A Fake Master Rides the Waves in Horror Movies

Master Meng was a famous online metaphysics expert, making her name by filming livestreams exploring haunted places and producing short horror dramas advertised as being based on real paranormal events.

After years in the business, she knew all the classic paranormal tropes, but had never seen a ghost.

She was also convinced that ghosts didn't exist.

Until one day, she went to gather footage at a haunted building where a murder had taken place.

The victim, who had been tormented by ghosts, warned her not to go in, or she would definitely regret it.

Even her partner, who was there to film with her, joked that they were just like the expendable characters in a horror movie who ignored the protagonist's warnings and rushed to their deaths.

Master Meng didn't care. Master Meng was unimpressed. Master Meng said she would take responsibility for her own life and death.

Then, the moment Master Meng stepped into the haunted building, she saw glaring words in blood-red lettering above everyone's heads.

The victim haunted by ghosts: [The mad protagonist.]

Her partner: [The missing passerby.]

Master Meng herself: [The tragic expendable.]

It turned out their world really was derived from horror movies, and Master Meng and the others really were expendable characters with a death-seeking script.

Master Meng: ...

Master Meng: I was wrong. I've already dropped to my knees and surrendered.

But it was too late. The ghosts in their world played dirty, claiming lives without delay. Before she could find a real master to save her, her partner and the protagonist had both disappeared.

With no other choice, Master Meng had to team up with an unlucky supporting character who was also being tormented by paranormal events, the protagonist's friend, and bravely charge into the haunted building to die (crossed out).

To save people.

She had thought it was a certain-death situation, but at the critical moment, Master Meng unlocked a deeper understanding of the world.

The bad news: Their world was derived from horror movies.

The worse news: Their world wasn't derived from just one horror movie. It was a world that combined all kinds of horror movies.

Good grief. Master Meng thought even Zhong Kui himself would have to exclaim, "Good grief!"

This meant demons and monsters would run rampant, with all kinds of evil spirits roaming everywhere.

But the one piece of good news was that since this was a combined horror-movie world, many of the settings had been linked together.

In Horror Movie A, there was a mysterious and powerful family of exorcists. Originally, they had no connection whatsoever to her own family, which shared the same surname and appeared in Horror Movie B.

But now that the worlds had merged, she had become a descendant of a branch of the exorcist family.

All the theories she'd accumulated over the years, whether true or false, had turned into techniques she could use in real combat.

Master Meng: Heh heh heh, if that's how you're setting things up, then I'm wide awake now.

The next second, Master Meng grabbed a broadsword and swung it at the ghost's head (wrong).

Master Meng grabbed a peachwood sword and stabbed at the ghost (right).

Once the crisis was over, the supporting character who had survived life and death alongside her smiled and asked her name.

"I've been calling you Master this whole time, but I don't even know your name."

Only then did Master Meng realize: Expendable characters really weren't worthy of names. She'd even been calling herself Master.

"Fu Zhi. My name is Meng Fuzhi."

"And you?"

Yuan Qingye was a veteran ghost magnet, the very definition of bad luck. Let's put it this way: From childhood to adulthood, she'd encountered ghosts more times than an ordinary person had eaten meals.

She hated those paranormal-streaming daredevils who took all kinds of life-threatening risks just to chase thrills.

Wasn't being alive nice?

So when she first met that online streamer who called herself Master Meng, she knew exactly what a clueless, reckless fool she was. She had no idea what real terror meant.

And just as Yuan Qingye had expected, before seeing ghosts, she made grand promises that she wouldn't return until she had conquered the enemy. But after seeing one, she turned into Ye Gong, who loved dragons only in theory, and ran off at seventy miles an hour.

Yuan Qingye assumed that next, the other woman would either be haunted and come back to beg for help in tears, or be a cold corpse by the time they met again.

But what she hadn't expected was that on the night her friend and Master Meng's partner went missing, she would see Master Meng at the foot of the pitch-black haunted building, clutching a peachwood sword and preparing to charge inside.

"Since everyone dies eventually, I'll decide my own fate!"

"Let the heavens know that I refuse to give up!"

Yuan Qingye: "..."

Heh heh heh. She had never met anyone with such a strong sense of initiative.

She'd seen a ghost in the morning, had her whole understanding of the world change in the afternoon, and was ready to face a ghost herself that very night?

So brave.

Why did she suddenly find herself admiring her a little?

A paranormal story, slightly comedic, with a touch of folklore.

CP: Reckless expendable character (fake master) x unlucky supporting character (real ghost catcher)

2026.7.14

Theme: Never give up hope.