The Rise of Otaku
chapter-20

One of the bad things about village life was that it would get very dark and windy during the night. Plus Zhou Yu’s house was not neighboring with anyone. The closest neighbor was still very far from him. So it would become even quieter and secluded.

Just going to the toilet, Zhou Yu would always feel the cold wind blowing behind him and the shadows of the tree branches were moving in strange patterns as if they were the claws of some strange monsters. It made his heart beat rapidly.

Quickly returning to his room and switching on the light, with the bright light, he was finally able to dispel the fear and carry on the game.

Different to the CG animation, after entering the game, the graphics quality of the game clearly reduced at least two levels. Although it was still in 3D, the characters models of the game were very rough. It was just like Grand Theft Auto III.

But this was actually quite reasonable. If the gameplay graphic was as good as its CG animation, then the game would be as good as those high-quality games. It would not be a tier-two game.

The reason why it was compared to GTA 3, was that this game also seemed to focus on the open world, The level of the detail of the game was also similar.

The 3D version of Luhua village was much more interesting than the 2D version of it. Entering the villagers’ houses would always give Zhou Yu a feeling of adventure. It was just that he had never been to other villagers’ houses before, so he didn’t know if the internal of the villagers’ houses were similar to the game.

The game story started out very slow. The group of troubled students was playing around in the village, enjoying the scenery of the countryside after they got off the bus.

Camping, BBQing on the riverside, signing, and dancing, it could be said that the story was not scary again all. But instead, it had a “disgusting” romantic feeling. Only after a statue was accidentally discovered by a girl, did the story started to move toward the irretrievable abyss of terror.

The strange heart changing story, the eerie sacrifice ritual, a slovenly Taoist... Many clues and characters with different personalities constantly emerged one after another. It slowly wove a lifelike terrifying story.

As the game progressed, the troubled college students began to die one after another gradually. Every death CG animation would push the atmosphere of menace to another level.

......

Zhou Yu had been playing for the game for two days now. Although he still hadn’t finished the game, the main storyline of the game gradually became clear to him.

The main story of the game was adapted from the story “Judge Lu” in the book “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”. After the adaptation, the story became the occult tale that had been told by the villagers of Luhua village for many generations. The deaths of the main character’s classmates were all because of this tale.

The people who were dead would have some parts of their internal organs gone missing. Heart, liver, lung, kidney, spleen, etc... the missing body parts were even enough to make a new person.

Based on the current clues, the most suspicious person would be the slovenly Taoist, however, from an experienced game player’s perspective, this Taoist should be friendly like Gandalf in the lord of the rings.

Once Zhou Yu started playing the game, it was very hard for him to stop playing it. Especially when he couldn’t finish it. So he even stopped writing the light novel and fully focused only on playing the horror game for several days.

Just when he was concentrating on playing the game, his bedroom door was suddenly opened. Although it was in the daytime, it still made Zhou Yu, whose attention was completely attracted by the scary game, suddenly screamed like a little girl. But Zhou Yu’s reaction made both Zhou Shuyu and He Yuanyuan burst out laughing.

“Haha, why you scream like a little girl, don’t tell me that you are watching something that is not appropriate for kids.”

Zhou Shuyu casually pushed away Zhou Yu, making sure that he didn’t have the time to close the window. However, what she saw next was a distinctive scene of horror movies. In the dark forest, a person was walking toward a hair-raising ruined temple.

But what made her curious was the that she seemed to have seen the ruined temple somewhere before.

“Yuanyuan, come here, this movie is very strange. Take a look at this. Does it look like the ruined temple near our village?”

Hearing what she said, He Yuanyuan moved closer and removed the headsets so the audio could be played through speakers. Then both girls started to watch the CG animation as if they were watching a horror movie.

‘How brave are they. Are they not supposed to be scared of horror movies?’ Zhou Yu was speechless. Perhaps they had already seen many horror movies, otherwise, they would not have applied for the directing course.

It was indeed the ruined temple near the village, even the old tree next to it was exactly the same.

Some time ago, they both even went to that place to check if they could use the place to make a movie. The success of the aircraft launching video made them can’t hold back their passions for directing a new movie, and they had been thinking about making a new movie idea every day.

However, they didn’t expect that they hadn’t even started filming, the otaku who refused to leave his house already had a finished product.

It was not a bad CG animation. The background music was very tense, and the visual effect was also top-notch.

Under the old style lanterns, the scary murals were looming on the screen, making the entire animation looked more realistic and terrifying.

The entire CG animation didn’t show any signs of ghosts, but it still could still make people sweat in fear. It meant that it was a good horror movie.

It was a shame that the entire CG film was not long. It was only three minutes long. What was left was the gameplay. So Zhou Yu took back his chair and carried on playing the game while two girls were watching on the side.

“Brother Yu, this is our village, right? Did you make this?”

“Hmm... My internet friends made it. I was only responsible for taking real-life photos. So no, I didn’t make this.”

Of course, Zhou Yu would not say that he made it. What if two girls suddenly wanted to learn how to make games, then his lie would be immediately exposed.

In terms of him knowing some other otakus that knew how to create games was very normal. The only thing that was not normal was to create a game with such high quality. But those two girls would not know that. So this question could be ignored.

In fact, Zhou Shuyu and He Yuanyuan just wanted to get to know the people who made the CG animation. Maybe in the future, they would help them to add some special effects into their movie. However, no matter what they did to Zhou Yu, he just would not say anything. All he said was that they were just internet friends, and he didn’t know them in real life. Besides, they didn’t like to have strangers in their group.

Because of Zhou Yu, Zhou Shuyu already knew that otakus were a group of strange people. So she could only give up this idea and left Zhou Yu’s house with a copy of the game to study the game with He Yuanyuan.

Only after they played the game, were they shocked to find that they had become the characters in the game!

In this horror game, Zhou Shuyu’s character and He Yuanyuan’s character played important roles. The former one was the wife of the scholar Zhu Erdan, the later one was the ghost that swapped her head with the wife of Zhu Erdan.

Seeing the characters that looked exactly like them, embarked on a bizarre adventure in the game, causing an irresistible sense of immersion. Although both newbie players struggled at the beginning, eventually completed the first game PC game in their lives.

Of course, when they encountered some areas that they really didn’t know to play through, they would ask Zhou Yu this otaku for some advice.

They didn’t know how to tell if a game was good or bad. But they really like the story of the game. There were sad but beautiful love stories, scary story plots, surprising twists, and endings... All of them made them marvel that it was such a good movie script.

It seemed like that otaku wasn’t bragging about himself when he said that he was a writer. He indeed had that kind of talent.

“Yuanyuan, what do you think if we use this story as our movie script?”

“Don’t be silly, they must have worked very hard on this game, and they probably want to sell it. There was no way that they would give the script to us.”

He Yuanyuan could still think sensibly. Because she knew that making games usually required a lot of investment. Plus there were around 30 minutes of CG animation in total, so there was no way that they would do it for free. At least, they would need to get their investment back.

However, what she didn’t expect was that Zhou Shuyu was right this time.