"Fierce... fierce." Several players on the side watched in stunned silence as Yunchuan completed this series of actions.
"Butler Reese, please clean it up." Yunchuan took a sip of wine, smiled and raised his glass to the butler.
"Of course...of course." Reese bent down and responded quickly. He winked to the side, and several maids immediately came forward and squatted on the ground to wipe away the flesh foam and oil spots.
"Steward Reese, why don't you ask the chef to fry a few more eggs..." Mu Chen's mind was spinning rapidly on the side, and he used Yunchuan's remaining power to ask for a change of dishes.
The smile on Reese's face was really unbearable now, but he could only grit his teeth and ask the maid to remove the food in front of the players.
"I'm sorry to bring a bad experience to our distinguished guests. We will definitely serve you the freshest and most perfect food during dinner. But please don't forget today's assessment. The Duke will return to the manor before dinner."
……
"Ugh..." After leaving the restaurant, An An couldn't help but cover her mouth and ran to the corner to vomit.
"It's really... getting more and more perverted..." Liu Ruoyu also frowned and didn't want to think about the tragic scene on the dinner plate.
"Yunchuan... what do you think?" Although the glasses looked reluctant, they called the young man walking behind Mu Chen extremely seriously.
"What do I think?" Yun Chuan turned around in a funny way. He teased his glasses with some teasing, "You trust me so much? Don't you think I'm a canary?"
"You..." Sunglasses didn't expect to be retorted directly, and he was a little speechless, but it didn't make sense for him to talk about this behind his back, and he couldn't refute it.
"Hong told you?" Liu Ruoyu patted the glasses on the shoulder, telling him to shut up.
"Hmm."
"Sorry for the stereotype. Nowadays, beautiful newcomers are basically divided up as soon as they come in." Liu Ruoyu clasped his hands together and made an apology.
"Okay, I accept it." Yunchuan didn't want to embarrass them at first. He even thought that in the next copy, he could use the character of Canary from the beginning. After all, pretending to be a pig and eating a tiger. Things sound pretty fun.
"Reese just said that the freshest food will only be served for dinner, which means that we will meet Fatty again for lunch, and dinner is likely to be Yanyan whose life and death are unknown." The black-haired young man licked his lips, with a look in his eyes. Disgust flashed past.
"After all, if the head and limbs are removed, the trunk is more suitable for being a real staple food."
"Hong was made into a maid, Shanfeng's body was shattered into pieces and had to be thrown away. Yan Yan doesn't know whether he will live or die now, so Fatty is the best choice. And... they can't wait any longer."
"Can't wait?" Ning Ning supported the exhausted An An, a little puzzled.
"If you drink wine, you will be attacked by vines. If you eat meat, you will be attacked by animals. If you eat the flesh of a fat man, you will be attacked by the fat man at night." Mu Chen chatted at the side.
"Perhaps we can expand the scope. Both male servants and maids can be classified as humans. If we eat the fat man's meat, we may face attacks from everyone at night."
"No...it doesn't have to be at night." Glasses gritted his teeth. "Do you still remember that grapevine? The grapevine wrapped in the maid's skin."
"What maid skin?" Liu Ruoyu interrupted in confusion.
Glasses then remembered that there were three other players who didn't know what happened last night.
"The maid's skin is a constraint. Monsters at night may only be able to move during that period of time, which creates the illusion that they can only attack at night. Once we eat the fat man, the maid who is classified as a human during the day can be unscrupulous They are chasing us." Yun Chuan answered coolly.
"But...but our main plot is to provide the nightingale to the Duke. If we all die, wouldn't it mean that there will be no nightingale..." An An was a little anxious, twirling her hair and shaking uncontrollably.
"It's different. It's the Duke who wants Nightingale, not the male and female servants. There is no conflict between the Duke choosing among us and the servant wanting to kill us. It may even be part of the assessment." Since everyone knows this Nightingale If it’s not that nightingale, then you might as well speak more openly.
"One more possibility..." Yun Chuan pushed open the heavy door.
"What?"
"The freshest and most perfect food. Yanyan's arm was broken before he died, so he is not perfect in terms of appearance, and the freshest ingredient is freshly killed and sold... it is sashimi."
"So the dinner may not necessarily be Yanyan, it may also be us who failed the assessment. So..." Yunchuan lifted the heavy blanket, and the man with messy hair trembled, covered his eyes and shrank back.
"Do you know the secret that the Duke is hiding?" The young man's black eyes met his cloudy eyes.
"Ah...save me...save me..." The man stretched out his skinny hands in fear and tried to push him away, mumbling incomprehensible words.
"Don't scare him!" Liu Ruoyu stepped forward and stood between the two of them.
"To scare him." Mu Chen suddenly remembered something. He clicked twice in the void, and a silver-white ball of light suddenly appeared.
"This is..." Glasses rubbed his chin.
"The props obtained from the previous copy have not been used yet." Mu Chen clamped the man's chin with one hand and pressed the silver-white light ball into his eyebrows.
——
The prop NPC's fear [scare someone to death without paying for their life (one-time consumable)] players can ask a question when the NPC is afraid [do not touch the dungeon principle], and will definitely get the correct answer. -——
The system considerately broadcast the introduction of the props in his mind.
"I can only ask a question that does not violate the dungeon principle." He looked back at Yunchuan, who continued to secretly threaten the man.
"Ask for your props."
Okay…
"Ask him for the password directly?" Liu Ruoyu whispered.
"You can only ask one question and make the most of what you get." Mu Chen shook his head. "Got to find better questions...big questions with small questions!"
"?" Yun Chuan came over in a swish, making big questions and small questions. What the hell, the reflective head of the director of the props department suddenly flashed before his eyes.
"There are always some big questions on the test paper. There are many small questions in the big questions. This can be regarded as one question." Mu Chen explained to him in a low voice.
I see... The chief boss, who had never answered a paper before, looked thoughtfully at the trembling NPC man.
I will find time to send an email to the director of the props department later to congratulate him on working overtime again.
"Then I'll start." After several players murmured for a while, Mu Chen squatted in front of the man, stepped forward with glasses and covered the man's mouth to prevent him from mumbling the answer before he finished the question.
"Please listen to the title: Duke Morton Nadal found a nightingale, and the nightingale's song was very beautiful. But later, a foreign businessman presented him with an imitation bird made of diamonds. With the company of the diamond bird, the Duke gradually The Nightingale forgot about it until the Diamond Bird damaged the Duke. He suddenly realized it. In order to regret it, he locked the Diamond Bird in a box and tortured himself day and night until the Nightingale returned. From then on, the Nightingale and the Duke lived together again..."
"Uh... uh..." The man whose mouth was covered suddenly opened his eyes wide, whining and struggling desperately to break free from the shackles of his glasses.
"Hold him! Keep asking!" Liu Ruoyu held his arm tightly and let the glasses seal the man's mouth with a card.
"This question has a total of one sub-question. Now please listen to the first sub-question: What is your name? What is your relationship with the Duke? The second sub-question: What is the password to lock the diamond bird's box? The third sub-question: The Duke...Nightingale's What are the secrets? Fourth..."
——
Players are advised to stop, otherwise the props will be automatically destroyed-——
The cold electronic sound unbearably interrupted Mu Chen's question.
"..." Glasses also heard the system's broadcast, and at Mu Chen's signal, he released his grip on the man.
"Ah... help... ah..." The man danced around helplessly for a while and then his arms suddenly froze in the air. A silvery-white light flashed from his forehead, and the tattered man became quiet.
"My name is Wiener Nadal." The man spoke mechanically. His raised arms slowly lowered themselves, and his whole body was as stiff as a piece of wood.
The surname is Nadal, and he seems to be a relative of the Duke... Mu Chen raised his eyebrows.
"Duke Morton Nadal is my brother..."
"The password that locks the Diamond Bird box is the time when he painted his first oil painting of a nightingale."
"The nightingale imprisoned my brother's soul...and now...it's going to find a new body!" Weiner suddenly opened his eyes wide, his white eyes fixed on Mu Chen, and said the last words word for word. The person who releases Morton’s soul will replace him and become the next host of Nightingale!”
After finishing speaking, Weiner's slack eyelids drooped, and his whole person instantly became depressed.
"Ah...save...save me..."
He regained his initial dementia appearance.
The effect of the prop is gone.
"The person who releases Morton's soul will replace him and become Nightingale's next host." Liu Ruoyu was stunned for a moment and repeated Navi's last sentence.
"Nightingale...Nightingale...Damn Nightingale..." Navi opened his mouth wide, and there was a strange crunching sound in his throat.
"Uh..." He suddenly grasped the red blood vessels coiled around his neck. The blood vessels that were originally lying softly on his shoulders were now twisting like snakes, slowly turning into purple-black, thin blood vessels. The branch raised its head and continuously sprayed out black blood.
"Stay away!" Mu Chen pulled Yun Chuan back and dodged back, accurately avoiding the blood splattering everywhere.
'Hiss...' Large blood spots fell on the floor. The originally shiny wooden floor instantly turned gray and rotten, and within a few seconds turned into something like wood wadding, revealing the cement floor underneath.
Weiner gasped for breath. He stood up with difficulty, his two skinny legs trembling constantly. "Drink..." He shouted, his skinny fingers inserted into the blood vessel hard, black blood spattered everywhere, and he actually pulled the blood vessel out of his body forcefully.
The old man stared at the struggling blood vessels in his hands, and a glimmer of light suddenly flashed in his eyes.
"Thank you." He raised his head and looked at the vigilant players surrounding him. He suddenly manipulated his withered muscles to forcefully smile and made a hoarse voice.
Click...click...
There seemed to be the sound of dead branches breaking in Weiner's body. His exposed skin was covered with spider web-like lines, and his whole body was cracked bit by bit, and finally turned into a handful of dust and scattered on the ground.
"Weina is dead." Liu Ruoyu announced the fact ruthlessly as she watched the last dust fall to the ground.
"Thank you." Mu Chen suddenly repeated Weiner's thanks.
"Huh?" An An's eyes suddenly widened.
"What's wrong?" Ning Ning asked her in a low voice.
"Thank you. This mouth shape is different from Weiner's mouth shape!" She tried to imitate Weiner's mouth shape just now.
"Rose Garden." Mu Chen glanced at An An, "He was talking about the Rose Garden."
"This is a way for undercover agents to pass on information. They say things they don't want to do, but the shape of their mouth is indeed the real information."
"You know a lot." Liu Ruoyu blinked at him in surprise.
"I just learned a little bit of lip reading by chance, so I can talk about business." Mu Chen frowned and thought.
"Rose Garden, what's in the Rose Garden."
"People like to bury precious things under the big trees in the garden." Yun Chuan tried to recall the poor human stories in his brain.
"This forest is the back garden of the Duke's house, and every tree looks similar." Liu Ruoyu still remembered that they wandered outside the house on the first night and almost got lost in the woods.
"So when it comes to the rose garden, the clues are likely to be under those roses. There are too many mysteries now. Let's go to the garden to take a look before noon." Glasses made his decision immediately.
The group cleaned up the powdered Weiner and then got up and headed to the garden.
Their journey was relatively smooth and they only met a few maids.
Although the maids were not friendly towards them, due to the rules, they did not fight.
There were only a few footmen hoeing in the garden.
"Be careful of the male servants." Those old male servants seemed to be still human beings and could attack them without restraint.
"I'll do it." Glasses waved his hand, he snapped his fingers, and seven or eight black cards flashed out of the air.
They trembled slightly in the air, and with the movements of the glasses, several white figures were carved on the pure black card.
"Go." Glasses blew on the cards, and the cards flew out, imprinted on the servants who were hoeing. At the same time, several men carrying hoes appeared on his wrists. Little white man.
The male servants were shocked, stood up straight one by one, and walked straight into the manor carrying hoes and buckets.
"The effect of my card can last for twenty minutes, so you have to act quickly." Glasses watched the last manservant walk into the manor and breathed a sigh of relief.
The group of people moved forward quickly in the garden, and soon they came to the place where the roses bloomed most densely.
The delicate roses are still growing vigorously, and they are in full bloom in clusters. Countless beautiful butterflies and nectar-gathering bees are flying up and down among the layers of delicate petals. The refreshing fragrance comes, and the flowers tremble slightly in the wind.
A beautiful and peaceful scene.
But no one dares to forget the experience of the first night. It was this seemingly beautiful and delicate rose that made them run away in all directions.
Liu Ruoyu took a step forward and lit a red flame in his hand.
"These roses will attack people, protect yourself." She specifically reminded Yunchuan, who did not go out to explore that night.
"Okay." Yun Chuan looked at Qiangwei who seemed to be honest and didn't refute. He walked up behind Mu Chen and poked Mu Chen's lower back with his finger in a bad way. "Did you hear that? Protect me."
"Don't touch!" Mu Chen shivered abnormally and held Yun Chuan's wrist with one hand from behind.
Holding the slender cold wrist with his warm palm, Mu Chen squeezed it subconsciously, it felt so good...
"Why are you so thin? Xingchen doesn't give you food?" He retracted his hand uncomfortably and looked for topics randomly, the skin beside his ears turning slightly red.
"?" Yunchuan was puzzled. "What are you talking about? I've been like this since I was born."
"Ahem." Glasses coughed twice and rushed from behind the two of them to the front. "Be aware of the impact."
Notice the impact…what impact?
I really don't understand you humans.
"Concentrate!" Liu Ruoyu obviously noticed that the few people behind her were almost absent-minded, and she was so angry that she sent out a wisp of flames that quickly revolved around the players.
Zhizhi…
The rose flowers felt the heat wave coming and retreated one after another.
Black branches with sharp thorns poked their heads out from the flowers, and arrogantly raised their hooked thorns.
A gust of wind blew by, and the burning debris hit his face with the smell of decaying blood. Liu Ruoyu burned half of the roots of the roses with a fire. The roses twisted their bodies desperately and wanted to attack, but they were afraid of the blazing flames ahead.
"Take it easy, don't be too obvious." Glasses looked at the burnt-black rose with concern.
"I know it well." Liu Ruoyu curled her lips, and the flames changed shapes in the air to form a concentric circle that enveloped the players.
The thick roots of the rose had to retreat, revealing the miserable state of the fertile land.
White bones, shriveled skin, rotting flesh, squirming maggots.
"yue..." An An closed her eyes and covered her mouth in despair again.
"Dig." Liu Ruoyu didn't have time to take care of her. She took the shovel that just came from the wall and pushed it into the ground.
The corrupt organization was uncovered, and the thick putrid smell hit the players' noses and brains like a giant hammer.
"..." After a few minutes, Yun Chuan finally couldn't bear it anymore when he looked at the mess on the ground. He couldn't bear the overwhelming smell.
A few strands of golden thread crawled out from his trousers and secretly fell into the soil.
Within three seconds, Yunchuan located something strange.
He elbowed Mu Chen, pointed out the location to him via voice transmission, and urged him to finish digging and leave quickly.
When Mu Chen arrived on the road, he pretended to dig around for a few times before calling other players to come over and see what he had dug up.
It was a gray bottle with a cork at the mouth.
The bottle was covered with dirt, and I could only vaguely see something like a notebook inside.
"I'll open it and see if it's okay." Ning Ning put on her gloves and carefully picked up the bottle.
She knew very well that she and An An were taken away from the dungeon this time, and An An's repeated expressions losing control due to some scenes may have caused dissatisfaction among others. In order not to become a dragster and be abandoned, Ning Ning resisted her nausea and had to pick up the bottle.
The girl's slender fingers had already touched the bottle cork. The cork, which had been buried in the soil for who knows how many years, had already rotted into disarray. A large number of debris fell to the ground with her movements.
"Stop!" Mu Chen suddenly shouted to Ning Ning.
He looked at the crumbling cork, and his heart suddenly beat uncontrollably.
At this moment, the glasses suddenly felt a burning sensation on his wrist. He lowered his head and saw that the marks of the white figures on his wrists were slowly fading away. He signaled to the others: "The time for cards is coming, let's go first."
"Let's go." The players withdrew from the rose bushes as quickly as possible, got stuck in the queue and walked out of the male servant's blind spot and returned to the guest room in a thrilling manner.
"Huh... Is the bottle okay?" Liu Ruoyu breathed out and turned to look at Ning Ning.
The girl's clothes were stained with dirt from the bottle, but she still held the stinking bottle tightly.
At this time, even Yunchuan didn't notice it. A wisp of black mist that was so thin that it was almost invisible squeezed out of the gag that was almost broken into pieces and quietly entered the girl's wrist.
"Why didn't you open it just now?"
The glasses are trying to see clearly what's inside through the bottle. His cards don't work on the glass bottle, and he can't see what's inside directly through the bottle.
"Can't turn it on." Mu Chen shook his head. His heart was beating at an extremely high speed, which caused great discomfort to his body. His mind was filled with the sound of his heart pounding, and he couldn't function normally for a while. think.
"Weiner said that the person who releases the Duke's soul will become Nightingale's next replacement." Yunchuan was keenly aware of Mu Chen's abnormality. He walked up behind Mu Chen seemingly casually and put his hand on his shoulder casually. waist.
Warm and powerful energy poured in, soothing Mu Chen's wildly beating heart.
"But he didn't say what the container that held the Duke's soul was, so anything abnormal could be that container."
Dark creatures can only possess emotional souls. Mu Chen should have sensed something, but...
Thin and dense spiritual threads almost covered the room, but he still didn't feel anything strange.
The player should have noticed it as he continued to explore. Yunchuan lowered his eyelashes and slowly retracted the spiritual thread that spread out.
This time, the dark creature was so smart that it didn't show him any malice.
"Indeed, our journey has been too smooth..."
"Is it possible that there are other requirements for releasing the soul? For example, voluntary, unconscious, etc.? Players may easily open the bottle just to find the password." Ning Ning quickly put the bottle on the table.
"There is still a question." Mu Chen, who had regained his composure, rubbed his brows, "The Duke is talking about assessment. Assessment means that the final result is selected after layers of tests. If you open a bottle, the final result will be determined. The risk to the personnel is too great... Even if he had been screened in advance, we would still have five people left.”
"What the Duke wants to assess is the nightingale. Literally speaking, the nightingale is a bird. It may be a confusing option..."
"Okay, okay, let's just talk about how to deal with it." Glasses stopped the players' argument. "Time is running out, it's almost lunch time."
"Let Duke/Reese/NPC open the bottle!"
"...Now we have a tacit understanding." The corner of Glasses' mouth twitched slightly.
……
Lunch time
The frustrated chef in the morning looked even more terrifying with his scarlet eyes, and he personally served plates of exquisite dishes to the players.
These dishes are heavy on oil, salt, and extremely rich in seasonings. Looking at the thin minced meat on the plate, everyone knows that they cannot eat them.
Yunchuan simply stopped drinking. He just sat in his seat and shook his glass.
As the boss, he could easily smell the fishy smell in the dish that was masked by the heavy seasoning.
More than just dishes.
Even the wine in his hand smelled of rotting meat.
Maybe it's dripping blood into a wine bottle, or maybe just twisting the blood and flesh into a paste and smearing it on the bottom of the cup.
Anyway, the chef was determined to mess with Yunchuan today. He didn't even leave after serving the food. He stood beside Yunchuan like a wall.
It was as if Yun Chuan could break free and strangle him to death as long as he took a bite of food.
Not only him, but all the surrounding maids are also secretly observing the player's actions.
However, players have always taken advantage of loopholes. The rule is that players must eat at the table, but it does not say that they must eat meals prepared by the manor.
Mu Chen took a CD without any guilt, lifted the tablecloth to cover the plate, and then took out a few straws from his pocket.
"Guest..." The chef gritted his teeth and squeezed out two words. His forehead was stretched with ferocious veins, and his entire forehead was congested and turned red.
"Who are the guests? You are the guest or I am the guest. What right do you have to care about what the guests eat?" Yunchuan slapped the table and retorted on the spot.
The chef's big face suddenly turned purple, but he had no choice but to look at Yunchuan with vicious eyes and apologize in a low voice.
The other players took this opportunity to come up with weird food.
Only Yunchuan can do this kind of thing, and even the guests are divided into upper and lower classes.
Ten players, nine commoners and one noble.
The servants didn't recognize them, but they recognized that Yun Chuan's gorgeous clothes must not be a commoner.
Only nobles can naturally scold their servants, but correspondingly, nobles will also be hated by their servants.
Facing the chef's angry gaze, Yun Chuan felt a little gloating about his misfortune.
Sure enough, attacking one's own people is quite exciting.
The chef is of good height and is a good candidate for frame-up.
It's just you, no one is calling you unlucky.
Yun Chuan raised his chin towards Mu Chen who was opposite him. Mu Chen was instructed to secretly place the glass bottle next to the table leg.
"Come here and cut the steak for me." Yun Chuan started to order the chef with a smirk.
"Okay, distinguished guest." The chef thought he was about to start eating, so he quickly put on a flattering smile and stepped forward to take the plate with the steak.
Those steaks were about the size of an adult male's hand, and there was a finger-thick bone in the center, which looked like a human thigh.
The steak was placed in the upper right corner of the table, and the chef had to change his direction, stick out his huge butt, and bend down to carry the heavy plate.
So the poor cook fell into the same pit for the second time.
Whoosh
The cards popped out of the glasses, and two thinly connected cards were wrapped around the chef's ankles under the cover of the tablecloth.
The chef fell to the ground for the second time in one day.
But this time, the fall was far worse than that of the morning. The heavy plate hit the bottle directly, breaking the old glass bottle into pieces.
Not only that, the glasses also tied the tablecloth to the card, causing most of the dishes on the table to fall to the ground, leaving a mess.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Mu Chen quickly stepped on the folded paper in the bottle and stuffed the note into his pocket under the guise of looking down at the chef.
With the chef's two consecutive blows, this meal was completely uneatable.
Reese's face was livid with anger, but he couldn't get angry at the player, so he could only attack the chef.
The wailing chef was picked up by the maid with one hand and dragged out of the door mercilessly.
…………
"They fed the chef to Qiangwei." Glasses, who came back from the investigation, said that he didn't want to recall the bloody scene.
"Did they find any signs of burning?" Liu Ruoyu was a little nervous.
"Probably not. The maid left him there and left. How about it? Did you get the result of the password?"
"July 5, 1654." Mu Chen clicked on the paper spread out on the table.
It was a roll of parchment that had been torn into several pieces, with a vague pattern drawn on it.
"This parchment has been badly worn, and we can barely make out the picture on it is a nightingale." An An put away her glasses and nodded at the others. "But the date can be discerned as July 5, 1654."
"Then this is most likely the password."
"There is a high chance that yes, let's check the situation in the afternoon and don't act rashly. It will be troublesome for the chef to be eaten by Qiangwei. If there is really a soul in the bottle... I'm afraid there is no way to find out." Liu Ruoyu was leaning on the sofa, feeling worried. .
"Then this box." Glasses took out the box that was riddled with holes.
"Keep it for now. Anyway, Reese only said he found the password but didn't say he had to let us open it."
"Okay."
Having said that, the players still chose to go out to investigate again in the afternoon to avoid missing any clues.
After several battles, the players are no longer as wary of each other as they were at the beginning.
"Yunchuan and I will go to the garden to take a look later."
"Okay, Liu Ruoyu and I are also planning to go to the fifth floor again. Nightingale replaced the Duke with her own soul and lived in this world for hundreds of years. There must be other secrets hidden in this." Glasses nodded. .
"Then... let's go to the warehouse and have a look." Ning Ning agreed.
The group of people decided on their destination, and this time they really let down their guard and exchanged communication paper cranes.
——
Garden——
"I felt the influence of the dark creatures, but only at the moment when I opened the bottle. I didn't feel that feeling even after the bottle was broken." As soon as he arrived in the garden, Mu Chen spoke immediately.
"Because there is indeed a soul in that bottle." Yunchuan nodded, "Those things can only possess emotional souls. I think the person who releases the Duke's soul will become the next replacement for Nightingale. This sentence That’s not accurate.”
"The person who releases the soul will become the next replacement of that soul." Mu Chen said softly. "Then the dark creatures that leave their souls will look for the next host."
"Chef or player." Yun Chuan pulled him to stop. "But obviously it didn't possess the chef."
"Huh?" Mu Chen turned around in confusion.
"Come on, this is a hard-won fighting opportunity. After extracting the confession, let's follow the sisters~" In Mu Chen's eyes, Yunchuan was smiling with evil intentions.
"You...what are you going to do?" He immediately became more vigilant.
The beautiful black-haired young man snapped his fingers, and golden threads instantly sprang out, forming a huge barrier on the lawn.
At the same time, the lush rose flower wall suddenly shook violently, and a withered palm slowly poked out.
"Again? This isn't what I thought..." Mu Chen turned back stiffly.
"It's just what you think~ Attention, he is already disabled, and you don't want to end up interrogating a bunch of broken bones." Yunchuan smiled and took a step back, leaving the battlefield to this new player.
(End of chapter)