Chapter 10 A Heap of Misunderstandings

The four had just greeted each other and were about to start discussing their next strategy when Ji Chang's expression suddenly changed. "Everyone… the items in my inventory have all turned gray. Is anyone else experiencing this?"

Prompted by his reminder, the other three also opened their game menus to check their inventories.

"Me too, everything is grayed out, and I can't take anything out," Qiu Feng Se replied.

"Same here," Feng Bujue added.

Honghu said directly, "This must be a restriction the script has placed on us…" He paused for a moment. "But there isn't even a hint about it?"

Ji Chang was a steady strategist. His thinking might not be as fast as his teammates, but he was very thorough, always thinking things through carefully. After hearing Honghu's words, he realized another problem. "Then what if… there are other restrictions? Like…"

"Time," Qiu Feng Se picked up on his thought. "Suppose this script only updates the tasks and gives us no system prompts. We have to figure out all the settings and rules ourselves. Then the most likely factor to lead to a team wipe is time."

Honghu nodded. "That's definitely possible… What if this script hides a time limit, and we're completely unaware of this rule, and we explore leisurely…"

"We should be able to find relevant hints about the time limit soon," Feng Bujue interjected in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Yeah… that's right." Honghu continued on Jue Ge's words, pondering. "Unbreakable rules don't exist. If there really is a time limit, there must be similar plot points or hints, and they would appear early in the script. If they only appear when we're clearly running out of time, or if there's no hint at all, that would be too…" He stopped himself.

Honghu turned his head, pushed up his glasses, and looked at Feng Bujue with a suspicious gaze.

Qiu Feng Se and Yu Zhong Ji Chang hesitated for a moment, then realized something and shifted their gazes to Feng Bujue.

"What?" Feng Bujue immediately pretended to be stupid. "Did I say something wrong? Actually, I thought… with you guys around, any restrictions or puzzles would be solved quickly, so I just said it casually."

"Uh…" Honghu gave two dry laughs. "No, no, you're right, you have a talent for puzzle-solving, haha…" In his heart, he was saying, *Tch… so that's what he meant. Optimistic nonsense said casually, with such a calm and confident tone. I thought you deduced it instantly and scared me.*

Qiu Feng and Ji Chang shrugged, their expressions noncommittal.

Feng Bujue secretly breathed a sigh of relief, thinking, *I accidentally blurted out a conclusion that popped into my head… Luckily, I didn't say too much and managed to get away with it. This won't do, this isn't the attitude of someone just passing by. From now on, I'd better stop thinking and think about something else… Right, imagine Si Yu's illness is cured, hmm… a beautiful woman with a fever…*

"Hey… why does this guy suddenly have a rather lewd expression on his face…" Qiu Feng whispered to Ji Chang beside him, "He was only praised by Honghu, does that warrant such a reaction…"

Ji Chang swallowed. "Could he be a [Bleep]…"

"That word is somewhat insulting, you have to say homosexual," Qiu Feng lowered his voice even more.

"Hey… you still understood it even after it was censored…" Ji Chang whispered.

Honghu looked at Feng Bujue's face, which was drooling at the corners and filled with a silly smile, and became even more convinced that this guy was just a daddy-grabber, a useless player. The title of Dark Vanguard probably referred to the fact that he often sided with the villains in previous scripts or habitually used stealth skills.

"But… come to think of it." Honghu muttered softly to himself, "Qiu Feng and Ji Chang, did these two know each other before… Their conversation doesn't sound like it, how did they get together so quickly to whisper… Hey, were they mouthing 'gAy' just now… Are these two maybe… in love at first sight?"

In just a few minutes, these "smart people," each with their own hidden agendas, had created many inexplicable misunderstandings…

"Ahem… Anyway, based on the only hint we have right now, which is the opening CG, 'Detective Club' is most likely somewhere in this building." Honghu raised his voice slightly.

Qiu Feng replied, "If 'Detective Club' refers to the entire building, this script would be too simple. It's impossible to clear the level just by walking through the door."

Ji Chang added, "Then it must refer to a certain room in this building."

"Hmm…" The three of them hummed in unison, imitating Shinichi's pose.

At this moment, Feng Bujue suddenly took out a magazine from his coat pocket and said, "Items outside of the knapsack seem to be usable."

Prompted by him, Qiu Feng Se seemed to think of something. He also took something out of his jacket pocket, a small bag of chocolate. He tried a few times and said, "But items outside the knapsack can no longer be put into the knapsack."

"Basically, the knapsack is equivalent to being sealed…" Honghu muttered.

"Then all the items we find can only be held in our hands or put in our pockets," Ji Chang added.

"Now that we've clarified this rule, there's a problem… Do we go straight into the building, or do we explore the surrounding map first?" Qiu Feng asked. "Aside from the time limit, if it exists, if we choose to explore the city for equipment and items, even if we find something valuable, we'll only be able to carry a limited amount. It wouldn't be appropriate to carry larger standard weapons, controlled knives, etc., in our hands, parading them around, would it?"

"Moreover… limited knapsacks mean that if we trigger a battle, we can only fight barehanded." Ji Chang added, "Although I'm not exactly useless, that's not exactly my strength…"

Honghu nodded slightly and continued, "That makes sense, but I think it's better to observe the surroundings first." He explained, "First, we don't know if we can come out after entering this building. The setting where the entrance automatically closes is very common. Second, our starting coordinates after entering the script are at the entrance of this building, not inside the door. This also shows that there are things to explore outside the building. Otherwise, the system wouldn't have bothered."

"Hmph… this 'strategist' is quite capable." Feng Bujue thought. "Even if the system doesn't give any hints, he can still make reasonable inferences based on extremely limited known information."

Qiu Feng and Ji Chang agreed with Honghu's suggestion, and Feng Bujue naturally went along with the majority. The four of them discussed and decided to quickly explore the area within half a kilometer around the building to see the general situation of the script.

This "general situation" included a lot of content, such as… what era, what country, what city, is it completely fictional or does it have a real-world prototype, is the plot adapted from other works or purely generated temporarily. Are there zombies in the city? Are there aliens? Are there ghosts? Are there superheroes?

These are all things that can be investigated. Picking up a torn newspaper on the road or using a normally functioning public phone can confirm many things. For these puzzle-solving players, completing this most basic level of intelligence gathering is a familiar task.

Unfortunately, they don't have the chance to use this skill in this particular script.

Ten minutes later, the four people gathered back at the entrance of the building from four different directions. The expressions on three of their faces were not very good.

"Judging from the newspapers and the shop signs on the roadside, this place uses German, but the system doesn't provide any translation," Qiu Feng Se said.

"There aren't many pedestrians on the road, and they're all white people. I spoke to them in Chinese, but they just pretended not to hear me," Ji Chang continued. "I didn't dare to use force to stop them, after all, attracting the police would be disadvantageous for us."

"Judging from the clothing of the pedestrians, the appearance of public facilities, and the vehicles on the road, this should be the early 21st century. The location is hard to say, there are many German-speaking regions," Honghu said. "Since the language and writing are both incomprehensible, and we don't have the local currency, it's really difficult to know too much without breaking the law or resorting to violence."

Feng Bujue was the last to speak. "I borrowed some change and his cell phone from a young man in his twenties. I tried 110, 119, 120, 114, 10086, and many other numbers, but none of them went through." He paused for a moment. "After that, I used the change to buy some snacks at a convenience store." He patted his bulging pocket. "If you guys want to eat something…"

"Hey! That's not the point!" Qiu Feng interrupted him. "Since you understand German, you should have asked him some useful information, such as the specific era and location of the script, whether he's heard of 'Detective Club,' etc."

"Who said I understand German?" Feng Bujue said.

"Huh?" Ji Chang said, "Then how did you borrow… wait…" He seemed to understand. "You didn't…"

"I stopped the young man and tried to communicate with him in Chinese and English, but I failed," Feng Bujue said calmly. "So I picked up a brick and grabbed his collar and said two sentences in German, namely 'Qi si ou lei' and 'Fang ai zan dou zhazha', and then he gave me his cell phone and wallet." (These are transliterations of Mandarin phrases meaning "You are trying to piss me off", and "Get out of my way, all of you scumbags".)

"God…" Honghu shook his head with one hand covering his face.

Qiu Feng's mouth twitched. "Isn't that just robbery…"

"Alas… the brick is the international language," Ji Chang sighed.

Honghu added, "Let's just go into the building… If the police come, it'll escalate…"

Feng Bujue shrugged expressionlessly. "Okay."