Chapter 14: Haunted Hill House (14)
Yan Shixun was suppressing his temper and listened to the male actor's confusing words with patience, hoping to get some useful information from them.
But the male actor seemed to have been scared crazy, and just kept saying things like "corpse" and "Let's die together". The male actor's voice was so harsh and unpleasant that it hurt Yan Shixun's ears.
Yan Shixun finally raised his hand impatiently, and his slender fingers flexibly formed seals in the direction of the male actor, making a calming and soothing talisman.
The next moment, the actor's crazy screams stopped abruptly. He rolled his eyes and fell backwards, hitting the ground with a bang.
The staff members who were frightened by the actor around them finally came to their senses and hurriedly went up to lift the actor up from the ground.
"Brother Yan, what should we do now?"
In the depressing silence, Zhang Wubing didn't care that the live broadcast camera was on nearby, and immediately sought help from Yan Shixun.
Yan Shixun lowered his eyes, his gaze falling on the portable camera on the actor's shoulder: "Carry him to the emergency personnel first, and send someone to watch him with Liu Yiyi. If he still makes a fuss after he wakes up, calm him down - don't let him talk again, otherwise he will say the wrong thing."
"Also, when he just went out, the split screen was on?" Yan Shixun chuckled: "Finally, there is a good thing."
When things developed to this point, even the most dull-witted person would realize that something was wrong.
"Mr. Yan." A guest looked at the miserable state of the male actor over there, swallowed his saliva and asked tremblingly: "What's going on?"
Some people were more concerned about what the actor had just said: "Is what he said true? Are there really those things out there? Then what should we do, director, I don't want to record anymore, I want to leave now!"
"You can try." Yan Shixun raised his hand to support his chin, looking at the man with a half-smile: "Maybe, when you come back later, there will be one more person in the emergency room."
Hearing Yan Shixun's implied meaning, the man shuddered and stopped talking.
When asked, Yan Shixun simply took out his mobile phone and searched for program-related tags on the social platform.
As expected, after the impact of what was captured by the split-screen camera that the male actor just took out, the program once again sparked hot topics and discussions on the social platform, and some people also uploaded the split-screen recording of the male actor just now.
It can be seen that everything was normal when the actor just walked out of the villa.
Although the male actor was terrified by Liu Yiyi's miserable condition, he was afraid that he would also encounter the same accident as Liu Yiyi in this weird villa.
But he still had some basic common sense, knowing that if he just left like that, not only would he face compensation or even lawsuits from the subsequent director and program crew for breach of contract, but he would also leave a bad impression on the audience in front of the live camera and ruin his popularity.
So the male actor opened his own split screen, gave a wronged smile to the camera, and accused the program crew of exploiting the guests. Without telling them in advance that there was a script, they arbitrarily added horror elements for the sake of program traffic, and played tricks, which even led to Liu Yiyi's injury.
Out of fear and interests, the actor performed exceptionally well, causing many viewers and his fans who had not watched last night's live broadcast to sympathize with him and curse the program crew together.
The actor looked at the comment trend on his split-screen interface on his phone and nodded in satisfaction.
The comments and barrages in his split-screen were almost all in support of him. Occasionally, there were a few who questioned the script theory because they watched Annanyuan's split-screen live broadcast last night. They were also labeled as water armies hired by the program production team by fans and were cursed.
The only thing that made him unhappy was that his call to his agent didn't go through, as the call was out of service area.
This damn remote place! There is no signal.
The actor sneered in his heart, and as soon as he left Guishan, he immediately contacted his agent and public relations team. Whether it was this stupid program crew or Yan Shixun who looked down on him, just wait for his revenge!
That guy named Yan Shixun couldn't even sign with the company, how dare he treat him like that? He had to let Yan Shixun know what it meant to respect his predecessors and traffic.
Even if I have a decently handsome face, so what? No company wants me.
He is just waiting for the moment to come and see Yan Shixun collapse from being scolded by his fans and public opinion, haha!
The handsome face of Yan Shixun crying bitterly in the illusion pleased the actor and diluted the shock of Liu Yiyi's miserable condition just now. He was so happy that he ignored the changes in the surrounding environment for a while.
When the actor was finally sweating profusely and looked up to see how far he was from the foot of the mountain, he discovered that he seemed to have an impression of the surrounding environment.
This familiar feeling made him look around in confusion, and then he was horrified to find that after walking for half an hour, he was still on the path down the mountain next to the villa. He could even see the spire of the villa emerging from the woods if he turned around!
This, what is going on?
The actor started sweating at that moment.
He didn't bother to interact with the audience in front of the split screen, but quickened his pace and concentrated on going down the mountain, wanting to leave this weird place as soon as possible.
However, when he began to pay attention to his surroundings, he was even more horrified to find that no matter how fast he walked or how long he walked, he was just circling in the mountains, and when he looked back he could always see the spire of the villa behind him.
The actor's clothes were soaked with sweat, and he could hear nothing except his own deafening heartbeat and heavy breathing.
Including strange noises coming from the woods on both sides of the stone path and from the soil beneath the feet.
The audience, who were originally confused because the actor suddenly stopped talking before the split-screen live broadcast, were dazzled by the camera images that kept passing by the scenery at a rapid speed, and complained about why the actor suddenly walked so fast.
At this moment, some sharp-eyed viewers suddenly noticed the sudden appearance of red in the woods at the edge of the split screen.
[Look! What is that?]
[It must be the villagers nearby who went up the mountain.]
[Who is wearing red when working? I think it looks a bit like the plastic mannequins in shopping malls, with artistic shapes. But how could a plastic mannequin be left here in this deep forest?]
[No! It’s alive. The person is moving!]
[It doesn’t look like a living person! He, he looks like someone who has been skinned! I can see blood vessels, his intestines are all on the ground, how can he still move!!!]
[WTF TF TF TF!!]
The male actor couldn’t see the comments in the live broadcast. He was in a hurry to get on the road and didn’t notice the red light emerging from deep in the woods. No matter how anxious the audience was, they couldn’t remind him.
“Crash…”
“Crash…”
First there was the slight sound of leaves rustling in the wind.
Then, beneath the fallen leaves and rotten soil, the soil layer rose and fell and squirmed, as if something was moving beneath it.
A blood-red arm suddenly broke out of the ground and pointed straight to the sky.
It was like some kind of signal. In the originally silent woods, the soil began to break up one after another, and bright red corpses crawled out.
The bodies had lost all their skin, with all their blood vessels and organs exposed to the air. Some were even severely damaged, with half of their bodies smashed to pieces, exposing the bones inside. Others were disemboweled, with their stomachs and intestines hanging out of their bodies, swaying as they walked.
They slowly crawled out from under the soil and fallen leaves, shook off the dirt, slowly stood up, and in the shadow of the woods, approached the still unaware actor from all directions.
The stone road going down the mountain seems to stretch infinitely and never end.
When the actor found himself in the familiar scenery again, he felt like he was stuck in a maze and was almost in despair.
He gasped and looked up and around, trying to find a way down the mountain.
It was not until then that the actor suddenly discovered that under the shadows formed by the layers of leaves in the woods, there were actually a group of red human figures approaching him.
Those human-shaped objects without skin, dragging their flesh that had long been dried and rotten by the wind over the past hundred years, slowly reached out their hands to the living people in the sunlight, eager to touch the vitality and sunlight of the living people.
They opened their huge black mouths, wailed, and spoke, trying to drag the living people into their world.
“Don’t…go…”
"Stay here...with us, together, in the dirt..."
"Give me your skin, let me leave here... Give me your blood, your flesh... I want to go down the mountain... My children are still in the village. I want to go back, I must go back to my wife and children..."
"You, can't leave... This is a grave, there is only a grave... Together with us..."
"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts... Where are my legs, where is my head..."
"It was the bandits...it was the bandits who killed me..."
The ghosts' whispers layered together and reverberated into the echo of death and emptiness, echoing in circles in the mountains and forests.
They each expressed their own resentment and unwillingness, and stretched out their rotten fingertips with all their might towards the actor. Even if they were burned and screamed the moment they touched the sunlight, they still kept moving forward, trying to catch the actor.
Their sharp voices can almost shock the soul of a living person, and their faint sobs can give people a splitting headache.
The male actor looked at the bright red monster walking towards him with bulging eyes in horror, his mouth wide open but unable to utter a word due to extreme fear, only making "ho ho" sounds.
Finally, when the bright red monster, who was not sure whether it was a ghost or something else, grabbed the actor's ankle with its arm bones that were burned by the sun until only charred bones were left, he finally let out a heart-wrenching scream. The weird scene that was beyond his cognition and common sense broke down all his psychological defenses.
“Ahhhhh!! Ghost, ghost!”
The actor opened his eyes wide, kicked the dry bones on his ankles desperately, and crawled down, trying to get rid of these things immediately and escape the terror.
He kept looking back while running for his life, but was horrified to find those things were also stumbling after him.
And that’s not all.
The soil in the woods kept wriggling, and blood-red rotten arms broke through the soil and centuries of decay and broke out of the ground.
The actor was running wildly in fear and despair, while more and more red humanoid monsters emerged from the soil deep in the woods, wailing and crying, and moving towards the actor.
They want to keep the actors and drag the living into their graves.
They wanted to skin the actor alive, drink his blood, pick up his flesh and make it their own body, replace the actor's identity as a living person, and leave from the grave of the dead.
They stared at the running actor with their eyes, which were now filled with black holes. They opened their rotten and smelly mouths and let out wailing screams that became more and more shrill, with tears of blood flowing down their long-rotten eye sockets.
The actor who kept looking back slipped and fell flat on the stone road. When he got up with stars in his eyes, he found that the blood-red humanoid monsters had taken advantage of his brief pause to approach him.
They came one after another, piling up around the male actor, forming piles of corpses, reaching out their hands, trying to touch the flesh and blood of the living.
The actor, who had nowhere to escape, looked at the monsters swarming around him, and the line in his heart that remained a normal person finally broke completely.
“Get out! Get out—!!”
The actor screamed miserably and ran away in panic along the cobblestone road using his hands and feet.
As the audience followed the actor's body shaking violently and even spinning from time to time, they faced the blood-red humanoid monsters and even looked into the eyes of the skeletons with hollow, dark eye sockets. They were shocked and terrified, and some even retched from the disgust.
The audience trembled, as if they were feeling the same thing as the actor. For a moment, they were affected by the monster's deep malice and were frightened to the point of view of paleness.
…
All the guests and staff fell into a long silence after watching the entire split-screen recording of the male actor with Yan Shixun in the living room.
Except for Zhang Wubing, Bai Shuang and An Nanyuan, even if the other guests found out on social media platforms after waking up that there was a problem with the live broadcast of the show while they were asleep last night, due to Liu Yiyi's incident and the rush of time, they did not have time to carefully watch the live broadcast recording of last night. They only hurriedly got a general idea from some variety show celebrities and hot comments.
At this time, they watched helplessly what happened to the male actor outside the villa when he wanted to go down the mountain. They were so scared that they turned pale, trembled all over and could hardly stand.
Although Zhang Wubing had developed the habit of listening to Yan Shixun's words to survive since college, he did not expect that it was these things that caused Yan Shixun to say that he could not go down the mountain. His face turned pale.
As for Bai Shuang and An Nanyuan.
After seeing Liu Yiyi's miserable condition this morning, the two realized that they were able to escape death last night because of Yan Shixun, and now they are convinced by Yan Shixun. When they saw the screen recording and realized that Guishan was in danger, they stayed closer to Yan Shixun, as if they were relieved that they could survive by staying with the big boss.
The rest of the staff were even more stunned. They didn't expect that they had just come to participate in a travel variety show that didn't make much splash, but they would encounter such an outrageous thing!
"Then, then we really can't leave Guishan? What should we do? I don't want to stay here, I want to go home!" Someone's voice even sounded like crying.
Yan Shixun calmly closed the screen and chuckled, "For those who left the villa without permission during the day, I would like to thank you in advance for providing me with more video data to study the situation outside. Thank you for your sacrifice to save others. You will always live in my heart."
Hearing that Yan Shixun did not mean to say it clearly, the man immediately shut up and no longer mentioned going down the mountain.
Everyone saw the miserable state of the actor when he returned from outside, and no one wanted to be the next person to have a mental breakdown after being scared by a monster.
"Brother Yan." Zhang Wubing called Yan Shixun softly. Although he was frightened, as a director, he still tried to stay calm and direct the situation.
"Liu Yiyi's injuries are fine in the short term, but if they last too long, there will definitely be problems. Another thing is that the emergency personnel checked him out. Apart from some minor injuries such as scrapes, his main problem is mental... We can't let him continue to be unconscious like this."
Even after what happened, Zhang Wubing still did not give up and wanted to get everyone out of the dangerous situation and continue with the variety show.
Yan Shixun glanced at Zhang Wubing's determined look and said, "Remember to pay more. The original contract between you and me was just for a normal variety show. If you want me to do more work, you have to pay extra."
He hates to have any unnecessary karma with anyone.
Zhang Wubing agreed immediately.
An Nanyuan, who was standing next to him, also quickly responded: "Brother Yan, I will transfer the money to you right away! I will give you whatever you say, and I will never bargain."
Bai Shuang: "Me too!"
The other guests also gradually realized from the attitudes of the few people towards Yan Shixun that Yan Shixun was probably not just an amateur, but a master who knew some of that stuff.
No matter how much they looked down on or ignored Yan Shixun before, these people now began to scramble to make offers and promise Yan Shixun high salaries, fearing that they would be rejected.
Yan Shixun agreed to none of them. He just raised his hand to support his well-defined cheek, and sat steadily on the sofa in the living room, making three rules with everyone without any fear of any dangerous incident.
"Then everyone, work hard to get out of Guishan—"
"First, no one is allowed to leave the villa during the day, and no one is allowed to open the door and leave the room at night."
"Secondly, you are not allowed to say any non-scientific words or mention any non-scientific things."
"Third, don't trust anything outside the show crew in the villa, and don't eat anything casually."
"Fourth..."
Yan Shixun paused for a moment, and then under everyone's nervous gaze, he uttered the last sentence.
"Believe in yourselves, you will all leave Guishan and head for Guishan."
"Because, I'm right here."
His long eyelashes were as thick as crow feathers, and a gleam of excitement gradually brightened in his covered eyes.
As if he had encountered something exciting, Yan Shixun looked full of fighting spirit and madness at this moment, as if he would rush towards the enemy without fear and have a hearty fight in the next moment.
The people who had just been trapped in the fear of death and danger couldn't help but feel hopeful when they saw Yan Shixun being so confident.
"Knock, knock."
However, just when everyone was getting excited, a slight knock on the door suddenly came from the edge of the living room.
The old butler stood at the junction of the living room and the dining room, and put on a fake, stiff smile on his stiff face.
"Guests, breakfast may begin."
Seeing everyone's vigilance and refusal, the old housekeeper said with such a weird smile: "Please rest assured, guests, for the sake of your health, there will be no food suitable for guests in the mountains, in case the overly curious guests get sick. The only food you can eat is the food provided by the villa kitchen."
"Of course, if you have doubts, you can refuse."
"It's just... I heard that the experience of starving to death is not a very good one."
Hearing the undisguised malice in the old butler's voice, everyone shuddered and retreated cautiously.
Yan Shixun, who was surrounded by everyone, put his hands in his pockets and stood up slowly.
His handsome face was filled with excitement and wildness, and he gave the old butler a cold smile.
"Since it's the craftsmanship of the villa kitchen, I must not miss it."
“The flavors from a hundred years ago are really intoxicating.”
Yan Shixun and the old butler looked at each other silently across the crowd.
After a moment of silence, the old butler stepped back half a step to the side, clearing the way to the restaurant.
"Then everyone, please."
The space without lights or windows was completely dark, like a monster's bloody mouth, waiting to devour its prey.
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