Chapter 11 The Truth Revealed

“Oh… I see.” Feng Bujue looked at the few strands of golden hair between his fingers, and many questions were answered at that moment. “From my subjective perspective, I am still myself…” He stretched out his hand, looking at his sleeves and palms. His attire was undoubtedly still the Joker look from the game, his skin was yellow, and he could vaguely see his black hair when he looked up.

He observed the strands of hair under the magnifying glass. “But… from the objective perspective of this scenario world, I should be someone else. When the hair leaves the whole that is the body, I can see its true appearance.” He placed the hair on the desk and took out a small wooden comb from his pocket, examining the remaining hair on it with the magnifying glass. “Hmm… the color, length, and texture are all similar.”

Feng Bujue pondered for more than a minute. “Wait… I only combed my hair twice at the start of the scenario. Unless this character has severe hair loss, there shouldn’t be so many strands of hair on this comb.” Thinking of this, he grabbed his hair a few times, this time using a little more force.

Unexpectedly, when he brought his hand back to his eyes, he saw a large clump of hair, one tuft of which was still attached to a small piece of bloody scalp.

“Holy crap…” Feng Bujue quickly opened the menu to check, thankfully his survival value hadn’t decreased as a result. He felt carefully, but didn’t feel any particularly severe pain on his scalp.

“Okay, okay, okay… calm down… calm down…” he muttered nervously, as he seemed to consider hair loss to be an extremely serious situation.

He threw away the hair he had pulled out, calmed his emotions, and then he realized something else. “Speaking of which… up until now, I haven’t found anything resembling a mirror at all. Is the system trying to prevent me from seeing what ‘I’ look like…?”

Feng Bujue’s gaze fell on the photo again. “Assuming that the little devil on the left is the little guy who dragged me in the opening CG, and the other little devil is the person I’m playing, what exactly led them to this point…” As he thought, he flipped the photo over.

On the back of the photo, there was a line of handwritten text: “Arthur and Andrew, my children, my love.”

“Oh, so these two kids are brothers…” Feng Bujue thought. “Wait… Arthur and Andrew…” He picked up the small wooden comb again, his gaze lingering on the A.A engraving. “Arthur and Andrew?” He stroked his chin and pondered, “I knew it was a limited edition, heh…”

For the next ten minutes or so, Feng Bujue read *Alchemy Advanced* with great interest.

Opening the dark blue cover, the first thing that caught his eye was this passage: “After studying *Alchemy Basics*, you may think that the pinnacle of this skill is to turn metal into gold, or to create some kind of elixir to prolong life.

This book will tell you that such ideas are extremely foolish.

Alchemy is a sacred technique that makes humans equal to gods. Those vulgar people whose minds are filled with money and immortality will never be able to touch the realm of the gods.”

Although the wording and context of this passage were sarcastic and cautionary, Feng Bujue was not at all disgusted by it. These words undoubtedly exuded an aura of noble aloofness, and this kind of temperament was most likely to arouse Feng Bujue’s enthusiasm for research.

Unfortunately, Feng Bujue only finished reading the table of contents and the first chapter. The second chapter and the content after that were all in a blurry, shielded state… And Feng Bujue couldn’t fully understand the content of the first chapter, probably because he hadn’t read *Alchemy Basics*, so he had no idea about many of the nouns in the first chapter.

“You need at least a high school level of chemistry, and at the same time, you need to master a lot of knowledge about the so-called ‘material philosophization’ in order to complete the three steps of ‘understanding, decomposition, and reconstruction’ to perform the simplest alchemy.” After seeing that the content of the second chapter was unreadable, Feng Bujue closed the book and said to himself, “Just from the examples in this first chapter, you can see the complexity of the alchemical formulas… On this basis, combined with astrology, runology, and the alchemist’s personal abilities and talents, it can be simplified into a transmutation circle.” He looked up and exclaimed, “Arthur in that video clip was probably only ten years old, but he was reading this book with such a calm expression… A genius…”

This copy of *Alchemy Advanced* was classified as a scenario item that could not be taken out of the scenario, and would definitely be used in the subsequent game progress, so Feng Bujue temporarily put it into his bag. He put the photo into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Afterwards, he searched the entire study again, but found no clues, let alone a key. So, he picked up the kerosene lamp and magnifying glass and headed for the next room.

The next room was the kitchen. Directly opposite the door was the stove and chimney. The stove was very dirty, but from the traces on it, it could be seen that it was still being used. Below the stove were cabinets, and the surrounding walls were also equipped with wall cabinets, cupboards, and so on.

In the center of the kitchen, there was a four-legged wooden table, two meters square. The tablecloth covering the table was filthy and unrecognizable. On this wooden table was a large bowl of meat sauce-like food, next to an unwashed plate, which also had some meat sauce residue on it.

Looking out of the kitchen window, he could see the exact same scenery as from the study… pitch black, chaos. In this state, the glass should be able to be used as a mirror, but when Feng Bujue walked up to it and looked, he could only see a blurry black shadow. He then found several metal kitchen utensils and polished their surfaces until they were shiny, wanting to reflect his appearance, but he still failed.

“This system is determined not to let me look in a mirror, is it?” Feng Bujue shrugged and said.

Then, he opened every cabinet, searching for anything that might be a clue. As a result, he found a lot of pots, pans, bowls, and dishes, but no knives, and no clues…

“This room can’t possibly not have anything of value…” After searching the kitchen, he said, “There’s a kerosene lamp in the storage room, a magnifying glass, photo, and book in the study, there must be something in the kitchen too…” As he spoke, his gaze stopped on the bowl of meat sauce on the table.

“Alright, for the time being…” He turned the bowl upside down, causing the meat sauce to flow onto the table, then moved the bowl aside and stirred the meat sauce a few times with his hand.

As a result, he actually found a key:

【Name: Red Key】

【Type: Scenario Related】

【Quality: Average】

【Function: Permanently unlocks the red iron door, disappears immediately after use】

【Can this item be brought out of the scenario: No】

【Note: Hidden in a red place】