Ah. You saw it?"

Only then did Lu Ban remember the video he had uploaded that morning. He hadn't expected a classmate to see it.

It was kind of embarrassing.

It felt like having an embarrassing wish-fulfillment novel he'd posted on a fiction site discovered by his mother, who happened to be a Chinese teacher, and then having her pick apart every awkward sentence.

"Yeah. It was pretty scary, but also pretty interesting. By the way, are you still in Jiangcheng?"

"I am."

"Want to come out for a meal sometime? We haven't seen each other since graduation, have we?"

"Yeah, if I have time. Definitely next time!"

After absentmindedly agreeing, Lu Ban stared blankly at his phone screen after the call ended before remembering what his old class monitor had mentioned.

It definitely wasn't because she had secretly been in love with him all along, so she'd been following his Old Days Video Network account and saw the video before calling to ask about him.

That left only one answer.

He turned on his computer and opened Old Days Video Network. The moment the homepage loaded, he saw the automatically selected hellish thumbnail at the very top of the trending recommendations.

Old Days Video Network used a big-data algorithm, and human recommendations carried very little weight. If it had made the trending homepage now, it was one hundred percent because the views and other metrics had skyrocketed.

Looking closely, Lu Ban was stunned to find that his video had already reached 1.5 million views and over ten thousand comments—and less than half a day had passed.

Had this video really taken off?

"Seriously?"

Curious, Lu Ban clicked into it to see how those ten thousand-plus comments were praising him.

I watched this on the subway and nearly had to be carried away. Why are people these days so damn cruel, always making this kind of thing?!

No living person could possibly come up with something this hellish!

I was still sleepy, but after watching this, I'm wide awake. Gotta go, my closet moved. I need to check it out.

Any brave warriors willing to try this game tonight?

May all evil spirits disperse. No offense intended!

I finished it. This was obviously edited with special effects. It wasn't scary at all. The main thing is that the idea was good. It must have been made by a professional team.

No, I have to give this video the full support package and share it too. I can't be the only one getting tricked!

Early in the morning, I was under my blankets watching this video with great interest. I couldn't help touching my wife's cold hand beside me. Wait, where did I get a wi—

I just want to ask one thing: is the person in the video still alive?

Most comments like these were from people who had been scared by the video and then turned around to curse Lu Ban out, or who cursed him while sharing, liking, and tipping the video to boost it in repayment to society.

Seeing all those comments insulting him, Lu Ban wasn't angry at all. He even wanted to laugh.

For a creator of horror content, the audience's fear was the best reward. If he could scare a few more people into cursing out loud, then he could be said to have accumulated a little merit.

Besides, Lu Ban's video didn't rely much on sudden scares or disgusting shots. It was almost entirely atmosphere-driven, so its horror factor wasn't all that high. Instead, that became an advantage for spreading it.

A huge number of frightened viewers, unwilling to become the only victims, kept sharing it and pushing up its popularity, trying to get it onto the charts and trap even more people.

That was the direct reason the video had exploded in such a short time.

Lu Ban's Old Days Video Network private messages were already overflowing. He casually looked through them and found people simply repeating the video comments, people checking whether he was still alive, people asking about the game's details so they could try it themselves, and even talent agencies asking about collaborations.

Dear Mr. Motionless, we would like to invite you to star in our web movie.

There were even talent scouts.

Lu Ban ignored them for the time being.

After washing up and returning to his computer, he found the view count had increased by nearly another fifty thousand.

At this rate, the video would reach five million views by tomorrow at the latest. It wasn't even noon yet, and most people had watched it while slacking off on their commute. Lu Ban guessed the real spike in views would come that night.

In that respect, Lu Ban was rather grateful to his Friend Under the Bed.

"..."

Lu Ban couldn't help looking beneath the bed again. Sure enough, there was nothing there.

After thinking about it, he picked up a broom and mop and cleaned his room inside and out. He even mopped beneath the bed until it was spotless, leaving the whole place looking brand-new.

When he came back and refreshed the page again, the view count had reached 1.6 million.

The process of refreshing it was rather addictive.

But his account had only gained a little over two thousand followers. Compared to the major Uploaders on Old Days Video Network with millions of followers, it was rather unimpressive.

Some students might ask: why were there so many views, yet so few new followers?

As the information Lu Ban had previously looked up explained, a video going viral depended on many accidental, unrepeatable factors. Reaching a million views required the march of history itself.

For a newcomer like him to upload a video and achieve this much, honestly, it was just good luck.

Follower count, meanwhile, reflected hard strength. It symbolized the audience's recognition of a creator's production ability. A single supernatural horror video couldn't make Motionless explode in popularity along with it.

Lu Ban didn't need to worry about that for now. The system mission required five million views, not one million followers.

Since something good had happened for once, Lu Ban didn't stay cooped up at home. He decided to go out for a walk, have lunch, then visit the library and find some books related to the supernatural to improve himself.

He went downstairs and entered the braised chicken rice shop at the entrance to his residential complex. After ordering a medium serving of braised chicken, he was about to take out his phone to check his video's views when he noticed the young girl at the next table staring at him.

So Lu Ban raised his head and stared back at her.

Stare—

The two looked at each other for over ten seconds. No sparks of romance flew, but she suddenly jumped up and asked with a strange expression on her face.

"...Are you alive?"