Chapter 1 What Did You See?

"What did you see?" Jiang Cheng asked, frowning.

"I saw an acquaintance, an acquaintance of yours." Fatty's trembling hand pointed towards the computer. "He's... he's in the movie, in one of the shots, I saw him!"

"My acquaintance is in a movie..." Jiang Cheng was momentarily stunned. He didn't follow celebrities. If it was an acquaintance, there might be some actresses in action movies, but Fatty was watching a horror movie.

He walked to the computer, puzzled. The film was still playing, showing a group of college students walking along a country road. The picture quality wasn't very clear, and the camera was shaking, giving it a pseudo-documentary feel.

Jiang Cheng watched for a while, but he didn't recognize the movie.

The camera occasionally focused on the faces of the college students, four men and one woman, all unfamiliar faces. Jiang Cheng had never seen them before.

"Where's the acquaintance?" Jiang Cheng turned to ask Fatty.

With Jiang Cheng by his side, Fatty gradually calmed down and quickly reminded him, "It's coming up. There's a scene where they're all drinking together, in a bar."

Jiang Cheng dragged the progress bar and slowly found the spot Fatty was talking about.

The college students arrived at a place that looked like a bar. The bar was crowded, and business seemed good, but the camera shook too much, making it dizzying.

Putting on his headphones, Jiang Cheng heard them speaking a rare dialect. The background music was also loud, so he couldn't hear them clearly, but he could sense their tension from their tone.

One of the men with a buzz cut kept checking his phone, doing it several times a minute, which only intensified the tense atmosphere.

Jiang Cheng stared at the screen. He felt the same way Fatty had, an indescribable unease, as if that unease would become reality in the next second.

"Doctor," Fatty's voice suddenly rose, "It's almost here!"

About 10 seconds later, a man who looked like a waiter passed by the college students. The moment he turned his head, Jiang Cheng was stunned.

Fatty was right, he did recognize this person. He was a waiter from the bar he frequented.

It was the same bar he had taken Fatty Huai Yi to before, and this was the person who had served them!

But... how was that possible?

Judging from the quality of this movie, it was at least 20 years old. How old would this waiter have been back then? Besides, forget about the waiter, he wasn't even sure if there were bars like that back then...

Jiang Cheng suddenly paused. Now that this waiter had appeared, could this bar in the video, whose background was unclear, be the same one he frequented?

After thinking about it, Jiang Cheng was worried he had made a mistake, so he deliberately rewound the video until he paused it at the moment the waiter turned his face. This time he was finally certain, this was the same person he knew, not just someone who looked similar!

"Where did you find this movie?" Jiang Cheng pressed.

"In a forum that specializes in recommending horror movies." Fatty recalled, "This movie was really popular, it was ranked first in the category, and a lot of people left messages recommending it."

"Which forum? Find it for me."

Fatty heard this and took out his phone, operating it. He had used his phone to find it before, but this time his expression worsened. "How... how can't I find it?" Fatty said anxiously, "I even logged in to check before coming back, and a lot of people were recommending this movie, I can't be mistaken!"

Jiang Cheng took Fatty's phone and operated it for a few seconds, pulling up his browsing history, then took a deep breath and showed it to Fatty, "People's memories can be wrong, but phones don't lie. There's no horror forum you mentioned in the browsing history."

Actually, Jiang Cheng had sensed something was wrong earlier. This was an old movie, how could it possibly be number one on the hot list? Besides, he had seen a lot of horror movies, if this movie was really that famous, he would have heard of it at least a little.

"Fatty," Jiang Cheng said softly, "Don't be scared when I say this, but I'm afraid you logged into a ghost website."

Fatty's face turned pale when he heard this. Actually, even if Jiang Cheng hadn't said it, he would have sensed that something was wrong.

After thinking about it, Jiang Cheng continued, "This might be a new paranormal event, spread specifically through horror movies. Anyone who has watched this movie will be targeted by the ghost in the movie."

"But we've also watched this movie, we..." Fatty suddenly panicked. He watched horror movies to build his courage, not to risk his life. If he had known the result would be like this, he would have never watched it.

Jiang Cheng signaled Fatty to calm down with his eyes, "We're entangled with the bus. Judging from what happened before, ordinary paranormal events don't have much of an impact on us. I don't think the ghost in this movie can kill us either."

Fatty thought that the ghost in this movie didn't look ordinary at all, but he didn't dare to say it, for fear it would come true.

He said that, but Jiang Cheng's face didn't show any feeling of surviving a disaster. "Although it doesn't affect us, it's definitely a disaster for ordinary people. Anyone who has logged into that forum might search for this movie, and anyone who has watched the movie will be killed by the ghost." Jiang Cheng's words were all just speculation, but he was at least 80% sure.

Hearing that many innocent people would die because of this movie, Fatty couldn't help but ask, "Doctor, is there anything we can do?"

He had a strange sense of trust in the doctor. What the doctor said was the truth. He said that this paranormal event would not affect the two of them, so nothing would happen. Since there was no danger, of course they should save the innocent people they could.

Staring at the computer screen, Jiang Cheng asked Fatty, "Tell me about the ghost in this movie first."

"The ghost here is a female college student, she's... she's a classmate of these people in the movie. They went camping in the mountains together, and as a result, they drank alcohol. At night, someone had malicious intentions, and in the struggle, the female college student accidentally fell down the hillside."

"By the time the others found her, she wasn't dead yet, but she was seriously injured. The others were worried that she would call the police after she got out, and everyone would be implicated, so they agreed to each hit her with a stone to death."

"That way, everyone's hands would be stained with blood, and if something happened, no one could escape responsibility."

"Then they carried the body, found a remote cave, threw the body inside, and then sealed the outside of the cave with stones, thinking that this would be perfect."

"But what they didn't expect was that the Nightmare Assault had just begun."

"A week after this incident, they started receiving calls one by one. The number on the phone was from the dead woman. Some people plucked up the courage to answer, and there was a very eerie crying sound on the other end. The crying was muffled, as if it was coming from a confined space, and then there was the sound of fingernails scratching at stones." Fatty was scared just thinking about it. "When they buried the woman, they threw her belongings into the cave with her, including the female student's phone."