“Brother Jue… that’s too disgusting,” Wang Tanzhi said.

“What’s disgusting?” Feng Bujue asked back as he headed for the corpse.

“It’s disgusting in thought and action!” Wang Tanzhi shouted, “You can’t just assume the reward isn’t enough and mess around…”

“Mess around?” Feng Bujue said, “If there’s shit or an Alien in there, that’s messing around.” He had already squatted down in front of the second corpse, “If there’s nothing in there, it only proves my reasoning was wrong, that doesn’t count as messing around. But if there is something…” As he spoke, his hand was already reaching into the hideous wound on the corpse’s abdomen, nonchalantly feeling around in the bulging belly.

“Brother Wang… tell me quietly, what does Brother Feng do in real life…” Long Aomin was so frightened by his teammate that his scare value fluctuated.

“Novelist…” Wang Tanzhi replied with a blank expression.

“Novelists are that scary?” the lonely girl beside him heard and couldn’t help but interject.

“Clearly… he’s not mainstream,” Wang Tanzhi added.

“Ha!” Feng Bujue’s laugh startled the other four.

“Look!” Feng Bujue said triumphantly, holding up something in his hand. He had actually found equipment from the bloody, shit-filled corpse, and it was even of excellent quality…

[Name: Eye of Hatred]

[Type: Armor]

[Quality: Excellent]

[Defense: None]

[Attribute: None]

[Effect: Instantly reveals the monster’s aggro target]

[Equipment Requirement: Character level 20 or below, un-tradable after pickup]

[Can be brought out of this scenario: Yes]

[Remark: Since you found this item, it clearly belongs to you. These goggles were made by a necromancer who had many enemies and wanted to use them to discern the murderous intent of others in a crowd. Unfortunately, this thing can only observe one target at a time… When he was alive, he carved a line of small words on the top of the goggles – When you look at me, I am also looking at you.]

The equipment looked a lot like the goggles that pilots often wore during World War II. The only problem was that it came out of a dead body’s stomach, which was really disgusting…

“I knew it, all the clues in this police station are too obvious. There isn’t a single person in the whole city, but there are corpses here. The other two corpses have items that must be there. This corpse seems optional, but if you could only find a police baton on him, then the system wouldn’t need to put such a memorable corpse here. It would just hide the baton in some corner.”

“Okay, okay… you’re ruthless…” Wang Tanzhi said, “Time is short, can we leave now? We’ve recovered and searched enough, and the teammates have been startled by you.”

…………

After leaving the police station, the five continued to walk down the street. Exploring the police station allowed them to complete one of the tasks that might have been needed later in advance, and they also obtained a lot of useful items. Originally, the morale of the team should have been improved… but Feng Bujue’s strangeness was gradually noticed, and the fear he brought to his companions was probably deeper than the game could bring.

No matter how terrifying the scary tricks in the game are, even if they scare people into disconnecting, everyone knows that it’s just fake. But if Feng Bujue’s behavior further develops and escalates… that’s unimaginable. He’s a real player in reality, people get scared just thinking about it…

“Look ahead!” After walking for about ten minutes, Long Aomin stopped and pointed forward.

Everyone looked ahead and saw a plaza, a very open plaza covered with pebbles. In the very center, there was a huge door, more than ten meters high and about four meters wide. One side of the door was shrouded in a black, misty haze, while the other side was open.

As the five approached the door, the system prompt sounded again: [Current mission completed, main mission updated]

Opening the menu bar to check, the previous task [Search the city and find the Demon Gate.] had a check mark next to it, and two new tasks had been added below: [Find the Fire Key in the police station on East Ninth Street] and [Find the Wood Key in the shopping center on South Fifteenth Street]. The first task was checked off on the right the moment it appeared.

After Feng Bujue looked at the taskbar, he strode to the front of the gate, stared up at the door for a few seconds, and said, “I see… it seems it’s not too坑爹, three of the five magic arrays are lit, which means that the Gold, Water, and Earth keys don’t need to be found. They have been on the door maintaining the seal.” (坑爹 - keng die - a slang term expressing disappointment or disapproval)

Wang Tanzhi and the others also came over and looked in the direction of Feng Bujue’s gaze. The open door was filled with dense darkness, making one feel that even a strong light could not penetrate it. In the area of the door frame, near the top, there were five magic arrays of different colors, arranged in the five-pointed position of a pentagram. All five arrays were painted with obscure and difficult-to-understand divine patterns, and three of them were currently lit.

Feng Bujue took out the Fire Key, placed it on his palm, raised his arm, and approached the door, but after waiting for a while, there was no reaction. He put the key away again and said, “Hmm… I guess we have to wait until both keys are collected, and the next task is updated, before it tells us how to restore the seal.” He paused for a moment, “Time is of the essence. The time interval between the first and second darkness descents was about thirty minutes. Now it’s been eighteen minutes since the second darkness passed. If the interval is the same each time, then we’d better get to that shopping center within twelve minutes, and kill the monsters there, otherwise…”

Hearing this, Long Aomin took the lead and rushed out, “Quick! Follow me!” Although he didn’t have deep thoughts, he could still infer things about what was immediately in front of him. If they encountered reinforced monsters again, he would undoubtedly be the one to go up and fight to the death. He was already scared by the blood corpse, and he didn’t want to get his lunch box at this stage. (领便当 - ling biandang - slang for "to die")

Under the leadership of Brother Long, the five jogged all the way south. There was a city map in the plaza where the Demon Gate was located, and there were signs and street names in all directions, so Feng Bujue didn’t need to point the way. Long Aomin quickly found the location of South Fifteenth Street.

They ran a kilometer in five minutes. This was not a long distance, and basically anyone with normal physical fitness in real life could complete this task, but after running, they would have to pant for at least two minutes to recover.

“There’s actually electricity…” Long Aomin was obviously the type who could run a marathon in real life, and a kilometer was like child's play for him.

Here, a new concept must be mentioned – “Non-explicit Attributes.”

This is an attribute that is ubiquitous and cannot be completely quantified even in a virtual world. Taking Long Aomin as an example, as a player with relatively strong physical fitness in reality, there is a difference in the consumption after he and other players complete the same thing. Comparing him with the lonely girl, who has the worst physical strength here, Long Aomin consumes less physical energy after running this distance. Although it’s only a difference of about ten points, this subtle difference exists even in the later stages of the game.

In other words, if the upper limit of physical energy is the same, and they continue to run at the same speed until they are exhausted, then Long Aomin can run farther than the lonely girl. This is the so-called non-explicit attribute difference.

For another example, if you compare someone who knows how to use a gun in reality with someone who has never touched a gun in reality, and both of them have trained their marksmanship specialization to A level (Specialization Level A: Proficient, there is a chance to comprehend this skill on your own, when you reach this level, the success rate of this skill is 100%), and they use the same skill to shoot the same target, then the damage and accuracy of the person who knows how to use a gun in reality may be slightly higher, of course, this is a little bit that players themselves are difficult to detect, only the system knows exactly how much the difference is.

As the game progresses and the player’s comprehensive ability becomes stronger and stronger, after level thirty, they will be close to the level of walking on walls and punching like the wind in The Matrix. At that time, the difference in non-explicit attributes will become more and more difficult to detect. If you have to define this setting, it is to turn "talent" into a resource and give players certain benefits.

“Like the previous police station, it seems that places related to the main mission will have things that other places don’t have, such as lights and corpses,” Feng Bujue said.

“What do we do next? Wait for the monsters to rush out and attack us?” Wang Tanzhi asked.

“How could the system be so boring? Using the same performance technique every time,” Feng Bujue replied, “Let’s go in. Don’t expect another blood corpse to break through the wall here. There must be some other monster inside…”

He took the lead and walked towards the door. It was a large glass door that slid open to both sides. It was constantly open at this time, and Feng Bujue strode in.

The shopping center occupies a huge area, and it is difficult to estimate how many acres it occupies with the naked eye. The lights inside are very bright, and all electrical equipment such as elevators, escalators, and even vending machines are operating normally. However, many shelves have been damaged to a certain extent.

There are five floors in the main building alone, with two four-sided transparent cylindrical elevators for going up and down. Each floor has escalators, and the fire escape does not seem to be blocked, so there should be ordinary stairs inside.

After entering from the main entrance, there is a large supermarket that cannot be seen to the end. There are as many as thirty scanning cash registers, lined up like a neat team, forming a wall. There are a large number of other shops on each floor, clothing, catering, KTV, billiard rooms, etc… If there is enough time, players would be letting themselves down if they didn’t search this place thoroughly.

Without saying a word, Feng Bujue first stood in front of the sign at the door and quickly scanned what each floor mainly sold. But because this is a shopping center, it basically has everything, which instead has a confusing effect.

“Where could the Wood Key be… the furniture store? The toy store?” Loneliness also offered ideas anxiously.

If there were five Feng Bujues in this team, they would probably each take over a floor and start a "three lights" operation. But the problem is, there is only one Feng Bujue in this team, and there is only one Feng Bujue in this world. There is no point in acting separately. Not only will they not get the maximum benefit, but it may also cause danger. (三光行动 - san guang xingdong - literally "three lights action," meaning to loot everything)

Just as Feng Bujue was thinking about a plan, suddenly, everyone felt the ground under their feet shake, and another change occurred.

Boom—Boom—Boom—

A series of impacts came from underground. A piece of ground tens of meters away from them gradually bulged, forming a volcano-like shape. The tiles on the ground shattered and splashed, and the surrounding shelves were knocked apart. After being hit like this for seven or eight times, finally, a monster burst out of the ground and appeared in front of everyone.

“I bet five mao that killing it will find the key,” Feng Bujue said, looking at “that big tree.” (五毛钱 - wu mao qian - slang for "something cheap/worthless")

Half of the monster’s “body” was still buried in the soil. What was shown outside was a charred tree trunk more than two meters in diameter, with branches that spread out like withered claws at the top. There was not a single leaf, and there were things like facial features on the tree trunk, of course, they were also made of wood.

Long Aomin was in no mood to joke. He said, “I see that this guy can’t move. Even if the branches on top can be used as hands, the range of control is not large. As long as you stick to it, avoid its mouth, and go around to the back, that’s its blind spot for attack.”

While listening to him, Feng Bujue slowly took out the [Eye of Hatred] from his luggage and put it on. Items will become clean after being put into and taken out of the luggage. Even weapons covered in blood and minced meat can be restored to normal as long as they go in and out of the super-dimensional pocket of the luggage. So the goggles Feng Bujue was wearing now had no odor or foreign objects, but others would immediately think of…

“Hmm… let me see… its current target is…” Feng Bujue’s expression changed before he could finish speaking, and then he gradually raised his head, turned around, and looked at the edge of a handrail on the fifth floor of the mall.

That happened to be a blind spot of light. On the edge of the handrail, a humanoid black shadow was squatting. When Feng Bujue and the others raised their heads and turned around, it seemed to know that it had been discovered. It took the opportunity to spread a pair of bat wings, swooped down along the wall, and rushed towards the ground at high speed.

“What’s the situation? Batman?” Wang Tanzhi said.

“I personally prefer something like a demon… lie down!” Feng Bujue suddenly shouted loudly, and he was the first to hug his head and fall to the ground.

At this moment, Feng Bujue had already realized that the monster’s aggro target was not any of them, but the black tree monster that had drilled out of the ground.

Sure enough, the demon changed direction at the height where it was about to hit the ground, turned an arc, continued to accelerate, and flew straight towards the tree monster. The tree monster opened its mouth wide and let out a deep, horn-like roar.

The sound wave was substantial, stirring up a gust of wind, and the five people lying on the ground instinctively covered their ears. But for the demon that was flying towards it, the sound seemed to be nothing. The demon also opened its mouth with its fangs, and let out a roar while continuing to fly forward.

This was a shrill roar, sharp and extremely penetrating, like fingernails scratching glass, making people’s internal organs go numb. The two monsters, one a bass and the other a soprano, echoed each other, but did not bring a pleasant enjoyment, but brought painful torture.
Hu Die Lan