Marry the NPC with Money, Wife Comes Knocking - Chapter 94

Chapter 94

It wasn’t until the production team forced everyone to gather at the break area that the participants slowly shuffled over.

They watched Ye Susheng’s reaction with fear and trepidation, but the latter didn’t give them so much as a glance, completely immersed in her own private world with Hua Suihe.

A staff member began summarizing the day’s results. “Ahem. Well, that concludes today’s haunted house game. Everyone standing here is a member who has not been eliminated. First of all, congratulations to you all.”

Hua Suihe scanned the crowd but didn’t see Xia Moyi anywhere. Had she been eliminated?

“The seventy members who were eliminated cannot continue participating in the upcoming recordings, so they will not be appearing before you now.”

“However, we have opened up audience slots. If they are interested, they can continue to stay in the audience stands to accompany us. You may see some familiar faces in the audience.”

The day was already half over, and there were no other arrangements for the afternoon, so everyone was free to manage their own time.

The program team provided a place for everyone to shower and change. After an hour, they would have lunch together, and today’s group recording would be finished.

Hua Suihe kept Xia Moyi in mind. Once they were dismissed, she pulled the director aside to ask him privately.

“Xia Moyi? Let me check.” A staff member had just finished compiling an elimination list. The director, wearing thick glasses, looked over the names several times.

“That’s strange. Xia Moyi isn’t on here. She shouldn’t have been eliminated, right?” The director pulled out the list of those who had cleared the haunted house, but Xia Moyi wasn’t there either.

“Impossible, impossible…” How could the Horror System make a mistake? Even those who were crushed into dust would have a record on the list.

But now, this person was on neither list.

Ye Susheng stood beside Hua Suihe, not wanting her Hua Hua to waste her thoughts on an outsider. “Hua Hua, let’s not worry about her. I’m sure she’s fine.”

Even Ye Susheng couldn’t kill Xia Moyi, so ordinary Anomalies would be even less capable of harming her. There was no need to fret.

“I’m just worried that someone might still be trapped in the haunted house. Those who didn’t make it to the exit after more than three hours…”

“Impossible,” the director interrupted her. “Our haunted house surveillance has no blind spots. Anyone who didn’t come out after three hours is counted as eliminated. The staff has already brought them all out; no one was left behind.”

“She wasn’t eliminated yesterday, and her popularity is quite high. How could she just vanish…” The director was baffled, checking the list over and over. He scratched his head in distress until he’d pulled out a small patch of hair.

Hua Suihe’s pupils shrank for a moment, and she couldn’t help but remind him, “Stop scratching your head. It’s easy to lose hair that way.”

After pulling out that much hair, didn’t his scalp feel chilly?

Ye Susheng glanced over, her eyes filled with undisguised disgust and disdain. Even when an ugly monster took on a human form, it would still be hideous in all sorts of strange ways.

“This… this… doesn’t this count as a dungeon accident?” The director looked at Ye Susheng cautiously, swallowing the rest of his doubts. The person in front of him was the head of the Yu Sheng Troupe.

There were only two ways out of a dungeon: death or clearing it. This was the first time he had seen a player simply go missing.

They reviewed the surveillance footage, but it only showed Xia Moyi walking along before suddenly vanishing. She never reappeared after that.

It looked like a player using a Teleportation Talisman, but those couldn’t be used to leave a dungeon. She had simply ceased to exist within the space.

Since the director couldn’t find her either, Hua Suihe could only say her goodbyes. She stared at the distant, inconspicuous entrance of the haunted house, hesitating for a moment before sighing softly and withdrawing her gaze.

Ye Susheng could sense that Hua Suihe was in a bad mood. Although she was a bit jealous that Hua Suihe was worrying about someone else, she could only follow along quietly.
Hua Suihe composed herself and took Ye Susheng’s hand. “Let’s go. Let’s get lunch first; I’m a bit hungry.”

Ye Susheng let herself be led away, looking quite well-behaved. “Hua Hua, shall we go buy some groceries after lunch? I’ll make dinner for you tonight~”

“Sure.” Hua Suihe accepted readily and even listed a few dishes she felt like eating.

Ye Susheng agreed to all of them in one breath, committing the ingredients to memory.

After eating the lunch provided by the production crew, the two of them headed to the supermarket together.

By the time they had bought a pile of things and returned to the hotel, it was already four in the afternoon.

Just as they sat down, Hua Suihe received a call from Xia Moyi. She tapped to answer. “Moyi?”

Ye Susheng stopped what she was doing and drifted closer to Hua Suihe, wanting to hear the conversation clearly.

Hua Suihe conveniently put the call on speaker. Ye Susheng glanced away, pretending she wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.

“Sister Ah-He, I don’t know how, but I suddenly ended up back home. I tried to head back, but whenever I tried to enter, I’d find myself at home again.”

After being tossed back and forth twice, Xia Moyi was still stuck at home, which was why she was calling Hua Suihe to explain the situation.

Hua Suihe was somewhat surprised. This was clearly a reset mechanic, similar to how Ye Susheng was forced to reset back home every morning at eight to clock in. She hadn’t expected Xia Moyi to have one as well.

This trigger mechanism… it likely teleported her away whenever it sensed danger.

Hua Suihe’s eyes dimmed slightly. “I see. In that case, don’t come back. I’ll tell the director for you and have you withdraw from the recording, okay?”

“Or do you still want to return?”

The voice on the phone went silent for a long while before finally sounding resigned. “Then I won’t come back. Sister, I’ll keep watching you on the livestream. Good luck.”

“Okay. Hanging up now?”

“Goodbye, Sister.”

Ye Susheng was quick, decisively tapping the end-call button for Hua Suihe. “Hua Hua, she’s fine. You don’t need to worry about her anymore.”

Hua Suihe nodded. “I’m not worried.”

Xia Moyi was the game’s protagonist; she should have some protagonist aura protecting her. Hua Suihe had been overthinking it.

At midnight, the bottom ten on the Popularity Ranking were eliminated. Only seventy trainees remained, but there were still twelve days left.

Consequently, the elimination mechanic changed from the bottom ten to the bottom three each day.

Over the next few days, there were no scheduled activities for acting out scripts. Three people were steadily eliminated every day.

With half of the dungeon’s duration passed, Hua Suihe sat at her vanity one evening after her shower, doing her skincare routine. After applying a face mask, she spotted the Gossip Collection Ye Susheng had found for her earlier. She checked it against the remaining list of names and found that more than half of them had been eliminated.

Bored, she continued reading the gossip she hadn’t finished. Ye Susheng walked over to her side and heard Hua Hua say in a muffled voice, “This thing hasn’t come in handy yet.”

“It will.” Ye Susheng brought over a hair dryer and began drying Hua Suihe’s hair. “After this dungeon ends, my work might stop for a while.”

Hua Suihe looked back at her. “Why? Have you not been proactive enough?”

Ye Susheng gently toyed with Hua Suihe’s hair, her voice lazy and coquettish. “I applied for it myself. I want to spend more time with Hua Hua, not work.”

Besides, Thriller was always causing trouble; it was so annoying. She didn’t want to become ugly. After that incident in the haunted house, she could imagine that every subsequent Thriller dungeon would try to force an Anomalization on her.

If they couldn’t reach an agreement on this, then she just wouldn’t work anymore. With the pay raise from this time, she had enough to last a long while.