"If you die live on stream, will you get demonetized?"
That was the top comment on the last video Jin Qiang watched.
A shaky, low-resolution clip played across his laptop screen of three streamers yelling inside an abandoned subway tunnel, their flashlights flickering as a long shadow darted past...Then slowly faded to total darkness.
Just screams and hurried footsteps were heard, and then silence took over as the video ended.
Jin Qiang slurped the last of his instant noodles, his lips smacking as he muttered.
"Tsk~ So fake."
Letting the plastic fork clatter into the cup. He crushed the container and tossed it behind him, where it joined a sad pile of garbage in the corner.
His apartment was a one-room shoebox above a hardware store, the walls were stained yellow from damp, and the only decoration was a poster of an anime ghost girl with sharp teeth and a QR code for donations.
The air smelled faintly of instant ramen, mold, and a trace of burnt dust from the rattling heater that wheezed when it ran.
Jin Qiang was a 23-year-old guy and was, as you can tell, poor and had no stable job. Currently, he is a full-time amateur horror live streamer and a part-time delivery guy.
And he had debts and was really just getting by, and now he was on the verge of being kicked out of his place because he needed to pay 2 months of overdue rent or else he'd be living on the streets.
With a short sigh, he flipped on his ring light.
It flickered to life, like it was short-circuiting, but it still worked.
Well... barely...
Just enough to light up his face with a pale, uneven glow.
Jin Qiang's looks were not that bad, but with all the stress and the lack of money to take care of himself, he looked like a literal bum. His hair was long and unruly, tied in a ponytail, he had bangs which he always tucked behind his ears, and he wore thick black rimmed glasses.
In short, he looked like an isolated, poor, sickly, dorky guy.
While setting up his broadcast.
For a split second, he thought he saw a shadow behind him on the wall.
When he turned….
Nothing.
"Don't do that…" he said to the ring light, half-joking, half-not.
He then booted up his streaming app, cleared his throat, and put on the persona that had earned him a modest but loyal following of ghost-hunting degenerates.
"Yo yo yo—" He grinned at the barely-active chat window.
"What's up, ghost fam! It's ya boy, GhostQiang, bringing you real terror tonight. No filters, no edits, just me and whatever the hell's lurking down there."
[🌕无脸宝贝 entered the stream]
[👻666Tips donated ¥2: Bro I hope you scream like last time lol]
"Appreciate the tip, 666Tips!" Jin said as he finger-gunned the screen.
"Let's hope I don't die tonight, yeah?"
He then pulled on his hoodie and checked his gear.
Bluetooth body cam blinking red, backup battery charged, flashlight, phone, and enough bravado to pretend he wasn't scared.
He took one last look at the stream stats before heading out to tonight's livestream set.
Viewers: 9.
"Not bad for a Thursday." He thought to himself.
"Okay guys~ I'm off, I'll see you in an hour again. Bye~"
...
Tonight's stream was a big one, the infamous Line 13 Tunnel.
Officially, it had been shut down for "maintenance" for months.
Unofficially? People said it was cursed.
Six months ago, three popular urban explorers went in for a collab livestream and they never came out.
The last footage showed them laughing at the entrance, and then screaming into static as darkness swallowed them whole. One by one, their cameras died, and their bodies were never found.
But the footage?
Somehow, it got uploaded.
And the internet did what it does best…
Watched it a million times and started making memes, forums, and theories.
For Jin Qiang tho…
It was perfect…
The perfect clickbait.
When he arrived at the abandoned subway. He started his livestream.
[LIVE STREAM STARTING…]
Viewers: 11
The wind howled through the stairwell as Jin Qiang descended the cracked stone steps.
The entrance to the Line 13 service tunnel gaped ahead like the open mouth of something ancient and starving.
The rusted gate leaned crooked, spray-painted with dripping red symbols.
He hoped it was paint.
The walls inside were covered in graffiti of ghost eyes, crude talismans, smears of something dark and brown, and scrawled symbols that looked disturbingly like a curse written in blood.
He lifted his phone as his flashlight sliced into the damp air.
"Legend says if you hear a second train, you're not in this world anymore…"
A smirk twitched at his lips.
"Let's find out if that's true."
[🍜油条哥哥: lmaooo this guy gonna die for 12 views]
[🎥ZhenGhost: do a summoning rite or I'm leaving]
[💀xXHellGirlXx: show feet]
He rolled his eyes and kept walking. "You'll get ghost feet if I die, how's that?"
As he walked deeper, his footsteps echoed louder than they should.
Each step sounded like two….
One, following just behind him.
He checked a couple of times, yet no one was there.
Then, around thirty steps in, his stream suddenly glitched.
He noticed that the camera froze and then lagged, yet he kept going further.
For a while, static kept flaring across the screen, and Jin Qiang frowned.
"Ugh, connection's acting up. Should I go back and fix it?" he muttered, glancing behind.
"Huh?"
The stairwell was gone.
Behind him, there was only more tunnel.
A yawning, endless stretch of concrete swallowed by shadow.
The air grew heavier, and the sound was muffled, like he'd walked underwater.
His flashlight blinked just for a second, then steadied.
He looked back at his phone to check if it still wasn't working...
Then he froze.
"Huh?"
[🧧红包姐 donated ¥13.14: Is this part of the act? So real.]
[👁Viewer count: 312…]
His eyes snapped toward the viewer count and couldn't believe it.
"That can't be right…" Jin Qiang said as he blinked a couple of times. checking to see if he miss-saw it.
He tapped on the screen.
The live stream app stuttered, and suddenly new usernames poured in too fast for him to read.
[☠️Noskin23]
[💀床下的人]
[👁ShadowBehindU]
"What the…" Jin muttered.
He hadn't promoted tonight's stream, and no one big had shared it.
Where were these people coming from?
He squinted at the chat.
The usernames were… strange.
They weren't the usual edgy gamer handles.
[🩸BrokenNeck_Offline]
[🔪IWatchUType]
[👻吊死在天花板]
And the emojis were… corrupted. Glitched. Off.
Just...something felt wrong.
Then... The stream glitched again.
But this time, the camera split.
It was now showing two camera angles.
One from his chest cam.
And the other…. from behind him.
"What the hell…" he whispered as his heartbeat pounded in his throat and he turned around slowly, the flashlight trembling in his hand.
No one…
There was nothing there.
But on the second feed, it showed something else.
A figure stood.
Silently still.
Pale and slightly hunched.
Its head, tilted at an unnatural angle.
Its face was smooth and featureless, like a video that wouldn't buffer.
Its eyes—if they were eyes—twitched like glitched frames.
And its mouth stretched too far in a crooked grin.
That had Jin Qiang's blood turning to ice.
[☠️XiaoHei tipped ¥666: AHAHAH this dude's actually cursed.]
[🔥Trending Now: #TunnelDeathStream]
He backed up and the stream lagged, or maybe his heart did.
"Nope nope nope—AHHHHH—!"
He turned to run but tripped on his own feet and fell unsightly so.
His phone clattered to the ground.
The camera tilted sideways as the flashlight rolled into a puddle of black water.
The stream caught him curled on the floor, trembling, shouting, and swearing.
"F*CK!!! F*CK YOU!!! NO!! F*CK!!! SH*T!!! HELP!!! SOMEONE HELP ME!!! F****CCCKKK!!!!"
The figure didn't move.
It just stood there.
Watching.
Smiling.
Then, just after a few seconds...
Whoosh….
It was gone.
Like it had never been there.
[👻XiaoHei: Yo streamer. You're funny. I like you. Let's see if you survive next episode.]
[STREAMENDED]
Followers Gained: +3,911
New Achievement Unlocked: Liked by the Dead ☠️