Chapter 11 Tree House

It was nearing noon in the tree house.

"Wow~ You're much more amazing than I thought, wang..." Sean scratched his head, looking at Xiao Tan and saying, "...You were too modest before. In my opinion, you're practically an expert on monsters."

"I'm okay..." Xiao Tan replied absently.

At this moment, he had been chatting with these two little brats, Sean and Horace, for a long time. The so-called "monster test" was actually just a knowledge quiz about monsters. For a player like Xiao Tan who had been in Thriller Paradise for a long time, these questions were naturally without difficulty.

"Speaking of... can chatting with these two little ghosts really help with the competition..." Since he hadn't gained any definite benefits or received any system prompts, Xiao Tan was already suspecting whether what he was doing was useless.

"I told you, right! Sean." Horace chimed in from the side, "Now wang can join our club, right?"

"Of course." Sean said, "Let him be our consultant."

"Haha... that's really great..." Xiao Tan didn't want to dampen the children's enthusiasm, so he forced a smile and then said, "Well... I think it's almost noon, I..."

Just as Xiao Tan was planning to sneak away on the grounds that "my mom told me to go home for lunch," Sean suddenly thought of something and interrupted, "Right! I have something to show you guys."

As he spoke, he climbed to a corner of the tree house and rummaged through a pile of junk.

Seeing this scene, Xiao Tan swallowed back what he wanted to say and waited to see what happened.

"Oh, here it is." After a while, Sean came back with a book.

It was a rather thick book, with a leather cover and a yellowish-brown overall appearance, indicating that it was quite old.

"The other day, my mom went to Jane Boggs' garage auction and bought this book for me." Sean showed the cover of the book to his two little friends with a mysterious expression, "Look who the author is."

"Um... this is..." Xiao Tan had just seen the words on the cover clearly.

Horace on the side had already shouted, "Oh my god! It's Van Helsing! Where did the Boggses get it?"

"My mom said they found it in the old house on Dark Creek Road." Sean replied.

Xiao Tan thought for a moment and said, "Um... can I take a look?"

"Of course..." Sean said the first half of the sentence, directly handing the book to Xiao Tan, and then said the second half, "...if you can understand it."

Xiao Tan took the book, looked down, and blurted out, "German?"

"Yeah." Sean shrugged. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have left the book here without looking at it."

"Um..." Xiao Tan thought to himself, "I don't understand German... and the system's translation function hasn't translated the words on this book, so it can be seen..."

"Sean, Horace." Xiao Tan thought for a moment and asked, "Do you know anyone nearby who understands German?"

Sean and Horace looked at each other. After a few seconds, Horace swallowed and replied, "There is... but that person..."

"What's wrong?" Xiao Tan asked suspiciously, "Is that person not very friendly?"

"We call him 'Creepy German Guy.'" Sean took over, "He looks about sixty years old, lives alone in that unit in the northwest corner of the community, no one has ever seen him leave the house, and no one has ever seen what the inside looks like..." His tone was like describing a monster, not a person, "It is said that he is a German spy, or maybe a vampire."

"I think he's just a foreign empty-nest old man..." Xiao Tan couldn't help but complain.

"What did you say?" Sean and Horace didn't seem to get the meaning of the sentence.

"Hehe... it's nothing." Xiao Tan quickly steered the topic to the main business and continued, "If you don't mind, how about going with me to visit that 'Creepy German Guy'?"

…………

It was nearing noon. On a small road in the city, an ambulance was driving steadily.

The driver was a blond young man in his twenties. He was wearing a blue uniform and was wearing headphones while driving, listening to slightly noisy music.

Perhaps because this trip was just to transport a corpse, he was the only one in the car.

And lying in the back of the ambulance was the man who called himself a "werewolf" who had been shot dead in the police station earlier.

"What's going on?" The blond young man drove the car to the middle of the small road and found that the road ahead was blocked by an old brown Ford.

Because this road was relatively narrow, blocking the car in the middle of the road like this would basically block the vehicles in both directions. Unless the driver was willing to risk scratching the bottom of the car and driving onto the shoulder of the road, it would not be possible to pass.

"Hey! What are you doing? Buddy." The blond young man had no choice but to stop the ambulance, stick his head out of the window, and shout at the car.

The next second, a pale face appeared in the window next to the driver's seat of the obstructing car...

…………

On the other hand, on a tree-lined road in the community.

"There are two of them, we can't be careless..." Tanlang squatted behind the green belt on the side of the road and said.

"I'm not being careless." Pojun hid behind a big tree one meter away from his teammate and replied, "In this kind of encounter, isn't it the most stable routine to test the waters with shooting skills first?"

At this time, behind a low wall across the tree-lined road.

"Fortunately, the players' abilities in this script are limited..." Xiao Ling muttered while treating the wound on her arm, "Otherwise, that shot just now might have killed me..."

"But..." Ruoyu, who was standing next to her, continued, "...we have already been taken the initiative by the other party, so we must be careful not to let the other party expand their advantage."

"It's okay." Xiao Ling had already restored the wound at this time, and confidently and murderously replied, "I don't believe it, can he still play sniper better than me?"

…………

Dark Creek Road, "Old House."

This road is located in the suburbs, and the surrounding area is almost like a desolate wilderness.

The whirling shadows of trees and miles of swamps surrounded the "Old House", adding to the eerie feeling of this already old house.

At noon on this day, a dark car slowly drove to the front of the old house... and stopped.

Soon, an adult man walked out of the driver's seat.

He looked like he was in his thirties or forties, wearing a cheap suit that didn't fit well. Although he tried to tidy up his hair and beard, he still couldn't hide the sloppiness revealed by his long hair and stubble.

"Come on, Mr. F, we're here." After Hill got out of the car, he turned around and walked to the back seat, opening the car door for Jue Ge with a very unhappy attitude.

"Hehe... you are a qualified driver, Mr. Hill." Feng Bujue didn't mind the other party's attitude. He even joked easily when he got out of the car, "Sorry I don't have any spare money to tip you."

"Hmph... that's a pity." Hill replied with a smile that wasn't a smile, using sarcasm to respond to Jue Ge's provocative joke.

"Okay..." After Feng Bujue got out of the car and stood still, he immediately issued an order to Hill, "Let's continue to move forward." At this point, he raised his finger and pointed to the old house more than ten meters away.

"What do you want to do coming to this place?" Hill glanced at the house and then said with a suspicious tone, "This house has been abandoned for many years, and there are rumors that it is haunted."

"Hehe... haunted." Feng Bujue repeated the two words and smiled, "Let me give you another lesson, Mr. Hill..." While speaking, he had already walked in front of Hill and made a gesture to signal the other party to follow, "All houses that claim to be 'haunted' usually have one of the following two characteristics—one, the house is indeed haunted; two, there is some major secret hidden inside, so someone has to spread rumors about 'haunting' so that people stay away from this place."

"You mean..." Hill continued, "This house belongs to the second situation?"

"This..." Feng Bujue turned his head and shrugged, "Heh... actually, I personally think... this house in front of us has both situations."

"Then you go in by yourself, I'll wait for you here." Hill immediately replied.

"Oyster." Before the other party finished speaking, a strange word suddenly popped out of Feng Bujue's mouth.

"Ah—" And Hill's reaction to hearing this word was not much different from hearing "taro."

Along with the screams, Hill's body began to convulse from the vest, until this effect spread throughout his body, it didn't even take two seconds, and in these two seconds, he had already fallen down due to pain.

"Why... why... say oys..." After Hill calmed down, he wanted to ask Feng Bujue what was going on, but when the words came to his mouth, he realized... it was better not to say the word "oyster."

"Heh... did you think I would only set one keyword?" Feng Bujue said, "I'm telling you, the lexicon of this chip is very extensive... there are more than forty such nouns that can make you feel ecstatic."

"You're simply a demon!" Hill roared angrily and unwillingly at Jue Ge.

"Whatever you say." Feng Bujue replied indifferently, then snapped his fingers and pointed to the door in front, saying, "Now, if you don't want to further understand which lines will make you uncomfortable, then please come and open the door."

Faced with naked intimidation, Hill could only quickly get up from the ground, pat the dust off his body, and then walked to the front of the old house.

"I hope you can keep your promise after this is over... and take out this damn chip." Hill murmured when he walked to Feng Bujue's side.

"Don't worry, that thing is more valuable than your life." When Jue Ge spoke of such ugly facts, he had a mocking tone.

Glulu—Glulu—

Hill, who had walked to the front of the door, twisted the doorknob a few times, and then turned to look at Jue Ge and said, "It's locked."

"So what?" Feng Bujue said, "Do I still have to teach you how to break into an empty house?"

He asked this question because... when stealing a car (obviously, the means of transportation that Feng Bujue and Hill were riding in was stolen), Hill showed all kinds of amateur qualities, and finally completed it under Feng Bujue's careful guidance.

"I can't pick locks!" After hearing Jue Ge's rhetorical question, Hill shouted back, "What else do you want me to do? Break the door panel?"

"You can try it." Feng Bujue replied immediately.

"I..." Hill wanted to retort, but he quickly noticed a trace of impatience flashing across Jue Ge's dead fish-eyed face, "Okay! I'll try, don't mess around!"

The pain caused by the chip... was undoubtedly more unbearable than a dislocated shoulder or a fracture, so Hill could only do as the other party said.

Bang—

The first hit caused the door panel to make a muffled sound.

Bang bang—bang bang bang...

Then there was a series of sounds, recording the frequency of Hill's attack on the door panel.

Just like that, after about a dozen hits, finally...

With a "crack," Hill's shoulder-aimed position was forced to create a small hole.

"See, this kind of thing... how do you know you will fail if you don't try it?" Feng Bujue said in a tone like a life mentor guiding a student.

Hill snorted coldly and didn't answer. He just silently reached into the hole he had made, then bent his arm and opened the lock from the inside.

A few seconds later, the door of the "Old House"... was opened just like that.

At the moment when the door opened, a gloomy, indescribable invisible pressure poured out from the door, scaring Hill to take a few steps back instinctively.

"Are you sure you want to go in?" Hill was the first time experiencing this kind of fear of being surrounded by darkness in broad daylight, and he wanted to back down extremely.

"Nonsense, otherwise what am I here for?" Feng Bujue appeared unusually calm; while speaking, he had already taken out the [Composite Anti-Gravity Launcher] from his baggage and turned on the switch of the searchlight, "Considering that the lighting inside this house is not very good, so... when you are scouting the road ahead, I will help you illuminate it, don't worry."

When he heard the words "scouting the road," Hill's spine turned cold. He swallowed, turned to look at Jue Ge, and asked tremblingly, "Are you sure you need me to scout the road? I mean..." He looked at Jue Ge with almost pleading eyes, "...I think you can handle this matter completely yourself..."

"Yes, I can." Feng Bujue replied coldly, "But since there is a cannon fodder, why shouldn't I use it?"