Honestly, It Was Super Obvious—You’d Have to Be an Idiot Not to Notice
Stepping out of the room she had just searched, Cho-young headed straight toward the one right beside it.
“Doll. Doll-doll-doll-doll-doll.”
“N-No, it’s fine. I’m sure Hye-yeon is down on the first floor working hard to f-find it, too.”
“Hm? What’s with you guys? Why are you acting like that?”
“I-I’m looking right now, okay?!”
Pouting indignantly, Cho-young reached out and pushed open the door to the adjacent room.
Creaked—!!
The hinges shrieked in protest. Through the widening gap, a clammy, icy gust swept out of nowhere, rustling the loose strands of Cho-young’s dark hair.
“Eeeeeeek!”
It was only a draft, yet Cho-young jumped out of her skin, losing her balance and slamming flat on her rear.
“Hey! Seriously, stop mocking me! If you’re gonna make fun of me, at least do it with donations!”
BleuSky has donated 5 Low-grade Chrome Stones!
"Here you go, you total chicken lmao"
Cho-young dusted off her skirt. “Blue Sky-nim, respected.”
Suddenly, the rhythm of the chat flipped on its head.
Huh? Why’s chat freaking out all of a sudden?
Cho-young cautiously raised her chin and peeked through the slightly ajar door.
“…There’s nothing there, though?”
Were they pulling another prank on her?
“Oh, come on, guys. I told you to quit messing with me! Ha! As if! Do you really think someone as cowardly as me would fall for that twice?”
Getting more comfortable around her audience by the day, Cho-young offered a hollow, scoffing chuckle. But the chat only accelerated into a blind frenzy.
“……W-What is it? Seriously, stop.”
“Wh-What types?” Cho-young stuttered.
Arbo has donated 1 Low-grade Chrome Stone!
"Choyoung-ping, run awayyy……"
Her blood running cold, Cho-young slowly lifted her gaze back toward the doorway.
Without anyone touching it, the door began to swing open on its own.
“Uh……”
SCREEEEECH—!!
The rusty squeal tore through the silence like nails across glass. Beyond the frame, the interior of the room was laid bare under the moonlight.
A woman clad in a traditional white burial shroud.
She was crouching on the floor with her back turned, her garments filthy, encrusted with dark, coagulated blood.
“……”
At first came bewilderment. Then came blinding, primal dread. And right behind it… a wave of sheer, bitter regret over ever agreeing to this stream in the first place.
They said that when human beings encountered true, paralyzing horror, their bodies locked up entirely. Her jaw hung wide open; she could neither turn and run nor take a step forward.
That’s… that’s a prop, right?
It has to be. Right?
I-It’s not real… is it…?
A hollow, rhythmic rasp broke the stillness.
Kkik, kki-kkik, kkik!
It sounded like nails scraping together, or perhaps a bizarre, suffocated giggle.
THUD!
With a bone-jarring crack, the shrouded woman’s torso snapped ninety degrees to the side.
THUD!
Another unnatural crunch vibrated through the rotten floorboards.
The ghost’s face twisted around to lock onto Cho-young.
It was an elderly woman’s visage—empty, gaping black sockets where eyes should have been. Her mouth was ripped vertically down her chin, and the sagging, decayed wrinkles on her skin looked as if they were melting like hot wax. Lower down, two blood-smeared hands hovered, tipped with impossibly long, blackened claws.
“…Urk…”
Cho-young took an instinctive half-step back.
THUD!
In the blink of an eye, the grandmother ghost teleported straight to the threshold.
“…EEEEEEK! AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!”
Snot and tears bursting from her face, Cho-young rocketed down the second-floor hallway at inhuman speed. She didn't spare a single thought for where Hye-yeon might be; she slammed open the front door of the abandoned mansion and burst into the overgrown yard outside.
“GYAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Screaming at the top of her lungs, she whipped around to face the derelict building.
VWOOOOM—!!
Vast, furious waves of spiritual energy coalesced inside the palms of her hands.
Fwooosh—!
KABOOOOOOOM!!!
Under the indiscriminate, terrified barrage of Cho-young’s unleashed Fireball Technique,
ROOOOAAAR!
The abandoned mansion vanished from the face of the earth in a pillar of blazing fire.
A short while later.
“…I’m sorry.”
Hye-yeon stood with both arms held high in surrender.
Before her, Cho-young glared with a venomous scowl, attempting to cross her arms in reprimand—only to give up halfway because her absurdly massive bust made the gesture physically impossible.
“…Don’t laugh. Every single bastard laughing in chat gets a permanent ban.”
“Phew…”
Cho-young took a ragged breath, completely unsure how to quench the burning rage sizzling at the top of her skull.
“So. You’re telling me that ghost was you?”
Sporting an afro of singed, frizzy hair and a face covered in pitch-black soot, Hye-yeon coughed into her fist and nodded meekly.
She wasn't actually injured. An inner disciple of Pajeok Gate wasn't going to suffer a scratch from the Fireball Technique of a fledgling first-layer Qi Condensation cultivator.
“You put on a costume and full theatrical makeup?”
Nod.
Hye-yeon recalled the events on the second floor earlier.
Right as Cho-young was preparing to head into the neighboring room, Hye-yeon had sensed an immense surge of spiritual energy upstairs. Slipping through the outer window in advance, she had encountered a massive agglomeration of spiritual presence.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘……’
‘I took out all the ghosts here already! Why is a spirit with enough accumulated energy to form a conscious soul hanging around this place?’
‘……’
‘What? You came to see Cho-young? Why?’
‘……’
‘Rumors already spread through the ghost network…?!’
‘……’
‘…So the lingering spirit that used to haunt Cho-young’s house saw her sleeping, ran off to tell you guys, and you dragged this other spirit along just to catch a glimpse of her before moving on?!’
‘……’
‘Since your time to ascend to the afterlife has arrived anyway, you wanted to see Cho-young in person and gift her some spiritual energy on your way out? Well, that’s great and all, but……’
Right at that moment, the chat had chimed in with an irresistible offer.
SwordSaint’sDream has donated 1 Low-grade Chrome Stone!
"I’ll match it with an extra High-grade Chrome Stone, how about we do this?"
SwordSaint’s suggestion was simple: dress up in terrifying ghost makeup and give Cho-young the fright of her life. The chat had erupted in sheer delight, eggs egging on eggs. And so, Hye-yeon had hastily applied the disguise herself… resulting in Cho-young blasting the entire property into ash in a blind panic.
Having listened to the whole explanation, Cho-young put her hands on her hips, her expression utterly bewildered.
“Th-That makes zero sense! Why would ghosts want to look at me?!”
“…Guess they were men when they were alive…”
When Cho-young’s glare sharpened into daggers, Hye-yeon shrank back, ducking her head like a scolded puppy.
Eventually, Cho-young let out a deep, defeated sigh and sat down across from her. When she spoke next, her tone had shifted entirely.
“…I mean, I really didn’t anticipate an actual ghost. That startled the crap out of me. That part was my mistake.”
“Mis… Huh? Anticipate?”
“Whatever. We secured top-tier stream content, didn't we?”
“Stream……?”
“So you’re giving me the two High-grade Chrome Stones, right? Did you save the stream clips?”
Hye-yeon blinked, staring up at Cho-young with a completely blank, stunned expression.
Rewind to the moment I first stepped onto the second floor.
‘Wait a minute. This chat should be packed with nothing but degenerates looking to stir up trouble, right?’
So why hadn't a single person told me to tilt the camera down?
That was my first clue that something was off. Still, during the broadcast, I made a conscious effort to pretend I hadn’t noticed. Truth be told, I was genuinely terrified, so I didn't have much bandwidth to spare anyway.
In front of the wardrobe, however, the picture changed.
“Phew. Seriously. I’m not scared anymore, okay?”
Watching the viewers teasing me, I forced a stiff smirk onto my lips. I had been shocked at first, but seeing them banter made the whole thing feel more like a silly game, and my fear began to recede. Rather than feeling abandoned in the dark, knowing hundreds of people were watching gave me a bizarre sense of comfort.
And once I calmed down, that nagging doubt clawed its way back to the surface.
‘…Come to think of it, these guys are never this well-behaved.’
Ever since my very first broadcast, they had thrown vulgar jokes at me without hesitation. Even if banning people weeded out the worst offenders, they still found clever ways to harass me about my chest. Especially in a haunted house exploration, where I was practically guaranteed to jump and scream at shadows.
And yet, they weren’t asking for lower camera angles?
They were just going to sit there and politely watch ‘Cheon Cho-young’s Wholesome Haunted Exploration☆’ like it was an educational children’s show?
Yeah, right. In what universe?
“I’m opening it, okay?”
So, as I reached for the wardrobe door, I shut my eyes tight. It wasn't just fear; I was trying to focus my senses on the ambient qi around me.
Was it possible that Hye-yeon—who had claimed she would look for the doll on the first floor—was actually in cahoots with the chat?
“……My eyes are closed. Is there anything inside?”
Feigning sheer terror to keep the viewers off guard, I quietly stretched out my spiritual senses, searching for the faintest trace of energy.
The Qi Condensation realm was fundamentally about attuning to spiritual energy. I had felt the qi of cultivators when I first tumbled into this world, and again at the community service center. There was no reason I couldn’t do it now.
Slowly, the threads began to weave together.
Okay. First off, there’s a faint but definite trace of spiritual energy beneath the desk. And……
…?
Why are there two signatures?
One was clinging to the ceiling. And the other was under the desk.
Shivers!
Goosebumps erupted across my flesh.
PsychicPhenomenon has donated 1 Low-grade Chrome Stone!
"Nothing's there, you can open your eyes"
“R-Really? There’s truly nothing there? PsychicPhenomenon-nim, you scared me earlier, so I don’t really trust you.”
At that exact moment, I genuinely didn't trust him. Had the entity in the closet migrated under the desk? The thought chilled me to the bone.
Amgwihyeoltu has donated 1 Low-grade Chrome Stone!
"Seriously, there's nothing there"
I didn't know what the presence under the desk was, but the signature plastered against the ceiling? I recognized that one instantly.
It was Shin Hye-yeon, colluding behind my back with my viewers!
I could clearly feel the medicinal aura of the spirit pill I had given her radiating off her body!
Having pieced it all together, I cracked my eyelids open just a sliver, pretending to scan the inside of the empty wardrobe.
“Phew, there really isn’t anything, is there?”
Alright. So you guys thought you’d gang up to play me for a fool, huh?
…Fine. I’ll give you exactly what you want.
I was going to ham up the damsel-in-distress act and fleece every last donation out of their pockets. How many years had I spent watching live streams? Under normal circumstances, my moral compass might have hesitated, but given that these rascals had tried to prank me first, gloves were off.
Tense atmosphere inside a haunted ruin. Viewers spinning shameless lies to 'comfort' me—or rather, to bait reactions and get better views of my chest. It was impossible not to develop a sense of competitive camaraderie.
After that, I made a show of checking under the desk—though I had genuinely braced for something to jump out due to the lingering qi, and was legitimately relieved when nothing did—deliberately arching my back, letting my chest and hips take center stage, and acting appropriately terrified.
Then, I headed into the next room on the hunt for the nonexistent doll.
What I hadn't accounted for was an actual, honest-to-god spirit showing up.
That part had bypassed my acting entirely and scared my soul straight out of my body, prompting me to reduce the entire building to ash.
I had noticed the ceiling signature vanishing earlier, but who could have guessed she was preparing such a ridiculous, horrifying prank?
Anyway.
Listening to my meticulous breakdown of the entire setup, Hye-yeon’s jaw dropped so low it practically hit the dirt.