New Times, New Hell

Chapter 86 - Ghostly Showing

The movie theater manager and employee were both astounded. The employee stared at the defensive position the female ghost was taking up with her knife. In a daze, he scratched his head and asked, “Yi? How come this clip’s different?”

Yu Zhengdu turned to look at them. Very meaningfully, he said, “You guys still think this is a film clip?”

Before the employee could react, the manager’s expression had already changed. He gazed at Yu Zhengdu, nervous. Hesitantly, he asked, “What are you trying to say?”

At this time, an ear piercing shriek sounded from the middle of the auditorium. It was Zheng Yan. “There’s a ghost in your movie theater! A ghost——”

Yu Zhengdu’s mouth twitched. He stared at Zheng Yan, who was surrounded by all the ghosts in Luofeng, and really wanted to say bro, it’s not that big of a deal. It really isn’t.

At the same time, the female ghost on the screen also shouted, “There really are ghosts! He’s not lying.”

Yu Zhengdu: “……”

The employee belatedly understood. He wasn’t as sharp-tongued as his manager. While screaming, he charged towards the door, “Aaah, we’re being haunted! We’re really being haunted——”

With a thud, the door to the auditorium suddenly shut.

Yu Zhengdu glanced at Shang Que. In rare synchronization, Shang Que was faintly smiling at him. “We’ll just resolve the incident here.”

Yu Zhengdu nodded. Though everyone had an unspoken agreement about these matters, it was still better to not cause too much of a commotion. If the employee ran out while shouting, who knew how big of a mess this would cause in the neighboring auditoriums.

The movie theater manager had originally wanted to keep calm. But as soon as he saw the door automatically close, he finally reached the end of his wits. Voice tight, he asked, “W-who are you people?”

Yu Zhengdu pulled out a business card and handed it to him. With a slight smile, he said, “Hello. This is covered in our company’s scope of business.”

The movie theater manager accepted the business card. He had just glanced at it when the employee next to him broke down and melted into a puddle on the floor. He furiously shook his head, “What to do?! What to do——We can’t escape——”

Zheng Yan started adding to the commotion from the middle of the auditorium too. “Boss, hurry and catch the ghost——”

With this interruption, the movie theater manager felt his brain go numb. He gulped and asked, “You need to prepare some tools, right? A sword made of the wood of a peach tree? The blood of a black dog?”

Employee: “We can’t even leave right now. How are we going to prepare anything?”

“There’s no rush. We catch ghosts scientifically, so don’t need that stuff,” Yu Zhengdu placated.

The manager had already lost his capability to think. “What? Catching ghosts scientifically?”

Only to see Yu Zhengdu step forward, extremely composed. He lifted his chin to gaze at the screen and calmly said, “Miss Ghost, I’m an employee at Luofeng. You’ve already broken the rules of Underworld management. Right now, I’m going to officially arrest you. Please immediately set down your weapon, place your hands on your head, and squat. We will be more lenient if you cooperate.”

The employee couldn’t help complaining, “Is there something wrong with you? Do you think a ghost will pay attention to you if you’re reasoning with them?”

As soon as he finished speaking, he heard a clink. The female ghost on the screen threw her apple knife away and obediently covered her head with her hands. While facing one side of the screen, she squatted while crying, “I only wanted to scare them a little. I didn’t harm anyone, really……”

Employee: “……??”

Manager of the movie theater: “……??”

The manager stared at the big screen in shock. Then, he turned to look at Yu Zhengdu. “W-what’s going on?”

Yu Zhengdu smiled faintly. “Our company has a contract with the Underworld. Thus, all ghosts are rather……respectful towards us.”

The manager gazed blankly at him, then turned back around, bewildered, to observe the female ghost trembling on the screen. The question in his heart ultimately went unspoken……Seems to me like this female ghost isn’t simply respectful towards you?

The employee who was sitting on the ground was even more astonished. Without even bothering to wipe his tears away, he tried to speak. With difficulty, he asked, “So one can a-actually reason with ghosts?”

Yu Zhengdu: “Our company can.”

The ghost capturing ended abruptly, before the movie theater manager and employee could even mentally prepare themselves. When Yu Zhengdu pulled out handcuffs to arrest the female ghost, the movie theater employees couldn’t even make any facial expressions because they were so shocked.

Zheng Yan covered his chest with his eight trigrams mirror and said, still frightened, “What did I say? As expected, it’s very likely to encounter ghosts in the middle of the night. Good thing I brought tools that can ward off evil spirits!”

Yu Zhengdu: “……Seems to me that they were useless even though you brought them.”

Zheng Yan: “How could you say that? Didn’t you see how that female ghost didn’t even dare to step close to me?”

The circle of Luofeng ghosts around him couldn’t help turning to stare at him: ……Don’t you have even the slightest inkling about why the female ghost actually didn’t dare to step close to you?

Zheng Yan and the Luofeng employees continued watching their movie. Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que escorted the female ghost to an office in the theater. The movie theater employee and manager tagged along.

Since the female ghost had stepped out of the screen, the humans in the movie theater could no longer see her. However, the next moment, they witnessed the power of new technology—— Luofeng’s ghost imaging technology.

The employee immediately became respectful. “Truly so scientific!”

At this time, the movie theater manager finally shared the truth. In actuality, they had all felt that there was something off about the horror film clip incidents from early on. Though their company was adamant about saying that everything was only due to technical difficulties, in private, they had actually asked the maintenance technician for answers. The technician said that the company couldn’t find any technical problems at all. The system didn’t seem to be infected by a virus in the slightest.

However, they absolutely could not publicize the fact that there was a probable haunting. If this news got out, there would be extremely detrimental consequences for the movie theater. As such, though the company was slightly suspicious, they still ordered the manager to keep the rumors under control, no matter how difficult it was to do so. Because of this, things got dragged out until now.

The manager wiped the cold sweat off his forehead and said, “Actually, we were close to not being able to keep up the act. The audience members had many complaints. Originally, I was preparing to submit a request to the company within the next few days to have a religious master come by no matter what. I hadn’t thought that I would encounter you guys. Truly so fortunate……”

“There’s no need to be so polite,” Yu Zhengdu said with a smile. “We need to be paid too.”

The manager was speechless. However, he still smiled politely. “As you should, as you should. I’ll submit a request to the company tomorrow and have them refund the money you spent buying out the auditorium today.”

“That’s not enough,” Yu Zhengdu drawled out. “I’ll tell my coworkers at the finance department later to send our service fee to you.”

The manager’s expression appeared conflicted. “I-I didn’t submit a report ahead of time. The company might not approve the request……”

Shang Que scanned him up and down before resting his gaze on the female ghost again. He coldly spoke, “Then nevermind. Let her go.”

The manager’s expression immediately changed. He rapidly changed his mind, “I’ll definitely convince the company.”

Both parties reached an initial stage of collaboration. Only now did Yu Zhengdu start interrogating the female ghost.

He looked at the female ghost. Instead of yelling or trying to intimidate her, he calmly asked, “Speak. Why did you break the rules and come out to scare people?”

The female ghost lifted her head and resentfully glared at the manager of the movie theater. Her tone was slightly angry too. “They and that stinkin’ movie collaborated to have ghostly showings in order to fake ticket sales!”

As soon as the female ghost said this, the manager’s expression instantly became a bit unnatural. Yu Zhengdu recalled the recent news about a shitty movie creating fake ticket sales and glanced at the manager. “So your movie theater was the one having ghostly showings……”

The manager hadn’t expected that this haunting had actually been caused by the ghostly showings. He felt extremely surprised and innocently proclaimed, “Our company invested in that movie too. If the ticket sales are bad, we’ll lose a lot of money…… Also, the company required us to run the ghostly showings. We’re only employees. We couldn’t say no……”

The female ghost laughed eerily out of habit. “Since they like running ghostly showings so much, I decided to make their movie theater become the setting of a real ghostly showing.”

Yu Zhengdu was forced to tap on the table. He warned, “Watch your attitude. Quit acting like a ghost to scare people.”

The female ghost hurriedly wiped her cold smile off and revealed a sweet, well-behaved grin instead. “I know I was wrong.”

The movie theater employee and manager both had bewildered expressions on.

This female ghost was so obedient?

Though he now knew the cause of everything, Yu Zhengdu still lamented while staring at the female ghost, “Their ghostly showings weren’t doing anything to you. You’re a ghost. Where did your extreme sense of justice come from? You feel the need to take care of these types of situations too?”

“Of course.” The female ghost hrmph’d. She angrily explained, “The lead actor of that shitty film is my gege’s rival. A trashy actor acted in a trashy film and now needs fake ticket sales to compete against my gege. I obviously need to stand up for my gege……”

The movie theater employees suddenly felt their hearts almost stop beating.

Yu Zhengdu almost exploded too.

He had never expected, in his wildest dreams, that the reason for everything was the fury of a fangirl ghost.

Due to the fact that the female ghost hadn’t actually caused any true damage, according to Luofeng’s rules, Yu Zhengdu ordered for her to be kept in custody for five days. She was also docked the corresponding amount from her good and evil scores. Thus, this incident became resolved. Of course, the movie theater didn’t need to know about this part. They only needed to know that the female ghost would never appear again. This was so that they would pay the service fees on time.

After dealing with the incident regarding the female ghost, the movie in the auditorium they had bought out had finished too. To express how apologetic he was, the manager of the movie theater gave Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que a free membership card to the theater. Yu Zhengdu didn’t reject it. Coincidentally, he and Shang Que were going to watch another movie over the weekend. This made things a lot easier.

Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que exited the office. All of Luofeng’s ghosts were waiting outside.

Yu Zhengdu laughed and said, “It’s not like we don’t know the way. You didn’t need to wait for us.”

Lu Lingxi waved offhandedly. “The neighboring premiere auditorium just happened to finish too. We’re waiting around a bit in order to avoid encountering them.”

Yu Zhengdu nodded, then scanned the crowd again. He realized that Zheng Yan was missing, so asked, “Where’s Zheng Yan?”

Lu Lingxi replied, “He went to the bathroom.”

At this time, in the bathroom of the movie theater, a girl waited outside the door. She anxiously peeked her head into the female bathrooms and yelled at her friend, “Ah Qiao, hurry and come out. Almost everyone else has left already.”

The girl named Ah Qiao replied, “What’s the rush? If everyone else is gone, we won’t have to squeeze into the elevator anymore.”

The girl said, “I’m so scared.”

Ah Qiao scoffed. “You still haven’t recovered?”

The girl, expression dismal: “No shit. That female ghost stuffed the apple into my mouth. Hurry up.”

This girl was named Anna. She happened to be one of the people scared by the female ghost during the premiere showing. After the incident, the movie theater employees had placated her for a long time and also reimbursed her for the movie ticket. Additionally, the movie premiering tonight was one she had waited a long time to watch. In the end, she still bit the bullet and stayed until the end of the premiere with her best friend, Ah Qiao.

Originally, they had wanted to follow the large crowd of people leaving the premiere, but unexpectedly, Ah Qiao spent quite a long time in the bathroom. By now, everyone else had already left.

Ah Qiao knew that her friend spooked easily too. She replied, “Okay, okay. I’m coming.”

After she finished speaking, the sound of the toilet flushing sounded out from the male bathrooms next door. A man hurriedly ran out. While running, he shouted, “Wait for me, you guys! I’m scared——”

Anna: = = How come this guy was even more cowardly than her?

Just as she thought this, she noticed that something had fallen off of the man.

“Hey, your thing fell——” Anna shouted. But the man had already shot off into the distance and disappeared. She was exasperated and could only pick up that item. She planned to turn it into the movie theater’s lost and found later. However, she only realized after stepping closer to the item that the item was a string of prayer beads.

Anna: = = Please don’t tell me this is for coiling.

Just as she was feeling speechless, Ah Qiao came out too. She glanced at the object in the other’s hands and instantly felt shocked. “When did you get infected with the middle-aged, greasy man aesthetic?”

She was actually coiling prayer beads?

Anna hurriedly waved her hands around. “A man dropped this just now.”

Ah Qiao: “……Tsk.”

“Let’s go. I’ll turn it into the movie theater,” Anna said. the two of them headed to the service counter.

The front of the service counter was facing the elevator door. Ah Qiao noticed immediately that the elevator happened to be stopped on this floor. Thus, she hurriedly pressed the elevator button to keep the doors open. She shouted, “Anna, hurry and turn the thing in! I’ll keep the elevator doors open.”

“Oh oh,” Anna replied. She turned around to look and added, “Ey, the elevator’s completely full. Let them go down first. We can wait for the next one.”

Ah Qiao furrowed her brows. “What are you saying? The elevator is clearly empty, okay?”

Anna: “No, it’s really full. Look……”

Halfway through her sentence, her heart suddenly fell to the bottom of her chest with a thud. The color on her face disappeared. In terror, she asked, “Ah Qiao, you’re not joking with me, right?”

“Why would I joke with you? It really is empty……” While speaking, Ah Qiao turned around to look inside the elevator.

While they had been speaking, Kang Jin had been furiously pressing the “close” button in the elevator. Finally, right before Ah Qiao turned around, he successfully managed to get the elevator doors to shut.

With a “ding——”, the elevator started descending.

Anna was on the brink of tears. She jogged over and said, voice trembling, “Ah Qiao, I really saw people in there earlier……”

“Then maybe I saw wrong?” Ah Qiao was a bit uncertain too. She took the prayer beads out of Anna’s hands. “It might be better if I’m the one who turns this in. You wait right here for the elevator.”

Anna nodded. Ah Qiao happened to glance at the street outside the mall through the glass windows. With a smile, she said, “You don’t need to be too worried. There are still a lot of people waiting outside. You won’t die from fright.”

Upon hearing this, Anna looked outside too. She replied, “There aren’t any people outside, though. They’re clearly all gone, okay?”

Ah Qiao said, “What do you mean? They’re even lining up……”

Anna’s face became terrified once more. Coincidentally, a male voice suddenly sounded out at this time. “Ey, aren’t those my Bodhi prayer beads?”

The next second, Zheng Yan snatched his beads out of Ah Qiao’s hands and smiled at the two of them. “Thank you guys. I thought I would never be able to find these again.”

“They are his.” This man had a pale complexion and was quite handsome. Anna recognized him in an instant.

Ah Qiao hurriedly let go and said, “You’re welcome.”

Zheng Yan put the prayer beads on, then pulled out a mini eight trigrams mirror to clutch onto. He finally sighed. “Now I can rest at ease.”

Ah Qiao and Anna silently took a step back.

So greasy.

“Let’s head downstairs together,” Zheng Yan said. Coincidentally, the elevator stopped on this floor. Thus, Zheng Yan held the door open and gestured for the two girls to enter first.

“Thank you,” Anna replied. She walked in with Ah Qiao. After, Zheng Yan walked in too.

After entering the elevator, Anna asked Zheng Yan out of curiosity, “Weren’t you telling your friends to wait for you? Where are your friends?”

“Dead,” Zheng Yan replied. He maintained a calm smile on his face and acted like the other Luofeng employees standing in the elevator weren’t there. It had to be said that his acting skills were quite believable.

Anna: “……”

She made eye contact with Ah Qiao. They both assumed that Zheng Yan had been left behind by his friends so was now cursing them out of anger.

Anna still felt a bit panicked in her heart. Through the clear elevator, she saw the streets outside. She pinched Ah Qiao. “You’re too mean. You knew I was scared, but still lied and told me there were people outside……”

“There really are, though.” Ah Qiao peeked outside, then went yi? in surprise. “How come they’ve all disappeared?”

“Hahahaha.” Zheng Yan suddenly started laughing really loudly from off to the side. “Maybe they’re all dead.”

After such an interruption, Anna and Ah Qiao both, again, went: = = This guy is quite handsome, but why does he speak like he’s insane?

However, because of this, they forgot to continue this topic of conversation.

On the other side, the movie theater’s manager had started supervising the final auditorium cleanups. A few employees dragged out several large bags filled with popcorn and drinks from the auditorium Luofeng had been occupying. One employee complained, “The people who rented this auditorium must be crazy. There were three of them, but they still asked for every seat to be filled with a bucket of popcorn. Even if you’re rich, you can’t waste money in this manner.”

“Let them do whatever they want to. Don’t comment so much,” the manager scolded. He offhandedly picked up a bucket of popcorn from a seat nearby and grabbed a handful to throw into his mouth. “It would be nice to have more buyouts like this one……”

Before he could finish speaking, he spat a few times until the popcorn had all been removed from his mouth. “What’s going on? Why is this popcorn……”

Halfway through his sentence, he suddenly thought of something and hurriedly swallowed the second half of his sentence. The employee asked him in confusion, “What’s wrong with the popcorn?”

“Nothing,” the manager calmly stated. “The popcorn’s gone soft.”

“Of course it’s gone soft. It’s been sitting out here all night.” The employee had thought that there was something actually wrong. Upon hearing this, he chuckled a few times and offhandedly plucked the popcorn out of the manager’s hand to throw into the trash can. “Don’t eat it anymore.”

The manager made a noise of acknowledgement. He didn’t say anything else; only, he inconspicuously picked up a cup that hadn’t yet been removed from the auditorium and took a sip. Then, he said, “These things have been left out for too long. Hurry and toss them out. Don’t let anyone take anything home. If they end up with a stomach ache because of these foods, we won’t be able to afford to compensate them.”

The employee chortled. Without thinking too much, he said, “Who would eat expired popcorn and Coke?”

The manager didn’t respond. He only stared, face cold, as they worked. This was to prevent them from secretly consuming anything.

At the same time, his thoughts started racing through his head.

All the popcorn and drinks left in this auditorium had become flavorless. They tasted completely different from when they had first been made by the movie theater.

Though the manager couldn’t confirm that anything had truly happened, after considering the prior events, he more or less had a theory in his heart.

This movie theater was experiencing a terrible haunting!!!

His palms started sweating. He silently pulled out his phone and inputted the number on the business card Yu Zhengdu had left behind. Then, he texted the other.

Manager:【Great Master, did you guys specially come to help us out because you knew very early on that our movie theater was being haunted?】

Manager:【Thank you guys so much!】

Manager:【I’m definitely going to diligently submit a request to the company in order to try and achieve a long term collaboration with your company!】

Yu Zhengdu after suddenly receiving these texts: “……??”

He looked at Shang Que, bewildered. “What’s the movie theater manager saying?”

Shang Que scanned the texts and very casually held onto Yu Zhengdu’s hand while at it. He calmly said, “No matter. As long as he doesn’t hold back on our service fees.”

“Oh,” Yu Zhengdu replied. Then, he silently lowered his head and glanced at his wrist that was being held by Shang Que.

Shang Que looked straight ahead. His expression didn’t change. “I can’t always have you being the only proactive one.”

Yu Zhengdu: “……”

Wait no. When had he ever been the proactive one?

The author has something to say:

Xiaokui: I need to take initiative too, occasionally. To give him a bit of encouragement.

Zhengdu: ……??