"Alright, Brother Mo, I'll listen to you!" Lin Tianheng immediately chimed in. "Lin Tianheng knows how to repay favors—you saved my life, so of course I'll follow your lead."
"Chen Mo makes a good point. For this reward, I also think the team reward is more valuable than the individual one." However, Dai Minghan's mouth twitched. "Fifty whole plot points... thinking about it still stings a bit."
"It's not just a sting—I'm down to zero points now." Chen Mo gave a wry smile. "I thought this team mission might earn us something, but instead, we've lost it all."
"How about this," Li Yan said after a moment's thought. "I still have some points on hand, and since I don't need anything specific to exchange for right now, I'll compensate you all a bit."
"Hehe, really? Such a good deal?" Lin Tianheng immediately grinned and took over the conversation. "Since Brother Li is willing to open his wallet, I won't be polite."
Dai Minghan rolled his eyes at him, while Chen Mo and Su Mu joined in the laughter. Li Yan glanced at Su Mu, who shook her head. "I don't need points. Just transfer some to them."
"Fine, you little rich girl, I'll leave you alone." Li Yan made a rare, lighthearted joke. Soon, a ding sounded from Chen Mo's phone, indicating he'd received 20 plot points from Li Yan.
"Wow, twenty points! Brother Li, that's really generous." Lin Tianheng beamed with joy, and even Dai Minghan and Chen Mo broke into smiles.
"I've barely saved up any savings, and you've all cleaned me out." Li Yan put on a troubled expression, but couldn't help smiling. Before this, he and Su Mu had discussed choosing the team reward, their only worry being that the individual reward's high point value might not convince the other three to give it up. They never expected Chen Mo to think even further ahead than they did, which was a huge relief.
News of the team mission's completion quickly spread through the seventh group's horror story chat group. This was the first time the seventh program group had participated in a team-level special mission. Not only had all four survived, but they'd also unlocked new team permissions. The news caused a stir within the program group, exciting everyone.
Su Mu, Li Yan, Chen Mo, Dai Minghan, and Lin Tianheng—clearly, these five had become the backbone of the seventh program group. Among them, Su Mu had completed six horror stories, Li Yan five, Dai Minghan four, and Chen Mo and Lin Tianheng three each—all at the veteran level or above.
Li Yan, having completed five regular missions, had earned the qualification to unlock the host privilege. However, he still needed to pass a special solo assessment mission. When that mission would be released depended on the radio station's decision.
If Li Yan passed the solo assessment, the seventh program group would gain a second host.
Aside from the vacant first and fifth program groups, most of the remaining seven program groups in the Strange Tales Radio Station had only one host. But there were exceptions—the ninth program group, for instance, had Jiang Rou and another person named Hua Ziqin, who was said to be the true controller of the group.
The most common rumor about Hua Ziqin was that Jiang Rou was a host he had personally trained. Outwardly gentle and refined, he was actually ruthless and skilled at reading people. When facing team missions involving different program groups, his unpredictable attitude often left others hesitant and wary of his strength.
At the same time, he was a peculiar individual. Forced into the radio station, all participants loathed the horror story missions it issued but had no choice but to endure them. Receiving a horror story notification felt like a death warrant from the King of Hell. Yet Hua Ziqin would deliberately disable his host privileges to get assigned to regular missions. For a host, completing such missions didn't count toward their tally. Whether this was a testament to his skill and boldness or sheer reckless insanity was anyone's guess.
Regardless, he was still alive and well in the ninth program group. But neither Su Mu nor Li Yan wanted any contact with him.
Such a person was either extremely calm and confident or utterly insane!
After completing this team mission, Chen Mo made several more attempts, but to his disappointment, the eerie stranger's face never appeared in the mirror again. It seemed the parasitic item of the Human Skin Ghost Face was indeed a passive trigger—only when sensing fluctuations in supernatural energy would the ghost parasitic within him emerge.
Though it hadn't reappeared, the feeling of being possessed and controlled by a ghost was still etched in his mind, sparking curiosity about the entity's identity. In his memory, he vaguely recalled a pale, gaunt face with a healed knife scar on the forehead, long, powerful fingers, and movements so precise they resembled a surgeon's. Why this doctor had been killed, turned into a Human Skin Ghost Face, and had his soul trapped within it remained a mystery.
What sent chills down his spine, though, was another statement...
"Perhaps there's more than one ghost inside the Human Skin Ghost Face."
At the time, Su Mu had told him that the Human Skin Ghost Face wasn't appearing for the first time. Before this, another listener had exchanged for this parasitic item. On that person, two ghost faces had appeared—one being the ghost doctor, and the other a woman with only half a face and one eye. Her face seemed disfigured by fire, but that single remaining eye was a ghost eye!
Chen Mo was naturally very concerned about this person's experience, but Su Mu told him that this person had died a year before Chen Mo entered the radio station. And not in a horror story—he was killed by the ghosts within the Human Skin Ghost Face awakening! When he died, his body was covered in wounds from a scalpel, and half his face was destroyed by the female ghost, as if burned. It was a tragic death.
Just two ghost faces... only two had appeared from the Human Skin Ghost Face, and they killed a living person. This showed how much resentment and deep curses were hidden within the item. Hearing about the previous exchanger's fate filled Chen Mo with shock. He never imagined that items sold in the shop could include such dangerous cursed artifacts!
Items capable of suppressing ghosts and preventing them from awakening in reality did exist, but they couldn't be directly exchanged from the shop—they had to be obtained in stories with special settings!
-- PS: Thanks to the generous reader's massive tip, thanks to Ruohu Ahaha and other readers for their tips. Special thanks to the reader for long-term support, and thanks to everyone for their monthly tickets and recommendation tickets!