"No one designed it, yet ghost characters and plotlines appeared on their own?" Chen Mo's heart suddenly stirred.
"What kind of ghost program could this be? Could you, Mr. Zhang, reveal anything about it?"
His hands clasped together, the prominent knuckles betraying Zhang Yiming's inner turmoil at that moment. The hair-raising incident back then must have been something he was extremely reluctant to recall, even now.
"It was... a red house, with a woman and a little girl inside, saying some strange things—like complaining about her husband's coldness, and the child clamoring to go to the seaside to see the lighthouse, things like that. On closer thought, there didn't seem to be anything particularly unusual. But our game was about a hero defeating a demon king to save a village—such random characters and plotlines had no place in it."
A red house, a woman and a child?
Everyone present drew in a sharp breath. Wasn't this exactly what they had seen in this "cursed game"?
"With something like that happening, you just let it go?" Dai Minghan suddenly interjected. "I mean, didn't the Rinz company take any measures back then?"
"Of course not," Zhang Yiming shook his head.
"After confirming the existence of the 'ghost program,' and after some hesitation, I ultimately decided to report the incident to higher-ups. After all, this was a game crucial to the company. Setting aside whether these things were created by spirits, having inexplicable content in a released game would be a devastating blow to its reputation."
"But when I reported the 'ghost program,' the company's top brass reacted in a very puzzling way. They not only harshly criticized us but also flatly concluded that someone was using a prior incident to implant malicious code and bring down the company!"
"A prior incident?" Chen Mo keenly caught the key phrase. The truth, layer by layer, seemed buried deeper than he had imagined!
"That's right. I only learned then that, before this, Rinz had experienced a severe incident where a former employee went insane. A programmer who was fired, perhaps unable to bear the blow of career failure, became psychologically twisted. He not only killed his wife and child but also committed suicide in his own home!"
"And the 'ghost program' that appeared in the game recreated the house where that family lived, along with the wife and daughter of that suicidal employee!"
"What?"
Chen Mo, Dai Minghan, and everyone else felt their hearts leap!
That woman and that little girl had indeed died in reality. They... were the ghosts in this story!
And as the story unfolded, it was finally pieced together that these two spirits were the family of that suicidal programmer. But why had they appeared in the game, slaughtering the plot characters and participants of this world?
Though some mysteries were unraveled, many new ones emerged.
Meanwhile, Zhang Yiming didn't notice the shifting expressions around him. His mind seemed still immersed in the events of seven years ago.
"So the company naturally assumed someone held a grudge and was secretly sabotaging the project. They ramped up personnel to investigate while continuing the game's normal development."
"Perhaps only I... after learning about this, was haunted by a strange notion that the programmer hadn't just committed suicide but had left behind a vicious curse. Now, that terrible resentment had entered the game we were developing!"
"At the time, I couldn't tell if I was the one being irrational or if things were truly as terrifying as I imagined. But in the end, I chose to resign out of extreme fear. Yet I never expected that the curse I dismissed as nonsense would actually enter the game, causing the development team members to die one after another. Eventually, the game couldn't even be released. Only by disbanding the team and shutting down the company did we stop the curse from killing further."
"But that man has been dead for seven years now! The curse back then already killed over a dozen people. Even if it had some anger, it should have subsided after so many deaths. Why would it revive after seven years?"
Li Kai asked in confusion. Meanwhile, Chen Mo and Dai Minghan both fell into deep thought.
"Oh, right," Lin Tianheng suddenly slapped his forehead as if remembering something important. "I almost forgot to ask—what was the name of that suicidal programmer?"
Lin Tianheng's reminder made Chen Mo's heart skip a beat. The suicidal programmer, the red house—wasn't that exactly what corresponded to his "dream"?
In the "dream," he had indeed seen three boys walk into an old house deep in the alley. Under the sunset's glow, the house looked like an oil painting, dyed orange, and inside, he had found black traces that looked like bloodstains.
Could this be the remnants of the programmer killing his wife and child before committing suicide back then?
Though the sun was blazing outside, it couldn't dispel the heavy gloom in their hearts.
Hearing Lin Tianheng's question, Zhang Yiming fell into thought again, as if straining to recall.
"Yin Xiong."
"I remember clearly. The name of that suicidal programmer was Yin Xiong."
"Think about it—it's truly terrifying. What could drive a person to lose their mind, to the point of killing their own wife and child, and then choosing suicide?"
Zhang Yiming's confusion mirrored Chen Mo's.
This matter still held many riddles.
Why was that programmer fired back then?
After being fired, why did he go insane, become twisted, kill his wife and child, and then take his own life?
Explaining it all with "couldn't bear the blow of career failure" seemed somewhat unconvincing.
But one thing was basically certain: that suicidal programmer was highly likely the source of the curse in this horror story.
And the old house from the "dream" was certainly worth investigating.
"Mr. Zhang, one last question. Do you remember where this man, Yin Xiong, lived?"