Chapter 1 The Croatoan Clue

Li Ang took out the small wooden horse puppet and had E Wunian identify whether it matched his memory.

After receiving a positive answer, he told the other teammates that he had also found the English word "croatoan" in the pulley group area.

"Every time you encounter an abnormal organ, it will trigger a memory of the mansion's past."

Li Ang glanced at E Wunian and said, "The words in the pulley group area prove one thing—even if E Wunian dies completely, we won't be left without information.

We can still connect the clues to Roanoke Island through that line of English."

E Wunian felt a chill run down his spine for no reason. Thinking of something, he asked the other three, "By the way, where's Dong Fengpo? Didn't you find him?"

"No."

Shi Jiang shook his head. "After we each completed a mission objective and gathered, we searched most of the mansion.

We kept making noise along the way, but didn't get any response from Dong Fengpo, nor did we find any traces of him. We finally found this utility room."

"..."

E Wunian was silent for a moment.

He had struggled to survive in this cargo well for so long, and finally barely survived with the help of his teammates.

Dong Fengpo, who was in a state of disappearance, had not responded, and the system prompt had not sounded...

Not optimistic.

"Let's go."

Shi Jiang shook his head and said indifferently, "Hurry up, we should continue searching the house."

Regardless of whether Dong Fengpo was dead or alive, it was always right to search the mansion quickly and find the abnormal organs.

The four players left the utility room and continued along the corridor.

This corridor was located on the first floor underground, running across the left and right sides of the mansion. The walls were built with solid cyan bricks, spacious, straight, and bright—this alone was enough to show that the financial situation of the mansion's builders was quite good.

The group entered the servants' bedrooms and other rooms to search, but found no clues. As time passed, the possibility of Dong Fengpo's survival continued to decrease.

The last room in the corridor was a wine cellar with a low arched stone door. The shelves inside were filled with dusty wine bottles, and some oak barrels were piled in the corners.

Forest Cat took a photo of the wine cellar as before, but still gained nothing.

"This is the last room in the mansion."

Forest Cat frowned and said, "Where are Dong Fengpo and those special organs?"

"Should we go back and search?" E Wunian asked, "Search the living room on the first floor again?"

"Wait, I found it."

Shi Jiang, who was groping in the corner, turned around and shouted. He moved away the oak barrels piled in the corner, squatted down, and stared at a large area of lighter-colored square bricks in the corner of the wall.

He used a paper cutter to chisel into the gaps between the bricks, gently pried open the bricks one by one, and disassembled them, revealing a dark, winding, circular secret passage about the height of a person.

"Is it here?"

Shi Jiang glanced inside with a flashlight. There was no strange smell in the air, and his reconnaissance skills did not show any signs of poisoning.

"The air inside is flowing."

Shi Jiang listened for a while, then looked at the wires attached to the stone walls of the secret passage, turned his head and said to his teammates, "There are traces of wires here, it is estimated that it will lead to a generator room or something.

Want to go down?"

The presence of a power source in a silent, uninhabited mansion was already a strange thing. Even if the players hadn't discovered this secret passage, they could have found it by following the wires.

In other words, this secret passage was probably the path to other strange organs.

Going down was definitely necessary.

Shi Jiang and E Wunian walked in the front, Forest Cat, who was holding a camera and taking photos every once in a while, followed behind, and Li Ang walked in the back.

He held the stone arm in his hand, tapping on the stone walls rhythmically, listening to the echoes.

Along the winding spiral staircase, the four players walked down a distance and reached solid ground.

Here was another stone-structured corridor in a confined space, without any lights, extending forward for quite a long distance in the darkness.

"Heh—heh—"

The sound of labored breathing rang from a room in front of the corridor, sounding like the intake of breath after the trachea had been cut open. That room was near the winding staircase, and a hole had been artificially cut out of the outer wall, with countless wires densely passing through it, extending to the inside of the room.

'This is the generator room.'

Shi Jiang thought to himself, not rushing forward, but turning his head to look at his companions, signaling Forest Cat to take a photo of the room.

Although Forest Cat didn't explain the specific effects of the [Divination Polaroid], the players present were all intelligent, and they could roughly guess that this might be a functional item for predicting and reconnaissance just by looking at her performance.

Forest Cat didn't waste any words, picked up the camera and took a photo of the room.

This was the first time the [Divination Polaroid] had taken effect, and the photo was completely black, unable to see any light.

'What's the situation? Could it be that a black person will stand here in a few minutes and block the camera lens?'

Forest Cat didn't believe it, and after the [Divination Polaroid]'s special effect buffer was completed, she changed the angle and took another photo of the room and the corridor.

The newly developed photo was still completely black.

Forest Cat frowned, put away the camera with a gloomy expression, and shook her head at Shi Jiang.

The latter silently picked up the paper cutter and gestured to his teammates, then nimbly climbed up the outer wall of the room, looking inward through the hole where the wires passed through the wall.

In the not-so-spacious room, there were indeed several simple and crude large diesel generators, but the most eye-catching thing was a wooden table placed in the middle of the room.

On that wooden table, there was an old woman's head, shriveled and withered, like a gray-black dried pineapple.

"Heh—heh—"

The head was breathing laboriously like a broken bellows. However, due to the lack of a torso, she could only constantly open and close her mouth, futilely and weakly inhaling, and then pumping the air out of the trachea at the cross-section of her neck.

Almost at the moment when Shi Jiang discovered the old woman's head and his pupils suddenly contracted,

The dried pineapple-like head seemed to notice Shi Jiang's peeping gaze, and suddenly opened her shriveled eyes, and a vast and surging invisible energy rose around her.

The air stirred up bursts of ripples, and the intangible energy condensed into sharp spears, directly piercing the solid and heavy walls and blasting into Shi Jiang, who was lying on the wall.

Bang—

Shi Jiang rolled out, and his whole body slammed into the corridor wall. His left arm, which served as a buffer, was abnormally twisted and slanted, with the forearm and upper arm forming a reverse ninety-degree angle, falling straight down to the ground.

"Be careful, she has telekinesis..."

Shi Jiang fell to the ground and shouted loudly. At the same time, ignoring the pain, he stretched out his right hand to hold his left wrist and twisted it hard. With a "click," he actually forcibly snapped his dislocated and twisted left arm back into place.