Chapter 242 Brothers 6

Chapter 242 Brothers 6

"Ha... haha..." Feng Bujue’s lips were twitching. He removed the magnet from his pocket and placed it over the small hole. He realized that the size was just right. He attempted to reach the magnet through the hole. It had only reached one third of the way in when he felt a strong magnetic pull inside the hole. It sucked the whole magnetic strip in, and the next second, the safe opened on its own.

This smaller safe did not require any password. The dial lock on the front was just a distraction. The real way to open it was to trigger one of the mechanisms inside. Eighty percent of this safe was made from a normal metallic material, but on the inside of the small hole, there was a part that was made from unique, high-density magnetic stones. It had a machine wedge built into it, and the only way to unlock this safe was to use the magnet that he had procured earlier.

"The type of puzzle solving keeps on changing. The system sure is creative..."

Even though Feng Bujue was feeling quite annoyed that he had wasted so much time, he soon calmed down. The larger safe on the outside was unlocked by a code, but that did not mean that the smaller safe inside would require the same method to unlock it. He only had himself to blame for falling into the trap of preconception.

Feng Bujue took out the item ’The Cell Key That Leads to Underground 1F’ from inside the small safe. Then he left Cell Six and walked up the stairs that headed above. After unlocking the black iron cell door, the key disappeared. The system announced at the same time, "Current quest complete. Main quest updated."

The mission step ’Explore Underground 2F. Open the door that leads upstairs.’ had been ticked, and now the next step of the quest appeared to take its place. "Head to Surface 1F."

"Hmm?" When Feng Bujue saw this latest updated quest, he was confused. Theoretically speaking, should the new quest not have been something like ’Explore Underground 1F. Open the door that leads upstairs.’? However, the latest update only had a simple directive of ’Head to Surface 1F.’ This made it sound like...

"Is it possible that I can walk straight up there without anything stopping me?" Feng Bujue mumbled to himself. He held the rusted long iron rod, which had turned back into a trash quality item, and carefully moved down Underground 1F’s corridor. This floor had a practically mirrored design of the level beneath it. Not far from the stairs were six cell rooms, with three on each side. But the cell rooms on this floor had different steel doors from the ones underneath them. There were no feeding holes or small windows. There was no paint on the doors to indicate their number either. Other than the keyhole and the handle, the six doors were like slabs of steel with unknown thickness. From outside, it was impossible to tell the situation of the cells on the other side.

Feng Bujue tried to see if he could open any of the six doors. They were all locked. As he walked down the doors, he paid close attention to any noise behind them. There was nothing. He thought to himself, The chance of this entire floor being a decoration is infinitely small, so that can only mean... I will have to return here later...

While he thought, he reached the other end of the corridor. Before him was a staircase that led upward. Combining the steps that he had taken and the length of the corridor, Feng Bujue could confirm that right underneath this staircase would be Cell 0. However, this confirmation held no meaning other than the fact that the corridor for Underground 1F and 2F had the same length. It did not seem to mean anything else.Điscover new chapters at novelhall.com

The staircase before him was made from wood, and it looked decrepit and used. There was a lingering smell on the steps. The origin of the smell was probably the food or feces that had accidentally spilled out while being transported, mixed together with the bodily fluids of the people being dragged up and down the stairs. After they were mixed together, it came this cocktail of stenches that was not that strong but extremely vomit-inducing.

Feng Bujue followed the steps up the stairs. After a turn at a landing, he ran into a wooden door. He reached out to hold the doorknob and turned on it carefully. The door opened successfully just like that. Beyond the door was the ground floor. Standing at the step, looking out from the door, one could see a room that looked like a storage room. The walls were built from bricks, and there were many bursting gunny sacks lying around. By one of the walls were three rows of round wooden barrels that were normally seen at wineries.

The lighting in this room was far worse than the rooms underground. The only source of light was an oil lamp placed above the wine barrels. Feng Bujue naturally would not barge unprepared into the dim environment. He first poked the iron rod that he was holding through the door and hit around in all directions. After confirming that there was no trap that would react to a physical presence waiting for him, he walked through the door into the room.

"Current quest completed. Main quest updated," the system announced once more, and the new quest appeared. "Explore the ground floor to find the six keys. They are red, yellow, blue, black, white, and gray keys. Then return to Underground 1F to open the six steel doors."

Feng Bujue glanced at the mission before continuing to move forward. The first thing that he did was retrieve the oil lamp. In his situation where he was banned from using his flashlight, procuring a light source was something that was instrumental. He only walked for three meters when suddenly... with a loud bang, the door behind him closed.

After entering the door, Feng Bujue found two altars on the left and right hand side. The decoration that was placed there had already disappeared. If it was plant that was once placed there, it would have perished from the horrible air already; if it was a divine statue that was placed there, the saints would probably have been dragged out by the various demons that inhabited the darkness. They were dragged down into the evil whirlpool of abyss that presided underneath the home.

Feng Bujue walked to the window and pulled open the curtains. Through the glass, he could see a thick layer of darkness. Even if he raised the lamp before the window, it did nothing to cast the darkness away. It was futile to try to open the window. Even if he attempted to use the wrench to crack the window, he would only end up with a sore hand. He stuck his face close to the windowsill and sniffed at it. Unfortunately, the air outside the window did not leak into the room. He could only smell the scent of dampness and mildew. It belonged to this house, a decaying smell that was mixed with the scent of tarpaulin and rotten wood.

"Looks like it’s impossible to escape from the house this way," Feng Bujue commented as he walked to the study table that took up the middle of the room. The table was very messy with stuff littered everywhere. Feng Bujue picked up the items one by one and examined their properties. They were all trash. Only one of the drawers was left unopened. The rest of the drawers had been yanked out of the table and left on the ground. The papers that should have been inside the drawers littered the corner of the room and stuck at the corner of the table. An inkwell that probably belonged on the table was tipped over on the ground. The ink inside it had long since dried, and the paper around it was dyed black by the ink. Other than that, there was a black stain on the carpet that looked like a mushroom cloud.

Feng Bujue opened the only drawer that was left in the table and found a magnifying glass inside it. When he saw the object, he could not help but burst into laughter. "Hah... If only I had a smoking pipe, then it will be perfect."

Most of people from his age group, when they saw others in this outfit, would see it as old-fashioned or obsolete, but Feng Bujue had a firm belief that dangling a smoke on his lips and holding a magnifying glass in his hand was cool and retro, or perhaps this was a vision that only he would understand. Having obtained the magnifying glass, Feng Bujue found his interest growing. With the oil lamp in one hand and a magnifying glass in another, he turned to the other side of the study. On the wall of the study, there was a bookshelf. It was filled from top to bottom with books. One did not need to put into words the attraction an object like that had on Feng Bujue.

There was no time limitation to this scenario. If there was no one there to stop him, there was a chance that Feng Bujue would stay in the room and pull the books out one by one and finish them. The only thing that would make him stop was the time limit for using the gaming hub. When the connection time went over the maximum time that was allowed in a day, Feng Bujue would be forcibly disconnected from the game.

Thankfully, the system did something cruel to our Feng Bujue. Ninety-nine percent of the books on the shelf had no translation. There was not only no translation—the player could not even read the words clearly. The words in the book, be it on the cover or on the pages, had all been blurred out. This annoyed Feng Bujue to no end because he was quite interested in ’decryption’ as well. When he read Sherlock Holmes’ case of the Dancing Man when he was in primary school, he had spent at least half a year immersed in solving puzzles related to alphabets. The alphabet system in this scenario happened to have similarities to the English language. Initially, he had been confident that he would be able to translate the language system of this world using the decoder that he could have devised. But he had to give up that plan. Of course, the remaining one percent of the books had been translated by the system, and they were the hints provided for the players...

"The Advanced Study of Alchemy..." Feng Bujue studied the book with a dark blue cover and read out the title. "Hmm... Why is this placed here for me to see?"

As he commented on that, a slip of paper fluttered out from within the pages. Feng Bujue bent down to pick up the paper. When he held it to the light, he realized that it was not a piece of paper but a faded photograph. The photograph itself had yellowed, and this was a black and white photo, so the edges and the picture itself now had the same color. In the picture, there were two boys that looked about ten. They stood facing the camera next to each other. The smaller kid on the left was pressing his hand on the head of the kid on the right. Both of them were smiling brilliantly at the camera. Even through the picture, Feng Bujue could see their innocence and joy. Feng Bujue stared at the picture for several seconds, and something that he did not expect happened.

The next second, he reentered the state of the introductory cinematic. A video started to play before him. The video was similar to the picture. It had a sepia tone to it, instead of being completely black and white.

There was a field and a farm, and beyond the fences, some livestock like horses and cows were grazing freely on the field. A herding dog was running over. This was a peaceful scene. The camera shifted, and a valley entered his view. Not far from the valley sat a house that was two stories tall. Feng Bujue had reason to believe that it was the house that he was currently in. Even though he had taken three minutes to walk around the ground floor, in these few minutes that looked like he was wandering aimlessly, he had collected a lot of information.

He had an early guess of the house’s size, the number of the windows and doors, and a layout of the ground floor in his mind. He had also arranged in his mind to see if there was any overlap between the rooms on the ground floor and the cells underground. He even considered the possibility of a hidden area between the walls...

In any case, the layout of the ground floor of this place had already imprinted itself in Feng Bujue’s mind, so when he saw the outline of the house in the video, he made that quick association.

Laughter, the sound of children’s laughter.

The video did not cut into the house like Feng Bujue expected but continued to move horizontally to show a piece of grassy land. There was a swing and a small boy with blond hair was sitting on the swing. A woman, who should be the mother, was pushing him on the swing. The boy was chuckling happily and freely, and the mother’s face had a blissful smile.

Not far away from the swing, under a tree, sat a boy with brown hair. He was holding a book in his arms, and he was enraptured by it. It was a book with dark blue color... Obviously, it was the Advanced Study of Alchemy that Feng Bujue had just found.

"Arthur, do you want to come and play?" The mother turned around to call after the boy under the tree. Feng Bujue could not hear the boy’s answer because the video stopped then. He returned to the game and found himself in the study.

"Hmm... Could it be that..." The first reaction Feng Bujue had after watching the cinematic was to reach out and pull at his own hair.