Heh, upon seeing the room, Feng Bujue blurted out instinctively, "This couldn't possibly be ***002..."

"What thing?" Long Aomin asked, puzzled.

"Ah!" Wang Tanzhi suddenly shouted, "Don't ask! He'll go on and on for hours explaining it to you!"

Feng Bujue ignored him and replied, "It's a collection of sci-fi settings, freely and collaboratively created by enthusiasts on an online platform."

"He actually summarized it in one sentence!" Wang Tanzhi exclaimed. "I remember when he explained it to me, he went on for a full three hours!"

"Because you looked like you actually believed it, so I wanted to see how far I could take the scam," Feng Bujue said with a smile, already walking into the room made of flesh and blood.

The other four followed him in; none of them wanted to stay in that constantly changing corridor outside.

"Let's assume this is the center of the Usher mansion's cursed power." Feng Bujue went straight to the two corpses. "The entire room is constructed from the souls or bodies of generations of Usher family masters, so Roderick and Madeline's corpses will eventually become part of this room as well." He grabbed Madeline's foot, trying to pull it off, but the intestines were wrapped too tightly. Pulling from down here was useless.

Feng Bujue took out a kitchen knife from his bag, holding it in his mouth. It looked like he was planning to climb up the corpse and cut the intestines.

"Let me." Si Yu placed a hand on Feng Bujue's shoulder, stopping him.

Feng Bujue turned to look at Si Yu, who looked him straight in the eye. Si Yu didn't speak, but pointed at Feng Bujue, then pointed at the ground.

"Okay..." Feng Bujue actually understood her meaning. He knelt on one knee and leaned forward, turning his back to her.

Si Yu stepped forward with her sword, placing her foot an inch behind his shoulder, and lightly leaped up. The sword flashed in a semicircle in the air, cleanly cutting the two intestines that were suspending the corpses. The two bodies fell to the ground.

After landing, Si Yu said to Feng Bujue, "Thank you for your trouble."

"No... no problem..." Feng Bujue felt like he was the one who had troubled her.

Just then, Roderick's ghost reappeared, standing outside the door, behind Bei Ling.

"You... can't change anything..." Roderick said.

His sudden words startled Bei Ling, and she immediately turned around, shining her flashlight at the door, but saw nothing.

On the floor, Roderick's corpse began to move, the intestines around him naturally loosening. As everyone's eyes turned to the door, the ghost controlled his corpse to stand up and attack Feng Bujue once again.

Feng Bujue was very alert. His eyes were on the door, but when he heard movement behind him, he reacted instantly. He raised his kitchen knife and turned to block, the blade hitting Roderick's arm.

Although the corpse had regained mobility, it was still flesh and blood. The knife in Feng Bujue's hand cut directly into Roderick's right forearm, but got stuck on the bone, unable to cut it off.

Long Aomin's reaction was also quick. Seeing this, he stepped forward, raised his shield, and slashed horizontally at Roderick's temple. The [Shard of Ultron] was, after all, a fine piece of equipment. The "secondary adamantium alloy" setting was no joke. Combined with Long Aomin's Schwarzenegger-like physique, the slash blew off the top of Roderick's head.

The exposed brain was gray-black, looking like minced tofu, and emitted a disgusting odor.

Seeing that half of the other's head was gone, Feng Bujue quickly took out a pipe wrench with his free hand and stabbed the corpse's jaw several times. His eager movements made it seem like... if he didn't hurry up, there wouldn't be any head left for him to hit.

Seeing that the two of them could handle it, Si Yu didn't step forward to help. Soon, only Feng Bujue was left "whipping the corpse," wielding the kitchen knife in one hand and the pipe wrench in the other, chopping at the fallen corpse like he was mincing meat. He didn't stop until Roderick's body was a bloody mess, his internal organs spilling out, and the major bones in his limbs were mostly fractured. Then he stopped, panting, and said, "Hoo... he shouldn't be able to get up again."

Even Xiao Tan, who was used to corpses, couldn't help but cover his mouth and say, "Get up? Can that pile of stuff even *do* the 'get up' action? You could make dumplings out of that..."

Roderick's corpse was destroyed, but his ghost reappeared in a corner of the room: "It's useless... my flesh and blood will become one with this house. You... will be no exception."

Before he finished speaking, the door of the room closed on its own. The flesh and blood on the surrounding walls all began to writhe. Mouths with sharp, everted fangs appeared on the walls, big enough to bite off a person's face in one go.

"Hey... Jue-ge, what do we do now?" Wang Tanzhi took out his kitchen knife, but didn't know what to attack. Should he cut the meat wall?

"If tongues or something come out of the wall, I'm not sticking around..." Bei Ling said, looking at the mouths on the wall with disgust.

"Since we're all going to be swallowed sooner or later, why did you bother possessing your corpse to attack me?" Feng Bujue muttered, shining his flashlight at Roderick's ghost, but the latter didn't seem to be afraid of the light anymore.

"Oh... so you're not afraid of light in this room?" Feng Bujue said, walking to Madeline's corpse and pretending to crouch down.

Roderick's face showed obvious surprise: "What are you doing?"

"Madeline's soul doesn't want to become part of the Usher mansion. Her image briefly appeared in the cellar, calling out to me for help," Feng Bujue said. "I thought about it carefully... the phrase 'Let me out' probably didn't mean for me to rescue her from the coffin, because she had already escaped from that coffin while she was alive." Confirming Roderick's reaction, he stood up again and smiled, "Madeline wants me to take her body out of this room, so she won't be assimilated by this house like you will in a while."

Roderick's face became more and more terrifying, the features of a demon completely replacing his human features: "Look around you... how are you going to take her out?"

Feng Bujue said, "Do these scenes around me really exist? If this house could eat people so quickly, your corpses would have been eaten to dust long ago, right?" He swaggered to the wall and reached out to touch the bulging, bloody mouth.

The others didn't speak or try to stop him. Feng Bujue's confident tone and steady movements made them feel that he was sure of himself.

Roderick could only glare at him fiercely, but couldn't do anything.

Feng Bujue's hand passed through the illusions of flesh and blood, and touched the real wall—an ordinary wooden wall. "Just as I thought... the illusion concealed the true appearance of this room. So, now I just need to find..." He paused. "Heh, I'm getting slow. Where else could it be?"

Feng Bujue walked towards the corner where Roderick was standing. The latter looked frightened and roared in anger. But Feng Bujue completely ignored the translucent ghost, passed through him, and explored the wall behind Roderick with his hands.

After a few seconds, Feng Bujue raised his hands to a height slightly above his waist, palms forward, and lifted them upwards with force, opening a window.

The system voice announced: "[Current mission has been changed. Main quest has been updated.]"

In the mission bar, the main quest [Explore the mansion and find a way to escape.] was finally checked off, and a new quest appeared: [Destroy the magic circle and escape the mansion.]

The red glow of the blood moon shone in from the window. Roderick disappeared without a trace the moment he came into contact with the red light. At the same time, the light dispelled all the illusions, restoring the room to its original appearance.

It was just an attic, all brick and wood, with no flesh, bones, hair, or anything like that. The corpses had been hanging from two thick ropes, not intestines.

The room was empty except for a strange magic circle engraved in the center of the floor. This could be a randomly generated pattern in the game, but there was no way to verify it.

At this moment, the only terrifying thing in the room was the corpse that Feng Bujue had just chopped up.

The other four finally breathed a sigh of relief. Wang Tanzhi wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and said, "I was worried sick for so long, but it turns out this room can't hurt anyone at all."

Feng Bujue came to the magic circle on the ground and used his knife to randomly scratch some marks on it. "This room is like the 'head' of the whole house. The people of the Usher family are sent here after death, 'fed' to this mansion like food." He glanced at the minced meat next to him. "Their corpses disappear, and their souls merge with this house, transforming into various bizarre things. Maybe those distorted sculptures and ugly paintings are reflections of certain family members."

After scratching up the magic circle, he put away his weapon and stood up, saying, "Also... when I came in and saw these two corpses, I had some doubts... the 'He knows' that Madeline carved into the coffin, the 'He' it refers to might not be Roderick..."

"What? Could it be the protagonist of the novel?" Long Aomin said.

"No, the protagonist is obviously innocent, but..." Feng Bujue replied, "Besides the two masters, there are other people in Usher mansion... There are only one or two sentences describing this in the book. I remember a 'stealthy, silent male servant' and a 'cunning-looking family doctor who looked panicked when he saw the protagonist'."

"Are you saying that the Usher family members might also be victims?" Bei Ling continued.

Feng Bujue looked around, seemingly searching for something, and replied somewhat absentmindedly, "Perhaps the Usher family was targeted by some strange religious group and became experiments... no, sacrifices. After they die, they are sacrificed to this house. Who knows what's up with this house... Maybe the power of this house comes from some fictional evil god."

"Above." Si Yu suddenly said.

Feng Bujue immediately looked up and saw the last section of "The Haunted Palace" on the slanting roof:

Now travellers see within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh—but smile no more.

The system notification "[Side quest completed]" sounded.

Feng Bujue sighed and said, "Okay, now the magic circle is destroyed. This house should have returned to normal. We should be able to find a way out soon."

"Why don't we just jump out of this window then? We finally found an exit!" Wang Tanzhi said.

"Then you jump," Feng Bujue said, picking up Madeline's corpse and walking towards the door. "Good luck."