Chapter 12 "Heh……Heh……"

“Heh……heh……” Feng Bujue's mouth twitched as he took the magnet from his pocket and compared it to the small hole. He found the size was just right.

He tried to insert the magnet. When about a third of it was inside, he felt a strong magnetic force pulling from the hole, and the entire magnet was sucked in. The next second, the box opened…

It turned out that this small safe didn't need a password at all. The lock on the front was just a red herring. The real way to open it was to trigger a mechanism inside. Eighty percent of the safe was made of ordinary metal materials, but inside the small hole, part of it was made of a special, high-density magnetic ore, containing a mechanical wedge. And the only prop that could unlock this mechanism was that piece of magnet.

“Constantly changing the rules of the puzzle, huh… interesting…” Although Feng Bujue was a little annoyed, he quickly calmed down. The big box outside was opened with a password, but that didn't mean the small box inside had to be opened with a password too. He could only blame himself for falling into the trap due to mindset.

Feng Bujue took out the [Cell Door Key to Underground 1F] from the small safe, then left Cell Six and headed for the stairs leading to the upper level.

After opening the black iron-barred cell door, the key disappeared, and the system prompt sounded at this moment: [Current task completed, main quest updated]

The task [Explore Underground 2F, open the door leading to the upper level] was checked off, and the next instruction appeared: [Proceed to Ground Floor 1F]

“Hmm?” Feng Bujue felt something was strange when he saw this task. Logically, the task should have read something like "Explore Underground 1F, find a way to get to the ground," but instead, it simply said "Proceed to Ground Floor 1F." It was as if…

“Could it be that I can go straight up?” Feng Bujue muttered.

He held the rusty long iron bar (which had long since reverted to Poor quality) and cautiously walked forward along the corridor of Underground 1F. This floor was almost a mirrored design of Underground 2F. Not far from the stairs were six cells, three on each side. But the cell doors on this floor were different from those on the lower level. There were no food slots or small iron windows. The doors were also not marked with numbers in paint. These six iron doors, apart from the lock and the handle, were almost solid sheets of iron. Their thickness was unknown, and it was impossible to discern the situation inside from the outside.

Feng Bujue tried to open each of the six doors, but they were all locked. He pressed his ear against the doors to listen, but he couldn't hear any sound. He thought to himself, “It’s unlikely that this entire floor is just for show. That means… I'll have to come back later, won't I…”

While thinking, he reached the other end of the corridor. Before him was a flight of stairs leading upwards. Feng Bujue had calculated the length of the corridor based on his stride, and he was certain that directly beneath these stairs was Cell Zero. However, his calculations, apart from proving that the corridors of Underground 1F and 2F were equal in length, didn't seem to have much significance.

The stairs in front of him were made of wood and looked very old. There were still many strange smells lingering on the steps. The source of those smells might have been spilled food, excrement, or perhaps blood and body fluids left behind when people were dragged up and down. Mixed together, it became an odor that, while not strong, was enough to make one nauseous.

Feng Bujue went up the steps. After one turn, he faced a wooden door. He reached out, grasped the doorknob, and cautiously turned it. The door opened smoothly.

Behind the door was the ground floor. Standing on the stairs and looking out the door, he could see a room resembling a storage room. The walls were brick and wood, and the room was filled with many bulging sacks. Along one wall, there were rows of circular wooden wine barrels stacked in threes.

The light in that room was even worse than underground. The only source of light was a kerosene lantern placed on top of a wine barrel. Feng Bujue naturally wouldn't rashly walk into the dark environment ahead. He first extended the iron bar in his hand through the door and gently tapped up, down, left, and right several times, confirming that there were no traps that would be triggered by physical contact. Only then did he step through the doorway.

[Current task completed, main quest updated] The system prompt sounded again, and a new task appeared: [Explore Ground Floor 1F, find the six keys of red, yellow, blue, black, white, and gray, then return to Underground 1F to open the six iron doors]

Feng Bujue glanced at the task and continued forward. The first thing he did was to retrieve the kerosene lamp. In a situation where he couldn't use a flashlight, obtaining a source of light was clearly the top priority.

He had only walked three meters forward when suddenly… *bang!* The door behind him slammed shut.

Feng Bujue turned around sharply, but all he could see was the closed door and his shadow on the wall. He listened warily for another ten seconds, but the surroundings were filled with a suffocating silence.

At that moment, he made a decisive decision, took out the Vajra Bell, and activated the "Death Warning" effect.

For the next five minutes, anything that harbored hostility toward Feng Bujue and could potentially threaten his life would trigger a reaction from the Vajra Bell.

However, he waited for about twenty seconds after activating the effect, but not a single chime was heard.

“Whoa… what's going on…” Feng Bujue muttered, “There's no wind in this place, and this door definitely isn't equipped with a spring-loaded closing hinge… How did it close without any external force?”

A normal person, someone with a sense of fear, would definitely be affected by this state. But Feng Bujue wasn't that kind of person… To him, even if a ghastly ghost face suddenly appeared behind the door, it wouldn't have the slightest effect on his Scare Value. He only considered threats to his Survival Value and ignored the existence of Scare Value.

Therefore, as long as the Vajra Bell didn't ring, he had nothing to worry about.

He strode forward and reached the door, reaching out to open it. Unexpectedly, he heard a system prompt: [This door has been sealed by some special power. Only those who possess the six-colored keys can open it.]

“Oh… so it was the system that closed it.” Feng Bujue breathed a sigh of relief. He immediately understood the meaning of the prompt. This door was closed to prevent players from returning underground with only one or two keys, thereby disrupting the game's progress.

“Hmm… while the Death Warning state is still active, I should go out and scout the area.” Thinking this, Feng Bujue turned around, retrieved the kerosene lamp, put the iron bar on the ground, and quickly walked toward the other door in the room.

Pushing the door open, he found himself in a dark corridor. The light from the kerosene lamp could only spread a limited distance. By the way, the description for this kerosene lamp read: [Don't question how long it can burn. It will go out when it's supposed to.]

Unlike the two underground floors, the ground floor was mainly constructed of brick and wood, with more rooms. The corridor had corners, and the rooms contained furniture. It resembled a private residence.

“A mad scientist built a dungeon under his own house, huh…” Feng Bujue thought, “Maybe only the six rooms on the second basement level were used to imprison people, while the first basement level was some kind of laboratory?”

He held the kerosene lamp and moved forward sideways. To make good use of the Death Warning state, he temporarily refrained from detailed exploration and instead quickly moved through the corridor, opening the door of each room, stepping inside for a few steps, and then retreating to the next room…

During this process, what impressed Feng Bujue the most was the smell of this floor. For some reason, the air here seemed even worse than in those underground cells. It felt like… this house was built right in the middle of a slaughterhouse and a chemical factory, and the windows were open all year round.

In this way, it took Feng Bujue more than three minutes to try all the rooms on the first floor. The Vajra Bell didn't ring once. Although this didn't mean absolute safety, it at least indicated that simply walking around the mansion wouldn't be dangerous before triggering a new flag.

After exploring the entire floor, there were two places that Feng Bujue couldn't get through.

The first place was the staircase leading to the second floor, which was blocked by a lump of meat. Yes, a lump of meat. It looked like a large meatball made from the flesh of many corpses. It was unknown what force held these things together, forming a wall of flesh and sealing off the staircase.

Since the Vajra Bell remained silent, Feng Bujue approached the lump of meat without hesitation and poked it a few times with his finger. At that time, the system voice prompted: [A barrier controlled by magic, seemingly made of accumulated corpses]

The second place he couldn't get through was the main door to leave the house. Continuing along the corridor, he could reach it quickly. The door looked like an ordinary wooden door, but when Feng Bujue went to touch the doorknob, he received the following system prompt: [Cannot be opened]

These three words were perhaps the most common prompt players encountered when facing doors in all horror puzzle games, and even Feng Bujue wasn't interested in complaining about it.

“Ah… it's been an hour and a half since I entered the scenario.” After the Death Warning time was over, Feng Bujue returned to the storage room connecting to the basement. "It feels like the game's not even halfway done yet…" He said, beginning to search.

He spent five minutes searching the storage room but found no useful items. Every corner of the room was filled with dust and cobwebs. The sacks were filled with sand, and every row of wine barrels against the wall was empty.

Preliminary observation indicated that there were no keys in this storage room, or if there were, they were hidden in a place that couldn't be found in a normal state and required the guidance of some clue to be discovered.

Therefore, Feng Bujue returned to the first-floor corridor, carrying the kerosene lamp, and walked toward the next room.

Next door was a study, with a carpet covering the floor. But this was no ordinary carpet. To put it bluntly… even the weaving machine that made it would probably curse and say it wasn't its creation. When Feng Bujue stepped on it, he felt like this thing had become plant-like. In this foul, dark air, it had degenerated into lush, moist lichen, like moss spreading across the floor…

On the wall to the left after entering the room were two niches, but the decorations that had been placed inside were gone. If there had been flowers and plants, they would have died in this filthy, disgusting air. If there had been holy statues, the saints had probably been dragged out by the demons, large and small, in the darkness and dragged all the way to some evil abyss beneath the house…

Feng Bujue walked to the window and opened the curtains. Through the glass, he could only see heavy darkness. Even holding the kerosene lamp up to the window was useless. Trying to open the window was obviously futile. Using a pipe wrench to smash the glass only numbed his hand.

He pressed his face close to the windowsill and sniffed, but unfortunately, no air from outside leaked in. All he smelled was a musty odor, belonging to this mansion, a kind of moldy stench like oilcloth and rotten wood mixed together.

"It seems that escaping the house is unlikely," Feng Bujue muttered, walking to the desk in the center of the room.

The desk was messy, with a pile of objects scattered haphazardly. Feng Bujue picked up each object one by one and looked at its attributes, but they were all junk.

Only one of the desk's drawers was unopened. The other drawers had been pulled out of the desk and dropped on the floor, with papers scattered haphazardly in the corners and under the desk. An ink bottle that had fallen from somewhere was also lying on the ground, the ink inside long dried. Some of the nearby papers were stained with ink, and the carpet was splashed with an explosive ink stain.

Feng Bujue opened the only openable drawer and found a magnifying glass inside. He immediately smiled, “Heh… if there were a pipe or something, that would be cool.”

Most people his age, when seeing someone strike this pose, would think the person was old-fashioned or chuunibyou (delusional). Only Feng Bujue firmly believed that holding a pipe in his mouth and a magnifying glass in his hand was cool. Perhaps this was a romance that belonged only to him.

Having obtained the magnifying glass, Feng Bujue became even more energetic. He held the kerosene lamp in one hand and the magnifying glass in the other, turning to the side of the study. On that wall of the study was a bookcase, filled with books from top to bottom. This kind of prop was an obvious temptation for Feng Bujue.

This scenario had no time limit. If no one stopped him, it was possible for Feng Bujue to stay in this room and pull out each book and read it. The only thing that could stop him was the connection time limit of the game pod. When the nerve connection time in reality exceeded the maximum daily limit, Feng Bujue in the scenario would be forced offline.

Fortunately, the system had done something very clever in the setting. On this bookshelf, 99% of the books had no translation. Not only did they have no translation, but players couldn't even see the words clearly. The words in each book, including the cover and the title on the side, were a blur.

This made Feng Bujue very unhappy, because he was also quite interested in "deciphering." Since reading "The Dancing Men" in *Sherlock Holmes* when he was in elementary school, he had been immersed in deciphering games related to letters for at least half a year. The text in this scenario was seven or eight parts similar to English, and he had originally been confident that he could decipher the linguistic rules of this world, but now he had to give up.

Of course, there was also 1% of the books that the system had translated, that is, hints that he was meant to read…

“*Advanced Alchemy*…” Feng Bujue looked at the book with the deep blue cover and read out the title. "Hmm… why would they want me to look at this…" Before he finished speaking, a piece of paper suddenly fell out from between the pages.

Feng Bujue bent down, picked up the piece of paper, and examined it under the lamplight. Only then did he realize that it wasn't a piece of paper, but a faded photograph.

The paper quality of the photo had yellowed, and since it was originally a black and white photo, the border and the middle looked the same color. In the photo were two boys who looked to be about ten years old, standing side by side facing the camera. The shorter boy on the left was pressing his hand on the head of the boy on the right, and both were wearing silly smiles. Even just through the photo, Feng Bujue seemed to be able to feel their innocence and happiness.

Feng Bujue looked at the photo for a few seconds, but unexpectedly, something happened.

The next second, he re-entered the state of watching the opening cinematic, and a video appeared and played before his eyes. This video, like the photograph, was also faded, but at least it wasn't completely black and white.

A meadow, a pasture, sparse fences, and some cattle, horses, and poultry leisurely strolling on the grass. A sheepdog ran past. After this harmonious scene, the camera panned horizontally, and a barn entered the frame. Not far from the barn stood a two-story house.

Feng Bujue had no doubt that the house in the video was the same one he was in. Even though he had only spent a little over three minutes walking through the rooms on the first floor, the amount of information he had collected in those seemingly casual minutes was absolutely enormous.

He had estimated the area of the house, counted the number of windows and doors, constructed a floor plan of the entire first floor in his mind, and even deduced whether the positions of each room on the first floor overlapped with the positions of each room in the underground corridor. He had even considered whether there were secret rooms between the walls…

In short, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the floor plan of the first floor of this house was already in Feng Bujue's mind. Therefore, when he saw the exterior outline of the big house in this video, he quickly made a judgment.

Laughter, children's laughter.

The scene didn't cut to the inside of the house as Feng Bujue had expected, but continued to pan horizontally, arriving at a lawn next to it. There was a swing there, and a blond boy was sitting on the swing. A woman, probably his mother, was helping him push the swing. The boy let out cheerful and hearty laughter, and his mother's face was filled with a happy smile.

Under a tree not far from the swing sat another young boy, a brown-haired boy. He was holding a book and looking at it with great interest. It was a book with a deep blue cover… clearly, it was the same book as *Advanced Alchemy* that Feng Bujue had just found.

“Arthur, would you like to come and play for a while?” The mother turned her head and said to the boy sitting under the tree.

Feng Bujue didn't hear the child under the tree answer because the video ended there. He returned to the state of the game in progress, once again in that study.

“Hmm… could it be…” Feng Bujue's first reaction after watching the cinematic was to reach out and grab a handful of his own hair.