Lin Hanzhi was ahead of Vivian. Pale-faced, he glanced behind her and said evenly, "Nothing else. Just the railing."
Only after hearing him did Vivian dare turn around. She immediately saw that her dress had caught on a broken section of rusty railing. She let out a great sigh of relief and yanked her skirt free.
Seeing the yang flames on everyone's shoulders flickering and showing signs of weakening, Qi Gu said, "If you're scared, you can recite the incantation and form the hand seal as you go up. There's nothing on the stairs right now."
He had checked before coming upstairs.
His calm tone unconsciously made the frightened group regard him as their pillar of support. Just hearing his voice reassured them.
Lin Hanzhi was the first to follow his instructions. His voice was cool and magnetic; even listening to him recite the incantation was a pleasure.
Vivian and Mu Xingchen readily followed suit.
Panicking, Sha Chuan couldn't help regretting his earlier refusal of Qi Gu's suggestion.
He was second from the back, with Mu Xingchen behind him.
He wasn't sure whether his mind was playing tricks on him, but he kept feeling that besides Mu Xingchen's firm footsteps, there was another faint set behind him, following very closely. At times, its icy breath almost brushed his neck.
It has to be Mu Xingchen! he told himself.
But soon, that chilly breath grew increasingly distinct...
Then he finally realized something.
He was a step higher. How tall would the person behind him have to be to breathe against his neck?
Unless...
Unless it wasn't human!
No, I have to shake it off!
Thinking this, Sha Chuan came up with a plan. He abruptly quickened his pace, passed Vivian and Qi Gu ahead of him, and went straight to the front, reaching the landing between the first and second floors before the others.
Let it bother the people behind me instead. With that thought, Sha Chuan turned and used his glow stick to illuminate the wall in front of him, intending to feel his way farther upstairs.
The glow stick lit up the wall before him. A huge mirror actually hung on its peeling, grayish-white surface. Though covered in dust, it still dimly reflected human figures.
Sha Chuan saw his own face in the mirror... and a fleeting glimpse of a ghastly pale profile beside it!
It hadn't left. It was still following him!
Terror gripped Sha Chuan. He felt chilled to the bone, as though he had suddenly been plucked from the summer heat and thrown into an icy lake.
When Sha Chuan had squeezed past him earlier, Qi Gu had sensed the cold, sinister aura on him and seen the malevolent ghost, its spirit twisted and stretched out very, very long.
It probably followed us after we went upstairs. What a pain.
Damn it, couldn't I earn some money without any trouble for once?
Failing that, couldn't money just float down from my ceiling?
I'm not greedy. Five thousand a day would do.
The corners of Qi Gu's mouth drooped. A speck of spiritual light the size of a dust mote appeared on his fingertip, and he flicked it gently.
The spiritual light landed directly on the malevolent ghost, which fled in an instant.
He hadn't dispersed it outright because his intuition told him something was wrong with it.
Sha Chuan was too frightened to do anything. When Mu Xingchen passed him and patted his shoulder, he jumped again.
"Why aren't you moving?" Mu Xingchen asked.
"Y-you can't see what's in there...?!" Sha Chuan asked.
Mu Xingchen followed his gaze and said casually, "It's just a mirror, isn't it? It's not reflecting any ghosts."
Deathly pale and dripping with cold sweat, Sha Chuan gathered his courage and looked into the mirror.
At some point, the ghostly figure beside his neck had vanished.
But he hadn't done anything!
Naturally, the live chat exploded over this as well.
[Holy shit, what was that aaaaaah]
[Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, aaaaaah]
[Unless I saw wrong, wasn't there a ghastly pale ghost face in the mirror just now, right beside Sha Chuan's face?]
[So why are these things only bothering Sha Chuan... I just checked, and the others didn't seem to have any on them]
[I have a bold theory. Is it possible that the hand seal and incantation Qi Gu taught them actually work, and this happened because Sha Chuan didn't learn them...]
[Did you see that?! I just saw a speck of light fly from Qi Gu's hand toward that thing, and then it disappeared!]
[I saw it too. Qi Gu really knows his stuff!]
[Me too, but my friend said she didn't see it, so I must have been seeing things]
It had happened in a flash, and only some viewers had noticed. They began speaking up for Qi Gu in the livestream chat.
Most viewers still didn't believe them.
Outside, among the production crew, Old Ke was utterly stunned by what he had seen.
"Director Song, d-did you see that ghostly figure just now..." Old Ke's voice trembled as though he had been thrown into a nest of cockroaches.
"I did. Old Ke, you've really outdone yourself this time. I've never seen such an intricate prop mechanism before. You can't see any trace of a prop at all." Song An waved a hand. "Once this episode is over, I'll give you and your team a bonus!"
"N-no! That thing isn't a prop!" Old Ke's face was ashen, and cold sweat poured off him in the sweltering midsummer air.
Song An caught his implication, but still clung firmly to science and asked, unwilling to give up, "Didn't you take a day off? Could your apprentice have come up with something himself?"
Just then, Old Ke's apprentice returned. He had run the length of a street before finally finding an open convenience store and buying a bag of cold drinks to share with the crew.
Suddenly hearing Song An mention him, the young man offered them drinks with a sunny smile. "Director Song, Master, have a cold drink. What were you saying about me?"
Song An hurriedly pressed him into a seat in front of the camera feeds and pulled up the image of the ghost face flashing in the mirror. His tone was grave. "Xiao Li, is this a prop you set up?"
Xiao Li was a little nearsighted and couldn't initially make out what was in the picture, so he leaned in close. Once he saw it clearly, he cried out and jerked back, nearly toppling backward.
His face turned livid. "It wasn't me. We never designed anything like this, and current technology simply couldn't achieve something on this level!"
"Did you change the mannequins' positions on the first floor?" Old Ke asked, remembering the matter.
His apprentice had always been well-behaved and obedient, rarely taking matters into his own hands. Earlier, when Song An had suggested that his apprentice might have rearranged the mannequins afterward, he had already had his doubts.
"What mannequin order? Master, I wouldn't dare move anything you put in place. The day I watched the set, I just tested all the props and made sure they worked properly. I didn't do anything else." Thinking of what Old Ke was implying, Xiao Li's expression grew even uglier.
"You mean... the mannequins' order changed?"
At first, only Xiao Li's expression had changed. But now, hearing that the mannequins had moved, his entire body began shaking like a leaf.
Both older men present were shrewd enough to notice. Song An immediately pressed him. "What do you mean? Is there something wrong with those mannequins?"
"We didn't buy those mannequins... We saw a few in the acupuncture room, so we dressed them and brought them downstairs to use. The workers moving them complained about how heavy they were, but I just thought they wanted a raise, so I didn't give it any thought." Xiao Li curled into a ball, shivering with cold despite the midsummer heat.
Then-what exactly was wreaking havoc inside?
All three of them already knew the answer.
Before you continue