Chapter 1 Bloody Dawn

Not long after Li Ang left the automated pet feeder, he heard the long-awaited system notification.

Task trigger conditions met.

Task Type: Scripted Task (Single Player)

Task Name: Wan Jia Xiong Meng

Phase One Task Objective: Investigate the cause of death of Eileen Raphael.

Task Time Limit: 1 hour

Task Reward 1: 100 Experience Points

Task Reward 2: 100 Game Coins

Task Failure Penalty: Erasure

Teleportation in 5 minutes. Teleport now?

"Hmm?"

Li Ang raised an eyebrow. "Another single-player scripted task...

The task name is cryptic.

The task objective is to investigate someone's cause of death, and there's a 'Phase One' designation—meaning uncovering the cause of death will trigger the next task objective.

The time limit is 1 hour, and the rewards aren't particularly generous—indicating the first phase won't be too difficult..."

His mind raced, but his movements didn't stop for a moment. He and Miss Chai quickly packed up all the equipment and waited quietly in the living room for the teleport to arrive.

When the time limit was up and he opened his eyes again, Li Ang found himself sitting in an unstarted sedan, his hand on the steering wheel on the left side of the vehicle.

It was late at night. The sedan was parked quietly on the side of the street, enveloped in the circular arc of the streetlight, like a character entering a theatrical stage.

To the left of the street was a neatly maintained public lawn, and to the right was a row of small villas painted red.

Each villa had a yard with a lawn, and the yards were separated from each other by shrubs and wooden planks. Some villas even had large trees (with children's playhouses) and family swimming pools in their yards.

"This is...a community?"

Li Ang raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Is the setting for this mission world in Europe and America?"

The term "community" refers to a close-knit, mutually supportive, and humane social group composed of people with similar backgrounds.

American community culture is generally centered on the church, with faith as the bond, and the connections between neighbors are stronger than the concept of a "residential area"—

Good communities will elect a HOA homeowners association, similar to a street committee but with more power, responsible for selecting efficient property management companies, organizing regular community activities, and even hiring security teams or forming patrol teams composed of community homeowners to protect residents' safety.

"The public lawn is well-maintained, the houses are generally three-story villas, luxuriously decorated, and the occupancy rate is high. Each household's yard is also maintained with great care."

Li Ang glanced out the car window. "At the very least, it's an upscale middle-class community..."

On the surface, there shouldn't be any hidden dangers within this upscale community, but Li Ang still had to determine whether this was the real world,

and if not, how different the world's background was from the present.

He pulled out the car key still hanging under the steering wheel and looked at the tag on the keychain.

"Toyota sedan, cheap, inexpensive, low maintenance costs."

Although the car was clean and there was a fragrance of cleaning fluid in the air, the interior still showed that the car was a bit old.

"What is 'I,' driving a cheap sedan, doing in an upscale community?"

Li Ang muttered, "In any case, let's first figure out who I'm playing."

He reached out and adjusted the car's rearview mirror, using the streetlight above to see what he looked like now.

"Holy crap?!"

In the mirror, Li Ang was now a Caucasian woman in her fifties, with fluffy, shoulder-length brown hair, a round face, average looks, deep wrinkles, and overweight. She was wearing a loose red short-sleeved shirt and jeans, and cheap sneakers on her feet.

She resembled Susan Boyle.

"What the hell? Is this me?"

Li Ang felt himself suffocating slightly. He watched the elderly Caucasian woman in the rearview mirror making the same astonished expression as him, and felt a pain in his chrysanthemum.

"Hahahahahahahahaha."

Miss Chai, hiding inside Li Ang's body, finally couldn't help but burst out of his chest, laughing wildly.

"Shh, keep your voice down."

Li Ang stared with dead fish eyes and looked at Miss Chai in front of his chest. "You knew all along, didn't you..."

Miss Chai grinned silently.

From the beginning, she had noticed the appearance of the character Li Ang was playing, but she didn't say anything because she really wanted to see Li Ang's ghostly expression.

"Morbid sense of humor."

Li Ang shook his head helplessly and reached out to push Miss Chai's head back into his chest.

This time, the mission didn't impose any restrictions. Li Ang could use skills, equipment, and items at will while wearing the appearance of this elderly Caucasian woman.

He opened the small compartment in front of the passenger seat, flipped open the sun visor above, and searched around, finding a cell phone, wallet, a hand qiang in a plastic bag, and a bunch of documents including a driver's license.

The cell phone was an old model without fingerprint unlocking, and Li Ang had no idea what the four-digit password was, so he could only put it in his pocket.

"This isn't the real world, but the background setting is very similar to America in the real world."

Li Ang quickly said as he flipped through the documents he found: "The name of the old woman I'm playing is Katherine Raphael, fifty-two years old, a nurse working in a hospital, earning a meager salary and barely making ends meet, living in the southern suburbs of Frankfurt.

Eileen Raphael, the target of the mission, is Katherine's daughter."

He pulled out a few photos. There were photos of Eileen in a Western dress when she was a child, photos of Eileen participating in beauty pageants, Eileen's high school graduation photos, college graduation photos, and photos of the two of them traveling together.

"The relationship between mother and daughter is harmonious and friendly, but there are no photos of the father..."

Li Ang raised his hand and looked at the palm, back of his hand, and fingers in the rearview mirror.

"There are no traces of a ring on the ring finger of the left hand. There are three possibilities to explain this.

One is that the father betrayed the marriage very early, abandoned his wife and children, ran away, or divorced peacefully.

Two, he is no longer in this world.

Three, Katherine was quite promiscuous when she was young and didn't know who the child's father was."

Li Ang paused and looked at Katherine's average looks in the mirror. "Considering everything, the first possibility is still the highest.

So, the current situation is that Eileen Raphael died strangely, and Li Ang, playing her mother Katherine Raphael, must find out the truth about her death.

The question is, why isn't Katherine going to the Frankfurt police station, and what is she doing in this upscale community?

And with a hand qiang..."

He took out the plastic bag containing the hand qiang. Inside were ropes for tying, two dànjia, two boxes of bullets, and a supermarket receipt.

"The purchase time on the receipt shows 5 PM on August 8th, and the location is Walter's Supermarket.

The current time displayed on the phone is 11 PM on August 8th."

Li Ang flipped through the documents again and found a Frankfurt map book the size of his palm.

When he opened the map book, a withered yellow leaf fell out. On the page of the map where the leaf was, a small circle was drawn with red paint, and next to the circle, in messy handwriting, was a name: George Carter.

"Combining the shapes of the surrounding roads, the area circled on the map is the area where this car is parked."

Li Ang raised his head and looked at a villa in front of the road. "And George Carter's house is right there."