novelTele Chapter 10: The line between a bad ending and a masterpiece is very thin.
Chapter 10: The line between a bad ending and a masterpiece is very thin.
Lu Dan narrowed his eyes, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints in extreme fear and resistance, as he made out the deep red ocean.
Countless red, writhing "X"s formed a sea of blood—the rejected drafts condemned to death by editors and viewers.
Those severed limbs floating in the sea of blood are not corpses, but characters arbitrarily erased from countless scripts.
This is the design station.
A few words appeared on the girl's face.
Immediately afterwards, the chalk made a scraping sound as it rubbed against the rough cement.
rustling... rustling...
She wrote very slowly and very carefully.
Lu Dan didn't need to get close to see the words clearly, because as the chalk moved, he felt his body become really heavy, and his throat felt like it was being gripped by an invisible hand.
[Ending: The survivors escape to the rooftop, only to find it's a dead end. In despair, the merged demon bursts through the door and tears them to pieces. The End.]
Simple, vulgar, and utterly unoriginal. It's the most clichéd ending in a horror movie—a total wipeout.
"Thump!"
The iron gate behind him let out a scream, a huge fist-shaped bulge appeared in the middle, and the cracks on it were even visible.
A roar came through the iron gate, like bones being chewed right next to your ear: "Open the door... my foot! Give me my foot!"
There are only 3 minutes left.
Master Zhang slumped to the ground, his eyes glazed over: "What should I do? The script calls for your death, you have no choice but to die."
"It can be changed."
Lu Dan suddenly spoke, and he walked straight towards the faceless girl.
His steps were somewhat hurried, clearly indicating that he was also a little guilty.
"Is this the ending you gave us?" Standing behind the girl, Lu Dan's tone was tinged with mockery. "As the designer of the horror script, I have to say, this entire modified script is absolutely terrible, boring, and full of deus ex machina. If I were a viewer, I would give it a bad review without hesitation and throw the work in the trash."
The chalk in the girl's hand paused for a moment. She slowly turned her head, and the bright red Song typeface on her featureless face began to jump and recombine wildly.
"Rules erasure warning."
A terrifying pressure descended instantly, and Lu Dan's knees made a cracking sound, as if a mountain was pressing down on his shoulders, forcing him to kneel.
Lu Dan gritted his teeth, stubbornly refusing to bend his spine. Cold sweat dripped down his chin onto the three words "The End" written by the girl, blurring a small wet patch.
"What do you want? Just simple killing?"
Lu Dan stared at the blank face. "If it were just about killing, we would have been dead in the hallway just now. You went to great lengths to drive us here, wasn't it all for the final climax? But your current fate has ruined everything."
"The annihilation of the main characters is common in horror movies, but a illogical annihilation is a bad ending."
"That monster..." Lu Dan pointed to the rickety iron gate behind him, "It's a fusion of two vengeful spirits, its power level is broken, it's become a plot hole. You're just trying to cover up this hole by killing everyone, right?"
The words on the girl's face stopped moving.
She seemed to be thinking.
"Do you have a better suggestion? Countdown: 1:30"
Lu Dan's lips twitched slightly. "The greatest value of a great horror movie is never death, but the extension of fear. If we die here, you'll only get a one-time fear; but if we survive..."
He took a deep breath and tossed out the poison coated in sugar: "We can carry this fear into the next script, into a wider audience. A surviving, cursed protagonist, forever living in the shadows, is far more valuable than a broken corpse—that's sustainable profit, understand?"
With a loud bang, the lock on the iron gate shattered completely.
In an instant, a stench of blood and despair swept over us.
It squeezed into the rooftop, even larger than before. Its dense resentment transformed into black asphalt-like skin, and its four eyes flashed red when they saw the three people on the rooftop: "Found it... mine, all mine!" Two rotting heads roared, and a huge ghostly hand covered the sky, slamming down with the power to tear everything apart.
Lin Xiaoxiao closed her eyes.
Master Zhang's face was filled with despair.
Only Lu Dan remained unmoved.
He stared intently at the faceless girl, throwing out all his chips: "Turn it into my curse. This isn't a bug, it's foreshadowing—whether you create a masterpiece or a disappointing ending depends on this one move."
The ghostly hand stopped above Lu Dan's head. The gale that should have smashed him into a pulp instead tousled his hair and stung his cheeks.
The faceless girl lowered her head and used the chalk in her hand to draw a big X over the words "The End".
A screeching sound rang out, and she wrote another line of text next to it.
"To be continued"
The moment those four words appeared, the whole world seemed to be put on pause.
The enormous fused monster let out a defiant roar as its body began to disintegrate, dissipate, and then be forcibly compressed and folded.
The black resentment surged into Lu Dan's shadow like a tornado.
The excruciating pain was like a thousand red-hot steel needles piercing his spine and crawling through his entire body along his nerves.
He knelt on the ground, unable to make a sound, only able to open his mouth wide and roar silently.
The faceless girl stood up, and the originally gray-white sky began to shatter, like a broken mirror, revealing a deep and dark black hole behind it.
This is the exit point after customs clearance.
[Script settlement in progress]
[Script Rating: B]
[Hidden Achievement: Making a Deal with the Devil. (You accepted that thing to save your life; it now lurks in your shadow, ready to take your place at any moment.)]
[You have been cursed: The Faceless Scriptwriter's Expectation (From now on, you will be invited to every grand performance—as a passerby, forever.)]
The rooftop began to collapse, and Master Zhang and Lin Xiaoxiao were sucked into the black hole.
Lu Dan struggled to lift his head, his vision blurred. In the last second before losing consciousness, he saw the last line of words left on the ground by the chalk: "Looking forward to your next performance, Mr. Lu Dan."
Darkness swallowed everything.
......
......
"Sizzle—"
A familiar electrical sound.
Lu Dan suddenly opened his eyes. In front of him was a tidy office. On the desk was a cup of cold black coffee and next to it was a lit computer screen with a blinking cursor.
Lu Dan gasped for breath, his body already drenched in cold sweat. He instinctively groped his body, finding it unharmed, without wounds or pain.
"A dream?" He looked around at the familiar surroundings, somewhat dazed; this was his home.
The clock on the wall pointed to 3 a.m., which seemed to be only a moment after he entered the instance.
That's so true.
He picked up the coffee cup with trembling hands, wanting to take a sip to calm his nerves.
In the reflection of the black coffee, he saw his own face. A pair of bloodshot eyes stared intently at him through the black coffee liquid.
His hand trembled, and coffee spilled onto the table. The coffee color spread rapidly, soaking the postcard with a clown on it.
A line of small, blood-red text slowly appeared on the computer screen.
[Newbie Trial Ended]
Welcome to the real horror movie set!
【Your account balance: 300 points (Please redeem them for survival items as soon as possible)】
Lu Dan slowly put down the cup and looked down at his feet.
Under the light, his shadow was darker and thicker than that of an average person, and there was a noticeable bulge on the left ankle of the shadow, which looked exactly like a high heel.