“Then… this is their mother’s bedroom.” After watching the cinematic, Feng Bujue hypothesized. “From that kind of line, it sounded like her last words, and the reaction of that Arthur proves that he was corrupted in his teenage years… But why? Is it because he was adopted that he hated his own brother? Or is this the natural evil within the Xin clan? Or… did something happen that corrupted his personality?”
With this suspicion in mind, Feng Bujue started to ransack the room. There were many parts of this bedroom that needed to be search, and the investigation took up a lot of time. The drawers of the bedside table were empty. He checked all the corners, but there were no carvings on it. The two closets were not only empty but had a mildew smell to them. Even through the gas mask, the smell was horrible. Even so, Feng Bujue still climbed on top of and into the closets to look everywhere. Ten minutes later, he checked even under the bed and confirmed that… other than a cinematic, there was nothing in this room.
Feng Bujue was obviously categorized by the system as someone who had a compulsive exploration need. The symptoms of this disease were an insistence to explore the entire map to find all the items and converse with every NPC, investigate all the hidden elements, and accomplish all the achievements. If possible, he wanted to find all the bugs, to use as negotiating chips after he finished the game. When he was playing Elder Scrolls, ahem, rather, when he was finding inspiration for his writing, he was prone to this illness. Now that he was in a solo mode, he did not need to consider his teammates or the time limit, so naturally, the sickness reappeared.
After dealing with the first bedroom, he headed next door. The exploration process of the next room was similar to this one. First, it was the iron rod that entered before the man. This second room was also a bedroom. The décor was similar to the one before it, but the environmental situation was completely different. The room was caked in dust. Other than a bed and a closet, there was nothing else. However, Feng Bujue managed to hypothesize that there had been other furniture in this room from the traces that were left on the ground. They included a study table and a piano.
“For a wooden floor, as long as furniture sits on it for a year, traces will be left there forever…” He used his hand to touch the floor. “These traces… it is from furniture that has been placed here for more than ten years. The places where the floor was pressed down upon had different coloration from the surrounding place.”
He squatted on the ground to look for five minutes.
“But from the layer of dust, it has been quite some time since they were moved. They have probably been turned into firewood already…”
As mentioned earlier, the emptier the place the easier it would be to search. Feng Bujue lifted the dirty sheet. He did not discover anything and turned to the large closet.
“Hmm… Good taste,” he joked when he saw the clothes inside the closet. There were only two types of clothes in the closet—white shirts and pants with suspenders. The shirts hung from hangers while the pants dangled from the wooden bar in the closet.
Everything was dirty, covered in blood stains. Even for someone like Feng Bujue who had a high threshold for dirtiness, this was beyond his threshold.
“What is the purpose of putting unclean clothes inside the closet? Remove the dirty and wet clothes, hang it, and replace it with the set that appears the least disgusting? After the brothers lost their mother, was there no one to do the laundry? If that is the setting of this scenario, it’s quite scary…”
As Feng Bujue’s mind wandered, he squatted down, and his hands stopped at the drawer at the bottom of the closet.
“If there’s unwashed underwear in this drawer and a white or yellow key hidden here, what should I do?”
With the sound of wood grinding on wood, Feng Bujue pulled open the drawer. Thankfully, it was empty.
“Phew… For some reason, I feel relieved.” He sighed and closed the drawer. He took out a shirt and pants from the closet. He examined the size. “The person from the introductory cinematic… is about 1.6 meters. These clothes are too large for him. So… does this bedroom belong to Andrew?”
Feng Bujue dropped the clothes on the bed. Starting from the corner of the room, he once again started a carpet search. Since he had not found any plot items or triggered a recap from this room, his search was more thorough than before. He practically looked through every inch. Finally, when he came to the window, he paused for several seconds, and another cinematic video was triggered.
…
Golden hair filtered into the room. A study table was placed next to the window, and a boy of about ten sat at the table, carving a piece of wood. The boy’s hair was gilded gold by the sun. His eyes were focused on the wood he was holding. His actions were cautious, like he was creating something difficult and intricate. On the other side of the room, a boy with brown hair was sitting at the piano. With a pleasant expression, he played a simple tune. He was not that good at it, so the tune was intermittent, but he did not seem to mind. His only audience was his little brother.
This relatively warm scene proceeded for ten seconds when Andrew suddenly threw the wooden piece and the carving knife on the table. He sighed with disappointment. “Ah! I failed again.”
Arthur’s fingers left the piano, and he turned around to say, “Then you can redo it.”
“Ah… No way, it won’t work… This is the fifth one. I need to hand this in tomorrow. It’s too late to start now.” At this point, Andrew turned over and smiled endearingly. “But if it’s big brother… you’ll finish this kind of thing in a jiffy… After all, you’re a genius!”
“You’re right,” Arthur replied calmly.
“Er…” Andrew narrowed his eyes. “How could you just take it just like that?”
“Why can’t I since you complimented me as a genius? Why the need to be humble?” Arthur slid off the chair and walked to Andrew’s side. “Fine, give it to me. You’re a sneaky little thing.”
“Haha, thank you, big brother!” Andrew smiled brilliantly.
Arthur picked up the half-finished carving that his brother had done. He held it before his eyes to study for several seconds, and there was condescension in his eyes. For something like this, he would not fail once, much less five times. Unfortunately, Arthur had no chance to do things like that. If his identity as a descendent of the Xin clan was discovered, not only him, the people who had taken him in would be punished by death. Therefore, his mother did not send him to school like the other kids. Actually, other than his little brother, Arthur had no friends. His life was limited to the farm. Other than the occasional farmer, his circle of friends was limited to his mother and Andrew.
Arthur observed for a while, and an idea came to his mind. He picked up a pen and drew a magic circle on some paper. He completed a simple circle in just a minute, and then he placed the wooden piece in the middle of the circle. Arthur placed both of his hands on the side of the paper and mumbled something like he was clearing his mind. “Hmm… Do it like this… and then that…”
Several seconds later, his eyes flew open, and the wooden piece morphed into a ball of light, changing its form. When the light faded, the wooden block had turned into a small wooden comb.
“Wow, that’s amazing!” Andrew gasped in shock.
“Shush… Don’t let mom hear you. She doesn’t like it when I practice alchemy.” Arthur placed his pointing finger before his lips to silence his brother.
Andrew picked up the comb with his eyes shining. He placed it in his hand. “Big brother, you are amazing! Our teacher said that those who can use alchemy before twelve are veritable geniuses, and they will be destined for the Royal Arcana!”
“Is that so?” Arthur did not react that much because, from his perspective, that was just a small trick, something that he had known how to do a long time ago. With regards to the Royal Arcana… how would they accept a Xin clan descendent? Seeing the excitement on his brother’s face, Arthur was detachedly cold. “Andrew, remember not to mention anything about me to any outsiders. You should understand why…”
Andrew nodded. “I know, mum has told me many times.”
He answered as he picked up the carving knife to carve something on the comb.
“Hey… I’ve already finished the work for you. What are you doing? If you break it, you won’t be able to hand it in.”
Even though Arthur said that, he did not stop his brother. Andrew soon finished, and he showed the comb to his brother. He said with a smile, “I’m not going to hand it in. This is the first thing my big brother made for me. I have to keep it for myself.”
Seeing the carved A.A. on the comb, Arthur shrugged and ruffled his brother’s hair. “My silly little brother…”
…
When Feng Bujue finished the video, he could not help but mock, “Are you Sasuke’s older brother?”
From the cinematic, he was unable to tell the internal thoughts of Arthur and Andrew, so Feng Bujue could only make predictions from their body language and expression.
“Hmm… It looks like the videos aren’t playing in chronological order, but… it feels like the relationship between the two brothers was still fine when they were about ten…” Feng Bujue analyzed. “Even though I cannot rule out the possibility of their personalities maturing during puberty, I feel like… the reason things are the way they are now… the most crucial element is the so-called blood of the Xin clan.”