Embrace Science, Reject Superstition

As he explored the game bit by bit,

Song Ren soon discovered what made it special. It was not merely the Chinese funeral-culture backdrop within the game.

More importantly, Song Ren found that "Firework" lacked one of horror games' signature devices: sudden scares.

Jump scares—the kind where nothing happens for the first two seconds as you look into a mirror, but on the third, a piercing scream suddenly erupts beside your ear and a dead-fish-eyed ghostly face appears in the reflection.

For horror games, this kind of design could be nauseating if overused. But if cleverly placed at the right moment, it could produce a startlingly effective result.

Many of Nebula Games' previous horror titles, such as Resident Evil and even the DEMO-only PT, had used it at certain points.

But in "Firework," at least so far, Song Ren had not encountered anything like that. The game's fear mainly came from its oppressive atmosphere and his own paranoid imagination frightening him.

After playing in that environment for a while without ever finding anything truly terrifying, Song Ren's fear greatly diminished. At the same time, as he gathered more and more clues, his attention shifted to the game's story itself.

He also gained a deeper understanding of the game's setting.

The Lin Lixun he played possessed a very unusual constitution, allowing him to see and hear things ordinary people could not.

Put simply, he was a medium. In Zheng Ming's eyes, Lin Lixun had simply fainted on the floor during the earlier scene, but in reality, Lin Lixun had seen something no ordinary person could see.

"So much for embracing science and rejecting superstition. There's nothing scientific about this!" Song Ren grumbled, recalling the painted slogan he had seen at the entrance to the village.

He controlled Lin Lixun as he