Chapter 11 The Grand Search

The story splits into two. While Feng Bujue and the others were exploring the plot in the mountains, Xiao Tan and Bei Ling's search was also progressing in an orderly fashion.

Actually, there were no rigid targets for this task, and they were relatively relaxed in their mindset. Even if they found nothing all day, it couldn't be helped. The scenario maps in Thriller Paradise were like this: if you had good luck, you might find a Fine-quality piece of equipment in some inconspicuous place, and the process of obtaining it would be effortless. If you had bad luck, it was normal to get nothing after playing through the entire scenario.

Their search started from the east side of the town, searching house by house, room by room. Although those abandoned houses were mostly empty, the dusty bottles and jars, wooden boxes, as well as the roof beams, the space under the floorboards, the walls, and even the dilapidated beds, couldn't be ruled out as places where props might be hidden.

In short, for games like this, you had to explore with the spirit of playing *The Legend of Zelda* without looking at a walkthrough.

"Um... there's something I wanted to ask you," Xiao Tan said to Bei Ling, while lifting the large wooden pot lid on the kitchen stove to look inside, not knowing what he expected to find in the pot, maybe two silver coins?

"Okay, I don't have a boyfriend." Bei Ling was rummaging through a cobweb-filled cabinet.

"Uh... that's not what I wanted to ask you."

"Huh?" Bei Ling replied without turning her head, as if she were absent-minded, "Then what is it? You're going to ask me with this strange tone when we're alone?" She seemed to have thought of something and immediately added, "I warn you, I'm not a casual person!"

"What are you thinking..." Xiao Tan said, "I wanted to ask, is Gu Xiaoling your real name?"

"Hmm? Yes, why?"

"Gu as in ancient?"

"Yes~ yes~" Bei Ling replied, "Xiao as in stingy, Ling as in spirit." From the tone and wording she used when explaining her name, it could be seen that her personality was relatively unconventional.

"Hmm..." Xiao Tan frowned, looking thoughtful.

Bei Ling was still saying, "Bei Ling Xiaogu (lit. Sad Spirit Laughing Bone) is actually just my name backwards, with an extra character added at the beginning. When you heard my cousin call me 'Little Bone,' you should have guessed that there's a character that sounds like 'gu' in my real name, right? If a girl's name has this character, it should basically be in the surname, and it's nothing more than Gu, Gu, or Gu." She was muttering to herself, but still said in an impatient tone, "Ah... you're really stupid, is your head just for decoration? Think more when you encounter things..."

Xiao Tan didn't care about being spoken to like that. In fact, his thoughts were on other things, and he didn't listen much.

"It's strange... my family has an ancestral teaching that says... don't make friends with people with the surname Gu," Xiao Tan said.

"Huh?" Bei Ling was stunned when she heard that. "Hahahaha..." She suddenly laughed, "What a coincidence, my family also has an ancestral teaching that says that as long as the descendants of our Gu family make friends with people with the surname Wang, they don't have to be polite with them, just screw them over till they're dead."

"I'm not joking..." Xiao Tan said with a serious face.

"I'm not joking either, I'm serious," Bei Ling replied with a playful expression.

"Wang is a common surname..." Xiao Tan said.

Bei Ling reached out and gently tapped Xiao Tan's head, "That's why... who would take this kind of ancestral teaching seriously! Idiot!" Her action had no intention of attacking, so it wasn't blocked by the system.

Xiao Tan shrugged, "That's right, it's probably because someone in my ancestry had a grudge against someone with the surname Gu, and then did something stupid, which is why they left behind this kind of... ouch..." Before he could finish speaking, he was hit again, "What is it this time?"

"Are you saying that our ancestors were also stupid?" Bei Ling said unhappily.

"Okay, let's just pretend I didn't say anything..." Xiao Tan replied.

In order to avoid being hit again, he climbed onto the stove after saying this, and with a push of his feet, he jumped onto the roof beam. Now that his agility-focused skills were starting to take shape, this height was nothing to him.

"By the way, since it's just the two of us, there's also something I wanted to ask you," Bei Ling said at this moment.

"I don't have a girlfriend either," Xiao Tan replied, "And I'm a pretty casual person!"

"Ha, ha, ha." Bei Ling laughed dryly three times, considering it a response to the joke, and then said, "Seriously, is the team leader the type of player who never spends money on games?"

"We don't really play games that charge extra fees anyway. In the ones we've played, I haven't seen him use RMB (Chinese Yuan) props," Xiao Tan moved along the dusty beam, tapping the pillars inch by inch, wanting to check if there were any hollow compartments inside, "But for games that use prepaid cards, he often buys monthly or even quarterly cards, it seems he finds it troublesome to recharge again and again."

"Oh, so that means he's not stingy, he just sees if he's willing to throw money into the game or not, right?" Bei Ling asked.

"How should I put it... Jue-ge is a very complicated person, it's hard to guess what his 'principles' are," Xiao Tan said, "It seems that whenever he realizes that he's about to cross the line, he'll set a new boundary..."

"Sounds like you're saying... constantly lowering the bottom line," Bei Ling interjected.

"Haha..." Xiao Tan laughed twice when he heard that.

Suddenly, with a cracking sound, the roof beam suddenly broke in the middle. It must have been because it had been in disrepair for years, and the wood inside had rotted.

Xiao Tan was kneeling on the beam, his face facing down when the beam broke, so his reaction was relatively timely, and he was quite composed in adjusting his posture in the air. He changed to a standing position before landing, touching the ground with both feet.

Unexpectedly, when he came into contact with the ground of the house, he suddenly felt a softness under his feet, as if he had stepped into empty space. Then there was a series of continuous sounds, which turned out to be the sound of the ground collapsing.

It turned out that the kitchen floor of this empty house was less than half a meter thick, and below that, it was completely suspended. Because of the long years, the wood had rotted and the sand had flowed away, it was inevitable that it would become relatively fragile. When Xiao Tan and Bei Ling were walking normally on it, the ground could naturally bear it, but at this moment, Xiao Tan fell from the height of the roof beam, standing upright on the ground, plus the two broken beams also had considerable weight, the ground could not bear it, and suddenly collapsed.

Bei Ling's first reaction was very quick, she immediately reached out to pull Xiao Tan, and in that split second, she really grabbed the other party's wrist tightly. However, as a girl, her weight was originally much lighter than Xiao Tan's, and the area of the ground collapsing almost affected the entire room, Bei Ling herself was also standing on shaky ground, and had nowhere to borrow strength for a while.

As a result, she also fell down...

The two of them fell into a pitch-black abyss, and in an instant, they had fallen tens of zhang (1 zhang = 3.33 meters). They had no idea whether there were mountains of knives and forests of swords below, or huge rocks and hard rocks. But judging from the falling distance, even if they crashed on the mud, it would probably be a near-death experience...