Hell App (Web Novel CN)

Chapter 88: Video

“He runs really fast.”

Bai Yan watched the boy’s figure get farther ahead, feeling rather strange. If he saw correctly, the boy’s expression just now must have been filled with envy. But, what was he envious about?

Jealous that Gou Dan still has grandparents, while all his family members had died early deaths?

Bai Yan glanced at the old lady who liked giving out sweet potatoes, unconsciously taking another bite out of his own. Just from the taste of the sweet potato, having a grandmother like this would deserve that boy’s jealousy.

Shaking his head, Bai Yan felt that there wasn’t a need to look through this thoroughly.

At this moment, an old man came over, carrying a half-filled sack with both hands.

He walked up to the group’s vicinity and put the sack down, wiping off the seeping sweat on his forehead and calling Gou Dan, “Grandchild, help grandfather move this sack of corn cobs inside!”

“There’s only a few steps left, can’t you do it yourself?” The boy mumbled to himself, looking unwilling to do so.

“The water has already been boiled, but there’s no smoke coming out of the chimney?”

Ye Shangyu heard Bai Yan’s words and looked back to the chimney out of reflex.

Like Bai Yan had said, the chimney was clean as ever with no traces of smoke.

The grandfather and grandson duo spoke in unison, saying that the water had been boiled, but since there was no smoke coming out of their chimney, the two were obviously lying!

The grandfather looked like he was a serious person. This kind of person usually wouldn’t lie out of amusement without a good cause.

Seeing this, Bai Yan and Ye Shangyu’s hearts had the same speculation, that this family’s grandfather and grandchild were nothing but trouble!

But, whatever the outcome was, they wouldn’t rush in there to fight tactlessly.

The two problematic ‘family members’ may be killing people, and them crashing at the scene of the crime could make them the next ones to suffer that calamity.

In any case, by tomorrow, everything will become apparent.

“Granny…”

Ye Shangyu murmured this with a slight trace of agitation was shown between her brows.

However, she merely redirected her line of sight towards the marks on the ground left behind by the maza with a profound look on her face, then turning her head around and following the dirt road without looking back at the distant farmhouse they had just departed from.

Upon seeing this, Bai Yan also moved along. He knew that all signs pointed to disaster for the old woman, but he wasn’t always thoughtless. Even if he knew that the NPCs were also real people, he would never do anything that was such a pain in the *ss as doing good and saving a person.

On the road, Bai Yan was tossing the sweet potato in his hand and was indifferently eating it, suddenly realizing that the smell had become more fragrant.

After the two ate, he suddenly said to Ye Shangyu, “Want a few? I’ll split it with you.”

Ye Shangyu just shot him a glance, feeling unimpressed by his suddenly generous demeanor, and only dully replied, “Later, I still need to do some research. Don’t get me annoyed, the mood can negatively affect efficiency.”

Bai Yan merely chewed and finished the remaining sweet potatoes by himself. Once he finished them all, Ye Shangyu also found a suitable place for them to sit down and started to noisily type on her laptop.

Truth be told, although it was towards the end that they saw misfortune about to befall, after asking the family, Bai Yan and Ye Shangyu had gathered quite a lot.

Especially Ye Shangyu, she learned that Xu Lanfang normally liked looking at supernatural videos and was also usually scrolling online, this was extremely crucial.

She had acquired a lot of information about ghosts during her stay at the ‘Supernatural Research Institute’s’ Doomsday level. Compared to the other players, she naturally knew more.

Like Xu Lanfang, not long after she entered the game, just from seeing the old woman’s abnormal appearance, she deduced that Xu Lanfang was the ghost, not the old woman who lived with her.

In the app’s game, knowing who the ghost was ahead of time undoubtedly saved a lot of grievances.

Since Gou Dan mentioned that Xu Lanfang liked scrolling through supernatural videos, Ye Shangyu determined that scrolling was an important factor in their investigation.

She used a code she wrote herself to look through scrolling activity. Because she didn’t know Xu Lanfang’s username for scrolling through her feed nor did she dare look for this female ghost’s account, she simply aimed her attack towards this supernatural live broadcast platform, trying to analyze who exactly posted the problematic video.

While Ye Shangyu was avidly searching online, Bai Yan just surveyed their surroundings, acting as a guard if a stranger was approaching them.

Roughly ten minutes had passed when Ye Shangyu stopped her hands and suddenly said, “Found it, it must be her.”

“That fast?”

Bai Yan was astonished. He knew that Ye Shangyu’s computer skills were good, but wasn’t it too fast this time?

However, when he saw the results of Ye Shangyu’s investigation, he immediately understood why it was so simple.

In this aspect, the app didn’t give them that much trouble. The origin of these videos was under an extremely famous anchor for the supernatural category.

This anchor was the top one for the supernatural category for a long time and was dedicated to creating a variety of supernatural videos.

You could say that as long as the person was interested in supernatural events, they would usually pay attention to him.

It seemed that the app didn’t intend to test out the players’ hacking skills.

Even if you didn’t know anything about network technology, just as long as you knew that Xu Lanfang was a ghost, knew what site she usually went to, and knew that she liked browsing through the supernatural category, you’ll be able to find that problematic video.

Ye Shangyu first cautiously looked through the comments, confirming that nothing happened to the others that had watched the video, before clicking on the video and watching it with Bai Yan.

After watching and reading the comments, Bai Yan and Ye Shangyu noticed that there was strangeness oozing out the video.

According to the comments, this was in fact an ordinary supernatural video, and its plot ought to be like this——

At the very beginning of the short film, when the ‘human skin ghost’ didn’t have any pelts to take shelter in, all of its facial features were badly scrunched together while its body appeared badly mutilated. Just looking at his miserable and bloody appearance could make anyone experience an evening filled with nightmares.

In the short film’s plot, this ‘human skin ghost’ slipped into a human pelt every day, disguising itself as a beautiful woman and fooling around on campus, enticing every ignorant and young man in school.

Once the men completely trusted it and weren’t on guard around it, the ghost would arrange a date, luring the person into a highly secluded place, then using an excuse to abruptly leave.

After, the ‘human skin ghost’ would quietly pull open the zipper stuck to its body, peeling off the human pelt. Then, it would use cruel means to kill that person, turning him into a freshly made shell.

At the end of the short film, the unfortunate and deceived lead saw through the human skin ghost’s true colors.

He took advantage of the malicious ghost’s unpreparedness, putting on the pelt it had hidden away and confidently sneaking away from the human skin ghost for half an hour. He had a few close calls with the human skin ghost, but because of the bright halo acting on the lead, he simply avoided death.

Half an hour later, the human skin ghost lost the pelt it wore, so it disappeared with a puff of green smoke. As for the lead (the anchor), he narrowly escaped danger and went back home, once again returning to his peaceful life…

Originally, the plot ought to be like this.

But who knew that along with the anchor, all the audience were terrified to discover that the human skin ghost in the video was nowhere to be found!

It appeared to be running out of the video and suddenly evaporating into thin air!

The short film Bai Yan and Ye Shangyu watched was the version after the supernatural event had happened.

The two completely didn’t experience the original plot mentioned in the comments. From the start, the two saw a shriveled-up human pelt walking around campus, fooling around with the students. The scenes became more and more terrifying as the film progressed.

The two helplessly watched as a group of foolish students were duped and had dates with the human skin by the grove…

Slaughtering a pile of young and robust men, not long after, this piece of human skin found the protagonist. The male lead was also foolish enough to flirt with the human skin, sinking into passionate love and quickly responding to its request for a date.

Then, late at night in the small grove, the human skin ghost suddenly deflated itself into a ball in a dark corner, letting itself fall onto the filthy dirt-covered floor.

After that, the mutilated figure totally didn’t appear anymore. The male lead was being desperately chased by the wind, using his overwhelming acting skills to give life to the unfolding battle of wits with the wind.

Finally, the male lead discovered the crumpled-up ball of human skin left on the ground, and with a cheerful expression, he wore it. He then continued playing cat and mouse with the wind until the final scene in the film. He had run enough and turned his back, facing the wind, before finally giving a relieved smile, happily taking off the human pelt and heading home.

Compared to the original version, this entire short film seemed to be strange and baffling at the same time.

After appreciating the video, Bai Yan finally understood.

The mutilated figure was nowhere to be found, but its human skin was still there. This could mean that when the malicious ghost was running in reality, it forgot to bring its pelt with it.

The malicious ghost could turn living humans into pieces of skin. With this, when Xu Lanfang was watching this scary video, the malicious ghost must have suddenly crawled out of her phone, climbing into her body, turning her into a human pelt.

Following that, the malicious ghost was coated by Xu Lanfang’s skin, pretending to be human and dwelling with Xu Lanfang’s grandmother.

Since she was living with a ghost, the appearance of Xu Lanfang’s grandmother changed. She began to have green eyes and became fierce-looking from head to toe, her whole body developing into a ghost, which led to her diet gradually becoming unusual.

As far as Bai Yan had learned from chatting with Xu Lanfang’s grandma, this old lady was actually confused. She still did not know that something was wrong with her own granddaughter up until now, only perceiving that her grandchild had finally become more sensible.

“Living with Xu Lanfang for so long, do you really think that the old lady didn’t turn into that thing?”

The more Bai Yan thought about this, the more he felt something was not lining up. Ghosts were reckless beings, they wouldn’t think twice about killing someone. Even if they were only putting on a show and changing the old lady into the same ghost, why didn’t it kill her?

Compared to directly laying a hand, did ghosts also like natural transformation?

The puzzled Bai Yan turned his head to Ye Shangyu, only to see that she had a slight frown on her face as if the old lady not dying yet was extremely perplexing.