To get hold of the mysterious link tied to the ghost server, Fang Tian spent the entire afternoon parked at his computer working the problem. Over that time the student forum produced a steady stream of stout fellows ready to lend a hand — mixed in with plenty of freeloaders hoping to get something for nothing, and two or three who asked his rates for boosting, every one of them on a rank-first, pay-later basis.
The message bars of his several alt accounts blinked without pause, giving Fang Tian a genuine taste of the camaraderie among Qingkong alumni: everyone hunched at their computers, none of them knowing one another through the screen, yet all striving toward the same cause.
So as not to let the seniors' enthusiasm go to waste, he naturally added every one of his predecessors' assists to his browser's favorites — in a critical spirit, of course.
Sadly, not a single one of the mysterious links he received was the one he wanted.
What Fang Tian wanted was the special kind — the kind that let him share a stage with a ghost.
After his seventh alt got banned, Fang Tian was a little worn out. He realized that carrying on like this probably wouldn't get him much further; rather than keep vigil at the computer, he'd be better off catching some sleep before nightfall.
He yawned, minimized the page, and lay down on the bed. Maybe it was the 3,000 meters he'd run that morning — the moment he shut his eyes, he sank into a heavy, muddled sleep.
In the dark, time passed quickly. Fang Tian felt he'd no sooner closed his eyes than he was awake again.
It wasn't a sleep he'd gotten to wake from naturally. A bone-deep chill shot straight to the crown of his head, and as he woke he couldn't help giving a shudder.
The moonlight slanting into the dorm was the only source of light. By it, Fang Tian was startled to find Chu Lun gone from the room. Behind the silence lay a deathly, lifeless air.
He picked up the phone tucked under his pillow. The number on the screen read 00:03.
The second night had come.
Fang Tian yawned and returned to the computer. The instant he jiggled the mouse, the student forum's chat window popped up on its own — and he was keenly aware he had not clicked on those thirty-odd unread messages in the top-right corner.
『You there?』
A textbook opening line.
Compared with the predecessors who'd dropped a link and then hidden their merit and name, whoever was messaging him now was a touch more reserved.
The first message had come at 00:00.
『I saw your post on the forum. Are you good at shooting games?』
The second was at 00:01.
『I downloaded a game, but I'm not very good at it.』
The third was two minutes after the second — which was exactly when that wave of cold had jolted Fang Tian from sleep. He couldn't help frowning, because both the timing and the atmosphere were just a little too fitting.
Could it be that the reason no ghost had contacted him in the afternoon was simply that it wasn't yet past midnight?
『No problem, I'm pretty good. I can teach you.』
Fang Tian quickly composed a reply and sent it, then came another full two minutes of waiting — two minutes stretched so long they may well have been the longest two minutes of his life.
At last a link popped up. When he clicked it, no website opened; instead the browser automatically began downloading a file several hundred megabytes large.
『New quest available: "Ghost Server, and the Player Who Doesn't Exist" (Difficulty: F-rank). You have received a mysterious link inviting you to play a game together.』
『Quest objective: complete one match.』
『Warning: in F-rank quests, the Appreciator may encounter aggressive monsters. Making friends carries risk; the Appreciator must proceed with caution.』
This time Fang Tian read through the new quest the moment it appeared. The difficulty was a tier below the one he'd picked up in Building C's third basement — somewhere between Beginner and E-rank. He guessed the system rated quests by how dangerous they were.
Still, the dialogue box popping up out of nowhere proved once again that Qingkong's Seven Wonders weren't some tall tale dreamed up on a whim.
The several-hundred-meg game finished downloading in under a few minutes. Before Fang Tian could even click it, the game window opened by itself.
Mindful that his Sanity was only 5, he all but instinctively covered his eyes with one hand, in case some horror image leapt out after the black screen.
A game that could interest a ghost ought to be at least Outlast-tier, he figured. And since the other party had mentioned shooting games, it was probably a Resident Evil-style zombie game.
After a good few dozen seconds of bracing himself, Fang Tian finally spread his fingers a crack —— and a familiar loading screen met his eye.
This......
The hand shielding his eyes drifted down on its own. On the screen was a classic figure: a riot helmet, most of the face hidden under a black balaclava, only a pair of sharp eyes showing.
This is freaking Counter-Strike 1.6?
Fang Tian was suddenly seized by the feeling he'd been had. CS:GO had been out for years; hardly anyone still played this old game. It seemed the ghost who'd sent it to him was rather the nostalgic sort.
So all this fuss, and it turned out to be an invitation to shoot some guns.
Well, that played right into his hands — he was slick with a gun.
Before Fang Tian could do a thing, the game connected itself to a server. After a few seconds of map loading, what came up was a familiar map: he spawned as a Counter-Terrorist beside a truck parked downstairs.
Assault — the classic hostage-rescue map. He hit TAB, but the menu that popped up listed only his own player name. Even so, a three-minute countdown began.
He didn't hesitate. He bought light armor and ammo, then crept carefully toward the back door, running through in his mind every spot good for ambushing. After breaching the door, he first confirmed the left was clear, then ducked behind the crates on the first floor with the speed of a thunderclap.
A smooth, flowing sequence of moves — and yet no one shot at him.
As far as the eye could see, the cavernous warehouse was empty.
This ghost couldn't be very good, to let him slip into the warehouse this easily. Even if it wasn't confident in its aim, it should at least have tried to gather some info.
Fang Tian held the walk key so as to make no footsteps, and inched toward the hostage room on the second floor. It went off without a hitch, no resistance at all — but when the warehouse door opened, he found there wasn't a single hostage inside.
Had his opponent slipped out through the pipe or the front door while he was sneaking in the back?
Back when he played this map with classmates, there really were a few ultimate campers who liked to lurk near the CT spawn and the bridge. Figuring his opponent might already be on the bridge holding the front door, Fang Tian decided to crawl out through the pipe and trade shots on the rooftop. In 1.6 pistol rounds the CT held the long-range advantage, and from the roof down to the bridge he could pin the other side perfectly.
With that, Fang Tian crept into the pipe.
Just as he'd started thinking about what gun to buy next round, something out of the ordinary appeared in his view.
As everyone knows, the warehouse map's pipe leads to two places: one straight out to the upper rooftop, the other to just in front of the hostage room. But when he was halfway through, there was no ladder to the upper level on his right. In its place were red, branch-like fleshy buds.
Following the buds up to the ceiling, he found the pipe to the hostage room was almost entirely sheathed in a lining of flesh — a texture plainly beyond anything 1.6 could render, the slowly squirming portions lifelike, looking rather like the aberrant monster he'd seen down on the third basement level of Building C.
He'd walked right into it!
A CS 1.6 skin on the surface, a souped-up horror game underneath!
Fang Tian's heart went cold. He fired off a few rounds at the flesh wall with his silenced pistol; it contracted a couple of times, then stopped responding altogether.
After much hesitation, Fang Tian still steered his character up the buds to the pipe's upper level —— however lifelike the visuals, it was only a game.
The flesh-wrapped pipe was cramped and long, and the unscrupulous host had even disabled the flashlight, forcing him to grope forward in the dark.
Fang Tian's eyes narrowed to slits, braced for a ghost face to spring out and scare him at any second.
He'd admit he was a coward — but the USP in his hand right now was nothing to sniff at. In a space this tight, he could land a shot even with his eyes shut.
Time slipped by second by second. Soon only the last 30 seconds of the countdown remained, and Fang Tian finally reached the end of that long pipe.
Another vent panel leading down — but he'd bet good money this one didn't open onto the hostage room. It opened somewhere he'd never seen before, and that ultimate camper was very possibly crouched below right now, waiting to headshot him with a three-round Glock burst.
The situation was thoroughly unfavorable to Fang Tian, yet without a backward glance he smashed the vent panel and leapt down through it.
Now, it was time to show the other side what professional-grade reaction speed looked like.
"BANG——!"
A tremendous crash.
Before his character even hit the ground, Fang Tian shot up out of his chair a step ahead of it.
Momentum sent the computer chair toppling to the floor. In that moment, he finally understood that the streamers who flew out of their seats from horror games weren't acting.
Only, the thing that scared him wasn't in the horror game — it was outside the dorm door.
In that utterly silent setting, the sound had struck Fang Tian like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, catching him completely off guard.
He stood rooted in place, hands and feet gone cold.
His no-longer-controlled character had landed in a pitch-black corridor. There was no opponent lying in wait on the screen, yet the scene before his eyes sent his heartbeat racing to its limit: a familiar corridor, the doors along its left side shut tight, room numbers marked on each.
And that great crash just now seemed to have been made by something heavy hitting the ground.
The 30-second countdown soon ran to zero, but the match didn't end. The character still stood motionless in this corridor so very like a student dorm building.
The next moment, the quest prompt changed.
『Quest objective updated: investigate the sound outside the door.』