The whole screen was suffused with the color of blood. Then, after the light faded, two figures collapsed in the middle of the circle. Half a minute later, the blonde figure was the first to stand up.
“Why did this happen? Why! Argh…” Andrew saw that his skin was drying up like bark, and his hair was falling. He started to scream like crazy. Several seconds later, Arthur also climbed up from the ground. From his appearance, there was no change to him, but at the moment, there was no soul in Arthur’s eyes. He looked at his sibling, saying nothing.
“Why… why did this happen?” Andrew roared. “There can’t be a mistake with the circle. We should have succeeded. Why I… Ah…” The pain in his body exploded. It was far beyond the normal threshold. Hearing the scream, life snapped back into Arthur. He quickly rushed forward to knock Andrew out. Actually, even if he did not do that, the other would have fainted from the extreme pain soon.
“Huh… Huh…” There were some issues with Arthur’s body as well. The simple action was enough to drain him, causing him to gasp for air. But compared to Andrew, his pain was nothing. At least his body did not show any trace of zombification. Arthur stood there with his eyes darting about, thinking…
One minute later, Arthur walked toward the unconscious Andrew. He turned his brother away from him. Then he looped his arms under Andrew’s arms and dragged him out of the room.
…
“The two brothers wanted to make something… but they failed?” When Feng Bujue saw the cinematic, this thought appeared. “It wouldn’t be something as common as trying to revive their mother, would it?
“But this video explains the thing that Arthur repeated at the beginning. ’…Don’t worry… everything will be fine… Something must have gone wrong somewhere… I will figure this out…’ He was not only telling it to his brother but also to himself.”
Feng Bujue scratched his chin. “Looks like the sorry state that ’I’ am in is not due to Arthur. He did not turn me into his experiment. This is all due to one failed experiment. And Arthur temporarily locked me inside Cell 0 because he has been trying to figure out a way to save me…”
Feng Bujue murmured as he walked into the room. “”Hmm… Looks like the whole plot is about to end. In any case, I should find the gray key first.”
Who knew that something happened the next second? Before this, whenever Feng Bujue wanted to enter a new room, he would check for physical traps. There had been none, but this time, due to the interruption of the cinematic, he forgot… and he walked in just like that. There was a commotion, and then the floor started to crumble from the middle of the circle. Feng Bujue did not have a chance to react, and he fell down the hole. Of course, when he was falling, other than the instinctual need to curl up, Feng Bujue could not have been calmer. His heartbeat was even, and he was very conscious.
He pulled out the layout of the house in his mind. He was clear that he was falling into an empty room. He had made a clever guess of the height between the first and second floor. Including the gap of the floor itself, it was less than four meters. With his current physique, other than falling headfirst and snapping his neck, he would survive in any other pose.
In less than two seconds, the falling stopped. He survived naturally, but the oil lamp broke…
“Fine, it was about time anyway.” Feng Bujue sat in the darkness, surrounded by stuff and debris that had fallen with him. Even if the key was inches before him, he would not know. “By the way, where has Arthur gone after locking me up in Cell 0? He hasn’t shown up even though I’ve created such a big commotion.”
Feng Bujue looked at his Life Points. He had fifteen percent, which was expected. He stood up and slapped the dust from his body. He patted it twice and then heard a ting.
“No way…” Feng Bujue’s lips twitched as he bent down to reach toward the noise.
———
Name: Gray Key
Type: Plot Item
Quality: Normal
Function: Unlocks the gray door permanently. Disappear after use.
Can be taken out of the scenario: No
Remark: Fell out from a broken oil lamp and landed on a fellow covered in dust.
———
“Haha…”
After several seconds he got the key, the system announced, “A door somewhere has opened.”
“Fine… now that I’ve lost the light source, I have to return underground,” Feng Bujue grumbled as he took out the iron rod. The room was originally empty, so he only needed to extend the rod until he hit the wall. Then he followed along the wall and soon found the door. Using this method, he took ten seconds to find the door and left. After confirming his location, the rest was easy. Since he had the layout in his mind, the length of the corridor and how many steps he would need to traverse it… everything was in his mind.
Fear of the darkness was natural. The smaller one’s field of view, the bigger the unknown. One’s alertness would increase with the decrease of the information within one’s grasp, and one’s self defense consciousness would be maintained above a certain level. To put it simply, a human’s fear of the dark came from a strong psychological need of self-preservation. Fear would cause one to pay extreme attention to the smallest and the most insignificant information found in the darkness. But Feng Bujue did not feel fear, and he did not need to borrow from the positive and negative influence that fear had on people. Based on his memory of the surroundings and his vivid imagination, he could find his way easily in the darkness.
He found the storage room in just a minute. He walked through the door and walked toward the stairs to Underground 1F. The door that was locked by the system had been opened. Feng Bujue turned the handle, and the door opened easily. The light that came from the underground corridor lit up his surrounding again. When Feng Bujue walked down the stairs, he took out all six keys from his pocket and held them in his hand. The doors that were closest to the stairs were the blue and black doors. Feng Bujue chose the blue door first. After the lock was undone, the key disappeared. He tried to push on the door, but he heard the hint, “The red door is still locked.”
“Hmm… So, I need to do this in sequence…” Feng Bujue realized that and decided to unlock all six doors first.
One minute later, after he had exhausted the last key, the system rang to say, “Current quest complete. Main quest updated.”
The previous quest step had a tick next to it, and the new quest read, “Explore the six rooms at Underground 1F in the order red, yellow, blue, black, white, and gray.”
“Okay, let’s see what you two brothers are up to.” Feng Bujue came to the red door, gripped the handle, and pushed. He looked from the door. The interior of the room was all red. The room was wreathed in a red light, but there was no light source. Feng Bujue used the rod to test for traps, but once the rusted rod reached into the room, an arm shot out from beside the door to grab the iron rod and yank it into the room. Feng Bujue was caught by surprise. To not be pulled into the room, he quickly let go.
Brother Jue’s hand was equipped with both the outfit of dark purple leather gloves and the equipment, Spiderweb Gloves. Normally, he did not show his equipment, just his bare hands, and if he needed to use the gloves, he would show the outfit and not the equipment. If there was a reason behind it, it was because Brother Jue thought that the appearance of the Spiderweb Gloves was rather ugly…
But no matter the appearance, in the equipment slot, as long as the Spiderweb Gloves were equipped, they would perform their purpose. What was the effect of this equipment? The normal Defensive attribute aside, its special effect could be summed up with the following—’It can stick to stuff.’
Because of this small difference, when Feng Bujue let go, it did not help him escape from disaster. He was standing two steps away from the door and was pulled into the room by the rod…
Feng Bujue reacted quickly on the spot. When he was staggering and had not found his purchase, he activated Body Enhancement Spell and took out the wrench. The spell gave him the power to adjust his body. Feng Bujue lunged forward, and with his one hand on the ground, he somersaulted into the room. He increased his distance from the unknown enemy behind the door and was facing the threat head on.
He had expected it to be another synthetic creature, but he looked and saw another human being. It was a man over thirty, wearing something that looked like military gear. His right arm, the one that grabbed the iron rod, was a metallic arm. When the man saw Feng Bujue, his expression shifted, and he croaked out dangerously, “You monster… You’re here to kill me, right? I will not…”
“Wait!” Feng Bujue raised his hand. “I don’t wish to fight you.”
He saw the iron rod, which had been snapped in half, and thought, This thing has overwhelming fighting power. The mechanical arm is obviously far sturdier than my wrench.
“Humph… Stop joking…” The man scoffed and took a threatening step forward. “Do you think I will believe you‽”
Regardless of what he said, Feng Bujue did not deactivate Body Enhancement Spell. Since the man charged at him without listening to his reason, he would have to take the man on in a battle.