“Oh…” Feng Bujue’s reaction to Hill’s words was unusually calm. “I see…” he murmured. “Can I take it that… you’re negotiating with me?”

“Yes, I am negotiating with you.” Hill was also trembling inside, but on the surface, he still appeared quite tough.

“Heh…” Feng Bujue chuckled. “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll immediately recite a bunch of trigger words into this communicator and electrocute you to death?”

“If you electrocute me to death, you’ll never find Van Helsing’s diary!” Cold sweat was already trickling down Hill’s temples, but he still mustered the courage to respond.

“Hmm… not bad.” Feng Bujue mused. “You have guts, and you’re not completely stupid.”

“Hmph… I don’t need your compliments.” Hill, hearing that Brother Jue’s attitude had softened, breathed a slight sigh of relief and retorted coldly, “So… what do you think of this deal?”

Unexpectedly, Feng Bujue replied in the next sentence, “Not much.”

“What?” Hill exclaimed in surprise. “Don’t you want that diary?”

“Hehe…” Feng Bujue laughed twice more. “Although I said you’re ‘not completely stupid,’ that doesn’t mean you’re smart enough to play a fair game with me.” He paused for two seconds before continuing, “Mr. Hill, I think I should remind you again… the thing you’re carrying on your body right now is a ‘tracker’… a tracker! A tracker!”

As the saying goes, important things must be said three times, so Feng Bujue repeated the word three times at the end of the sentence, with gradually increasing emphasis and volume.

After being shouted at like that, Hill belatedly realized the problem. “You… you know where I’ve been…”

“Very good.” Feng Bujue said this sentence in the tone of a teacher praising a student who had answered a question correctly. After a slight pause, he added, “Where you went, how long you stayed, what you said, and all the movements around you, I know everything…” He concluded, “To put it simply… I can completely kill you now and then go find the diary based on your route.”

“No… this… this…” Hill slumped to the ground, his eyes glazed over, sputtering incoherent words.

“In fact, if you hadn’t hidden the diary, but had carried it with you and used torches and gasoline to intimidate me… that would have been more difficult for me.” Feng Bujue continued, “Although I could still incapacitate you with an electric shock, I couldn’t guarantee the safety of the diary.” He sighed. “But this development… is the best possible; the diary has been placed by you in a… ‘safe place’ that you yourself can’t reach.”

At this point, Feng Bujue’s tone became somber. “Presumably, you now understand… why I, who have been monitoring you all along, didn’t use the communicator to stop you when you hid the diary.”

“Gi… give me another chance!” Now, Hill could only admit defeat again. “Don’t kill me… I’ll go get the diary right now… there’s still time!”

“Ha!” Feng Bujue laughed loudly. “Now… do you think I’ll still let you get close to that book?”

As soon as these words were spoken, Hill immediately began to tear at his suit, seemingly trying to remove the tracker.

“Alright, don’t waste your energy.”

Just as Brother Jue spoke, Hill felt a sharp pain in his back, and the electric shock caused him to convulse on the ground for several seconds.

“Ho… how is that possible?” Hill muttered in shock as he regained his breath.

“You must be wondering why I didn’t say any ‘trigger words,’ but you still got electrocuted, right?” Feng Bujue chuckled. “Hehe… the reason is simple – there were never any trigger words to begin with.”

“What?” Hill was once again stunned.

“Even my assistant (that’s Musashi Koganai)…” Feng Bujue continued, “couldn’t have created a chip that could be embedded inside a person and still receive and recognize specific external sound signals in such a short amount of time.”

“Then…” Hill still didn’t understand. “Then why did I get shocked every time you said those specific words?”

“Didn’t you notice… that every time I said those words, I would always put a hand in my pocket or hide it behind my back?” Feng Bujue replied.

Hill was taken aback, and in that second, many fragments of memories flashed before his eyes.

“Understand now?” Feng Bujue paused for a few seconds before saying, “I was pressing the remote control.”

“You!” Hill immediately felt that he had been thoroughly played, and in a fit of shock and anger, he couldn’t help but blurt out a curse, “You bastard! You’re a devil!”

“Looks like you understand.” Brother Jue didn’t mind Hill’s curses; in fact, he was a little smug. “There’s no such thing as ‘trigger words,’ and there’s no such thing as ‘delayed trigger words.’ I just made it up as I went along. Anyway, if I want you to get shocked, you’ll get shocked…” He cleared his throat. “So… at this moment, I want to advise you, ‘take out the tracker and then retrieve the diary as a threat’… you should give up on that plan as soon as possible. Even if the communication is interrupted, I can still electrocute you to death… it’s just a matter of moving my fingers.”

Hearing this, Hill… finally despaired. He realized… that “Mr. F,” who looked like a child on the outside, was far more terrifying than he had imagined. If there really was some kind of “game” between the two of them, then Mr. F could be said to be five steps ahead of him in every way… no matter what he did or thought… it was all in vain.

“Okay…” Hill simply slumped to the ground, giving up on resisting. “Just kill me…”

“If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it while you were hiding the diary and on your way here.” Feng Bujue replied. “Why would I waste so much time talking to you?”

Hill was stunned for a moment. “Then… what do you want?”

“I’m sparing your life because I still have things for you to do.” Feng Bujue replied. “Now, if you don’t want to die or spend the rest of your life with this chip in you, then hurry to the castle. Once you get inside, stay where you are… the werewolves will come to pick you up.”

“Okay!” As soon as Hill heard that there was still a way out, he immediately perked up and quickly got up from the ground. “I’ll go to the cast… wait… did you just say ‘werewolves’?”

…………

Unlike Hill, who was “invited” into the castle, Blade and his two companions received much worse treatment…

Not long after they entered the [Underground Waterway], they discovered that this route was impassable.

Of course… strictly speaking, it wasn’t that the “road was impassable,” but rather that they themselves didn’t have the ability to pass through… After killing seven or eight bats and huge “killer fish,” branch routes appeared before them. One path went upwards, but the platform above was extremely high, and there was nowhere to get a foothold on the water, making it difficult to go up; the other path went downwards, requiring them to dive in, but it was pitch black underwater, and they didn’t know where it led, nor did they know how long they would have to swim to reach the surface…

After some consideration, they decided to turn back and take the other route outside the red door…

So, they spent another five minutes quickly turning back, passing through the white corridor, and arriving at the place with the pool again.

Anyway, they had already swum in the underground waterway, so they didn’t care about being soaked and went straight towards the other side of the pool; and waiting for them in the pool… was a group of earth-colored fish-men monsters.

Fortunately, these monsters were also very weak, and most of them could be killed with a single hammer blow from Brother Long’s shield.

Before long, they swam across the pool and reached the opposite shore. The terrain on this side was symmetrical to the route they had taken when they came in. The three of them leaped back and forth through two intersecting platforms and entered the next space.

What surprised them a bit… was that there was a small Boss in this space…

Although it was a “small” Boss, it had a lot of presence and was quite large. Its appearance… was a giant green skeleton with only its upper body, crawling on the ground.

Since it was holding a huge bone club in its right hand (who knows if it was its own leg bone), it could only crawl back and forth with its left hand, making it move quite slowly. However, its massive size made up for its lack of mobility… because it was indoors, there wasn’t much space for the players to maneuver. In the limited space, the giant pillar-like bone club crashed down, making it really difficult to dodge.

Fortunately, Blade’s three players were all skilled at grinding monsters. After observing the small Boss’s movement patterns for a while, they swarmed forward and beat it wildly during the gaps in its attacks, directly smashing it into a pile of bone fragments.

If it were in another game, after defeating such a monster, there would probably be some equipment dropped, or even if there was no treasure… at least the players should get some free health recovery.

However, this is Thriller Paradise… it’s also very normal for there to be nothing but skill points after defeating a super-strong monster.

Therefore, after defeating the small Boss, Brother Long and the others briefly checked the corpse and, after confirming that there was nothing of value, continued on their way…

In the subsequent rooms, the architectural decorations gradually became richer, with broken metal stairs, colored floor-to-ceiling windows, beige stone walls and sculptures, and brighter candlesticks appearing one after another.

Along with the upgrade in decoration, the types and strength of the monsters also increased…

Fully armed zombies, eyeballs flying in the air, blue biting crows, wind and fire wheels with lion faces printed on the axles, skeleton people throwing bones, skeleton people wearing armor, skeleton people shooting arrows, unmanned armor throwing boomerangs, unmanned armor throwing large stones, and so on and so forth. In short, there was a wide variety, both above and below, and the attack methods were also different.

Brother Long and the others felt as if they were playing some kind of side-scrolling game. The further they went, the more powerful the enemies they encountered, and this “power” wasn’t just a simple increase in health, but an individual or overall increase in the five aspects of “attack, defense, speed, skill, and intelligence.”

However… they had already made it this far, and it was obviously impossible for them to turn back empty-handed… even if they had to bite the bullet and keep going.

[Chapel]

Finally, after overcoming many obstacles, wading through water, jumping over slopes, and killing dozens of monsters… they passed through a white corridor sealed by two red doors and heard a system prompt.

At this time, nearly an hour had passed since they first entered the city, and the three of them had used up about a third of their stamina.

“What’s it this time? Is that the leader of the Nine Nether Souls?” Long Aotian, covered in sweat, gasped as he looked at a giant burning skull floating in the distance.

“It just looks like it…” Greedy Wolf, following behind, replied. “The real Soul Slayer should be much stronger than the Boss in this script.”

Seven Kills sighed. “Then… same as always, this kind of floating thing that seems unavoidable… I’ll take care of it…” As he said that, he prepared to use [My Way Fist].

“You all seem to be in pretty good spirits.” Just as Seven Kills raised his hand, the burning skull suddenly spoke.

“Oh? This is the first monster we’ve encountered that can communicate…” Brother Long immediately said.

“But the progress is still slower than I expected.” The skull ignored Brother Long’s words and continued on its own. “Is it because of the reduced size of your bodies that you need to pay more attention to the distribution of your stamina than usual?”

As soon as he heard the words “reduced size of your bodies,” Greedy Wolf’s expression changed. He took a step forward and shouted loudly, “Who are you?” Before the other party could respond, he couldn’t wait to blurt out the name he had guessed in his heart, “Feng Bujue?”

“Hehe… good guess.” The skull continued, “Of course… I’m not actually here. I’m just using magic… to chat with you through the voice of this monster.”

“It’s definitely your style…” Seven Kills glared at the skull and said, “Always hiding in the dark and controlling something…”

“You can’t say that… this morning, I was still fighting you head-on in the open, but the result was that I almost got killed.” Feng Bujue replied in a very annoying tone. “After this battle, I decided to change my strategy.”

“You could just say you’re better at playing dirty…” Seven Kills said again.

“Since you asked so nicely… okay.” Feng Bujue paused slightly and then raised his voice, roaring with the skull’s eerie voice, “That’s right! I’m good at playing dirty! I just like playing dirty! Even if I don’t want to play dirty, the audience is expecting me to play dirty! I’m going to use dirty tricks to kill you! WAH HA HA HA HA HA…”

Seeing this scene, Seven Kills’ mouth twitched, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and he also felt a dark fire rising in his heart…

Long Aotian noticed the change in his expression, so he patted his small shoulder and said, “You… you’re too young… look at me, I never argue with Brother Feng…”

“Hahahaha…” Feng Bujue’s villainous laughter lasted for a full thirty seconds before stopping. After laughing, he let out a long breath and said, “Phew… okay, gentlemen, I was originally going to give you some hints on the route here. But now I’ve changed my mind. You can just keep playing in the city… Who told me to be so insidious? Wah ha ha ha ha ha…”

Boom—

This time, his laughter didn’t last long, because Seven Kills used a [My Way Fist] to blast the skull into ashes.