Chapter 10 The Tenth Street

Tenth Street, Number Nine.

Like all the previous addressees, it was an ordinary two-story house, with a desolate front yard and no mailbox.

Feng Bujue parked his bicycle, slung his messenger bag across his shoulder, and, shotgun in hand, quickly stepped onto the porch.

Tap, tap, tap—

"Open up!" He shouted as he knocked on the door.

What happened next, I'm sure you can imagine... Before long, a fat man in slippers came down from the second floor, opened the door a crack the width of a palm, and stood in the shadows as he asked, "Who are you looking for?"

"Mailman." Feng Bujue held up his temporary work ID, flashed it in front of the other man, then put it away and pulled out the envelope. "Delivery."

"I... don't accept it." The Number Ten Fatty's reaction was identical to the previous nine.

*Kacha—*

Feng Bujue smoothly raised his shotgun, pushed the barrel through the crack, and said in a deep voice, "Do you accept it now?"

"You... what do you want?" Although the Number Ten Fatty showed fear, he didn't run away.

"Either accept the letter, or accept a bullet. Your choice." Feng Bujue's tone was no joke. When necessary, he could be extremely ruthless.

"No... don't kill me..." The Number Ten Fatty raised his hands in surrender. "Even if you shoot, I won't accept it... unless..."

"Unless I give you your command code?" Feng Bujue interjected.

"Yeah..." The Number Ten Fatty nodded.

"Tch..." Brother Jue spat, thinking, "So brute force really doesn't work..."

Two seconds later, he lowered his gun and said, "How many digits is your code?"

"Eleven," the fatty replied honestly.

Upon receiving the answer, Feng Bujue turned and walked away, heading straight for his bicycle.

…………

Over the next forty minutes, Brother Jue visited the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth addressees.

Without exception, all three were also fat. Their voices, personalities, reactions, and so on... were all consistent with the previous ten addressees.

Feng Bujue didn't waste any time arguing with these guys. He had already tested everything he could, so he didn't ask anything other than the number of digits in the command code.

At two fifty PM, Brother Jue arrived once again at the abandoned mailbox in the North Town Cemetery.

At that moment, an envelope had appeared on the ground next to the mailbox.

Although there was no wind, a stone was still placed on top of the envelope.

"So, they really replied..." Feng Bujue muttered and picked up the envelope.

It was an earthen-yellow envelope. Holding it in his hand, he could feel that there was only a thin piece of paper inside. Brother Jue carefully tore it open, took out the letter, and then... he discovered something very perplexing—both sides of the letter were blank.

"Again?" Feng Bujue couldn't help but complain, "Invisible ink? Wordless heavenly book?" His complaint was the same as when he received the "newspaper."

As he spoke, he examined the letter closely, confirming that there were no traces of writing or any odors on the paper.

"Hmm... what does it all mean..." As Feng Bujue pondered, he subconsciously supported his right elbow with his left hand, and with the index and middle fingers of his right hand slightly joined, he traced a line from his forehead down to the tip of his nose. This habitual thinking motion allowed his mind to operate more smoothly. "If this piece of paper was simply lying next to the mailbox, it might be mistaken for—just a discarded piece of waste paper. But as it stands, this piece of paper is inside an envelope and is being held down by a stone... this setup is telling me that this blank piece of paper is indeed the 'reply.'"

After a moment of thought, a flash of inspiration struck his mind. "Eh? Could it be..."

The next second, Brother Jue took out the newspaper from earlier, flipping to the blank pages in the middle. "Indirect hint?" At this thought, he simply sat down on the ground, holding the letter in one hand and the newspaper in the other, murmuring, "This 'reply' really has no content... but 'no content' can also be a kind of hint." His gaze moved to the newspaper. "A hint that... 'the answer lies in a place that looks blank.'"

Having thought of this, Feng Bujue tore off the first page of the newspaper.

The front of this page was the meaningless headline, while the back was the second page, which had no text and only an illustration.

The illustration on the second page was a photo of a brick wall, with a tree standing in front of it. At first glance, it was another landscape photo, but on closer inspection, one could see... bicycle tire tracks on the ground at the bottom of the picture.

"Okay, let's see... the quality of this newspaper is average. Fire or water revealing techniques are probably impossible..." Feng Bujue held the "experimental item" in his hand, pondering. "Right now, the methods I can try are..." As he thought, he reached for his shotgun, but a second later, he pulled his hand back. "Wait... if the item needed to solve the puzzle is the gunpowder from the bullets, then Ghostly Shadow should have given me the puzzle after I got this gun..." He rubbed his chin. "Which means... the thing that makes the hint 'appear' was already on me at the time..."

Then, Brother Jue, like a child in a natural science class, showed a face full of excitement and pulled out a bunch of props from his pocket, arranging them in a row on the grass.

"Let's try them one by one..." He said, picking up the first prop.

Over the next five minutes, he first tried to look at the content on the newspaper through the phone's camera; then he used a ballpoint pen and a pencil to划了一小块each on a small area of the paper; and then he used a coin, a key, and a credit card to gently scrape several areas of the newspaper.

Unfortunately, all of these attempts ended in failure...

"Hmm... this isn't right either, I have to change my thinking..." He muttered as he picked up the spice bottle containing salt. This was the last item on him that could possibly be used to solve the puzzle.

*Hiss hiss hiss…*

Fortunately... this last attempt worked. When the white salt grains were sprinkled on the newspaper, wisps of white smoke rose from the paper, with a slight smell of burning. This was obviously not the reaction that paper should have when it encountered salt...

【14.52,7.66, tree trunk】A few seconds later, a line of carbon-colored characters like smoky writing appeared on the blank page next to the illustration.

"Ha! Got it!" Feng Bujue's smile appeared at the same time as the words on the newspaper. He really hadn't expected that the key item for solving the puzzle would be the salt bottle he had found on Felt Hat Bro.

With the experiment a success, what followed was simple. Brother Jue followed suit, cracking the other twelve pages in the middle of the newspaper in turn, obtaining a total of thirteen similar pieces of information.

"If I'm not mistaken... the first two numbers are coordinates." Feng Bujue recorded all the hints, his expression now relaxed. "Specific to two decimal places, probably to match the mini-map I have on hand. And the noun that follows each coordinate is undoubtedly to be combined with the 'illustration.'"

At this moment, Brother Jue had a rough understanding of what these hints meant. Coincidentally, the coordinate on the second page was the one closest to him at the moment. So, to verify his reasoning, he quickly packed up his things, got back on his bicycle, and set off in that direction.

In less than five minutes, Feng Bujue arrived near the coordinates 【14.52,7.66】 on the mini-map (due to the size of the map, he couldn't stand exactly on a certain point, at most he could only get close to it). He searched for a while and saw the brick wall in the illustration, as well as the big tree planted in front of the wall.

"Tree trunk, huh..." Feng Bujue parked his bicycle, picked up his shotgun and walked over.

He cautiously approached the target step by step, as if the tree would suddenly turn into a monster and attack him. However, the final result proved... that he was overthinking it. The tree in front of him was just a very ordinary tree, and there were no fLAgs or events at this location.

The only thing of value here was an Arabic numeral carved into the tree trunk—1.