Feng Bujue looked at the remark and said, “Even though it sounds redundant, it could be some kind of hint.”
He scratched his nose.
“The red key is hidden at a red place, so does that mean that the yellow, blue, black, white, and gray keys are hidden at places of their respective colors?” He put the key away, and he immediately thought, The yellow key wouldn’t be hidden inside poop, right?
With that suspicion in mind, he left the kitchen and walked to the third room.
The room was opposite the kitchen. It had a small window inside the room, and it was sealed up by planks. Even though light was unable to filter into other rooms as well, this room appeared especially dim. The room had a horrible stench, and a thick layer of grime covered the wooden floor. Feng Bujue showed his gloves and used one hand to close his mouth to block the influence of the dust and stench.
The room before him was empty. Even though there were signs of earlier furniture left on the ground, it was hard to predict how the room had originally looked. Feng Bujue predicted, when the homeowner first started to get involved in the dark arts, he should not have already prepared a special cell, so this room was probably the earliest cell. Of course, now that he had the two underground floors, his criminal career had gotten on the right path.
“Perhaps the black or gray key is hidden here,” Feng Bujue said. He raised the oil lamp and started to search. This kind of empty room was easier to search. The ceiling, floor, and wall could be seen with a glance. Feng Bujue walked around and soon found a seriously corrupted plank right under the sealed window. He bent down and bumped his fist against the spot twice. With a crack, the board split open. He reached down into the hole to search and soon found…
———
Name: Black Key
Type: Plot Item
Quality: Normal
Function: Unlocks the black door permanent. Disappears after use.
Remark: Hidden in a dark place.
———
“It feels like the keys for this quest are all randomly hidden,” Feng Bujue said. “Compared to the maddening puzzles underground, this was just a test of patience and attention to detail.”
The fourth room he visited was the foyer. Technically, it was not even a room because the foyer was connected to the corridor and had no separate door that faced inside, just the main door that was locked and faced outside. There was not much furniture in the foyer. Things were left in a mess. There was a clock on the wall. It seemed to be broken; the time on it had remained the same since the last time Feng Bujue laid his eyes on it. He stood before the clock for a long time and suddenly said, “Could it be… Even though it looks like a clock, but actually, it is used to mark the date…”
Feng Bujue was considering the setting of this world again. This clock had a twelve-hour design, no different from the clocks in real life, but the man liked to suspect… could the long and short needles represent the calendar?
He looked through the furniture at the foyer. Instead of the key, he did find another plot item.
———
Name: Feather Cap
Type: Plot Item
Quality: Normal
Function: Unknown
Can be taken out of the scenario: Yes
Remark: Leather cap with normal handicraft. Even with the decoration of a long and brilliant feather, it does not mask the banality of its quality.
———
“This is the fourth item I can take out of the scenario,” Feng Bujue said. “Soap, fake teeth, perfume, a feather cap… What is their connection?”
After leaving the foyer, he went to the last room he had not visited on the ground floor, the toilet.
It was unclear whether the technological growth of this world was a bit slanted, or this was the system’s limitation. There was fluorescent light underground, but there was only an oil lamp aboveground. The kitchen had a stove, but the ventilation used a chimney. The toilet had a flushing toilet but did not have even a lightbulb. Next to the door was a small table. On the table was an empty plate with some wax oil.
“You’ll need to light a candle to use the toilet at night. That’s quite scary…” Feng Bujue closed the toilet lid and stood on it. He attempted to open the window above the toilet. “Oh, right, after all, there is no mirror here, so it won’t be that scary.”
He knocked on the blurred window. It was very sturdy, and it was too small for him to crawl through it anyway.
“Fine, white key and yellow key, which will be it?” Feng Bujue had seen the inside of the toilet, and there was only water. So, as he spoke, he opened the water box.
Bang!
The door behind him closed.
“This again? Just opening the water box triggered something?” Feng Bujue quickly turned to open the door, but no matter how hard he pulled, the door refused to budge, like someone was pulling on the door on the other side. This time, the system did not say anything. His originally relaxed nerves tensed, and he prepared to use his skills to face any imminent danger. By now, his Life Points had naturally recovered to over forty percent, but this was probably not enough in a Nightmare Mode mission.
One step after another, Feng Bujue carefully got close to the toilet. There were many scary images in his mind, like the toilet turning into a monster and opening its ’mouth’ to bite him… Or… the monster shooting something out from the ’mouth’ and flooding the entire room… Regardless of the situation, it was definitely ’scary’. Of course, that was just his imagination. The reality was… other than the locked door, nothing else happened. He walked closer to the water box and found a key sitting at the bottom.
———
Name: Blue Key
Type: Plot Item
Quality: Normal
Function: Unlocks the blue door permanently. Disappears after use.
Can be taken out of the scenario: No
Remark: Hidden in water.
———
“The rules have changed again… Based on this logic, will the key red be hidden in fire?” Feng Bujue said sarcastically as he put the key away. His mind had not stopped moving, and soon, he realized why the door would be locked.
“I get it now… There are six keys in total, three on the ground floor and three on the second floor. So, when I found the last key on the ground floor, an event was triggered. Something will have to happen, and then I can get up to the second floor.
“The foyer is connected to the corridor, so there is no key there. The kitchen, the empty room, and the toilet are encapsulated spaces, so no matter which room I was in when I found the third key, I would be locked in.
“But the problem is… what will happen? After I was locked in, will the blob of meat that blocked the way to the second floor move away on its own or disappear?”
Pap, pap…
A strange sound came from the corridor. Feng Bujue’s expression shifted. He walked forward to press his ear to the door.
It sounded like something was moving hurriedly on the wooden floor. The strange sound became more insistent and frequent, like a bunch of mice as large as cats rampaging down the hall.
“Is this for real?” Feng Bujue gulped, and in his mind, the meat-like creature had come alive and was squeezing its way down the corridor. “Someone with trypophobia would be panicking right now under that impression. But for me, this kind of setting is…”
Bang bang bang!
“Hey! It’s knocking on the door!” Before Feng Bujue finished, something slammed into the door three times, and the point of impact was at the top part of the door. “Wait… this door isn’t locked, is it?”
Indeed, the door to the toilet had no lock; one could open it by turning the handle. But on the inside, there was a latch lock, the people inside could lock the door that way, but at that moment, the locked was not being used.
“Oh… I get it now. The thing outside the door has no fingers to hold the handle,” Feng Bujue mumbled as he locked the door. “Ha… Now you’re screwed, aren’t you?”
Bang bang bang!
The thing knocked on the door urgently and made some incoherent noise. “Ke… Ke… Ke…”
“Hmm? Is it trying to communicate with me to open the door?” Feng Bujue murmured. “Hmm… Nah, that’s probably the guttural sound from the monster’s throat.”
The banging sound returned. The thing started to move again. From the sound, it had made a turn around the house before ending at the front door. But it was unable to open the door. Two minutes later, it returned to the toilet and rammed on the door several times. This time, its incoherent noise changed. Feng Bujue heard pleading in it.
“Something does not feel right.”
Then, another sound came. It was very clear—the sound of footsteps. It came down the stairs, and it was heading down the corridor. The knocking became urgent. The thing outside the door was practically wheezing.
Click. The door to the toilet opened. Feng Bujue opened it.
In the one minute, Feng Bujue had realized that the door could magically be opened again. Therefore, he made a quick decision—this was a choice for the player, a choice that might affect the ending.
The creature at the door had a human-like upper body but without hair, fingers, a tongue, or a chin. And its lower body was stranger. More than one hundred ’legs’ were joined at the waist, and each leg was made from human fingers or joints. Each ’leg’ was about three fingers long.
When Feng Bujue saw this thing, he did not speak but quietly moved to the side to test its reaction. It flew past Feng Bujue and hid in the corner of the toilet, shivering in fear.
“So, it was running for its life…” Feng Bujue held the lamp and poked his head out to look toward the source of the footsteps in the corridor. “Then… what does the real monster look like?”