"Ha … Haha …" The corner of Feng Bujue's mouth twitched. He placed the magnet in his pocket near the small hole and compared it. He found that the size was just right.
He tried to insert the piece of magnet into the hole. When it was only a third of the way in, he felt a strong magnetic force pulling the entire piece of magnet into the hole. The next second, the box opened …
It turned out that this small safe did not need a password. The lock on the front was just a trick. The real way to open it was to trigger a mechanism inside. 80% of this safe was only made of ordinary metal materials, but inside the small hole, there was a part made of special, high-density magnetic ore, and it contained a wedge. The only item that could unlock this mechanism was the magnet.
"Constantly changing the rules of solving puzzles … You have guts …" Even though Feng Bujue was annoyed, he quickly calmed down. The big box outside was opened with a password, but it did not mean that the small box inside had to be opened with a password. He could only blame himself for falling into a trap because of his fixed mindset.
Feng Bujue took out the [Prison Door Key to Underground 1F] from the small safe, then left Cell 6 and walked to the stairs that led to the upper level.
After opening the black iron cell door, the key disappeared, and the system notification rang. "Current mission completed. Main mission updated."
The mission [Explore Underground 2F, open the door to the upper level] was ticked, and then the next step appeared. [Head to Surface 1F]
"Hmm?" When Feng Bujue saw this mission, he felt that it was strange. Logically speaking, the mission should have said something like "Explore Underground 1F, find the way to the upper level", but it only said "Head to Surface 1F". It was as if …
"Can I go up directly?" Feng Bujue thought.
He held the long rusty iron bar (the iron bar had already returned to its broken quality) and cautiously walked down the corridor of Underground 1F. The design of this floor was almost a mirror image of Underground 2F. Not far from the stairs, there were six cells, three on each side. However, the iron doors on this floor were different from the ones below. There was no feeding hole or small iron window, and there were no painted numbers on the doors. Other than the keyhole and door handle, the six iron doors were basically one piece of metal. The thickness was unknown, and it was impossible to see what was going on inside from outside the door.
Feng Bujue tried to open the six doors one by one, but they were all locked. He leaned against the door to listen, but he could not hear anything. He thought, The possibility of this whole Underground 1F floor being a decoration is not high. That means … I'll have to come back later, right?
As he thought, he came to the end of the corridor, and a flight of stairs that led up to the upper level. Feng Bujue calculated the length of the corridor based on his steps, and he was sure that Cell 0 was right at the bottom of the stairs. However, other than proving that the length of the corridors was the same, his calculation did not have much meaning.
The stairs before him were made from wood, and they looked old. There was a strange smell lingering on the stairs. The source of the smell could be the food and excrement that was spilled during the transportation, or it could be the blood and bodily fluids left behind when people were dragged up and down. After they were mixed together, it turned into a smell that was not strong, but it was enough to make one nauseous.
Feng Bujue walked up the stairs, and after one turn, he came face to face with a wooden door. He reached out to grab the doorknob and carefully turned it. The door opened just like that.
Behind the door was the first floor. Standing on the stairs and looking out the door, one could see a room that looked like a storeroom. The walls were made of bricks and wood, and there were many bulging sacks piled up around it. There was also a wall that had three rows of round wooden barrels stacked on the side.
The lighting in the room was worse than underground, and the only source of light was a kerosene lantern that was placed on top of the barrels. Naturally, Feng Bujue would not walk into the dark environment before him. He first reached the iron rod in his hand into the door and knocked it up, down, left, and right. After making sure there were no traps that were triggered by physical contact, he stepped through the door.
"Current mission completed. Main mission updated," the system said. "Explore 1F underground and find the red, yellow, blue, black, white, and gray keys. Return to 1F underground to open the six iron doors."
Feng Bujue glanced at the mission and continued to move forward. The first thing he did was to grab the kerosene lantern. Since he could not use the flashlight, getting a lighting device was the most important thing.
He only walked three meters forward when suddenly … with a bang, the door behind him slammed shut.
Feng Bujue whipped his head around, but all he could see was the closed door and his own shadow on the wall. He listened cautiously for another ten seconds, but there was only a suffocating silence around him.
At that moment, he made the decision to take out the Bell of Jin Gang and activate the special effect of Death Warning.
In the next five minutes, anything that harbored hostility toward Feng Bujue and could threaten his life would trigger a reaction from the Bell of Jin Gang.
However, after activating the special effect, he waited for another twenty seconds, and there was no sound at all.
"Hmm … What is going on?" Feng Bujue mumbled to himself. "There is no wind in this place, and the door can't be fitted with a spring-loaded hinge … How did it close without any external force?"
A normal person with a sense of fear would definitely be affected to some extent in such a state. However, Feng Bujue was not that kind of person. For him, even if a ghost's face suddenly appeared behind the door, it would not affect his Terror Points. He had always considered the threat to his Life Points and ignored the existence of Terror Points.
Therefore, as long as the Bell of Jin Gang did not ring, he had nothing to worry about.
He quickly walked up to the door and reached out his hand to open it. However, he heard the system announcement. "This door has been sealed by some kind of unique power. Only those with the six-colored key can open it."
"Oh … So, the system has closed it." Feng Bujue sighed in relief. He understood the meaning of the system announcement immediately. The door was closed to prevent the player from returning underground with only one or two keys. That would disrupt the game's progress.
"Hmm … While the Death Warning is still active, I should go out to investigate." With that thought in mind, Feng Bujue turned to grab the oil lamp. He placed the iron rod on the ground and hurried toward the other door in the room.
He pushed the door open, and beyond it was a dark corridor. The light from the oil lamp could only reach a limited distance. By the way, the remark of the oil lamp read, "Do not question how long it will last. When it is time to go out, it will go out."
Different from the two underground floors, the ground floor was made from wood and brick. It had more rooms. There were corners in the corridor, and there was furniture in the rooms. It looked like a normal house.
"So, the mad scientist built a dungeon under his house …" Feng Bujue thought. "Perhaps only the six rooms on the second floor are used to lock people up, and the first floor is some kind of lab?"
With the kerosene lamp in hand, he moved sideways. In order to make full use of the Death Alert status, he did not explore in detail for the time being. Instead, he quickly passed through the corridor, opened the door of each room, leaned in, took two steps, and then retreated to the next room …
Throughout this process, the thing that left the deepest impression on Feng Bujue was the smell on this floor. For some reason, the air there was worse than in the underground prison. It gave him the feeling that this room was built between a slaughterhouse and a chemical factory, and the windows were open all year round.
Just like that, Feng Bujue spent more than three minutes trying the same thing in all the rooms on the first floor. The Bell of Jin Gang did not ring even once. Even though this did not mean absolute safety, at least it meant that before a new flag was triggered, there would be no danger just walking around the house.
After exploring the entire floor, there were two places that Feng Bujue could not pass.
The first was the staircase that led to the second floor, but it was blocked by a lump of meat. Yes, a lump of meat. It looked like a large meatball made from the flesh of many dead bodies. It was unknown what kind of power made these things stick together to form a meat wall that blocked the staircase.
Since the Bell of Jin Gang did not ring, when Feng Bujue walked close to the lump of meat, he brazenly approached it and poked it with his finger. At that time, the system said, "A barrier controlled by a spell. It looks like it is made from the flesh of dead bodies."
The second place that he could not pass was the door that led to the exit of this house. If he walked down the corridor, he would soon reach it. The door looked like a normal wooden door, but when Feng Bujue touched the doorknob, he got this system message. "Cannot be opened."
These three words were probably the most common hint that players would get when they were faced with a door in a horror puzzle-type game. Even Feng Bujue had no interest in commenting on it.
"Ah … It has been one and a half hours since I entered the scenario." After the Death Warning ran out, Feng Bujue returned to the storage room that was connected to the basement. "It feels like the game is not even halfway through yet …" He said as he started his search.
He spent five minutes looking through the storage room, but he did not find anything useful. The corners of the room were covered in dust and cobwebs. The sacks were filled with sand, and the rows of wine barrels that leaned against the wall were all empty.
Based on his preliminary observation, there was no key to this storage room. Even if there was, it would be hidden somewhere that could not be found normally and would require some kind of clue to find it.
Therefore, Feng Bujue carried the oil lamp and returned to the first floor corridor to head to the next room.
There was a study next door, and the floor of the study was covered with a carpet. It was not a normal carpet. To put it in perspective … even the loom that created it would curse that it was not its product. When Feng Bujue stepped on it, it felt like the carpet had already turned into a plant. It degenerated into a lush lichen in the stinky and dark air, or it was like moss that covered the ground …
After entering the room, there were two niches on the left side of the wall, and the decorations that had been placed there had all disappeared. If the decorations were once placed there, they would have died in the dirty air. If the decorations were once placed there, then the saints would have been dragged out by demons of various sizes from the darkness, all the way to the abyss of evil at the bottom of the room …
Feng Bujue walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. Through the glass, he could only see the thick darkness. Even if he raised the oil lamp to the window, it was useless. Trying to open the window was obviously useless. Using the wrench to smash the glass only numbed his hand.
He leaned his face close to the window and sniffed. Unfortunately, the air outside the window did not leak in at all. All he could smell was a damp smell that belonged to this house. It was a moldy smell that came from the combination of tarpaulin and rotten wood.
"Looks like it's impossible to escape from this house," Feng Bujue grumbled as he walked to the study table in the middle of the room.
The table was messy, and a bunch of random objects were scattered all over the place. Feng Bujue picked up the objects one by one to check their attributes, but they were all trash.
Only one of the drawers of the study table was unopened. The other drawers had been pulled out from the table and fallen to the ground. The papers inside the drawers were scattered around the corner and under the table. There was an ink bottle that had fallen to the ground from who knew where. The ink inside the bottle had already dried, and the papers around it were dyed with ink. There was an explosive ink stain on the carpet.
Feng Bujue opened the only drawer that could be opened, and he found a magnifying glass inside it. He laughed. "Ha … If only there was a smoking pipe or something like that, that would be so cool."
Most people his age would think that this person was old-fashioned or chuunibyou when they saw this pose. Only Feng Bujue firmly believed that holding a smoking pipe and holding a magnifying glass was cool. Perhaps this was a romance that only belonged to him.
Feng Bujue, who had obtained the magnifying glass, became even more excited. He held the oil lamp in one hand and the magnifying glass in the other as he turned to walk to the other side of the study. On the wall of the study, there was a bookshelf, and it was filled with books from top to bottom. The temptation of this kind of prop for Feng Bujue was self-explanatory.
There was no time limit to this scenario. If no one stopped him, Feng Bujue could stay in this room and pull out the books one by one to finish them. The only thing that could stop him was the gaming hub's connection time limit. When the connection time in real life exceeded the maximum time limit for the day, Feng Bujue in the scenario would be forced to go offline.
Fortunately, the system had done something extreme in its settings. On this bookshelf, ninety-nine percent of the books were not translated. Not only that, the player could not even see the words clearly. The words inside each book, including the title on the cover and side of the book, were all blurry.
This annoyed Feng Bujue greatly because he was quite interested in 'deciphering'. Ever since he read the case of the Dancing Man in Sherlock Holmes when he was in primary school, he had been addicted to deciphering letters for at least half a year. The words in this scenario were seventy to eighty percent similar to English. He had been confident that he would be able to decipher the language of this world, but now he had to give up.
Of course, one percent of the books had been translated by the system. In other words, they were meant for him to read.
"Advanced Alchemy …" Feng Bujue looked at the book with a dark blue cover and read out the title. "Hmm … Why do you want me to read this …" Before he finished, a piece of paper suddenly fell out from between the pages.
Feng Bujue bent down to pick up the paper. He brought it up to the light and realized that it was not a piece of paper but a faded picture.
The paper of the picture was yellowed, and since it was a black and white picture, the frame and the middle looked the same color. In the picture, there were two boys who looked about ten years old. They faced the camera side by side. The boy on the left was pressing his hand on the boy on the right's head, and both of them had goofy smiles on their faces. Even through the picture, Feng Bujue seemed to be able to understand their innocence and happiness.
Feng Bujue looked at the picture for a few seconds and did not expect something to happen.
The next second, he entered the same state as when he was watching the opening cinematic. A video appeared and played before his eyes. This video was the same as the picture. It was also faded, but at least it was not completely black and white.
There was a meadow, a pasture, and behind a sparse fence, some cattle and horses wandered around the meadow, and a shepherd dog ran by. After this harmonious scene, the camera panned, and a barn entered the picture. Not far from the barn was a two-story house.
Feng Bujue had no doubt that the house in the picture was the one he was in. Even though it only took him three minutes to walk through all the rooms on the first floor, the amount of information he gathered in those few minutes that seemed like a casual stroll was enormous.
He estimated the size of the house, counted the number of windows and doors, constructed the floor plan of the entire first floor in his mind, and deduced whether every room on the first floor overlapped with the rooms in the underground corridor. He even considered whether there was a secret room between the walls...
In short, it was not an exaggeration to say that the floor plan of the first floor of the house was already in Feng Bujue's mind. Therefore, when he saw the outline of the house in this video, he quickly made a judgment.
Laughter, the laughter of a child.
The picture did not cut into the house as Feng Bujue expected. Instead, it panned and came to a lawn on the side. There was a swing there, and a little boy with blond hair was sitting on the swing. A woman, who should be his mother, was helping him push the swing. The boy let out a cheerful and hearty laugh, and the mother's face was filled with a happy smile.
Under a tree not far from the swing, another little boy with brown hair was sitting. He was holding a book and reading it with great interest. It was a book with a dark blue cover... Obviously, it was the same book as the "Advanced Alchemy" that Feng Bujue had just found.
"Arthur, do you want to play for a while?" The mother turned her head and said to the boy sitting under the tree.
Feng Bujue did not hear the child under the tree answer because the video stopped there. He returned to his in-game state and was once again in the study.
"Hmm... Could it be..." Feng Bujue's first reaction after watching the CG was to reach out and grab a handful of his hair.
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