Chapter 360
Chapter 360
After some thought, Zhou Jingying added a small Custom Setting.
The two special guests could invite any of the female guests, who were free to choose whether to accept. A male guest left without a partner could join one of the couples on their date, making it an outing for three.
Turn a couple’s date into a three-person outing, and the potential for conflict shot straight up.
Of course, to prevent both guests from choosing the same couple, it would be first come, first served.
Zhou Jingying had also designed this as a precaution against Xia Zeqin.
There were four couples, but the other three were all NPCs. She thought it was perfectly obvious whom Xia Zeqin would choose.
Once Yellow Hair and Lin Junruo learned the rules, they both became alert as well.
They could only hope Xie Cheng would come through for them!
Xie Cheng had worked out something of what was happening too.
So, the moment the show began, he was the first to invite Lin Junruo. Once she turned him down, he immediately announced that he wanted to join their date. At that point, Xia Zeqin had not even said which female guest he wanted to invite.
Just…
Beautifully done.
Yellow Hair and Lin Junruo happily welcomed Xie Cheng into their group.
Who would have thought that this, too, could earn them a rise in Popularity?
“Hahahaha, these two are such goofs.”
“Wake up, Sheng Mao! He’s here to steal your girl.”
“The most laid-back couple I’ve ever seen.”
“…”
Ignorant humans.
Lin Junruo and Yellow Hair grumbled inwardly.
Xia Zeqin was not surprised. He made no further attempt to approach them, simply choosing an NPC to while away his time with.
Once the partners were settled, filming for the new episode began.
This time, Zhou Jingying chose a confession Script.
Either the male or the female guest could prepare a declaration of love for the other.
But now that one group had become a trio…
Xie Cheng would have to prepare a declaration for Lin Junruo too.
That left two men preparing declarations for Lin Junruo, while she would prepare one for one of the two men.
“Spicy.”
“A love-triangle showdown in the flesh.”
“Go for it, girl!”
“Only children choose. Grown-ups take them all!”
“…”
Numbness.
While Yellow Hair’s group filmed the final episode without much worry or pressure, Jian Fan’s group of five had also entered their new episode.
This time, the scenario Lu Jing chose was…
A funeral home.
Well, damn.
Taking in his surroundings, Qin Nan could only say, well, damn.
Lu Jing really was not worried about scaring them to death.
They had already done a hospital and an office building. Now, in the final episode, at the most dangerous moment, he had actually chosen a funeral home.
Qin Nan was truly numb.
Apart from that rather upsetting choice of location, Lu Jing had not added any unnecessary tricks this time.
They were not counting on Popularity anymore, after all, were they?
This was simply a straightforward Escape Room scenario.
The seven guests were university classmates.
One day, they received news that another of their university classmates had died of an illness.
The seven traveled from different places to their late classmate’s home to attend his funeral. As they followed his family to the funeral home for his cremation, something strange happened.
They discovered that everyone had vanished.
Including the body in the mourning hall.
They were now inside that hall.
As part of the usual procedure, a funeral home would set up a simple mourning hall for the family to bid the deceased a final farewell. As an aside, this was another service funeral homes could provide: filming the proceedings. The price was not low, either.
That service had been booked for this funeral.
It was during the filming that things changed.
Everyone had been paying their respects in the mourning hall while a funeral home employee recorded it. In the blink of an eye, however, everyone disappeared. Only the seven of them remained, along with a camera on a table.
They were trapped in the hall. Their immediate priority was to find the key, unlock the door, and get out of the room.
The furnishings were extremely simple.
In the center stood a makeshift bed assembled from wooden boards, where the deceased should have been lying. A white funeral wreath stood beside it, with a few more white wreaths placed around the room. It was a very basic mourning hall.
A table stood against the wall opposite the door, with the camera on top.
They could take in the entire room at a glance.
There was nowhere to hide anything. For now, the camera seemed to be the only thing they could investigate.
Qin Nan was the first to approach the table and pick it up.
It was still recording.
Surprised, Qin Nan promptly pressed the stop button.
“The camera was still recording,” he told Jian Fan and Mu Xin as he began working the controls to look through the footage.
Once he stopped recording, the footage just taken was saved. It was this clip that he now opened on the camera.
In the video, the deceased was still lying peacefully on the boards in the center. Around him stood his family and the seven university classmates invited to the funeral. They were walking around the body to bid him a final farewell.
The footage was very clear.
But just then…
A burst of static flashed across the screen. Then the people, including the body on the boards, seemed to shudder like the static itself. A moment later, they were gone.
Only the seven of them remained in the mourning hall.
They looked around. Finally, Qin Nan saw himself slowly approaching the camera.
He came closer and closer, gradually filling the frame. Then the image shook, evidently as he picked up the camera, and the recording stopped.
It was exactly what they had just experienced.
“Look at the other clips,” Jian Fan said.
Qin Nan nodded at once.
The camera contained footage of more than this one deceased person. There were other videos, all following the same procedure.
Qin Nan selected the previous clip and played it.
It was a simple farewell ceremony. The family had only kept the video as a memento.
Nothing seemed strange, but Jian Fan spoke again. “Go back further.”
Qin Nan did not object.
There had to be a reason this camera was in the hall. Just because the current footage showed no problems did not mean the earlier recordings were fine.
He moved on to the clip before that.
When it revealed nothing either, he went back again.
At last, he reached the final clip in his search: the earliest recording.
The mourning hall in this video looked a little different from the one around them. It seemed much newer, as though the hall had only just been built. More plainly, the recording might have been made just after the funeral home itself was completed.
And in this video…
The doors of the mourning hall stood wide open, and funeral wreaths crowded the entrance.
The deceased seemed to have been someone very important. Not only were there a great many wreaths, but many of the mourners wore smart suits and polished shoes, looking quite different from ordinary family members. They were lining up to walk around the deceased and pay their respects.
Everything was still perfectly normal.
But then…
Bang!