The time returned to more than ten minutes ago. At that time, the brave invincible hadn’t died yet, and Feng Bujue was still in that cellar.
Feng Bujue knocked on the coffin board, and said jokingly, “Hey, Miss Madeleine, are you still there?”
Naturally, he didn’t expect anyone in the coffin to reply to him in an unpleasant tone: “Get lost!”
Because he already knew it should be empty.
After watching the first part of the haunted palace, Feng Bujue speculated that the setting of this mansion might be the House of Usher in a certain novel. At this time, he came to the cellar and saw the coffin and the fifth ghost palace on the wall, and he was even more sure.
Feng Bujue Bowen had memorized it right, but he hadn’t reached the realm of photographic memory yet. Except for those things that were swept out of the memory attic as information garbage, other memories…such as this kind of novels he had read, the content he could recall was generally around 60 to 70%.
It is impossible for him to stand there and recite the full six paragraphs of Ghost Palace after reading the first paragraph. So later he asked Xiao Tan and Brother Long to say some words to remind himself, and the two lines in his memory gradually became clear.
Of course, Feng Bujue still remembered the general plot of that novel quite clearly.
Many people know the name of Edgar Allan Poe, he is the founder of the detective novel, and his “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is considered to be the first real detective novel in modern literature. The term “mystery novel” was used when it was published.
But that was in 1841, and “The Fall of the House of Usher” was written before that story, a gothic thriller, and the whole thing is permeated with an extremely gloomy black atmosphere.
The plot of the story is roughly like this: the old friend of the protagonist, Roderick Usher, has suffered from a mysterious genetic disease for generations, and the big house he lives in seems to be bound by some kind of strange curse. The family has been passed down in one continuous line, and the father died and the son succeeded, so the original name of this ancient house has been gradually forgotten by people. This building and this family have been equated. When people mention “House of Usher”, they refer to both this house and this family.
One day, Roderick wrote a letter to the protagonist, in which he stated that he was dying soon, that the disease had tortured him to the point where he was haggard and in a trance, and that the unknown terrifying power in the House of Usher would destroy his sanity and take away his life. his life.
The main character comes to visit and spend time with an old friend, hoping he gets well. But on the night of the protagonist’s arrival, Roderick’s sister, Miss Madeleine “died of illness”.
She was Roderick’s only relative in the world, his only companion for many years. Miss Madeleine has been seriously ill for many years and has died, but she has been fighting against the disease and has never been bedridden. Roderick’s uncharacteristically melancholic, nearly broken state of mind was largely due to her.
Roderick asked that her sister’s body be kept in a cellar for fourteen days before burial. The protagonist helps his friend to put Miss Madeleine into the coffin and place it in the cellar, but no one knows that she is not dead…
Seven or eight days later, the distraught Roderick had fallen into madness. On that horrible night, the protagonist witnessed the terrifying Miss Madeleine appearing in the house, frightened her brother to death, and then finally died. The protagonist escaped from the House of Usher and saw the building collapse on the mountain. in the pool.
There are many “unscientific” places in this story, such as why was Madeleine buried alive without anyone noticing? How can a woman who has struggled in the coffin for seven or eight days still have the strength to fight all the way back to the big house? How did the mansion collapse? Local earthquake or directional blasting?
But nineteenth-century readers would not ask such questions about a tale of horror and suspense. On the contrary, in the years after the end of the 20th century, the number of “professionals” who rely on “excessive interpretation” and “finding faults” as their main business has gradually increased in various fields, especially the cultural field. If Poe lived in the 21st century, any academic crook under the name of “professor” would dare to demote him to nothing. Or it is to rely on “deep” interpretation of his works to express some unwarranted views in the original works.
This topic will not be discussed in depth, but let’s go back to the story.
According to the plot in the novel, the coffin must have been empty. Regardless of whether the ghost that Feng Jue saw in the tunnel just now was Madeleine’s ghost, anyway, her body was no longer in the cellar, but in the big house.
Feng Bujue pushed open the lid of the coffin, it was indeed empty and there was no corpse. He waved his hand to disperse the rising dust, and then used a flashlight to illuminate the inside of the coffin, and soon found a line of small words engraved on a wooden board at the end of the head, which seemed to be scratched out with fingernails.
There is only one sentence “he knows” above, without punctuation marks, and the words are crooked. Put yourself in the shoes… There is no light in the coffin, and Madeleine can’t see whether the letters she wrote are neat, and she has to maintain a certain posture to carve these on the top of her head, so being recognizable is not bad.
[The hidden mission has been triggered. 】Feng Bujue heard the system prompt and immediately opened the menu. At this moment, he saw another prompt window covering the front:
[The hidden missions in the script can provide you with very considerable rewards, but the difficulty of discovering and completing the hidden missions will be higher than the main and side missions. 】 [System prompts related to hidden missions, including voice, text, and mission content in the menu, are only visible to players who discover missions. If a hidden task is found in a multiplayer occasion, the players present will jointly obtain the task. However, hidden tasks cannot be shared over time. After one or more task executors describe the task content to other players, the other players can obtain the task content and progress in the menu, but they are not regarded as accepting the task and cannot be rewarded for completing it. 】 [The above prompts will only pop up when the player discovers the hidden mission for the first time. If you need to read it again, you can search for it in the game description. 】“That is to say… whoever discovers it will figure it out by himself, and then he will get the reward alone.” Feng Bujue read, he closed the two prompt windows, and glanced at the task: [Save Miss Madeleine’s soul 】
Feng Bujue said: “Oh…it’s such a situation…” He already had an inference about the direction of the plot in this script, but the question now is how to get out of this cellar?
He raised the flashlight again and conducted a more detailed search of the surroundings, but found nothing. He turned his gaze back to the coffin, except for that line of writing and some scratches left on the wood, there were no more valuable clues.
Feng Bujue placed the flashlight inside the coffin at an angle, tilted the glowing end to stabilize it, then bent down to pick up the thick coffin board from the ground, leaned it against the wall, and looked at both the front and back, but There is nothing on this big piece of wood.
“Wait…” Feng Bujue’s movements stopped suddenly, and he thought to himself, “The person lying in the coffin should be lying on his back, and if he wants to engrave words, he should also engrave them on the coffin board, even if she is worried that someone will ignore the lid when opening the coffin.” The engraved words on the coffin lid are only engraved on the top of the head, but why there is no trace of struggle on this board…the scratches and kick marks are all in other places, and this coffin lid is like new.”
Feng Bujue picked up the flashlight, shone the light on the coffin lid leaning against the wall, squatted down, and stared at the piece of wood, “Hmm…” He reached out and knocked again, and the coffin lid made a normal sound of solid wood. It doesn’t look like it’s hiding a mezzanine either.
At this time, Feng Bujue made a very bold (at least for others) decision. He lifted the coffin board and covered two-thirds of the coffin lengthwise, then got in by himself, held the coffin lid with both hands after lying down, and lifted it up vigorously, restoring the coffin to the closed state.
Lying in it, he didn’t feel very comfortable, not because of psychological reasons, but because the coffin was not upholstered, it was pure wood, and it was as if he was sleeping on a hard, unmade bed.
Feng Bujue put himself in the same situation as Miss Madeleine. He shone the flashlight on the coffin board and said, “How did you get out…” He tried to push it with one hand Push the coffin lid.
Unexpectedly, it couldn’t be pushed at this moment.
“Oh?” Feng Bujue was taken aback. He immediately put the flashlight next to his neck, stretched out his hands and feet, pushed it hard a few times, and kicked it a few times, but the coffin lid remained motionless.
After tossing and tossing, he just wanted to stop to catch his breath, but he saw that the piece of wood facing his face on the coffin lid was slightly raised and gradually turned into a human face.
The gender of that face was difficult to distinguish, and the voice sounded like an old witch, it said to Feng Bujue: “Dying man, do you want to get out from here?”
“Yes.” Feng Bujue replied, he wanted to see what tricks this coffin monster had.
“What can you give me?” asked the coffin lid.
At this time, a system prompt sounded: [You can donate a piece of equipment of ordinary or higher quality, and let the monster teleport you back to the space outside the cellar]
“Oh… ‘can’ donate, right…” Feng Bujue thought: “In other words, I can also choose not to donate.” He thought: “And… what if the player doesn’t have the equipment that meets the requirements? , it may not be stuck here, um… there must be some other way.”
“Coffin, I don’t want to give you anything.” Feng Bujue replied.
That face suddenly changed drastically, the eyes and mouth opened strangely, and became extraordinarily ferocious, which would have shocked an ordinary person. However, it was just a slightly protruding human face floating on the coffin board, it was impossible to attack the people in the coffin, at most it could scare people.
“Then you will be trapped here forever, dying in fear and hunger, even if your fingertips are ground to bloody, even if your toes and knees are shattered, it is impossible to break…”
Click, Feng Bujue took out the M1911A1 pistol from his luggage, and opened the safety.
“Let me introduce you…” Feng Bujue pressed his gun against the brow of that face: “Some interesting gadgets born after the second industrial revolution.”
“The damage you caused to me with the weapon in your hand is not enough for you to escape, and one or two small wounds are nothing.” Coffin Gai replied.
“I know you can change and repair yourself, but what about the coffin beside me, above my head, and under me?” Feng Bujue said.
“Hehehe…” The face on the coffin lid actually smiled, and at the same time, the handwriting carved by Madeleine on the top of Feng Bujue’s head, as well as the marks on the surrounding wood disappeared, “As long as I want.”
“Hmm…so that’s how it is. Anyway, I have received the mission and discovered the secret of the coffin, so these details such as notches can be omitted, right…” Feng Bujue put the gun away as he said.
“Now, do you want to change your mind?” The coffin lid said again: “Maybe you can dedicate that weapon to me just now, and I will send you out.”
Feng Bujue took out the [Western Kitchen Knife] and [Mario’s Pipe Wrench] from the luggage almost without a pause, “You have two options, first, send me back to the big house, and end this fun conversation.” He raised his hand and cut the coffin board with a knife, leaving a knife mark: “Second, I unloaded you as firewood.”
Tens of seconds later, Feng Bujue successfully reappeared in the big house, but the location was no longer in the original living room, but in a corridor. There was also a painting on the wall next to him, but instead of a cellar, it showed an ugly, abstract human face.
He didn’t stop there, just confirmed that the survival value was still full, and there was still a lot of physical energy left, so he continued to explore…
