STB Chapter 38: Haunted

This is machine translated and all copyrights belong to the author. Please note that the translator might take creative liberties for better readability. Thank you for reading.

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Jian Hua stood in the crowd, looking unwell.

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The quiet, dormant fine white filaments suddenly sprang to life.

The photography studio was large, and they had been slowly growing for seven days, still inconspicuous even after becoming visible.

Even when they all emerged, to human eyes, it just seemed like the lights suddenly dimmed (being blocked), a layer of dust rose on the green screen, and the nearby boxes accumulated some strange white substance.

Jian Hua, standing amidst the crowd, instinctively reached out to steady himself as everything around him seemed to shake as if an earthquake were happening.

He quickly glanced at Li Fei and saw a similarly serious expression on his face.

Was the Abandoned World descending?

In the studio, people remained looking up at the lights, frozen in time. The shaking of objects wasn’t severe; the last time it was like the sky and earth were collapsing, with everything about to blur into afterimages. This time, it felt like the entire studio was swinging like a pendulum.

Li Fei quickly regained his composure. He was about to go to Jian Hua but suddenly stopped.

Simultaneously, Jian Hua raised his hand in a decisive gesture to stop him.

They both noticed an unusual sound in their ears — a single syllable stretched infinitely, a chaotic noise, like a stuck tape. The sound fluctuated, oddly coinciding with the frequency of the studio’s shaking.

People’s movements weren’t completely halted; it was like a slow-motion replay.

“Is the overlap point unstable?” Li Fei murmured to himself. He could see smoke-like black matter constantly overlapping with the ground and the studio’s ceiling. When the black matter increased, people’s movements tended toward stillness, and as it was drawn away by an invisible force, intermittent breaking sounds reached their ears.

The only unaffected elements were the mycelium spread throughout the studio, eagerly competing to reach the areas where the black matter converged.

Jian Hua couldn’t see this, but he noticed the mycelium’s abnormal activity.

“Not good!” Jian Hua warned. The mushrooms were interested in only two things: superhumans and monsters.

Their current eagerness was a prelude to hunting. Jian Hua knew this because the mycelium always reacted like this near Li Fei. Even though Jian Hua, their host, had a clear will not to let the mycelium devour anything, they still couldn’t help but twitch.

The flow of the black matter was irregular, and even Li Fei couldn’t decipher its mystery. The mycelium, however, seemed certain. They wrapped around the black matter, probing it for a while, then seemed to identify a weak spot. They quickly converged, grabbing a cluster of black matter and aggressively “digging” into it, forcibly expanding an originally shapeless black mass into a large hole.

“Your ability is opening the Abandoned World,” Li Fei exclaimed in shock.

Jian Hua couldn’t see the black matter, but he could see the mycelium’s industrious “hard work.” Hearing Li Fei’s words, his face changed color, and he exertively controlled the restless fine white filaments to retreat: What’s so good about that world full of monsters?

The mycelium was dissatisfied.

Very dissatisfied. A place full of delicacies was just in front of them, and their master was insisting on closing the door they had just opened!

After struggling for two minutes, the mycelium reluctantly obeyed Jian Hua. But they didn’t return “empty-handed.” Li Fei watched as a figure appeared in the black void, a person dragged over by the mycelium.

Simultaneously, the black matter lingering nearby rapidly flowed towards that black void, much like the remaining foam in a washbasin rushing toward the drain.

The shaking lessened, and the sounds around became clearer.

Li Fei tensed up, realizing the abnormal event was about to end, and reality would return, meaning everyone would see the mycelium and…

It was too late to warn now, but luckily, Jian Hua didn’t need reminding; what Li Fei saw, he could infer from other clues.

The mycelium, with its dragged-in trophy, suddenly changed direction, heading towards Jian Hua.

Jian Hua had just controlled the mycelium to change color and hide when a multitude of voices flooded his ears.

Director Lu’s scolding to the props team was only partially uttered, the first syllable barely escaping his lips.

The crew members who looked up at the suddenly dimmed lights hadn’t even fully processed their thoughts.

“Ah!”

A bloodstained face appeared in mid-air in front of the third male lead.

He screamed and fell backward to the ground, trembling and desperately moving away with his palms.

The second scream was from the pop star, whose high notes easily soared octaves, revealing his vocal prowess as a male singer.

Li Fei looked at Jian Hua, who unemotionally withdrew the now-invisible mycelium.

The bloodied body, limbs limply hanging, was then manipulated by an invisible force, first touching the ground with its legs before collapsing softly at the exact spot where the third male lead had been standing, motionless.

The sound of the assistant director’s dropped megaphone was louder than the body’s fall.

This scene, akin to a horror movie, plunged the entire studio into seconds of dead silence, followed by even more frantic screams.

Just moments ago, they were filming, with a countable number of actors on camera and at least twenty pairs of eyes watching. How could a person appear out of nowhere in such a bizarre manner?

Was it a person, a ghost?

Alive, or dead?

Fear gripped everyone’s hearts, with no distinction between men and women.

They were either paralyzed with fright or screaming and running away.

Tripping over wires, bumping into others, or knocking over cameras — they couldn’t care less!

The cameraman was the first to snap back to reality, heartbrokenly rushing to embrace the toppled camera. Director Lu, panting heavily, grabbed the megaphone from the ground and bellowed, “Enough!”

The studio was large, and the commotion attracted the attention of people from other crews.

Those trying to flee were blank-minded until Director Lu’s stern reprimand made them instinctively stop, their hearts still racing.

Li Fei collapsed onto a chair, with Assistant Lin slumped at his feet, both appearing extremely shocked. It looked as though Assistant Lin accidentally blocked Li Fei’s path, causing him to stagger back and trip over the chair.

Among the actors close to the “falling corpse,” the female supporting actress swayed and fainted.

The third male lead’s face was distorted as if he had been punched, making wheezing sounds and moving as if he had forgotten how to walk or crawl, just dragging himself along.

Assistant Director Luo, who rushed over, almost laughed at the third male lead’s absurd state.

The third male lead, while moving, suddenly felt a greasy sensation on his palm. Recoiling as if electrocuted, he looked at his hand and shockingly found it smeared with thick, crimson liquid.

“Ah!”

A pool of blood had spread on the ground, all flowing from the body that had appeared.

The pop star stumbled and accidentally bumped into Jian Hua, who, playing along, pretended to stumble and fall. The remaining actors swayed and turned pale.

“What’s going on?” Assistant Director Luo was dumbfounded.

Was there an accident on set? But there were no action scenes in this shot, not even wirework. Who was the person lying on the ground?

Everyone instinctively looked up at the studio ceiling, which was intact.

Director Lu, with a grim expression, strode over and cautiously touched the “fallen corpse” with his megaphone. The body was pushed to reveal half of its bloodstained face, eliciting gasps from the studio.

Under everyone’s gaze, Director Lu gritted his teeth and reached out to touch it—

“Call an ambulance! He’s still breathing!”

The body was warm and rigid, and the blood was still warm.

Crew members who hadn’t witnessed the bizarre fall came over, wiping the injured person’s face with a cloth. After some whispering, they confirmed he was a complete stranger, someone no one had seen before.

Secret filming on set required work permits, so he couldn’t enter, let alone appear in this manner.

After reviewing the footage shot by the camera, Assistant Director Luo almost had a heart attack. They were a commercial film crew; how could a supernatural event suddenly occur?

No one dared to approach, and the actors were escorted out one by one.

Jian Hua kept his head down, walking unsteadily behind others.

He didn’t seek out Li Fei, noticing that some crew members were secretly recording the scene. Normally, the director and producer would stop such behavior, but everyone was too stunned. A minor incident on set usually caused a stir, let alone something like this.

“Call the police,” Director Lu ordered, discarding the bloodstained megaphone.

Li Fei “saw” the lying person’s body becoming increasingly hollow, almost indistinguishable from a nearby wooden box.

The man had already sustained fatal injuries before being dragged out of the Abandoned World. The source of life energy loss was evident: one at the right temple, another in the chest and abdomen.

Li Fei opened his eyes, searching the crowd for Jian Hua.

The set’s doctor arrived, shocked by the ferocious wounds, seemingly caused by an animal attack, with suspected broken ribs and claw marks everywhere.

“He might not need an ambulance anymore!”

The set doctor said with difficulty, his face a mix of confusion and anger. “Did this film use animal actors? Where are they? These wounds aren’t caused by a single animal, and he’s been unconscious for a long time, over half an hour! What have you been doing?”

“…”

The people in the studio turned pale and then ashen.

“What animal? There are no animals here. Even the exterior shots of the protagonist’s mansion are special effects; why would I need animal actors?” Director Lu exploded in anger.

The photographer’s assistant weakly asked, “Is it some kind of time travel?”

“Don’t talk nonsense!”

“If it’s not that, then where did he come from? It’s broad daylight; surely there can’t be ghosts!” the assistant argued, unconvinced.

The studio fell into dead silence again, and the third male lead, who had just caught his breath, rolled his eyes back and fainted.

Jian Hua stood in the crowd, looking unwell.

The obedient mycelium had dispersed back to the walls and floor, camouflaged to match the background, not truly invisible. How did the mycelium manage to drag back a person on the brink of death without getting a single drop of blood on itself? Where did all the blood go?

Jian Hua, feeling the mycelium’s rapid growth, was deeply unsettled.

–Li Fei had likely seen everything. What would he think? Jian Hua was inexplicably anxious.

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Last Edit: December 20, 2023 at 2:57 PM

This is machine translated and all copyrights belong to the author. Please note that the translator might take creative liberties for better readability. Thank you for reading.