Chapter 1153: Batman's Perspective
"Eh, 'Suffocate'? What kind of game is this? The description is interesting—what's a 'low-budget horror game' supposed to mean..."
Lin Xue was already inside the Matrix game pod, eager to see what Chen Mo's new game was all about.
This game had been causing quite a stir online recently, mainly because of Chen Mo's speech at the design competition, which piqued a lot of people's curiosity.
Of course, Lin Xue was diving into this new game with a sense of impending doom. As one of the most cowardly streamers in the whole "Fish Leisurely" platform, playing this game truly required a lot of courage.
But she had no choice; her viewers wouldn't let it go...
She had managed to dodge "Silent Hill" last time, but you can avoid it once, not forever. If she tried to bail again this time, her audience would revolt.
"Hey, you guys are the ones making me play this. I'm telling you, if I get scared half to death, you'd better send me a bunch of rockets..."
The game was called "Suffocate," with the English name "I Fled."
The game's entrance was located in a cave near the seaside mansion. The cave opening was very low, barely enough for an adult to squeeze through.
Lin Xue stared at the pitch-black cave entrance in front of her, feeling the tension already building.
"Is it too late to delete the game now..."
After agonizing for two minutes, Lin Xue gritted her teeth and stepped inside.
The moment she entered the cave, the light behind her vanished instantly, and everything around her plunged into complete darkness.
"Ah!"
Lin Xue screamed in fright. She looked around and found that aside from a TV set crackling with static to her right front, she couldn't see anything.
This TV was strange.
It was pure black and white, with a solid black casing outlined by white lines.
Or rather, it couldn't really be called a TV—it was just a bunch of white lines that happened to form the outline of a TV set.
The TV screen displayed the game's name, "Suffocate," in light gray, covered in static snow. And with the TV's crackling sound, the white outline rippled outward like water waves.
Lin Xue cautiously approached the TV, fumbling around.
From the feel of it, it was indeed a TV, but this strange visual made Lin Xue very uneasy.
There was a button under the TV. She pressed it lightly, and the game officially began.
A moment later, the sound of an alarm clock rang in Lin Xue's ears.
A glaring light hit her eyes. Lin Xue squinted as she sat up from the bed, finding herself in a bedroom.
The alarm was still ringing incessantly. Lin Xue looked around, and her first thought was...
Why is there fog inside the house...
Everything around was hazy, giving off a "Silent Hill" vibe. But the key issue was—this was indoors...
She'd never heard of such thick fog inside a house.
Lin Xue turned off the alarm clock by the bed and got up. The fog was getting thicker, to the point where she couldn't see clearly beyond two meters.
She touched her chest. Uh, couldn't tell.
She touched her hair. Confirmed—in the game, she was a guy.
Lin Xue was now playing as a fairly sturdy male character, with solid muscles and a relatively robust build.
Too bad he was blind at such a young age.
Lin Xue was very puzzled: "What's the deal here? Is this hinting at what the capital will be like in fifty years?"
The fog was so thick that Lin Xue could only grope her way forward.
Just then, a prompt appeared at the bottom of the screen: "Try making some sounds."
Lin Xue opened her mouth: "Hello? Anyone there?"
The fog around her instantly dissipated, revealing an area with a radius of less than two meters.
"Oh? So that's how it works? What if I clap my hands?"
Lin Xue tried clapping. This time, the sound was louder than her voice, and the fog cleared even more.
So Lin Xue kept clapping as she wandered around the room, examining the various furnishings in the house.
It looked like a middle-class family home in a Western region. The furnishings weren't luxurious, but the house was new and fairly spacious.
Bedroom, bathroom, study...
Lin Xue opened all the drawers and cabinets, finding some items like documents, books, files, greeting cards, baby supplies, and so on. They were all common things, with no special clues.
One clear clue was that the protagonist had a wife and was expecting a child soon. From the baby crib and magazines in the house, she could infer they were preparing for pregnancy.
Going down to the first floor, Lin Xue saw a woman's silhouette in the kitchen cooking, but when she walked over, the silhouette disappeared.
"Well, so far it's not that scary..."
Lin Xue felt this level of horror was acceptable. No pitch-black darkness, no eerie background music, and when she stepped into the yard, there were birds singing and flowers blooming.
Aside from the annoying haze, everything else was normal and not too frightening.
But just then, Lin Xue heard someone persistently ringing the doorbell. She walked over and opened the door, and suddenly her vision turned a strange blood-red, then went black.
When she woke up, she was in the middle of nowhere, with the car in front of her completely flipped over.
"This... where is this? There's a pool of blood on the ground? Is that my wife's? Did I crash?"
From her earlier experience in the room, Lin Xue already knew the male protagonist had a wife named Rose. But now the car was overturned, and a trail of blood led into the darkness in the distance. Clearly, the protagonist was about to recklessly follow that blood trail to find his wife.
"...Don't be stupid, okay? Let's just call the police... Uh, looks like we can't call the police. The newspaper earlier said it's the 1970s, right?"
Lin Xue had no choice but to follow the blood trail into the pitch-black forest. She knew it was all part of the scripted plot, but there was no way around it...
There was still a bit of light near the car, but as she ventured deeper into the woods, even that tiny bit of light disappeared, leaving only complete darkness.
But strangely, Lin Xue could still see things. The trees, grass, rocks—all had white outlines.
These white outlines would slowly fade over time, but whenever Lin Xue made a sound, a ring of white sound waves would spread out. When the sound waves touched an object, they would outline its shape.
"Exploring the surroundings through sound waves? So the protagonist's true identity is... Batman???"
Lin Xue kept clapping as she moved forward, using the sound waves to see the environment clearly. She followed the blood trail across a small stream and finally arrived in front of a cave.
It wasn't a natural cave; it looked more like a sewer or a bomb shelter. There was an iron gate at the entrance, and inside was a man-made arched ceiling.
Lin Xue's emotions were complicated. Logically, she should be very scared, given how dark it was.
But she wasn't that scared—nowhere near the point of wanting to flee. Because as long as she clapped loudly enough to make sound, she could see quite far.
"Feels okay, not that horr—"
Before Lin Xue could finish her sentence, a monster's screech suddenly rang out from ahead, and red outlines instantly spread toward her!
Everything around had been white outlines, but now they all turned red in an instant. This visual experience was enough to make anyone's mind explode...
Lin Xue froze on the spot.
"Is it too late to quit the game now??"