Chapter 17 Halfway

Speaking of which, while Feng Bujue and the others were exploring the plot in the mountains, Xiao Tan and Bei Ling were also methodically carrying out their search work.

In fact, there weren't any strict requirements for this task, so their attitude was quite relaxed. Even if they didn't find anything all day, there was nothing they could do about it. The scenario maps in Thriller Paradise were like this; if your luck was good, you might find a Fine-quality piece of equipment in some inconspicuous place, and the process of obtaining it would be effortless. If your luck was bad, it was normal to complete an entire scenario without getting anything.

Their search began on the east side of the town, searching each house and each room. Although the abandoned houses were mostly empty, they couldn't rule out the possibility of finding items hidden among the dust-covered bottles and jars, wooden boxes, on the roof beams, under the floorboards, in the walls, or even in the tattered beds.

In short, in a game like this, you had to explore with the spirit of playing *The Legend of Zelda* without a walkthrough.

"Um... there's something I wanted to ask you," Xiao Tan said to Bei Ling as he lifted the large wooden pot lid on the kitchen stove to look inside. One didn't know what he was expecting to find in the pot, two silver dollars perhaps?

"Okay, I don't have a boyfriend," Bei Ling replied, while rummaging through a spiderweb-filled cabinet.

"Uh... that's not what I wanted to ask."

"Huh?" Bei Ling replied without turning her head, as if she was absent-minded. "Then what is it? You're going to ask me with this weird tone while we're alone?" She seemed to have thought of something and immediately added, "I'm warning you, I'm not a casual person!"

"What are you thinking..." Xiao Tan said, "I wanted to ask, is Gu Xiaoling your real name?"

"Hmm? Yes, why?"

"Gu as in ancient times?"

"Yes, yes," Bei Ling replied, "Xiao as in stingy, Ling as in ghost." From the tone and wording she used to explain her name, one could tell that her personality was quite unconventional.

"Hmm..." Xiao Tan frowned, looking thoughtful.

Bei Ling continued, "Bei Ling Xiaogu is actually just my name backwards, with an extra character added at the beginning. You should have guessed that my real name has a 'gu' sound when my cousin calls me 'Little Bone', right? If a girl's name has this sound, it should basically be in the surname, and it's nothing more than Gu, Gu, or Gu." She was rambling to herself, but still used an impatient tone and said, "Ah... you're really stupid, is your head just for decoration? Think more when you encounter things..."

Xiao Tan didn't mind being spoken to like that. In fact, he was thinking about other things and didn't really listen.

"It's strange... my family has an ancestral saying that... we shouldn't make friends with people with the surname Gu," Xiao Tan said.

"Huh?" Bei Ling was stunned when she heard that. "Hahahaha..." She suddenly burst out laughing, "What a coincidence, my family also has an ancestral saying that as long as our Gu family descendants make friends with people with the surname Wang, we don't have to be polite to them, just mess with them to death."

"I'm not joking..." Xiao Tan said seriously.

"I'm not joking either, I'm serious," Bei Ling replied with a teasing look.

"Wang is a common surname..." Xiao Tan said.

Bei Ling reached out and gently knocked Xiao Tan on the head, "That's why... who would take this kind of ancestral saying seriously! Idiot!" Her action had no intention of attacking, so it was not blocked by the system.

Xiao Tan shrugged, "Yeah, maybe someone in my family had a feud with someone with the surname Gu, and then acted foolishly, which is why they left such a... Ouch..." Before he could finish speaking, he was hit again, "What now?"

"Are you saying that our family's ancestors also acted foolishly?" Bei Ling said unhappily.

"Okay, let's just pretend I didn't say anything..." Xiao Tan replied.

In order to avoid being hit again, he climbed onto the stove after saying this, and with a push of his feet, he jumped onto the roof beam. Now that his agility-focused skills were beginning to take shape, this height was no problem for him.

"By the way, while it's just the two of us, there's something I wanted to ask you," Bei Ling said at this time.

"I don't have a girlfriend either," Xiao Tan replied, "And I'm a pretty casual person!"

"Ha, ha, ha." Bei Ling laughed dryly three times, as a response to this joke, and then said, "Seriously, is the leader the type of player who never spends money on games?"

"We don't really play pay-to-win games anyway. In the few that we've played, I haven't seen him use RMB items," Xiao Tan said, as he crawled along the dust-covered beam, tapping the pillars inch by inch, trying to check if there were any hollow compartments inside. "But for time-based games, he often buys monthly or even quarterly cards, apparently because he finds it troublesome to recharge repeatedly."

"Oh, so that means he's not stingy, he just spends money on games if he feels like it, right?" Bei Ling asked.

"How should I put it... Jue-ge is a very complicated person, it's hard to guess what his 'principles' are," Xiao Tan said, "It seems that whenever he realizes that he's about to cross the line, he sets a new boundary..."

"Sounds like you're saying... constantly pushing the limits," Bei Ling interjected.

"Haha..." Xiao Tan laughed twice when he heard that.

Suddenly, there was a cracking sound, and the roof beam suddenly broke in the middle. It must have been because it had been in disrepair for years, and the inside of the wood had rotted.

Xiao Tan was kneeling on the beam, facing downwards when the beam broke, so his reaction was relatively quick, and he was able to adjust his posture in the air with relative ease. He changed to a standing position before landing, using both feet to touch the ground.

Unexpectedly, when he touched the ground of this house, he suddenly felt a softness under his feet, as if he had stepped into the air. Then there was a continuous cracking sound, which was the sound of the ground collapsing.

It turned out that the kitchen floor of this empty house was only about half a meter thick, and below that, it was completely suspended. Because of the age, the wood had rotted and the sand had eroded, it inevitably became more fragile. When Xiao Tan and Bei Ling were walking on it normally, the ground could naturally bear their weight, but at this moment, Xiao Tan fell from the height of the roof beam, standing upright on the ground, plus the two broken beams also had considerable weight, the ground could not bear it, and suddenly collapsed.

Bei Ling's first reaction was quick, she immediately reached out to pull Xiao Tan, and in that split second, she really grabbed his wrist tightly. However, she was a girl, and her weight was originally much lighter than Xiao Tan's, plus the area of the ground collapse almost affected the entire room, Bei Ling herself was also suspended in the air, and had no place to borrow strength for a while.

So, she also fell down with him...

The two of them fell into a dark abyss, and had already fallen dozens of *zhang* in an instant. They didn't know if there were mountains of knives and forests of swords below, or huge rocks and hard rocks. But judging from the distance of the fall, even if they hit the muddy ground, it would probably be a close call...