The Haunted Game Designer

Mud from the soles of his shoes remained on the floor as Qi Yan shut the security door and locked it tightly.

His hand, hidden beneath the raincoat, dug hard into his nails. Qi Yan's breathing grew heavier. The media had dubbed him the Rainy Night Killer — a name he found quite satisfying. Cruel, insane, and filled with fear.

"How should I thank him for offering me shelter?"

His bloodshot eyes were almost completely veiled in red as he stared at Gao Ming's back. He loved hunting down kind-hearted people, crushing beauty, and trampling on it mercilessly.

"Such kindness must come from a warm, happy family. He must have been well-protected by his parents. Flowers raised in greenhouses never know how dark human nature can be."

With his raincoat hood still on, Qi Yan's twisted face contemplated how to torment Gao Ming.

"You must be starving." Gao Ming carried out a plate of food and poured a glass of water. "Today is my birthday. I happened to cook a little extra. Would you like to try some cake?"

The cake on the table was brought by Weird Dad and Weird Mom. Gao Ming believed that good things should be shared.

"No, thanks." Qi Yan didn't touch anything on the table, perhaps afraid of leaving traces. "It seems like someone in the bedroom is calling you?"

"My parents are home too." A bitter smile appeared on Gao Ming's face. "They're not in good health, always staying in the bedroom, unable to move around."

"They're calling you... aren't you going to check on them?" In Qi Yan's mind, Gao Ming was already a dead man. "Why not greet your parents?"

"I'm quite introverted... not too comfortable talking to them." Gao Ming sighed lightly, limping towards the bedroom. "They're sick... with some strange symptoms... they need rest."

Qi Yan also heard the sounds coming from the bedroom. He followed Gao Ming to the door, where the air grew colder, and the light began to distort.

Gao Ming grasped the doorknob and opened the bedroom door while stepping back.

With a hint of curiosity, Qi Yan peered inside.

The shadows inside the room were receding. Half the room bathed in a dim, hazy glow, while the other half was shrouded in thick darkness.

In the place where light and shadow intertwined, ghastly faces emerged — twisted, writhing bodies tangled together. Those monsters disguised as Dad and Mom went berserk at the sight of Gao Ming, dragging and clawing at each other, slamming against the door!

The sheer terror of the scene suffocated Qi Yan. He had expected two bedridden elderly parents inside the room!

Instinctively, he staggered back — but when he turned around, he saw Gao Ming lifting a heavy vase.

He vaguely remembered the man mentioning he was introverted.

"Crash!"

Shards of porcelain scattered. Qi Yan's cheek was stained with blood as the world spun around him. As he collapsed, that "kind" man "thoughtfully" poured a glass of "water" straight into his mouth.

The entire sequence of actions was seamless, as if rehearsed countless times.

"You could've used painless drug paralysis, but you just had to choose physical paralysis." Gao Ming squatted beside Qi Yan. "Don't be afraid. You'll lose consciousness soon... you won't feel any pain."

Hearing Gao Ming's words, Qi Yan's fear deepened. He had no idea what Gao Ming was about to do to him.

His flickering gaze swept across the room — the bound, restrained "parents" — before locking onto the calm Gao Ming.

In that instant, the terror reached its peak.

What kind of lunatic was this?

Deception, manipulation, dominance, pleasure, revenge, greed — he possessed every trait of a psychopathic killer. Cold, complex, cunning, and dangerous, even his methods and process exuded a twisted style.

"Why does it feel like you're cursing me with your eyes?"

Gao Ming pressed Qi Yan's back down, grabbed his hair, and lifted his head so he could stare directly into the bedroom.

"Before the drug kicks in, I want to ask you one question... can you see the people in the bedroom?"

Qi Yan's eyes were filled with fear—he could no longer respond. A sharp pain throbbed in his head, his mind reeled from the overwhelming shock, and the effects of the drug were slowly beginning to take hold.

At this moment, he felt as if he had just crossed the Bridge of Forgetfulness, having drunk half of Meng Po's soup, only to be struck violently from behind. He was now trapped in a state between life and death, between remembering and forgetting.

"Judging from your reaction, you can see them." Gao Ming tied up Qi Yan's hands and feet. "I'm not hallucinating. The game has indeed become reality in some strange way."

The shadows in the bedroom were dissipating rapidly. The eerie father and mother figures howled as they merged into the darkness. It seemed they never truly belonged to the real world—only appearing because, for some reason, the two worlds had overlapped.

Gao Ming could feel the temperature rising again, and his breathing became easier. "It seems my game has become a medium, linking reality with the place where those eerie mothers exist. Once I clear the game, everything should return to normal. But if I continue to ignore it, will these urban legends keep spreading? Will they eventually intertwine completely with reality, never to be separated again?"

By now, four-fifths of the bedroom was illuminated with normal light. As the eerie mother and father figures were being compressed and absorbed into the shrinking shadows, one eerie mother suddenly broke free!

Her gaze was filled with a disturbingly doting expression. Dragging along all the remaining darkness, she lunged straight at Gao Ming!

Caught off guard, Gao Ming turned and ran. But Qi Yan, behind him, wasn't as lucky.

At the last moment before she fully vanished, the eerie mother dragged Qi Yan into the shadows. A blood-curdling scream pierced the air—something seemed to have been taken from Qi Yan's body.

At 4:44 AM, the bedroom finally returned to normal. Gao Ming entered the room with a mop in hand. The eerie father and mother were completely gone, as if they had never existed. The cake and candles they brought had also vanished without a trace, leaving behind only Qi Yan, lying there motionless.

His eyes were empty, his soul seemingly drained, leaving him in a vegetative state.

In the spot where the eerie mother had disappeared, Gao Ming found two terrifying black-and-white photographs. "Is this supposed to be my reward for clearing the game?"

The photos were old and worn, their material unknown. They looked as though they had been taken many years ago.

One of the photos showed Gao Ming sitting at a dining table, eating cake. Around him stood a dense crowd of eerie fathers and mothers, giving the picture an unnervingly staged family-portrait feel.

What was particularly unsettling was that in this photo, everything—the cake, the furniture, and all the parents—was in black and white. Only Gao Ming himself was in color.

Turning the photo over, he found a series of messy, crooked words scrawled on the back.

"To my dear child: You are now eighteen, officially an adult. From today onward, you are the new guardian of the family. You now hold the key to our home."

"Our home exists between existence and nonexistence, hidden in the depths of nightmares, teetering on the absurd edges of reality. It is far from you, yet connected to the darkest corners of every heart."

"As the guardian, you may choose to save every family member, granting them equal love. You may also use them as tools—or even choose to torment them in more twisted ways."

"You have complete freedom. All we ask of you is simple: bring more people into the game that awakens after nightfall. The energy they release will feed certain entities spoken of only in whispers."

The handwriting on the back of the photo was childlike—messy, erratic, and stained with blood, making it deeply unsettling to look at.

"Guardian?"

Gao Ming furrowed his brows as he picked up the second black-and-white photo.

The front side showed Qi Yan's face—frozen in sheer terror, as if it were his obituary photo. The back of the photo also contained eerie text.

"A photo of a family member: Only those with deep attachments to reality, those in near-death states, those in utter despair, those trapped in nightmares, those who have lost their sanity, and those burdened with great sin can find and enter our home—becoming one of us. We are the last stop before death, offering them an alternative to simply ceasing to exist."

"But most who come here regret not choosing death instead."

(End of Chapter)

Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon

https://patreon.com/Glimmer09