FEG | Chapter 8

Chapter 8, Please Invite the Pen Spirit

Bu Xiling’s words were contradictory, but Sun Fangchi understood what she meant very well. If humans are living creatures that have life and are alive, then a ghost like Bu Xiling is something that has no life but still exists, while the ghosts in the game are things that have neither life nor existence, complete dead objects.

The village buildings had no planning at all. They must all have been built by the villagers however they liked. There was not a single road in the whole village that ran straight north-south or east-west. All the paths were crooked and twisted, so although the village was small, one still could not see to the end at a glance.

The paths in the village were not wide. Even two people walking side by side would feel cramped, and it was impossible to imagine how inconvenient it must have been when the villagers lived there.

The seven of them walked in a line. There was not a single living plant in the whole village, and anywhere the eye could see, even the grass was yellowed and withered. The building walls had peeled away into pitted hollows, bricks were exposed, and there was dust all along the foot of the walls, yet there was not even a spiderweb. This broken yet clean feeling was especially eerie.

“We’re here, this one.”

The tallest building they had seen from outside the village was actually only two stories high. The reason it stood out from the flock was that it had been built on higher ground, and its first floor was almost level with the neighboring second floor.

“Is anyone in there? We’re here.” Fatty Zuiheng banged on the door loudly and repeatedly, and dust kept trickling down from the doorframe.

“Fuck, you’re going to knock the door down too!” Bald Guy said.

“No one’s answering...” Fatty Zuiheng pushed hard, and the door opened with a creak.

“Where is everybody? We’re here, is there any food? I’m starving...” Fatty Zuiheng shouted as he walked in.

Inside the door was a large room. In the middle were simple tables and folding chairs that did not fit Stone Well Village at all. Convenience food and water had been placed in the corner by the wall, and many parts of the room had cameras installed, their cold lenses all pointing toward the center.

“Whoa!” Fatty Zuiheng jumped. “What’s going on?”

Bald Guy opened a box of bottled water, took out a bottle, and unscrewed it. “Idiot, didn’t they say there’d be a livestream room?”

Fatty Zuiheng found a piece of bread, took a bottle of water, and sat in a folding chair to start eating.

Sun Fangchi took out his phone to look. It was nearly twelve o’clock, and the WiFi signal was full bars. They had even managed to run a network cable in here.

Anisocoria came down from upstairs. “No one is here.”

“The person who was here just left?” Tianshi Li asked in confusion. “Not even come out to meet us?”

“Maybe they just came to make sure we arrived safely.” Ning Xiaomeng guessed.

“Mengmeng makes sense.” Anisocoria agreed. “Our main task now is to divide the rooms. I looked, there are only four rooms. The organizers probably want two of us to share one room, two women in one room. How should the rest of us split up?”

In another place, a single room would definitely be more comfortable than a double room, but this was a haunted place, and a place for making a horror livestream. Who knew what would happen? Two people was more reassuring than one.

Tianshi Li looked around and said, “I’m a person who likes cleanliness, I can only accept little brother Anisocoria sharing a room with me.” Anisocoria spread his hands, indicating that he had no objection.

Fatty Zuiheng’s gaze moved between Bald Guy and Sun Fangchi. “I snore when I sleep, and it looks like Bald Guy sleeps heavily. We’ll share a room.”

Ning Xiaomeng gave Sun Fangchi a pitying look, as if she wanted to say something but held back.

Sun Fangchi actually thought it was just right. He had Bu Xiling with him, so sharing a room with someone else would be difficult.

Now that they had internet, Ning Xiaomeng also turned on her livestream equipment. “Then let’s take out the task card first and see what exactly the organizers want us to do?”

Anisocoria took out the black envelope. Under everyone’s gaze, he opened it and drew out a card. On a white background with black text, it said: At exactly ten o’clock tonight, all seven of you will livestream playing the pen spirit game together.

“My God!” Fatty Zuiheng gasped.

Ning Xiaomeng wore a panicked expression as she faced the livestream camera. “What should we do? I’m so scared. This place is so frightening, it’s completely different from playing an online game...”

Anisocoria walked into her camera frame and politely comforted her. “Don’t be afraid, Mengmeng, I’ll sit next to you when we play.”

Sun Fangchi did not want to keep watching their performance. He took some food and went upstairs, picked the room farthest inside, and closed the door.

There were two old wooden beds in the room, old-fashioned ones, like two long wooden boxes turned upside down, and the space under the beds could not be seen. Folded quilts were placed on the beds, all new, brightly colored, the only bright spot in the room.

Sun Fangchi spread out one set of bedding, made the bed, and was just about to flop onto it and rest for a while when Bu Xiling said, “The other set needs to be made too.”

“Xi ge, didn’t your elementary school teacher ever teach you that you should do your own things yourself?” Sun Fangchi said with deep sorrow, expressing regret over the failure of Bu Xiling’s moral education.

“Cut the nonsense, make it!”

“All right.”

The temperature on the mountain was not the same as at the foot of the mountain. As soon as the sun set, the temperature dropped sharply. Sun Fangchi was woken by the cold. When he opened his eyes, the room was dim, and when he looked outside the window, only a sliver of sun remained. Bu Xiling was nowhere to be seen, and he did not know where she had gone.

Sun Fangchi looked at his phone, and it was past seven o’clock.

To ensure the electricity for these three days, the organizers had installed solar panels and batteries on this house, installed a ceiling light in the livestream room, and desk lamps in the living quarters.

Sun Fangchi turned on the bedside lamp. The incandescent light, constrained by the lampshade, only illuminated the small area beside Sun Fangchi’s bed.

Having slept for so long, Sun Fangchi was hungry too, so he planned to go downstairs and get something to eat.

Outside the room, the corridor and staircase were pitch-black. Sun Fangchi had no choice but to use his phone as a light and grope his way downstairs.

Downstairs was brightly lit. To ensure the livestream effect, the organizers had installed wall lamps in every corner of the livestream room. The other six people were sitting around the folding table, eating.

Sun Fangchi took some food and water and sat in the only empty seat, but no one paid him any attention. He did not care and kept eating and drinking as he pleased.

At last, Fatty Zuiheng could not hold back and said, “Brother, what have you been doing all afternoon?”

“Me? Taking a nap.”

Fatty Zuiheng nearly choked on a piece of bread. Sleeping six or seven hours straight?

“Since we’re in a joint livestream event, you’d better not be too willful.” Anisocoria said coldly. He looked down on Sun Fangchi’s carefree attitude very much. Clearly he was a bottom-ranker, and yet he acted like he did not care at all, and did not try to cozy up to them either. He was clearly just putting on airs.

Sun Fangchi yawned. “Got it.”

“You!” Anisocoria glared at him.

“All right, all right, we’re basically a team now. Don’t argue, let’s talk about today’s task instead.” Ning Xiaomeng stepped in to smooth things over.

Bald Guy snorted. “What’s there to talk about? The pen spirit and all that are just scams, I’m not scared.”

Anisocoria said, “It’s just a little game, who would be scared? What we need to consider is the show effect.”

Tianshi Li said, “I think so too. It can’t be too flat, and it can’t be completely lacking in suspense either...”

Fatty Zuiheng agreed very much. “Right, everyone should talk in advance about how they’re going to perform.”

This way of putting it actually meant the same thing as He Baichang.

While they were discussing, Bu Xiling drifted back in from outside.

Sun Fangchi saw that her expression did not look very good and really wanted to ask, but in front of the other six people, speaking to thin air might well get him treated as a mental patient.

So Sun Fangchi signaled with his eyes, and Bu Xiling shook her head. “I didn’t find the thing from daytime.”

So Xi ge had gone to look for the figure that had appeared at the window during the day, Sun Fangchi thought. There must be something else, and Xi ge had not said it.

The props for playing the pen spirit game had been placed by the organizers on the small table in the corner, a sheet of paper filled with words and numbers, a pencil, and a bundle of white candles and a lighter.

Could there also be a power outage? Sun Fangchi guessed.

Around ten o’clock, Anisocoria’s phone received a voice call request from the organizers.

“Good evening, all streamers.”

The phone had been placed by Anisocoria on the folding table, and the voice came through the speaker, somewhat distorted.

“The cameras in this room have already been turned on. From this moment on, anything that happens in the room will be livestreamed on the Grey Bear Platform.”

As soon as the words fell, the red indicator lights on the cameras around the walls all lit up in unison.

“The first night’s task is the pen spirit game. Are all the streamers ready? Please have Anisocoria act as host.”

The voice call ended. Anisocoria gave a brief explanation of the pen spirit game to the cameras. It was all the usual stuff everyone knew by heart. Worth mentioning was that the pen spirit game was generally played by two or three people, so the seven of them were divided into three rounds total. Fatty Zuiheng and Spirit Young Master played the first round, Anisocoria and Ning Xiaomeng played the second round, and Tianshi Li, Bald Guy, and Sun Fangchi played the third round.

The game began.

Fatty Zuiheng and Spirit Young Master interlaced their fingers in opposite directions, pinching the pencil so that it hung over the paper.

“Pen spirit, pen spirit, you are my past life, I am your present life, if you want to continue our fate, please draw circles on the paper...” The two of them recited it several times in unison. Fatty Zuiheng began to tremble all over, dragging Spirit Young Master’s hand with him, the pencil drawing circles over and over on the paper.

Fatty Zuiheng made an exaggerated show of fear. “The pen spirit is here...”

Sun Fangchi: “...”

His mind was utterly unmoved, and he even felt like laughing.

“Pen spirit, pen spirit, when will my follower count reach one million?” Fatty Zuiheng asked.

Spirit Young Master looked up at him, and the pencil clamped between their hands drew a long line on the paper, then moved to the number one and circled it.

“Within a year?” Fatty Zuiheng said happily. “Thank you, pen spirit.”

Not bad, not bad, acting and directing yourself really was satisfying.

When it was Spirit Young Master’s turn to ask a question, Spirit Young Master shook her head and refused, and Fatty Zuiheng’s face looked rather bad.

“Pen spirit, pen spirit, you are my past life, I am your present life, if you want to leave, please move the tip of the pen away from the paper...” The pencil slid sideways off the paper.

The first round was considered over. Anisocoria had the heavy responsibility of hosting the scene, so he let Fatty Zuiheng talk about his experience inviting the pen spirit. “It felt too eerie. When the pen spirit came, I felt cold all over. My hand moved by itself without me using any strength, I was satisfied with the answer the pen spirit gave me...”

Fatty Zuiheng rambled on and on, and Sun Fangchi almost fell asleep.

The second round, Anisocoria and Ning Xiaomeng.

“Pen spirit, pen spirit, you are my past life, I am your present life, if you want to continue our fate, please draw circles on the paper...” As they recited the incantation, the lights in the room all flickered once at the same time. After the flicker, the brightness suddenly dimmed by several degrees, and the incandescent light even looked somewhat yellow.