BXBX NOVEL Chapter 91: Abandoned amusement park exploration
Chapter 91: Abandoned amusement park exploration
Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor- Koneko, Proofreader-Ghostie
Bei Quan sat down in front of the broadcasting station and hung a charm bag underneath the microphone.
“Wow!”
Jiang Nan’an exclaimed in joy as he sat beside Wei Fuyuan.
“Is this the secret technique of the Zhu Ling Secret Realm mentioned by the master?”
“Shut up!”
Young Master Wei was already upset. He was even more annoyed when he heard Jiang’s chattering,
“It’s time to start the broadcast!”
Jiang Nan’an touched his buzz-cut head and grinned a playful smile as he finally closed his mouth for the time being.
As soon as the clock struck midnight, Bei Quan pressed the broadcast button.
“Welcome to Midnight Radio [Thriller Night Talk], this is the anchor Bei Quan.”
Bei Quan’s soft and magnetic voice flowed effortlessly out of the speakers,
“Please tell us your story, no matter how strange it is.”
Bei Quan said softly into the microphone.
“I’m sorry we didn’t start on time last week. We haven’t heard from you since then, I wonder if you missed us?”
Hearing Bei Quan mention the words “last week”, Wei Fuyuan involuntarily recalled the ten days they had spent together in the United States. They got along day and night and were inseparable. Their relationship became so close that Young Master Wei had the illusion that the relationship between them was more than a friendship, but not yet lovers. Things seemed like they were slowly stepping in the right direction.
——But…
Wei Fuyuan silently bit his lower lip.
His heart felt sour and painful.
On the plane, they were still in close proximity to each other and slept close. When they turned over, they could touch each other. But, as soon as they returned to the “Sāntúchuān”, Bei Quan found a new man,? distanced himself, and even presented him with a termination of his contract!
Wei Fuyuan felt bitter. The fist that was resting on his knee was clenched tightly, and his chest was very tense. He really wanted to jump up, firstly to punch Jiang Nan’an, then to rush into the studio and push? Bei Quan hard against the table— to release this built-up hatred and vent his frustrations.
However, on the contrary, he couldn’t throw a fit now, especially when they were live— he could only swallow all of his grievances, suffocation, bitterness, and sadness.
Bei Quan’s voice nevertheless continued.
“Since you are all waiting anxiously, let’s cut the chatter and get to the listener’s hotline.”
Bei Quan smiled:
“I’m looking forward to see what kind of story we will hear tonight!”
With this sentence, Bei Quan stopped talking.
There was no more sound inside or outside of the broadcasting room— just dead silence.
This silence lasted for about two seconds before the phone rang.
“Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.”
Bei Quan released a light laugh.
“Okay, the hotline has been called. Let’s listen to what the caller wants to say to us.”
Bei Quan gently pressed some buttons on the mixer deck.
[Hello, hello… Hello?]
A girl’s voice came over the radio.
She called out several times in a row before hesitantly speaking.
[Excuse me, can you hear me?]
Bei Quan answered in a gentle voice with a smile on his face:
“Hello, yes, I can hear you very clearly.”
[Call…]
The girl on the other end of the phone breathed a long sigh of relief, her voice faintly bringing out a little cry because of the excitement.
[Great! That’s great!]
“Wow, she sounds young…”
Jiang Nan’an leaned closer to Wei Fuyuan. He lowered his voice, and said with a smile, “It seems like it’s a beautiful girl on the line, right?”
Wei Fuyuan glared at Jiang Nan’an in disgust, and then pushed the man away.
As Jiang Nan’an said, the voice on the phone did sound quite young, maybe from a 20 year old. The tone was high and clear with a little northeastern dialect accent.
Bei Quan asked the young girl:
“Excuse me, what should we call you?”
[Ah…]
The girl thought for moment and replied happily,
[My name is Rou Rou]
“Ok, Rou Rou.”
Bei Quan did not care what name was given to him, and this was probably a pseudonym— in order not to alarm the ghost in any case.
He asked for a name just to facilitate communication with the speaker and create a sort of bond.
“Has anything interesting happened to you recently?”
[Woo~]
The girl’s soft sob came from the other end of the phone.
[… Nothing interesting at all!]
She flatly retorted:
[Really, not only is it not interesting, but it’s also scary!]
[No, no! I should say, it’s something really terrible!]
She took a deep breath, but her mood didn’t calm down.
[Anchor, can you believe it? I… we- we just said a word casually, and it came true!]
At the end of the sentence, the girl was so excited that she cried out.
“Rou Rou, don’t worry.”
Bei Quan promptly interrupted the caller’s gradually fragmented statement.
“Let’s start from the beginning.”
He lowered his voice and spoke in a gentle tone that came with a soothing effect.
“How about this, you can start by telling us where you encountered the thing that made you feel ‘terrible’?”
———————–
Bei Quan and Rou Rou started a conversation in the form of a question and then an answer.
Under Bei Quan’s clever guidance, Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an, who were listening, gradually pieced together the complete story.
According to Rou Rou, she was a somewhat famous female streamer of a large network live platform. The main direction of her program was very different from most other women her age and aesthetics— she specialised in the supernatural field, anything to do with suspense, thriller, horror, and general curiosity.
[I usually spend a lot of my time watching horror movies online.]
[I watch the type of shows and horror movies while turning the camera to myself, so that the viewer can see my reaction…]
After describing the way she started broadcasting, she continued:
[I also play horror puzzle computer games, or some psychic games like Money Fairy, Ouija Boards, Bloody Mary, etc., depending on what the viewers want me to play.]
According to Rou Rou’s description, she is not a strong or tough looking woman.
On the contrary, she would deliberately create a timid and cowardly image of a soft girl in front of the camera— whether it was watching movies or playing games, she would pretend to be both clumsy and cowardly. She would scream so loudly that her neighbours would often knock at her door in concern.
But, it was this style that brought her a rather large and stable audience.
Her audience sometimes were not necessarily interested in horror films or scary indie games but, most liked to see a pretty girl lose her mind, scream, and even cry.
Rou Rou was precisely pinpointing her core audience, making herself a big streamer with millions of fans.
Just recently, Rou Rou finally met something that, in her opinion, was not only terrible but also very unimaginable.
[Yes…]
She took a soft breath and continued:
[The platform that I use hosts an annual contest which gives out awards for great activities and content. The point is to invite well-known streamers from various different programs to work together and collaborate? in live broadcasts…]
The editor-in-chief of the program to which Rou Rou belongs created a group chat, pulling all of the big streamers together, asking them to discuss what activities they wanted to do for this contest.
Most of the participants thought of traditional online games in the usual style they had hosted before, but only one anchor proposed something different— an offline party where they could do a live haunted house adventure.
This idea was very innovative and got a lot of positive responses from many people, including Rou Rou.
We visited each other’s cities, and finally organised a live broadcast of spiritual exploration in Fèng Xīngchéng City where the destination was an abandoned amusement park in the suburbs.
[A lot of people came at that time.]
[Besides me, there were five streamers alone, as well as their friends, so a total of…]
She hesitated before continuing:
[Mm, no, I don’t quite remember… There were usually about ten people anyway…]
“Okay.”
Bei Quan listened carefully to her words, and continued asking her questions to prompt more informations:
“So, what happened to you in the amusement park?”
Unexpectedly, Rou Rou gave an answer that surprised the all three members of the audience:
[Not in the amusement park…]
[Yes… Just before entering the amusement park…]
The abandoned amusement park that they chose was a tourism project led by the village government more than a decade ago. However, due to its remote location and poor management, it naturally closed down within two years.
The land where the amusement park was located had not been selected or used for any other purposes— some facilities and buildings that have no demolition value remain unused and abandoned. After ten years of weather corrosion, the attraction had been so dilapidated that horror films could be produced without any extra props or editing.
The streamer who initiated this spiritual quest was related to the village chief who developed the amusement park, and managed to get the keys to the park from them.
To heighten the horror and thrill of this adventure, the streamers did a lot of pre-production work— including setting up a backstory of “primary school students who were thrown out of the roller-coaster and broke their necks”, and even creating visual effects by photoshopping an old newspaper to make this fictitious horror story look realistic.
However, when they opened the rusted iron gate and prepared to enter the amusement park under the ardent expectations of their tens of millions of fans, there was an accident within the team.
[Someone suddenly screamed! Someone grabbed Miuya’s arm, and told her not to go inside!]
This “Miuya”, was the only other female streamer on the scene besides Rou Rou— Miuya brought along someone with her who was also a young girl, but Rou Rou didn’t know or recognize her.
[The girl said- she told us not to go in… no, otherwise, Miuya… she would die!]
“Oh?”
Bei Quan felt that he had heard the key clue and timely stopped Rou Rou’s narration with his softly spoken tone.
“Can you please recall carefully what the girl said at that time?”
The phone was silent for a second.
[She was very distressed at that time and kept screaming. I was quite far from them, so I couldn’t hear it very clearly.
After careful consideration, Rou Rou replied:
[But I remember- she said that Miuya would fall… She would break something…]
[Later, it turned out that she was right ……]
Rou Rou paused and sniffled hard as if trying to calm herself down, but it didn’t work and it made her voice tremble even more.
[But, the most horrible thing is not that she was right about Miuya dying …… but, but-]