Chapter Ten: The Art of Managing Spirits and Phantoms

He picked up the tripod and stepped out of the restroom, only to see several prison guards standing in the corridor. At first, he was startled, but then he remembered the message on his phone about “ghostly staff members.” With that in mind, he strode confidently up to the guards.

“Greetings, Boss!”

When the prison guard employees shouted those words in unison, Shang Yi felt a bit odd, but he quickly adapted to his new role. Smiling like a leader, he nodded to each spectral staff member. Closing his right eye, he noticed many more guards lingering in invisible form, drifting through the corridors and rooms.

He soon made a complete circuit of the entire prison, counting all the ghostly employees. Among them, twenty guards were ones he had fought to the death in the past. These included the deputy warden Crocodile, the field team leader Lizard, three field guards, seven internal guards, two cooks, a surveillance guard, and five doctors. There were also ten prisoners and five patients he had never seen before.

Apart from these, there were three ghosts. The moment he looked their way, the system displayed a floating caption: “Haunted House regular staff Tang Chi, Xu Yin, and Bao Bao have been unlocked. Regular staff can leave the haunted house scenario at any time.”

Xu Yin was a middle-aged man, looking about thirty. His skin was dark, his face deeply lined, and his small eyes were sharp. He wore a painter’s overalls, splattered red and white—whether paint or blood, it was hard to tell.

Tang Chi, a woman of about twenty-four or twenty-five, wore hospital patient clothes. Her face was cherubic but pale, her tangled hair was a shock of white, and her large eyes were bloodshot. Her lips were thick and blackish, and her teeth, when visible, were nearly pitch dark.

Bao Bao appeared to be a five- or six-year-old boy dressed in a yellow kindergarten uniform. He had a large head and forehead, with round, black eyes.

Shang Yi realized these three ordinary staff members would likely prove invaluable in the future. Smiling warmly, he nodded to them, quickly bridging any distance between them.

With thirty-eight new ghostly employees, Shang Yi felt a headache coming on. “Isn’t this just running a haunted house? Am I really going to have to master the art of management?”

Before crossing over, Shang Yi had also run his own company. Though the venture failed, he had still gained some experience in management.

He swiftly grasped the essentials. Based on the system’s strength classifications, he devised a management plan for the thirty-eight employees. First, he divided them into four teams, appointing Tang Chi, Crocodile, Lizard, and Xu Yin—the four most powerful ghosts—as team leaders.

He outlined the responsibilities each leader should assume, then repeatedly drilled them on the basic rules for haunted house staff: under no circumstances were guests to be harmed; the guest experience was paramount; staff must help timid guests overcome their fears, and so on.

Afterward, he taught them some of his own philosophies, techniques, and methods from designing horror games, instructing the team leaders to pass these on to their subordinates.

His vision was to turn the prison scenario into an open-world sandbox horror game. Once inside, visitors could explore any room they wished. Not all thirty-eight haunted house actors could appear at once; clear division of labor was essential.

Some could remain visible at all times, like haunted house mannequins, providing basic displays and scares for visitors—effects similar to those found in other haunted houses, but with a realism and terror far beyond that of mannequins or living actors.

The remaining actors were to observe visitors closely, gauging their psychological endurance, and appear at opportune moments to deliver unexpected frights.

Typically, the level of fright in a haunted house is fixed: brave visitors might remain unfazed, while timid ones could be scared out of their wits. All haunted houses inevitably fall into this rigid pattern.

But with years of game design and horror game experience behind him, Shang Yi understood player psychology and flow far better than your average haunted house owner. In his design philosophy, a good game offers every player a challenge suited to their level.

Thus, he repeatedly emphasized that all staff must observe visitors carefully, using their facial expressions to judge their current tolerance. For those with low endurance, staff should take it easy, providing reassurance after an initial scare so they could relax. For those with nerves of steel, the staff could intensify their efforts—if one actor wasn’t enough, send in another, bombarding the guest in waves until their limits were reached.

With this approach, the fright level of the prison scenario could be automatically adjusted: for some visitors, it would be a one-star fright; for others, three stars. This way, every guest could experience terror tailored to them, achieving a cathartic effect and maximizing the haunted house’s reputation.

His extensive experience as a horror game player had made Shang Yi a true connoisseur of fright. He knew precisely what kind of scare would have what effect in any given situation.

Seeing the haunted house staff’s bewildered expressions, he had no choice but to personally demonstrate how to play a ghost—showing everyone, movement by movement, how to hide, how to appear suddenly, what facial expressions to use, and how to gesture with their hands.

Watching their young yet highly professional boss, the staff—though all new to the service industry—quickly grew confident.

Shang Yi and his team practiced and rehearsed, working tirelessly until well past six in the morning. Only when he felt the staff had learned enough did he realize that he hadn’t slept a wink or eaten all night.

Suddenly, he recalled that he had acquired a skill called “Ghoul’s Appetite,” allowing him to restore HP by eating food prepared by ghosts. He promptly summoned the two prison ghost cooks to the kitchen to prepare a meal—partly to test if his HP would recover, and partly because he was genuinely hungry. Ghost-cooked or human-cooked, it made no difference; he just needed to fill his stomach.

The two ghost cooks worked with impressive skill, quickly whipping up a meat pie from the prison’s available ingredients—the kind of meat was anyone’s guess. It was Shang Yi’s first time eating food from the underworld. One bite, and it felt like he was chewing on scorched bark rather than pie.

Still, with his system-boosted resilience of ten, he managed to finish the pie in no time.

He watched as his HP recovered to 26 out of 50.

“A single ghost meat pie restores twenty-five HP. That’s decent enough, I suppose.”