Chapter 16 Update

【Side Quest Progress Updated】

【Deliver all letters before midnight, current progress 2/13】

The system voice sounded in due course, and the content in the taskbar also changed accordingly.

"Damn it..." The second homeowner's reaction was exactly the same as the first. He sullenly took the letter and turned to slam the door.

Jue Ge was quick to spot this, and swiftly stuck the toe of his shoe into the crack of the door. He also grabbed the door handle from the outside, preemptively saying, "Hold on, I have one more question."

"What?" the homeowner replied impatiently.

"Do you... have any relatives in this town?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Huh?" the homeowner replied in a very strange tone. "Why do you ask?" He paused for half a second, then continued, "I have no relatives, not a single one."

With that, he didn't even close the door, but turned and walked away.

"Hey! Hey!" Feng Bujue shouted twice more, but the other party completely ignored him. Judging from the sound of his footsteps... the guy seemed to have gone upstairs.

Afterward, Jue Ge tried to break in, but the door gap was too narrow, and the chain lock inside was too strong... After trying for three minutes, he had to give up.

"There's a problem..." Feng Bujue muttered as he returned to his bicycle, "There's definitely a problem..." He pedaled forward, his mind racing. "How do I feel like this guy and the first homeowner are the same person... Could it be that after this guy received my letter at Number 3, First Avenue, he went to Number 9, Second Avenue, to impersonate the second homeowner?" He shook his head slightly. "Hmm... that doesn't seem likely. I'm riding pretty fast, and I'm taking the shortest route. Even if he had a motorcycle, or a horse... it would be tight for him to get around me and arrive in advance. Unless... there's an underground tunnel between those two houses, and there's some kind of transportation inside that's faster than a bicycle, he couldn't do it."

Thinking of this, he roughly reviewed the plot and soundtrack of the classic film *Tunnel Warfare* in his mind, and then... overturned the above hypothesis.

"Hmm... even if they aren't the same person, they must be connected." Feng Bujue then thought, "Although I didn't see his face clearly, everything from his voice and figure to his tone of voice shows that these two are extremely similar..." He carefully recalled his conversation with the second homeowner. "But judging from the performance of Fatty Number Two (this was naturally a temporary code name Jue Ge gave the NPC), he doesn't seem to be lying. At least he himself believes... that he has no other relatives in town."

Jue Ge raised a hand and scratched his head. "Could it be because... decades ago... Fatty Number One's dad often visited Fatty Number Two's house? Or Fatty Number Two's dad often visited Fatty Number One's house? Or Fatty Number One's mom often..." He shrugged and stopped this meaningless speculation. "Hmm... actually, these situations seem to fall into the same category..." After realizing this, he added, "Then for the time being, I'll keep the possibility that they're brothers, and think about other hypotheses..."

And so, he thought as he rode...

About five minutes later, Jue Ge's eyes sharpened, and he smiled. "Got it!"

The next second, he muttered in a low voice, "Clones..."

As the saying goes, "The mentally ill have broad thinking," and although Jue Ge wasn't exactly ill, his mind was indeed different from ordinary people, and his thinking... could be said to have broken through the sky.

"That's right... it makes sense if you think of it that way." Feng Bujue said with considerable confidence, "That sentence 'not a single relative' can also be explained by this conclusion."

As he was thinking, he happened to arrive at the address of the recipient of the third letter: 【Number 7, Third Avenue.】

This was another two-story house. There was no mailbox in front of the house, and the lawn was yellow. The structure and style of the house were exactly the same as the previous two.

Tap, tap, tap—

"Open the door, open the door, open the door!" This time, Jue Ge simply skipped the "Is anyone home?" question. He directly slapped the door panel and shouted for someone to come out and open it, as if he were there to ransack the place.

Soon, there was movement inside again.

Second floor, fatty, slippers... you know.

A little over a minute later, the door opened a crack, and a fat figure stood in the shadows, asking impatiently, "Who are you looking for?"

"Mailman." Feng Bujue said coldly, squinting his eyes, "Delivering a letter." He held up his ID in front of the other party, and then handed over the envelope. "Let me guess... you don't want to receive it, do you?"

Fatty Number Three was stunned for a few seconds, then nodded like a rattle-drum. "Yeah, yeah! Don't want it!"

"Do I have to give your instruction code before you'll receive it?" Feng Bujue drawled, staring with dead fish eyes.

"Uh... yes," Fatty Number Three replied.

"Ah..." Jue Ge sighed. "Let me confirm... how many digits is your code?"

"Th... three digits," Fatty Number Three answered reluctantly.

"Damn it..." Feng Bujue cursed fiercely, then thought to himself, "Three digits... guessing it isn't impossible. If I'm unlucky, I'll just have to recite eight hundred or so numbers, and I can definitely finish in fifteen minutes... but according to this trend, the codes afterward might be even longer... What if I get a seven-digit number later? Even if I recited it as fast as I could, I wouldn't finish by nightfall..."

"Do... do you even know the code?" Fatty Number Three asked when he saw the difficulty on Jue Ge's face. "If you don't know it, go back!"

"Hmm..." Feng Bujue thought for two seconds, and replied, "Suppose... please note, this is just a hypothesis, suppose I don't know it, then... where should I go to get your instruction code?"

"Only the Ghost Mailman knows everyone's instruction code," Fatty Number Three replied.

"What?" Jue Ge paused for half a second, then said, "Are you... are you trying to screw me over?"

"What makes you say that?" Fatty Number Three retorted.

"You should know... if you talk to the Ghost Mailman, he'll attack you with a 'soul shock'," Feng Bujue said.

"Yes," Fatty Number Three replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "That's why everyone writes him letters." He paused. "Who would be stupid enough to talk to him?"

"You just wait, you fatso..." The next second, Feng Bujue turned around and left, muttering curses under his breath.

Combining the information in the "Work Manual," Fatty Number Three's answer should be credible. At this point, Jue Ge finally realized... that this side quest was far from as simple as it looked. Whether he could complete it before midnight depended on the progress he made next...