Chapter 001: An Invitation from Hell

In the silent dead of night, Qian Cangyi sat before his brown computer desk, his attention fixed on the screen. Tomorrow was the weekend, and as an ordinary office worker, staying up late to celebrate was only natural.

In the next moment, four blood-red characters slowly appeared in the center of the screen:

Game Over.

Qian Cangyi stretched lazily and then exited the game.

The screen returned to the desktop.

Suddenly, a pop-up appeared in the lower right corner.

Instead of a flashy advertisement filled with pictures, it simply read:

You have received a new email.

Qian Cangyi ignored it and was about to shut down the computer when, unexpectedly, the mouse pointer began moving on its own!

It swiftly glided from the center of the screen to the pop-up in the lower right corner and clicked.

Then, a webpage with a blood-red swirling vortex background filled the entire screen.

The blood-red vortex slowly rotated, its center a black void that seemed to swallow everything.

Qian Cangyi frowned deeply in confusion:

“What is going on?”

“What’s happening?”

“Could my computer be infected?”

“That’s impossible… I just ran a virus scan yesterday.”

He reached out with his right hand to press the power button, intending to force a shutdown, but it had no effect. Trying again yielded the same result.

Ignoring Qian Cangyi’s attempts, the pointer began moving, pausing over the unread mail option before clicking. The email content appeared.

The webpage background began to change. The blood-red vortex vanished, replaced by the image of an old mountain village.

The upper half of the background was painted with sunset clouds glowing crimson, while the lower half depicted the mountain village hidden in the backlight.

Qian Cangyi felt the situation was beyond anything he had anticipated.

That pop-up was not about money—it had some other purpose.

Behind the screen, two large blood-red characters emerged, slowly growing larger and darkening in color until they occupied half the screen.

Sacrificial Rite.

Blood slowly dripped from the characters, pooling at the bottom of the screen.

Seeing this, Qian Cangyi dared not breathe heavily. He slowly extended his right hand and lightly touched the blood gathering at the bottom of the screen.

A damp sensation transmitted through his fingertips.

His eyes widened, weariness swept away. He withdrew his hand and looked at his index finger.

---

The blood on his finger was shocking.

Was my screen bleeding?

The phrase echoed in Qian Cangyi’s mind. He looked at the screen again, his gaze now mingled with curiosity and fear—fear of the unknown.

After a few seconds, the characters Sacrificial Rite gradually faded, replaced by new black text in the middle of the webpage:

Welcome to the Hell Movie!

Qian Cangyi pondered for a moment, then reached out to unplug the power cord.

The desktop monitor remained lit.

“What... what is this? I even unplugged it, and I don’t have any backup power. Could it be...?”

Just as Qian Cangyi was shocked, the screen finally went dark.

Yet the scene he had just witnessed remained deeply etched in his mind, preventing him from composing himself.

Several minutes later, he looked down at his finger—there was no blood. It was as if the entire experience had been a hallucination. He plugged the computer back in.

The startup screen appeared, and the desktop loaded normally. Everything seemed perfectly ordinary.

Checking his browser history, Qian Cangyi was surprised to find that the most recent page was his own email inbox.

“Why my email?”

He logged in with a puzzled expression.

The strange email was quietly sitting at the top of his inbox, and chillingly, it had no sender.

His brow furrowed deeply; now he wished the earlier pop-up had been just a virus infection.

“Let’s see what it says.”

He forced himself to stay calm, took a deep breath, and clicked on the email.

The eerie scene appeared again.

The sinister characters Sacrificial Rite reemerged on the screen, blood once more dripping slowly.

Qian Cangyi reached out and wiped the screen with his right index finger. The dampness was gone this time. He glanced at his finger—everything was normal, no blood.

“Is this a hallucination? But why is this email in my inbox?”

He hesitated for a moment before choosing to delete the email.

Every time he deleted it, the system switched to the “Deleted Items” folder, but when the view returned, the eerie email remained unchanged, still sitting there.

“Can’t delete it?”

His voice trembled slightly. He wanted to sleep, but the email stabbed at his mind like a thorn. He decided to resolve it immediately.

He ran his antivirus software—it quickly scanned without any issues, then proceeded to a full system scan.

Searching online for any information about Hell Movie yielded nothing useful—only unrelated content.

Logging into his email via his phone, he found the same mysterious email in the inbox.

No method bore fruit.

The blood-red vortex seemed an unsolvable riddle, leaving Qian Cangyi increasingly anxious.

He sat dazed in front of the computer, then turned to look out the window. The sky was beginning to pale with dawn.

“Forget it, I’ll sleep for now.”

Dragging his exhausted body to bed, his mind was filled with the mysterious email before sleep claimed him.

---

When he awoke, the sun was already high overhead.

Qian Cangyi opened his eyes, sweat covering his forehead. He glanced at the clock—it was noon.

The strange events from the night flashed through his mind, but for now, he had no interest in dealing with them.

Truthfully, even if he wanted to, he doubted he could find a solution.

While washing up, he looked at himself in the mirror—his eyes were bloodshot.

“Did I pull an all-nighter?”

He yawned, then shook his head to clear his thoughts.

After splashing water on his face, he rested his hands on the edges of the white sink, letting the water drip slowly.

Raising his head, he looked into the mirror. The dark circles under his eyes were pronounced.

Suddenly, he noticed strange red characters forming in the whites of his eyes, as if someone was writing on his eyeballs with a red pen.

[3 PM, First Movie.]

Qian Cangyi’s mouth opened slightly, his eyes wide with terror.

“What the hell? How is this possible? And it’s written in mirror image…”

“Is this another hallucination? Maybe I should see a doctor.”

As the bizarre occurrences multiplied, Qian Cangyi even began to doubt his own sanity. He devised a plan to verify it—using photographs.

Click.

His phone camera shuttered.

He examined the selfie, zooming in on his eyes—and there, the characters were clearly visible on his eyeballs.

“Let me show someone else.”

He sent the photo to a few friends, asking if they could see the writing, and if so, what it said.

To be cautious, he messaged several friends simultaneously.

This way, even if some joked or lied, he could discern the truth.

Soon, all the friends gave the same reply: they saw nothing.