The Ultimate Horror Live Stream - Chapter 24 - Fear Challenge

I hailed a taxi to Xinhu High School, but even the Taxi Driver hadn’t heard of such a place. It took over two hours of asking around before we finally reached the destination.

Paying the fare, I stepped out and surveyed the surroundings. Amidst waist-high wild grass and foul-smelling ditches, I spotted the campus, long forgotten by the city.

“This looks nothing like the upscale private school in the photos!”

The school in the pictures was grand and impressive, but the abandoned site before me was shrouded in Yin energy, resembling a half-buried corpse.

“It’s 11 o’clock, I need to pick up the pace.” Determined to complete the task, I plunged into the wasteland, struggling forward until a row of rusty iron fences blocked my path.

“Keep Out!” The warning sign had been torn down and tossed into the mud, bearing faint bloody handprints.

I picked it up and hung it back, puzzled. “Normally, even if a factory is abandoned, they wouldn’t build a barrier unless it contained hazardous materials. Why would a school need such isolation?”

Climbing over the fence, I ventured inside. Had I looked back, I would have seen the warning sign wobble and fall back into the mud.

At the school’s main entrance, the black-painted gate was secured with two red locks. Peering inside, I could barely make out the outlines of several buildings.

While I was focused on observing, a chill brushed my calf. I jumped back, spotting a black cat crouched by my feet.

“That startled me.”

The cat’s eyes glowed green, its head tilted in a strangely human-like manner, before darting into the abandoned school.

“These jump scares are going to give me a nervous breakdown if I keep streaming like this.” I slid the suitcase under the gate and climbed over, entering Xinhu High School.

“Phew, I’ve successfully reached the destination. My second Live Stream is about to begin!” I took out the camera and phone, plugging in the mobile encoder.

“Image acquisition in progress…”

“Bullet screen connection in progress…”

“Data stable, would you like to start the Live Stream?”

“Yes.”

“Welcome Teletubby Dies of Murder to the Live Room, welcome Officer Huang from Class 2, Grade 3 to the Live Room, welcome…”

As soon as the stream started, several familiar names appeared in the Live Room.

“Whoa, the Streamer is still alive, thank goodness!”

“Streamer, we thought you had kicked the bucket, we even ordered wreaths!”

“Where are you planning to risk your life tonight? Camera One is on standby, ready to call the cops anytime!”

The enthusiasm of the Water Friends was beyond my expectations. Despite their cheeky comments, they eased my anxiety and tension.

“Welcome everyone to The Ultimate Horror Live Room once again. Tonight’s location is truly chilling.”

I pointed the camera at the school’s name: “This school is called Xinhu High School, a private aristocratic institution jointly run by China and Japan. Only children from wealthy families can attend here…”

“I’ve heard of similar elite schools, introducing Japanese-style education, and the tuition is exorbitant!”

“Bah! Our great nation with five thousand years of history doesn’t need Japanese education!”

“Uh, everyone, calm down. Xinhu High School was shut down five years ago, so there’s no need to argue about it.”

The Live Room’s atmosphere was getting a bit out of hand, so I quickly stepped in to prevent the experienced drivers from going off the rails with their meme battles. “This school should be quite famous locally, but my investigation revealed that information about it was deliberately hidden five years ago.”

“What are they hiding? Or what happened five years ago that led to the school’s closure?” The audience’s attention slowly shifted to my words. “Tonight, I’ll lead you through the layers of mystery to uncover the lost truth.”

“Hurry up, the security guard might wake up any minute!”

“My instincts tell me there’s something fishy in the girls’ locker room. We demand the Streamer to investigate.”

“The person above has some serious insight. I read the stars and came to the same conclusion!”

“You two are missing the point. I say the girls’ restroom has even more Yin energy…”

“Scumbag, get lost!”

With my phone in hand and camera on my shoulder, I left my suitcase at the entrance and stepped into the campus.

Whether to head to the girls’ locker room or the restroom first wasn’t my main concern. In a new environment, the first step is to get your bearings and understand the layout.

“Teaching building, laboratory building, girls’ dormitory, office building, Playground…”

Xinhu High School was vast, and exploring the entire place would take a long time. To be safe, I decided to search one building at a time to see if I could find anything.

“Streamer, if you really don’t want to go to the girls’ locker room, we can accept going to the girls’ dormitory instead.”

“Come on, everyone who agrees to the girls’ dormitory, type a ‘6¹‘.”

“We’re a spirit exploration show; there must be ghosts in the girls’ restroom. I stake my reputation on it.”

After weighing my options, I finally chose to enter the teaching building, which was closest to the gate.

The building wasn’t very tall, only four stories. Due to its focus on elite education, the school didn’t have many students, with all three grades attending classes in this single building.

Each floor of the teaching building had four classrooms, with signs indicating the grade and class at the door. There were exits on both sides, and the stairway walls bore scorch marks from fire, with most of the handrails missing, leaving them bare and dangerous to walk on.

“Judging by the looks of it, the online rumors weren’t baseless. A fire or stampede might have really happened.” As I walked down the first-floor corridor, I couldn’t help but feel a chill. There’s something unsettling about looking into an empty classroom at night, with rows of desks and chairs eerily still.

The classrooms were empty, and although there seemed to be something written on the blackboards, even pressing my face against the window didn’t help me see clearly.

As expected, all the classrooms on the first floor were vacant.

Hugging the charred walls, I made my way to the second floor.

“Class 5 of Grade 1, Class 1 of Grade 2, Class 2 of Grade 2…” After exploring the second floor, I still found nothing, and began to suspect I was overreacting. I took a deep breath and headed to the third floor.

“Empty, empty, still empty.” My heart finally settled, but when I glanced at the last classroom on the third floor-

“What is that?”

Through the window, I saw four dark figures standing beside the podium!

“Bang!” The camera slipped from my hand and crashed onto the floor. I stumbled back a couple of steps. If it weren’t for the railing behind me, I might have fallen straight from the third floor!

“What was that?! Are there students still in this campus? No, calm down, maybe it was just a mannequin.”

I picked up the camera and approached the window again. “Gone?! Those four shadows have disappeared! They weren’t models!”

Cold sweat trickled down my back. I couldn’t even focus on the bullet screen in the Live Room as I moved towards the stairs.

“Creak.” The classroom door opened at that moment. “Scared me to death. Come out, it’s not a ghost, it’s a person!”

Judging by the voice, they weren’t very old. I stood there, dumbfounded, as two boys and two girls, all with backpacks, walked out of the classroom.

“You guys…”

“We’re students from a nearby school. We’ve heard rumors about this place being haunted, so we came for a fear challenge,” said the boy leading the group, who looked about seventeen or eighteen, the oldest among them.

“A fear challenge? Go home, this place is dangerous!” I said, unusually stern. The Underworld Showroom had set the Live Stream location here, which meant there might really be something supernatural!

“Uncle, you’re such a scaredy-cat,” one short-haired girl chuckled at me, seemingly in a relationship with the boy.

“Go home quickly. If something really happens, you won’t even have time to run.”

“You adults always make a fuss over nothing. We’ve been here longer than you and haven’t noticed anything strange.”

“Yeah, if you want to leave, go ahead. Our fear challenge is just getting started.”

Kids these days are unbelievably bold, or in other words, reckless. If I forced them to leave, it might trigger their rebelliousness, and they’d sneak back in.

“Alright, since you don’t want to leave, how about letting me join your fear challenge? I’m a Streamer in the supernatural exploration category, and I’m actually quite interested in this kind of stuff.” I said this purely to protect them, but little did I know, the real nightmare was just about to begin.

Footnote:

1. 1. 6(6):In this context, “6” is a slang term in Chinese that means “cool” or “awesome.” It is often used to express approval or excitement about something.