After leaping some distance, Feng Bujue glanced back.

Although he wasn't too far away, his teammates' figures were already blurry. Clearly, those wisps of foul air weren't just smelly; they also reduced visibility.

"Hmm…the visibility is really low…" Brother Jue muttered to himself, then scanned his surroundings. "I'd better memorize my location first…"

After all, he had been playing Thriller Paradise for two months. Even a complete noob would have figured out some of their own gaming experience, let alone Feng Bujue.

Now, Brother Jue had invented a unique "map memory method."

The specific method was to break down the memory: take a relatively wide area as a boundary, find a relatively open spot to stand, look around, lock onto a few details, and remember them. In this way, he was essentially putting the entire area into his brain as a jigsaw puzzle. Repeating the process a few times, he could construct multiple puzzles in his mind, and then slowly recall the complete map through the positional relationships between them, using chain thinking.

A swampy terrain like this might be difficult to remember for others, but in his eyes, it was very easy to recognize.

Of course… there were only two types of maps that Feng Bujue couldn't remember. The first was a repeating, identical space with barriers (like doors) between them. The second was a random, chaotic space with no obvious patterns and no normal return path (for example, opening the same door a second time would lead to another place).

In short, Feng Bujue used his method to walk and remember, gradually moving further and further in this dangerous land covered in dung.

About ten minutes later, an anomaly appeared…

"Ugh…"

"Ah…"

Moans rose and fell, sounding like both men and women, with some strange, animal-like wails mixed in.

(To avoid misunderstandings, I must note that the "moans" here were not the kind that aroused desire, but the kind that was utterly terrifying.)

"Hmm…it really appeared…" Feng Bujue murmured. He used the special effect of [Treading the Void] to stop and hover in mid-air, looking down.

He saw streaks of arms covered in filth reaching out from the fecal swamp below. Those muddy hands were like hooks and claws, their knuckles twisted, their movements twitching. They stretched upwards, grasping, as if searching for a lifeline.

Desperate wails accompanied bubbles rising from the bottom of the swamp, like a series of death curses, constantly pouring into the players' ears, making their skin crawl.

However… Feng Bujue wouldn't get goosebumps. He remained calm, analyzing the situation before him.

"If an event is triggered, it means there's something ahead." He carefully kept his feet out of the reach of those arms, his gaze slowly shifting. "There are basically no forks in the road here. There's only one small path that I can continue on…" He looked at the stony mud path below. "And this path doesn't lead to the main quest route…" He was still certain of this, because the direction that Uncle Worthless and the others were going was clearly in the opposite direction. "Heh…that means I'm getting close… what could it be…"

In fact, there were generally only three types of things he might encounter ahead: one, a reward item; two, a checkpoint leading to a new area; three, a death trap.

Feng Bujue naturally knew this in his heart. He was aiming for the first possibility. With the results impossible to verify, a one-third risk was worth taking a gamble. Besides, he had insurance…

He cleverly took out the [Vajra Bell] from his knapsack and activated the item's third special effect: gaining the "death warning" function for five minutes.

Logically speaking, with his current abilities, he could probably retreat unscathed even if he encountered a very powerful monster. But Brother Jue was just that cautious. For any plan, as long as the conditions allowed, he would leave a way out or maximize the insurance measures he could take.

This decisiveness at critical moments was the dividing line between experts and ordinary people. Choices that seemed insignificant to ordinary people were decisive in the eyes of experienced, intuitive players. It would be penny-wise and pound-foolish to save one or two skill or item Cooldowns, only to end up with a game over.

Ding-a-ling… ling-ling… ling-ling… the bell rang, but not very urgently.

"Hmm… seems like nothing's happening." Feng Bujue pondered. "The frequency of the ringing…" He turned his gaze to the arms below. "…should be for these guys down here." He stepped forward, continuing onward, but his speed had clearly slowed down. "Ah~ souls who drowned in shit, their resentment must be deep. If they catch me, it'll probably be an instant-death event…"

He guessed correctly. In this place, as long as a player was caught by those arms, they would be pulled down one hundred percent of the time, no matter how strong they were. The strong would simply be able to struggle for a little longer, and this struggle… would only allow them to experience that feeling of despair even more…

After walking another distance, the stony mud path below dwindled until only a "vein" remained. The air ahead also became increasingly turbid and hot.

Even the moonlight from the sky was gradually becoming hazy. This haze wasn't a change in the color of the sky, but a unique effect of the scene. In the setting, the lighting in this area was relatively dim.

"Oh…is that it?" Feng Bujue's tone was lukewarm, and his face was as calm as an ancient well.

As he said this, he had already reached the end of the stony mud path. There was a circular patch of mud about five meters in radius. The arms reaching out of the swamp clearly couldn't reach the middle of this mud patch.

But Feng Bujue still didn't step onto it. He chose to hover in mid-air, staring intently at the only thing in the middle of the mud patch—an electric shaver.

Yes, it was an electric shaver. With Feng Bujue's in-game eyesight, he could see its appearance very clearly.

The thing was lying flat in the middle of the circular mud patch, and there were no footprints around it. No matter how you looked at it… this scene seemed inexplicable. This unremarkable everyday item was undoubtedly out of place with the environment and setting of this script. This inexplicable sense of incongruity… was like finding the corpse of a penguin in the desert, or seeing boxer briefs in the refrigerator.

But this was Thriller Paradise, and anything was possible. Not to mention an electric shaver, even an old-model cell phone might be a god-slaying, demon-exterminating artifact.

"Is this the reward item…" Feng Bujue muttered. "Hmm… before touching it, I should try to check its attributes first."

He mustered all his spirit, guarded with highly concentrated attention, and unhurriedly stepped onto the mud patch. After standing still, he didn't bend over, but slowly squatted down, maintaining a posture in which he could roll or jump up at any time.

Finally, when he got within about twenty centimeters of it, the item description appeared.

[Name: Chuck Norris's Shaver]

[Type: Other]

[Quality: Legendary]

[Effect: Gives you a cool appearance]

[Can be taken out of this script: Yes]

[Remarks: One of the "Cn" series of items, recording one of Chuck Norris's 100 well-known facts, Bound on Pickup.

——Behind Chuck Norris's beard, there is no chin, only another fist.]

"Huh?" Feng Bujue was stunned. "What the hell? What does 'gives you a cool appearance' mean?" He could only retort to that perfunctory item description. "Cn series must mean Chuck Norris series… does this game have a whole hundred similar silly items?"

Although Brother Jue had doubts in his heart, the word "Legendary" in the quality column was still irresistible to him, especially since this was something that could be taken out of the script. There was no reason to leave it behind.

So, Feng Bujue made a decision that he would soon regret… He picked up the thing.

He didn't know that picking up this item would trigger a very shocking plot—the Hidden Boss Battle of the Masticating Demon Island.

That's right, the place where Feng Bujue was standing at this moment was the Hidden Boss's spawn point. Brother Jue only realized this afterwards… that this place was actually an extremely secretive and difficult-to-reach location.

In the Ghostly Swamp, a place where staying for even a second made one feel uncomfortable all over, it was hard to imagine… that anyone would deliberately look for this kind of remote fork in the road. Even if someone accidentally walked this way, they would be blocked by the arms reaching out of the swamp. Because under normal circumstances, players moved on the stony mud path, and it would take extremely precise maneuvering to avoid the pull of those arms and reach this place by walking on the ground.

However, Feng Bujue relied on his legendary boots to easily reach this place. The advantage of his equipment kept him in a relatively safe situation, so the Vajra Bell's alarm was so infrequent.

In any case, whether it was a coincidence or fate… things just happened this way.

Rumble——

A very heavy sound came, sounding like the movement when mixing cement.

"Hmm?" Feng Bujue had just put the shaver into his knapsack when he heard the sound.

After only hesitating for half a second, he flipped backward, leaping out several zhang, and hovered three meters above the ground. His gaze flashed like lightning, scanning the surroundings like a gust of wind…

Soon, Brother Jue locked onto the source of the sound.

In front of the circular mud patch, on the vast swamp with no path, a vortex slowly emerged.

Rumble… hoo-rumble…

The sound became more and more urgent, and the vortex spun faster and faster.

Suddenly, a giant hand reached out from the center of the vortex, stirring up a sky full of shit waves.

In the nick of time, Feng Bujue stepped on his moonwalk, retreating rapidly, barely avoiding the filth that rained down like raindrops.

In the same instant, another sound suddenly rang out.

Ding-a-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling……

The Vajra Bell, this hand-cranked bell, actually vibrated rapidly at a high frequency like an electric bell…