"Ah!" Xiongji cried out miserably and fell into the river.

In that instant, Feng Bujue and Wang Tanzhi both gasped. They were afraid that Xiongji would be washed away or drowned… which would make it impossible to complete the main quest.

“Hoo…haa…haa…” Fortunately, Xiongji’s head quickly emerged from the water, and he gasped for breath.

Because the river wasn’t very deep and the current wasn’t very fast, Xiongji floundered a few times and floated back up.

“That scared me…” Xiao Tan said, wiping away sweat.

“Hoo…” Jue-ge also breathed a sigh of relief and muttered, “Luckily, he got up in time… I almost kicked you down just now…”

“Hey… what was that for?” Xiao Tan asked, stunned.

“Of course, it was to send you down to save him,” Feng Bujue replied.

“Even if the system would let you kick me…” Xiao Tan narrowed his eyes and looked at Jue-ge. “If you want to save someone… usually you jump in yourself!”

“Don’t you know cats are afraid of water?” Feng Bujue retorted righteously.

“As if a falcon can swim…” Xiao Tan’s lips twitched. “Wait… come to think of it, bears are the animals that can swim! What are we even worried about?”

“Eh? Right…” Feng Bujue touched his chin. “Because his perverted attributes are too eye-catching, have we overlooked the basic characteristics of ‘animal anthropomorphism’…”

While the two were talking, Mya-mi in the distance trotted over. By this time, Xiongji had already climbed out of the river.

“Ah… that was close, I thought I was going to die…” Xiongji knelt on the grass, water dripping from his body, making him look disheveled.

The next second, he suddenly thought of something else. “Ah! My backpack…” He looked back at the river. “Uh… it’s already been washed away…”

At this moment, Xiongji had a look of grievance on his face, tears in the corners of his eyes, looking very pitiful.

“Forget it, Xiongji-jun.” Xiao Tan was still innocent and kind. He looked at this scene and felt a little unbearable, so he stepped forward to comfort him. “Anyway, it’s just a sticky backpack… it’s good that you’re okay.”

“Tumi-chan, you’re going too far.” Even Mya-mi said to Tumi, “Even if my house was robbed, the thief wouldn’t necessarily be Xiongji-kun.”

“It’s okay… Mya-mi-chan.” Xiongji supported himself with both hands, maintaining a standard orz posture, and said in a bitter tone, “It’s all because of my misdeeds in the past, so I’m suffering the consequences…”

In this atmosphere, Tumi was a little embarrassed. The look in her eyes towards Xiongji was no longer sharp. On the contrary, it carried a bit of guilt.

“Um…” Tumi hesitated for a moment and said, “I went too far. I’m sorry, Xiongji-kun.” As she spoke, she took out a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it over. “Your fur is all wet, use this handkerchief to wipe it.”

“Eh?” However, at this moment, Xiongji’s expression returned to being lecherous without warning, and his tone became slightly arrogant. “Ah, that… no need…” Before he finished speaking, he stood up and took out two socks from his pockets on both sides of his pants. “For wiping water… I have something better~ Huhu huhu~”

Silence descended…

Under the sharp, astonished, painful, and dead fish-like gazes of four people… Xiongji nonchalantly used a pair of pink socks with tulip patterns, which were obviously someone else’s… to wipe his face.

[Main Quest Progress Changed]

[Three days later, school.]

Jue-ge and Xiao Tan had not yet recovered from the speechless state, and the task prompt and scene change followed one after another.

In the blink of an eye, the two came to the classroom from the suburbs.

They opened the taskbar and saw that Xiongji’s number of arrests had jumped to “2”.

“What’s going on?” Xiao Tan was surprised again. “Tumi hasn’t even called the police yet… Xiongji was arrested?”

On the other hand… Feng Bujue’s reaction was different from Xiao Tan’s, or rather… his reaction was different from most people.

When encountering such sudden and unexpected changes, the first thing he usually did was not “ask others”, but “ask himself”…

Then, he would try to rely on his own knowledge, reasoning, and imagination… to try his best to answer this question. Even if he couldn’t come to a definite conclusion, he could at least make a few reasonable and possible speculations.

And the time it took for the above process to complete in Feng Bujue’s mind usually did not exceed three seconds…

Therefore, when Xiao Tan asked the question, Jue-ge could often give an answer.

“This case… is also a good example.” Feng Bujue turned his head to the left and said to Xiao Tan, who was sitting next to him, “It explains to us ‘Xiongji’s second form of arrest’ in this script.” As he spoke, he raised his head and scanned the surroundings, quickly finding Xiongji and Tumi at the other end of the classroom. “Um… we really can’t be careless…”

“Second form of arrest?” Xiao Tan repeated the key part of Jue-ge’s words, and then asked suspiciously, “Is it like just now… the moment Xiongji took out the evidence of his crime, he was directly regarded as arrested, and then the scene was immediately changed?”

“That’s right, that’s how it is,” Feng Bujue said.

“How is this form triggered?” Xiao Tan said. “Could it be related to the side quests?” He looked worried. “If they all do this next… it will be difficult for us…”

“It has nothing to do with the side quests,” Feng Bujue said. “The key factor… is still on you and me…” He thought for two seconds and explained, “To make an analogy… the main events we encountered before can actually only be regarded as ‘training levels’. Those were arranged by the system to let us familiarize ourselves with the basic gameplay of this script… In those events, until the police put Xiongji in the police car and took him away… we could try to reverse the situation.” He paused for half a second. “But from the event just now, the situation may be different… At this stage, as long as Xiongji successfully makes that kind of ‘self-confessed’ behavior, the system will declare ‘arrest’ and the case will end.”

“That is to say…” Xiao Tan thoughtfully continued, “From now on, it won’t work to change Tumi’s mind when she’s about to call the police. We must suppress Xiongji’s intention to court death before it turns into action, nipping it in the bud. Once he does it, we won’t have time to cover it up.”

“Yes,” Feng Bujue replied.

“That’s too difficult!” Xiao Tan said, “This guy is like a time bomb, he could expose himself at any time (yes, exposure is used here), and we’re not worms in his stomach, how can we…”

“There are hints,” Feng Bujue interrupted Xiao Tan’s grumbling and gave a constructive response. “For example, in the case just now… from the completion of the scene change to the period when Xiongji exposed the evidence of his crime, we got more than one hint.” He raised his cat finger and said, “First of all, he appeared wearing a bra and saying terrible lines… that was already ringing alarm bells for us. Secondly, thinking back now… the reason he was late was probably because he went out to steal things the night before, which led to him oversleeping. Also, when Mya-mi said that her socks were stolen, we should have thought of it… the things must be on Xiongji, even if they weren’t in his pants pockets, they were somewhere else, like stuffed in his mouth as facial padding, or clipped in his [beep] gate.” He sighed. “Alas… that’s why I said, we were careless… after the previous events, we shouldn’t have had even a trace of illusion about Xiongji… in this regard, we are not as good as Tumi…”

“Um… now that you say that…” Xiao Tan said, “We did have a chance to stop him before he took out his socks…”

“In short, the following cases will all be in this rhythm,” Feng Bujue said. “We have to…”

“Mya—” At this moment, Mya-mi-chan’s standard scream rang out again, interrupting their conversation.

Feng and Wang looked at each other, sighed together, and then ran in the direction of the scream…