Chapter 724: Why Did Your Live Stream End Up Under the Desk?!

Deep in the remote mountains of Colorado, Mount Massive Asylum, a long-abandoned home for the mentally ill, had recently reopened its doors, giving rise to a cascade of mysterious rumors and chilling horrors.

The shadow pulling the strings belonged to the "Research and Charity" division of a multinational corporation known as Murkoff.

Operating in absolute secrecy, it remained hidden until an internal whistleblower leaked information to Miles Upshur, an independent journalist who arrived to investigate; players assume the role of this brave reporter, using a camcorder to document and expose the company's atrocities.

Such was the overarching premise of the game, Outlast.

"Oh! I see a few new streamers broadcasting this game, Outlast!" inside the Yuanyang City shop, some patrons had already tasted the pure terror of Silent Hill, while others, though spared the firsthand experience, had heard whispered tales of this agonizingly frightening game.

Consequently, upon realizing that Outlast belonged to the very same genre, they hesitated to dive in immediately.

Instead, they preferred to see if anyone else would brave it first, opting to watch a stream before taking the plunge.

The student faction from the Haotian Academy, such as Mu Qing, clearly fell into this cautious category.

Soon, fellow students like Yue Bai and Tang Yu crowded around, their eyes lighting up: "Someone is streaming it?!"

Streams of other games were common enough, but to broadcast this brand-new horror at such an hour...

"Let me see, let me see!"

At that moment, Su Tianji was aboard a passenger dharma vessel bound for Jiuhua City, holding a bottle of iced black tea in one hand and a communication jade in the other.

Taking a sip of her chilled beverage, she scrolled through the messages flashing across the jade's surface.

"Master, Master!" her disciple, Fenghua, exclaimed while cradling her own communication jade. "Look! An elf is streaming Outlast right now!"

"More than one!" the younger disciple, Yuexin, squealed. "A whole bunch of elves are streaming Outlast!"

"Let me look...!" Su Tianji hurriedly tapped her jade. "Wait, how can you tell they are elves?"

"You can just check the streamer's profile... and some of them even have their cameras turned on."

Su Tianji tapped on a random link, and indeed, an elf appeared on the screen: "I think I recognize this one. I'll watch her."

They were far from alone; many veteran players across the old shops were tuning in, and Sera, who had only been live for a short while, looked up to find hundreds of viewers in her room: "Oh... so many people already?"

"Well, as an elf imbued with a righteous spirit, I simply cannot allow these villains to work their evil unchecked," Sera declared cheerfully, shouting her noble slogans with utmost solemnity as she maneuvered the protagonist, Miles, toward the depths of the asylum. "I will uncover the wickedness hidden within, so let us enter and see what awaits."

With that, she marched straight toward the main entrance.

Passing through the large iron gates of the perimeter wall, she found the main doors of the asylum firmly shut.

"We'll start by heading in through here," Sera narrated, reaching out to push the door.

"Clang, clang, clang! Is anyone there?" Sera made the protagonist rattle the heavy doors violently.

Until her hands grew numb: "Huh...? This door won't budge."

She tried pulling instead.

"Clang, clang, clang!"

A tremendous racket ensued.

She began banging on the door.

Thud, thud, thud!

The entire audience watched in sheer bewilderment as an elf frantically battered the entrance of a madhouse.

"What on earth is this elf doing?" a group of onlookers muttered, completely dumbfounded.

Good grief, I wanted to go in and slaughter everyone like a warrior! What's going on?! At least let me show off my skills first!

Her mind was bursting with flashy tactical ideas, yet she was being driven to madness by a door that refused to open.

"I have no idea..."

"Well, now we know for certain that the main entrance is locked," Sera remarked, realizing she had lost her composure in her eagerness to show off, quickly smoothing over her demeanor. "So, we shall look for another way in from the side..."

In certain aspects, this game bore a resemblance to Assassin's Creed, particularly when it came to climbing.

Of course, being a mere ordinary mortal, the protagonist lacked the masterful acrobatics of an Assassin, requiring the aid of wooden scaffolding along the flank to scale his way through a window.

Though a light had initially flickered inside the window, the moment Sera leapt through the frame, the bulb sputtered twice and plunged the room into absolute darkness.

Even on the viewers' screens, nothing remained but a vast, swallowing void.

When the car had first rolled into this estate, a thick sense of darkness and foreboding had already begun to unfurl, enveloping everything like a suffocating fog.

Now, that ominous dread and oppressive atmosphere seemed to grow even heavier, pressing down with greater malice.

"Oh my... it is terribly dark in there..." Su Tianji murmured, sipping her tea as she watched, sensing that things were about to get thrilling.

Yet for Sera, who was completely immersed in the experience, the sensation was entirely different; through the protagonist's body, she could feel the darkness bearing down upon her like stacks of heavy, invisible bricks.

It was reminiscent of how Fang Qi, back when he was an ordinary man before his transmigration, might have felt driving alone into the deep, uninhabited countryside miles away, only to stumble upon such a derelict asylum.

In the safety of daylight, one might dismiss such thoughts as trivial.

But when standing there in the dead of night, an inexplicable creeping terror would inevitably seize the heart, forcing the mind to wonder what horrors might suddenly emerge from the abyss.

Miles was precisely that kind of ordinary man, and at this moment, his heightened panic and senses began to bleed directly into the player.

The suffocating dread forced Sera to take a deep, stabilizing breath through the character, hurriedly switching on her camcorder to scan the pitch-black surroundings with night vision.

Because the environment was completely devoid of light, rendering even one's own fingers invisible without the device, the audience could only perceive this terrifying world through the lens of the camera.

Captured through the night vision, the world dissolved into an eerie palette of greenish-gray, closely resembling the unsettling, supernatural footage found in old horror films.

"Something feels rather off..." Sera muttered to her stream audience as she fumbled blindly through the dark, camera in hand.

This definitely wasn't right... she had prepared herself for so long just to show off some incredible maneuvers!

But this protagonist...

Her pulse raced until the thumping of her heart echoed loudly in her ears, accompanied by a throbbing headache so intense that Sera could hardly distinguish whether it was the character suffering from oxygen deprivation due to panic, or her own mind playing tricks.

She drew a deep breath, yet dared not exhale too loudly, carefully stifling her breaths as she let them out.

In such a state, to say nothing of having no combat capabilities, even a seasoned warrior would find themselves completely paralyzed.

Down the narrow corridor, a door suddenly clicked shut on its own—whether moved by a midnight draft or something more sinister—and within the dead silence of the room, the wind rattled the metal flaps of the ventilation ducts with a sharp, grating clatter.

Catching the faint ambient light filtering through a glass window from the main hall, Sera finally switched off her camera.

The path ahead was entirely obstructed; the only available route lay through a door left slightly ajar on the right.

"It seems entirely deserted here..." Sera narrated, addressing her unseen lens as she pushed the door open.

"Ah!" The character onscreen violently recoiled in sheer fright.

A corpse hung upside down directly before their eyes, illuminated by the ominous, rhythmic flickering of an overhead light.

Su Tianji laughed as she drank her tea, highly entertained by the stream: "Oh, look at that elf! She is hilarious, jumping all over the place from fright."

"Phew..." Realizing it was merely a lifeless body, Sera finally let out a breath. "That absolutely terrified me!"

"Uh..." She quickly clarified to her viewers, trying to save face, "That was nothing at all, haha... let's keep moving."

She hadn't even had the chance to show off her skills yet!

Sera continued guiding the protagonist deeper into the dark recesses.

Navigating through the interconnected rooms to the opposite side of the corridor, the atmosphere grew increasingly bizarre; around the far corner, the faint murmur of hushed voices echoed, yet when she approached, the hallway stood entirely empty.

Though the path forward was blocked by fallen desks and wooden shelves, one could still manage to squeeze through sideways.

"This game seems rather simple, doesn't it?" Sera commented, keeping up her commentary as she angled her body forward, slowly squeezing her way through the narrow gap between the bookcase and the wooden rack toward the other side.

Right at that moment, she suddenly felt a freezing cold hand grip her shoulder!

An inexplicable dread crept into her heart.

Turning her head, she was abruptly met with a bloated, twisted face straight out of a nightmare.

Before she could even register the sight fully, her body crashed through the glass window behind her, sending her hurtling out from a window several stories high.

"Ah—! Ahhh—!" Quitting the virtual reality mode with near-godlike speed, she ripped off her VR headset, sprang to her feet, and immediately lost her footing.

At this hour, everyone in the internet cafe was deeply engrossed in their games; a few players were walking down the aisle carrying instant noodles, and Boss Fang was also holding a tub of noodles, getting ready to log on—everything appeared perfectly normal.

Then, completely out of nowhere, came a piercing shriek of "Ah!"

Followed by a resounding crash.

Everyone nearby turned to look.

Only to see an elf crawling out from beneath the desk, covered in dust, staring blankly at the surrounding crowd.

"I mean... how on earth did your livestream end up under the desk?"

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