Chapter 1: Master-Level Script

"Still no good? Can't pass the review?"

At 6:30 PM, in an old house in Lin'an District, Rong City, the young man's eyes, once full of anticipation, gradually dimmed.

The middle-aged man sitting across the table slowly put down the manuscript in his hands, his gaze toward the young man filled with complexity. "Yang Xiao, your Script is written very well, but it's still that same problem: the market doesn't need pure supernatural scripts. You should understand the current general environment, so..."

"I understand, thank you, Zhao Ge." Yang Xiao tried his best to squeeze out a smile; he knew the other party had also done their best.

"By the way, Zhao Ge, I'll return the deposit to you. I'm really sorry for taking up so much of your time." Yang Xiao picked up his phone.

"No, no, no, it is I who should be sorry. Keep the deposit. I think... I think there will still be opportunities to cooperate in the future, so let's count this as the deposit for next time."

After saying this, the middle-aged man didn't give Yang Xiao a chance to refuse and turned to walk outside. The sky was gray and drizzling. The middle-aged man opened his black umbrella and, standing at the unit entrance, saw the rental notice the landlord had posted in advance. After a moment of hesitation, he turned back. "Little Yang, take a piece of advice from Zhao Ge: find a job first. A person has to live in the present. You have to find a job to support yourself, don't you?"

"I'm already looking. I went to interview at two companies this morning." Yang Xiao revealed a reassuring smile; he knew Zhao Ge was a good person and didn't want him to worry.

After a light sigh, the middle-aged man didn't know what else to say. He shook his head, opened his black umbrella, and walked into the curtain of rain.

Not until the middle-aged man's figure completely disappeared did Yang Xiao turn and walk back to his room step by step, his pace much heavier.

This was an old residential complex. The dim, cramped stairwell was covered in small advertisements for things like lock-picking and drain-clearing, and the railings were covered in rust. Decent people would not live here, but even such an indecent place had now become a luxury beyond Yang Xiao's reach.

He was moving out next month, though he didn't know where he would go. The landlord had already notified him in advance, and the rental notice outside the unit door had already been posted.

Closing the door and looking at the manuscript on the table, Yang Xiao felt a bit dazed for a moment. Unlike his classmates who were busy looking for work right after graduation, Yang Xiao chose to become a Script creator after graduating from university. That year, murder mystery games were booming, and market demand was high, which allowed Yang Xiao to see business opportunities and a chance to realize his dreams.

Over the past two years, he had created several works with excellent reputation and sales. He was an author specializing in supernatural suspense; works like the industry-acclaimed Huang Family Mansion and Rainy Night Murderer came from his hands.

But good times didn't last. Following an official document, the winter of the murder mystery game industry arrived abruptly, and the supernatural sector was wiped out entirely. Every script studio he was familiar with no longer accepted supernatural manuscripts. For Yang Xiao, this didn't just smash his rice bowl; it almost crushed all his hopes.

He had also tried to change, writing scripts about romance, family, and game plots, but unfortunately, his bias was too severe, and he hadn't been nurtured by romance or family. He even had very few friends, and no script studio was willing to take the risk to sign him.

After half a year of going around in circles, he finally decided to return to the supernatural. Hearing that the atmosphere wasn't as tight now, he seized the time to carefully polish a first draft and then sought out Zhao Ge, the owner of the script studio he had the best relationship with, but the result was already obvious.

He didn't blame Zhao Ge. Zhao Ge was a good person who had taken good care of him, but at the age of just over 40, with old parents above and children below, his whole family relied on him to eat. He needed to earn money to support his family and could not afford even the slightest risk.

Dreams couldn't be eaten, and they were no match for the necessities of life. It was time to think about what to do next.

But before that, he had one more important thing to do. He opened his phone and tapped into a group chat named Nightmare Family. There weren't many people in it, but the chat was in full swing.

This was his script-fan group, filled with friends who had always supported him. The topics they discussed were about his new Script, and everyone was looking forward to it. In some aspects, they were even more conscientious than he, the author, was, but this only made Yang Xiao feel increasingly ashamed.

With the new Script shelved and the future nowhere in sight, he had to stand up and explain. Gathering his courage, Yang Xiao slowly typed out a line, but upon seeing someone in the group suddenly ask if the author could release the new Script today, Yang Xiao broke down. He deleted the pale excuse he hadn't yet sent, threw his phone aside, and slumped against the back of his chair, gasping for air.

A long time later, when he came to his senses, the sky outside had turned completely dark. He went to the bathroom and splashed his face with cold water. The top priority now was to find a job. Although he still had some savings left, if he didn't have any more income, he would soon be sleeping on the streets, and his script-fan friends certainly wouldn't want to see him like that.

Just as he was racking his brains thinking about what jobs he could be qualified for, suddenly, a knock on the door sounded.

The knocking was very slow, dragging with a heavy tone, as if it were an old person with only their last breath left, but the pressure it brought to Yang Xiao was unprecedented. He immediately realized that the person outside the door was the landlady, who had come to find him because she saw the lights on in the room.

Shrinking his neck, Yang Xiao didn't dare to move at all until the knocking stopped and the hallway was quiet.

He waited for another full 10 minutes like this. Only after confirming that the landlady had left did Yang Xiao tiptoe to the door and open it a crack. After all, his umbrella was still left outside, and that was also his asset.

But when the voice-activated light turned on, Yang Xiao's brow furrowed. He saw that there was an extra delivery box on the floor outside the door.

After confirming there was no one around, Yang Xiao opened the door and picked up the delivery box. The box was very light. After shaking it slightly, Yang Xiao immediately determined what was inside: it was a Script Box.

The landlord couldn't have picked up the delivery for him; it must have been the delivery courier. But when did the couriers in the complex become so dedicated?

Returning to the room and opening the delivery box, inside was indeed a Script Box. On the box, a village under the moonlight was painted with an oil-painting texture. Every household's doors and windows were tightly shut, with no lights to be seen, as if it were a pool of stagnant water, devoid of life. In the distant background, towering black shadows vaguely emerged, which seemed to confirm that the village was located deep in the mountains.

In the upper right corner of the Script Box, four blood-red characters shattered the eerie harmony of the entire image, and this was exactly the name of the Script—Fengmen Ghost Opera.

This name, this composition, this bizarre atmosphere, couldn't help but make Yang Xiao, a deep-seated supernatural author, eyes light up. There weren't many script authors left who dared to write like this now. If this went well, it could be a master-level work.

Immediately grabbing his phone, Yang Xiao urgently wanted to know which script studio this Script came from. This gave him hope.

But he flipped through his entire friend list, and no one had mailed him a script. Besides being a script creator, Yang Xiao occasionally took on some private work, helping script studios he was familiar with to revise or evaluate scripts, helping to perfect the story plots while also earning a little bit of remuneration.

But under the current environment, no script studio had contacted him for a long time.

It wasn't a script studio he was familiar with, so who sent the Script?

Picking up the delivery box again, Yang Xiao noticed that the sender's information was already blurred, as if it had been soaked in water. He walked under the light and, with the help of the glow, finally managed to recognize the last few characters in the address section:

No. 144 Fengmen Town.