Chapter 1 Time Returns

Time rewinds to a dozen or so minutes earlier. At that time, Brave Invincible was not yet dead, and Feng Bujue was still in that cellar.

Feng Bujue knocked on the coffin lid and said mockingly, "Hey, Miss Madeline, are you still there?"

Naturally, he didn't expect anyone in the coffin to reply in an unhappy tone, "Get out!"

Because he knew it should be empty inside.

After seeing the first segment of the Ghost Palace, Feng Bujue speculated that the setting of this mansion was likely the Usher mansion from a certain novel. Now that he had come to this cellar and saw the coffin and the fifth segment of the Ghost Palace on the wall, he was even more certain.

It was true that Feng Bujue was knowledgeable and had a good memory, but he hadn't reached the point of photographic memory. Apart from the things that were swept out of the attic of memory as information garbage, the other memories... such as this novel he had read, he could generally recall about six or seven tenths of the content.

It would be impossible for him to stand there, finish reading the first segment, and recite the full text of the six segments of the Ghost Palace. So later, he first had Xiao Tan and Long Ge say some words to remind himself, and the two segments of poetry in his memory gradually became clear.

Of course, Feng Bujue remembered the general plot of the novel fairly clearly.

Many people know the name Edgar Allan Poe, he is the founder of detective novels, his *The Murders in the Rue Morgue* is considered the first true detective novel in modern literature, and he used the term "tales of ratiocination" when it was published.

However, that was in 1841, and *The Fall of the House of Usher* was written before that story, a Gothic horror novel, the full text exudes an extremely gloomy black atmosphere.

The plot of the story is roughly like this: The protagonist's old friend, Roderick Usher, whose family has suffered from a mysterious genetic disease for generations, and the house he lives in seems to be bound by some kind of strange curse. For hundreds of years, the Usher family has passed down from father to son, making the original name of this ancient house gradually forgotten by people. This building and this family are equated, when people mention "Usher's House", it refers to both the mansion and the family.

One day, Roderick wrote a letter to the protagonist, claiming in the letter that he was dying, the disease had tormented him haggard and delirious, and the unknown terrifying power in Usher's House would destroy his sanity and take his life.

The protagonist came to visit and accompany his old friend, hoping he would get better. But on the night of the protagonist's arrival, Roderick's sister, Miss Madeline, "passed away."

She was Roderick's only relative in the world, his only companion for many years. Miss Madeline had been seriously ill for many years and was terminally ill, but she had been fighting the disease and had never been bedridden. Roderick's abnormal melancholy and near-collapse mental state was mainly caused by her.

Roderick requested that before the burial, a cellar be found to place his sister's body for fourteen days. The protagonist helped his friend put Miss Madeline into the coffin and placed it in the cellar, but no one knew that she was not dead...

Seven or eight days later, the grief-stricken Roderick had fallen into madness. On that terrifying night, the protagonist witnessed the terrifying Miss Madeline appear in the house, scaring her brother to death, and then finally died, while the protagonist fled Usher's House and witnessed the building collapse into the mountain pool.

There are many "unscientific" places in this story, such as why Madeline was buried alive without anyone noticing? How could a woman who had struggled in a coffin for seven or eight days still have the strength to kill her way back to the mansion? How did the mansion collapse? Local earthquake or directional blasting?

However, readers in the nineteenth century would not ask such questions about a horror suspense story. On the contrary, in the years after the end of the twentieth century, "professionals" who rely on "over-interpretation" and "nitpicking" as their main business have gradually increased in various fields, especially in the cultural field. If Poe lived in the twenty-first century, any academic swindler with the title of "professor" would dare to depreciate him to nothing. Or they would express some non-existent views in the original work by "deeply" interpreting his works.

This topic will not be discussed in depth, let's go back to the story.

According to the plot in the novel, this coffin must be empty, regardless of whether the ghost shadow Feng Bujue saw in the tunnel just now was Madeline's ghost, anyway, her body is no longer in the cellar, but in the mansion.

Feng Bujue pushed open the coffin lid, and sure enough, it was empty, no corpse. He waved his hand to disperse the dust raised, and then used the flashlight to illuminate the inside of the coffin, and soon found a line of small characters carved on a wooden board at the head end, which seemed to be traces scratched out little by little with fingernails.

There was only one sentence on it: "He knows," without punctuation marks, and the characters were crooked. Thinking about it from her perspective... in the coffin there was no light, Madeline couldn't see whether the letters she wrote were neat, and she had to maintain a certain posture to carve these on the top of her head, so it was already good enough to be recognized.

[Hidden quest triggered.]

Feng Bujue heard the system prompt and immediately opened the menu, at this time he saw another prompt window covering the front:

[Hidden quests in the script can provide you with very considerable rewards, but the difficulty of discovering and completing hidden quests is higher than main and side quests.]

[The relevant system prompts for hidden quests, including voice, text, and quest content in the menu, are only visible to players who discover the quest. If a hidden quest is discovered in a multi-person setting, the players present will jointly receive the quest. However, hidden quests cannot be shared with a time delay. After one or more quest executors describe the quest content to other players, the other party can obtain the quest content and progress in the menu, but it is not regarded as accepting the quest and cannot receive completion rewards.]

[The above prompt only pops up when the player discovers the hidden quest for the first time. If you need to read it again, you can search and view it in the game instructions.]

"That is to say... whoever discovers it will solve it himself, and then one person will get the reward." Feng Bujue recited, he closed the two prompt windows and glanced at the quest: [Rescue Miss Madeline's soul]

Feng Bujue said, "Oh... so that's the situation..." He already had a deduction about the plot direction in this script, but now the question is how to get out of this cellar?

He raised the flashlight again and conducted a more detailed search around, but found nothing. He turned his attention back to the coffin. Apart from the line of words and some scratch marks left on the wood, there were no valuable clues.

Feng Bujue put the flashlight obliquely inside the coffin, propped up the end that emitted light to stabilize it, then bent down and picked up the heavy coffin lid from the ground, and looked at both the front and the back, but there was nothing on this big piece of wood.

"Wait..." Feng Bujue's movements suddenly stopped, and he thought, "The person lying in the coffin should be supine, and if she wanted to carve words, she should have carved them on the coffin lid. Even if she was worried that someone would ignore the carvings on the coffin lid when opening the coffin, so she carved them in the position above her head, but why are there no traces of struggle on this board... The scratch marks and kicking marks are all in other places, and this coffin lid is like new."

Feng Bujue picked up the flashlight, shone it on the coffin lid leaning against the wall, squatted down, and stared at the wood, "Hmm..." He reached out and knocked on it again, and the coffin lid made a very ordinary solid wood sound, and it didn't sound like there was a hidden compartment.

At this time, Feng Bujue made a very bold decision (at least for others). He raised the coffin board, covered two-thirds of the coffin lengthwise, then drilled in by himself, lay down, and used his hands to hold up the coffin lid, trying to lift it up, and restored the coffin to the closed state.

He lay inside, feeling uncomfortable, not because of psychological reasons, but because the coffin did not have a built-in soft pad, it was purely made of wood, he was like sleeping on a hard plank bed without anything spread on it.

Feng Bujue put himself in the same situation as Miss Madeline, he shone the flashlight on the coffin board, and said, "How did you get out..." As he said, he tried to push the coffin lid with one hand.

Unexpectedly, he couldn't push it at all.

"Oh?" Feng Bujue was stunned, he immediately pillowed the flashlight next to his neck, and used his hands and feet together, and tried to push it a few times, and kicked it a few times, but the coffin lid was still motionless.

After tossing for a while, he was just about to stop and catch his breath, but he saw on the coffin lid, the piece of wood facing his face, slightly bulging, and gradually turned into a human face.

The gender of that face was difficult to distinguish, and the voice sounded like an old witch, and it said to Feng Bujue, "A dying person, do you want to get out of here?"

"Yes." Feng Bujue replied, he wanted to see what tricks this coffin monster had.

"What can you give me?" the coffin lid asked.

At this time, the system prompt sounded: [You can offer a piece of equipment of ordinary or higher quality to allow the monster to teleport you back to the space outside the cellar]

"Oh... 'can' offer, is it..." Feng Bujue thought, "That is to say, I can also choose not to offer." He pondered, "And... what if the player doesn't have equipment that meets the conditions, doesn't that mean they will be trapped here, um... there must be another way."

"Coffin, I don't want to give you anything." Feng Bujue replied.

The face suddenly changed drastically, the eyes and mouth opened strangely, becoming particularly hideous, which would definitely startle ordinary people. However, it was only a slightly protruding human face floating on the coffin board, it was impossible to attack the person in the coffin, at most it could scare them.

"Then you will be trapped here forever, dying in fear and hunger, even if your fingertips are worn to bloody pulp, even if your toes and knees are shattered, it is impossible to break..."

*kacha*, Feng Bujue took out the m1911A1 pistol from his inventory and turned on the safety.

"Let me introduce you to..." Feng Bujue pointed the muzzle of the gun at the center of that face's eyebrows, "Some interesting gadgets that were born after the Second Industrial Revolution."

"The damage caused by the weapon in your hand is not enough for you to escape, a small scar or two is nothing." The coffin lid replied.

"I know you can change and self-repair, but what about the coffin around me, above my head, and under my body?" Feng Bujue said.

"Hehehe..." The face on the coffin lid actually laughed, and at the same time, the words carved by Madeline on top of Feng Bujue's head, and the traces on the surrounding wood disappeared, "As long as I want."

"Hmm... I see, anyway, the quest has been received, and the secret of the coffin has been discovered, so these detailed hints such as the carved marks can be discarded, right..." Feng Bujue said, putting the gun away.

"Now, do you want to change your mind?" The coffin lid said again, "Maybe you can offer me the weapon just now, and I will send you out."

Feng Bujue almost without hesitation took out the [Western Kitchen Knife] and [Mario's Pipe Wrench] from his inventory again, "You have two choices, first, send me back to the mansion, and end this pleasant conversation." He raised his hand and slashed on the coffin board, leaving a knife mark, "Second, I'll dismantle you and burn you as firewood."

Dozens of seconds later, Feng Bujue successfully reappeared in the mansion, but the location was no longer in the original living room, but in a corridor. There was also a painting hanging on the wall next to him, but it did not depict the cellar, but an ugly and abstract human face.

He didn't stay for long, he just confirmed that his Survival Value was still full, and his Stamina Value still had a lot left, so he continued to explore...