Chapter 14 The Ghost Palace?

"What do you mean? What's the 'Ghost Palace'?" Wang Tanzhi asked.

"Are you going to ask, 'Can I eat it?' next?" Feng Bujue replied.

"I'm past the age of asking 'Can I eat it?' to cutely sell myself... and I'm being serious right now, okay!" Wang Tanzhi retorted.

"See for yourselves." Feng Bujue stood up, allowing Xiao Tan and Long Ge to see what he had been examining while squatting.

The two of them moved closer and discovered words on the wall, seemingly carved with a knife. The content was entirely in English, but the players could see the translation by opening the game menu and observing.

It appeared to be a short English poem:

【In valleys, green and deep,
Where angels softly keep,
Once stood a palace bright—
A beacon of celestial light.

Within the realms of Mind,
Its lofty spires aligned,
No winged seraph ever trod
A fairer dwelling, blessed by God.】

"What does this even mean?" Wang Tanzhi asked, completely lost.

"Maybe this article is called 'Ghost Palace', and there are six sections?" Long Aomin guessed randomly.

They both felt... since Feng Bujue was around, that guy knew everything, so they could just ask him. Unexpectedly, when they turned around, they found that the kid had disappeared...

"Jue-ge?" Wang Tanzhi looked around and then stepped to the side to look up at the stairs leading to the second floor: "Where'd he go? He vanished when we weren't paying attention?"

Long Aomin looked around as well, but couldn't find him. He had no choice but to shrug helplessly and say, "He already said to split up earlier. He must have snuck off while we were looking at this poem."

Wang Tanzhi said, "Then let's go look for clues too. Anyway, Jue-ge said to gather here again after the main quest changes."

Long Aomin nodded, and the two of them then began to investigate the first floor, pushing open those doors that could be opened and checking if there were any remaining sections of the "Ghost Palace" or other clues in the rooms.

…………

Inside a complex corridor on the first floor.

Two female players were moving forward slowly and cautiously. Judging by their posture, they had already encountered some traps.

At this moment, Si Yu Ruo Li was holding a gleaming long sword in her hand. Although this item was only of ordinary quality, she had obtained the title of 【Ruthless Headtaker】 with this ordinary weapon, which was enough to show that she must have something extraordinary.

Bei Ling Xiao Gu didn't take out any firearms. She had made a similar judgment to Feng Bujue; if this script was all about ghosts and traps, then guns probably wouldn't be necessary.

"Eh?" Bei Ling, who was walking behind, suddenly paused and said a few seconds later, "Ha... they actually found a side quest."

Si Yu Ruo Li looked at the quest content and asked, "Should we also cooperate and look for this 'Ghost Palace'?"

"Hmm... let's not go out of our way to look for it." Bei Ling replied while thinking, "We don't know what it is yet, and besides, we're already looking for clues."

"Then let's continue." Si Yu Ruo Li responded and continued forward.

…………

On the second floor, Yongzhe Wudi was standing in a very large room. Like the living room, the windows in this room were long and narrow, located high up, a distance from the dark oak floor. Reddish light shone in through the window lattices, just enough to illuminate the more conspicuous things in the room, but no one knew where the red light outside the window came from in the middle of the night...

Yongzhe Wudi strained his eyes but couldn't see the far corners of the room or the coffered ceiling with swirling patterns. Of course, he didn't care about these details. What was the point of seeing them clearly? He just needed to know that there weren't any monsters hiding in the corners.

Dark tapestries hung on the surrounding walls, and all the furniture was large and inappropriate, old and dilapidated, and looked uncomfortable. The scattered books and musical instruments did not add any life to the room. A sense of sorrow seemed to be able to be sucked into the air, and a gloomy and depressing atmosphere floated everywhere, permeating everything.

After hearing the quest prompt, Yongzhe Wudi glanced at the menu. His first reaction was that the two female players had discovered something in the mansion, which triggered the side quest. He didn't think that the other three noobs could find this quest.

Although he was not good at solving puzzles, Yongzhe Wudi was still a professional player. If he wasn't good at reasoning, he still had game experience. He first roughly searched the room, wanting to find equipment or consumables. Unfortunately, the only things in the room that could be picked up and swung were a wooden guitar and a violin with a broken string. Hitting monsters with these fragile wooden products was not as good as fighting with his bare hands. The special ability granted by his title 【Reckless Brawler】 was to passively increase the destructive power of his fists.

Since he couldn't find any equipment, Yongzhe Wudi began to look for quest items. He didn't know what the "Ghost Palace" was, and he wasn't interested in picking up all the books scattered on the floor and reading them one by one. He just walked towards the thing in the room that looked most like a clue – an envelope on the desk.

The other readable things in the room were either dropped or piled on the ground, but only this envelope was still placed on the desk, held down by an ink bottle.

When he picked up the ink bottle, Yongzhe Wudi found that some ink had permeated the envelope, leaving a stain on it, and it had long dried. He picked up the envelope, blew on it sharply, gently patted it a few times to dust it off, and then opened it, took out the letter paper, and began to read it.

This letter was not complete, many places were covered by ink stains, and the remaining parts were also blurred in many places. The beginning and end of the letter were not visible, but judging from the visible content, this letter should have been written by the owner of this big house to a friend.

The letter writer said that he was suffering from a sudden illness due to some kind of "curse" and was tormented by neurological disorders. He longed to see his best friend, his only confidant. He hoped that this friend could come and stay for a while, perhaps this would make his illness better.

The lines of the letter did reveal some signs of mental disorder. Some of the content was purely difficult to understand due to the letter writer's hand shaking or the sentences organized in his mind being incoherent.

Although Yongzhe Wudi didn't see any clues, he still put the letter away and took it with him. After scanning the room one last time, he turned and left.

…………

In a dark stone tunnel.

The light from a flashlight suddenly lit up, illuminating a small section of the road ahead. As soon as Feng Bujue saw the scene in front of him, he muttered, "This house has serious problems... Castlevania? Spatial distortion and teleportation too?"

In fact, a few minutes ago, he didn't intentionally sneak away from Xiao Tan and Long Ge's backs. He just walked to the other side of the wall in the living room, wanting to take a closer look at a painting hanging on the wall...