Chapter 340
Chapter 340
All three hid their faces.
The ghosts seemed to lose interest and began chatting freely among themselves.
At that moment, Lu Jing received a task notification.
The Script was generated automatically, but now Lu Jing needed to provide a general topic for the ghosts’ conversation.
That was not especially difficult. However, the cold electronic voice told him something else.
“Please adhere to your assigned persona. Breaking character will incur a penalty.”
Lu Jing was baffled.
He almost wanted to throw in the towel.
But he could not.
Lu Jing could only put his utterly ungirlish mind to work and miserably puzzle over their conversation.
Girlish sensibilities?
Then… a discussion about romance?
Hmm. What kind of romantic topic?
Lu Jing thought it over again and again. This truly was a major challenge for him. Since he could not come up with anything specific, a word flashed through his mind.
Television dramas.
More precisely, idol dramas.
Perfect. Lu Jing immediately decided on the topic.
He would have the ghosts discuss an idol drama.
Fortunately, Lu Jing only had to provide a general subject. He did not need to invent the plot of the idol drama himself, so he had managed to exploit a loophole.
Once Lu Jing settled on the topic, the conversation inside the elevator began.
After losing interest in Jian Fan and the other two, the ghosts began talking among themselves.
“Did you watch the latest episode?” asked one ghost, a woman.
“I did, I did! It was so sweet, unbelievably sweet. It made me want to fall in love.”
“Which drama are you talking about?”
“Sweetheart Princess. It’s super sweet, and the male lead is so handsome!”
“Wow, I’m watching that too, but I only just started. Is it good?”
“It’s great. It’ll make your heart overflow with girlish delight.”
“…”
Mu Xin abruptly found herself listening to these terrifying-looking ghosts discuss a fluffy romantic drama while making shy, girlish expressions to match.
The contrast earned them another surge of Popularity.
Lu Jing was baffled once again.
Lu Jing truly had no idea how his Popularity kept rising. Without realizing it, he had already accumulated more than 300,000. What an unexpected development.
Of the five of them, Qin Weiyi was currently the only one without any Popularity.
He was the camera operator assigned to follow the cast.
Of course, this role differed somewhat from its real-world counterpart.
In the real world, a camera operator would have to run after the cast constantly. Qin Weiyi did not need to do that.
He did not have to follow Jian Fan and the others every moment, but he did have to carry the camera at all times. He could adjust its direction and height to change the image being filmed.
He had been dutifully filming the three main cast members, but the bullet comments never mentioned him, so naturally, he gained no Popularity. He had to create a talking point for himself.
With that thought, Qin Weiyi adjusted the camera.
The focus of the shot shifted from Jian Fan’s trio to the ghosts in the elevator.
The abrupt change and suddenly enlarged ghostly faces immediately sent a string of exclamation marks drifting across the comments.
“!!!”
“Bullet comments, protect me!”
“Fuck, that’s scary.”
“Aaaah, camera guy, stop filming this!”
At the same time, Qin Weiyi gained a tiny amount of Popularity: 1,000. It truly was only a little. Once he gained the Popularity, he naturally saw the bullet comments as well.
Seeing someone tell him not to film this, Qin Weiyi thought for a moment, then shook the camera.
The viewers saw the image sway. Qin Weiyi’s Popularity began to shoot upward, and he gained another 5,000.
“Fuck, is the camera guy refusing?”
“Camera guy: My camera, my rules.”
“Hahahaha, the camera guy is kind of adorable.”
“Huh. After looking at them for a while, they’re not that scary.”
“They’re scary-looking, but kind of adorable.”
“…”
After watching the replay and reading the bullet comments, Qin Weiyi understood what to do.
Just then, the elevator suddenly stopped.
Qin Weiyi immediately turned the camera back toward Jian Fan’s trio.
At the sound of a ding, all three raised their heads in unison.
What they saw, however, filled them with despair.
They had not reached the first floor. Another group of ghosts now stood outside the elevator.
The moment the elevator stopped, the ghosts floated inside and greeted their companions.
“Hey, you lot are from the top floor?”
“Yeah. We’re heading downstairs to buy something to eat.”
“The view from the roof must be nice, huh?”
“Oh, please. It was cold enough to freeze a ghost to death.”
Qin Nan and the other two stared numbly.
They could only let the ghosts float over their heads.
The elevator had already been packed impossibly tight, and no one knew how these ghosts managed it. Another batch arrived, yet somehow, they all squeezed in.
The elevator grew livelier and livelier, while Qin Nan felt colder and colder inside. It was not only his heart that felt cold; his body did too, and his head was coldest of all, entirely because of the ghostly chill above him.
Fortunately, although the ghosts were noisy, they did not harm Jian Fan or the others.
This was probably due to the backstory.
After all, this was a variety show. What kind of variety show let ghosts kill its cast members? At most, the ghosts existed to frighten them.
Realizing this brought Qin Nan some comfort. His life might be safe, but his circumstances were hardly pleasant.
No one knew how much more time passed before Qin Nan and the other two finally heard another ding.
Qin Nan looked up and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
They had reached the first floor.
The elevator doors opened, and all the ghosts inside floated out. The three remained motionless for a moment and did not emerge until every ghost had drifted away.
Remembering her assigned persona, Mu Xin silently patted her chest. “That was so scary.”
This time, she meant it sincerely.
However, the remark neither broke character nor earned her any Popularity.
“What do we do next?” Mu Xin asked, immediately returning to the matter at hand.
Although none of them knew the others’ assigned personas, she had guessed some of them from the situation.
Qin Nan, for example, was surely supposed to be taciturn or something similar, because he was speaking far less than usual. Jian Fan’s persona was harder to guess, but it was clearly the complete opposite of his real self. Yet Jian Fan was naturally a man of few words, so Mu Xin had no choice but to shoulder the burden of speaking.
She never expected that sentence to earn her a little Popularity–only 1,000, but still.
“Hahahaha, she goes from boohooing in front of people to discussing business the moment she turns around.”
“Miss, couldn’t you at least keep up the act a little longer?”
“…”
Mu Xin was baffled.
She did not quite understand.
“Let’s check the entrance,” Jian Fan said.
In the Escape Room Script they had received, the first stage involved finding the code to the patient room’s lock so they could leave. Afterward, they had to find the elevator and use it to leave that floor. Of course, their Script said nothing about an elevator key card, though it did include the ghosts.
The ghosts were the second obstacle they needed to overcome before leaving that floor.
Next, they arrived on the first floor of the hospital.
There, they would discover that the hospital’s main doors were locked.
The doors had two locks. The first was electronic, requiring them to search everywhere for the code. The second was a physical lock hanging on the doors, so they needed to find its key.
As long as they found the electronic lock’s code and the key, they would clear this Escape Room.
However, neither the code nor the key would be easy to find. They would have to complete a series of smaller challenges along the way.
Their Script explained everything clearly. The problem was that they no longer knew whether the Script was true or false.
The locked doors were probably accurate, but the locations of the code and key might have changed.
That meant they would still have to put thought into searching for them themselves.
The three arrived at the main entrance.
This part matched the Script: one electronic lock and one physical lock.
What else could they do?
Search.