Chapter 1

“This is the disc? You’re sure?”

My best friend, Song Feifei, nodded firmly.

“That’s the one. There was a note inside saying adults weren’t allowed to watch it. I thought, if even adults can’t watch it, it must be really exciting!

“I never imagined it would be a cursed videotape! The day after I watched it, I got that creepy phone call. It said it would come take me away within seven days!”

I stared at Song Feifei, speechless. Curiosity killed the cat. This was what came of minding your own business at home and having disaster drop into your lap.

I put the disc into my laptop. Since the evil spirit was coming for Song Feifei, I might as well watch it too and save it a second trip.

I was a Daoist priest and an online influencer. On a certain platform, I livestreamed lessons on debunking superstition.

For some reason, though, the more I debunked it, the more people believed. They all said I was actually selling the stuff by pretending to discredit it.

Over time, plenty of viewers became devoted fans. One of them, a boy named Chi Shuo, had sent me this disc.

Chi Shuo had been feeling miserable lately. He was the best-looking boy at Jiang University, and his girlfriend was the prettiest girl there. Together, they were the most dazzling sight on campus.

But everything changed when a transfer student joined the international college’s finance program.

His name was Ou Chenyi. He was of mixed heritage, tall and well built, with sharply defined features and skin as white as snow. There was a gloomy quality about him that was hard to describe, and it had all the girls at the university swooning.

At first, Chi Shuo’s girlfriend merely went on every day about how handsome Ou Chenyi was.

In the second week, Ou Chenyi drove a Rolls-Royce to campus, and everyone went wild.

In the third week, he drove a Ferrari.

In the fourth, a Bugatti Veyron.

By the fifth week, Chi Shuo’s girlfriend had dumped him and was chasing Ou Chenyi like mad.

Seeing him mope around every day, Chi Shuo’s good friend Zhong Weiyan offered to show him something exciting.

Innocent Chi Shuo refused at first. Eventually, temptation got the better of him, and he watched it with Zhong Weiyan.

The disc ran for only three minutes. At first, the screen was completely black. The two waited patiently. Then it turned white, and after a while, a human-shaped shadow drifted into view. It faced the screen, gave a strange, rasping cackle, and said:

“Seven days.”

“You have seven days left. After seven days, I’ll take you away.”

After watching it, Chi Shuo gave Zhong Weiyan a furious earful. He thought his friend was playing a prank and didn’t take it seriously.

That night, he had nightmares. He dreamed of choking to death while eating, drowning in the bath, being killed by a car while crossing the road…

At the end of the dream stood a tall man. Thick fog hid his face, and his voice was as harsh as a cracked gong.

“You have seven days left. Choose how you want to die.”

When he woke up, Chi Shuo figured the disc had simply played on his imagination. He still didn’t take it seriously.

Then, first thing that morning, his phone rang. The man’s voice on the other end was exactly the same as in his dream.

“Seven days. You have seven days left. Heh heh heh…”

Not long afterward, Zhong Weiyan came back with a deathly pale face. The friend who’d sent him the disc was dead.

“Fuck! He went home to visit his grandma. It was hot, so he switched on the ceiling fan. A little while later, it fell off the ceiling. It was still spinning when it fell, and it sliced his whole head off! His grandma had a heart attack on the spot and was taken to the hospital. Everyone in their village is talking about it!”

Now Chi Shuo couldn’t stay calm. He remembered a horror movie he’d watched, called Ring.

He and Zhong Weiyan must have been cursed by that videotape.

In desperation, Zhong Weiyan remembered me. He was a paranormal enthusiast who liked researching ghost stories in his spare time. After a long discussion, the two decided to ask me for help.

Chi Shuo wrote a letter explaining everything in detail and asked Zhong Weiyan to mail it to me along with the disc.

Unfortunately, Zhong Weiyan picked up the wrong piece of paper. It was something their roommate had scribbled out of boredom. That was how Song Feifei became the next unlucky victim.