Chapter 41 The Mountain Pool and the Haunted Mansion 8
"Brother Jue… this… this… is, is…" Wang Tanzhi was scared and began stuttering again.
"If I don't interrupt you, are you going to continue [beep]ing yourself?" Feng Bujue asked.
"Brother Feng, how did you bypass the curse word censor?" Long Aomin exclaimed.
"Obviously, it's because there was no insulting intention behind my word, so the sentence itself wasn't blocked by the system. Since the term itself is not that cultured, it was replaced with a beep," Feng Bujue explained. "Then again, now doesn't seem like the time to discuss this problem, right?"
Bang Bang Bang… Hua La La…
The sound of explosions and glass shattering happened consecutively. The lamps on the wall exploded at the same time, causing darkness to fall. Before the commotion even ended, Feng Bujue had already taken out the flashlight from his backpack. He switched it on and aimed the stroke of light upward.
"Is that really necessary? They could have just switched it off. Looks like the mysterious power here has a flair for the dramatic." As he said that, he put on the Eye of Hostility.
When Xiao Tan and Brother Long saw the light in the dark, they turned their back to Feng Bujue and gradually retreated to his side. As they did that, they also retrieved the flashlights from their inventory, using them to light the space before them.
Passing Rain and Laughing Soul had their own source of light. Passing Rain held an old-looking lamp. Even though it looked worn, the item's attributes were not that bad.
———
Item Name: Lamp with Permanent Weak Light
Item Type: Tool
Quality: Poor
Function: Lighting
Special Effect: Will never be extinguished.
Remark: This lamp was once a powerful magical item, but after it was broken, it never got repaired. In its current form, it can only bring light to a five-meter radius around the user. The brightness of the light cannot be adjusted, and it cannot be turn off. Thankfully, it has a fuel reserve that will never run out.
———
She placed the lamp on the long table, and as the item description said, the lamp did not flicker at all and lit up the five meters around it.
Laughing Soul took out a yellow miner's hat and switched on the light that it was attached to it. She held the hat in her hands. Perhaps the hat was uncomfortable or she did not think it was fashionable.
The group all lowered their breathing to listen to the possibility of threat approaching them from the dark. Suddenly, there was a tingling sound coming from above them. They all looked up and saw the large chandelier above the table being pulled suspiciously by a mysterious force, and the person that it was aiming at was… Feng Bujue.
In the split second, the iron chain that held the chandelier suddenly snapped. The object that was half the size of a washing machine flew at Feng Bujue. The man's first reaction was to crawl under the table, but there was someone whose reaction was faster than Feng Bujue's, and it was not just one step faster.
Passing Rain skipped and kicked at the chair behind her. She launched herself into the air. She was agile, but there was still a feminine grace that characterized her movement. The blade flew out of its sheath, and it glinted dangerously in the dark. With a clean cut, she slashed at the falling chandelier. After the chandelier's metallic frame split in half, the force that controlled the object disappeared, and gravity took over. The chandelier crashed noisily to the ground.
Passing Rain achieved a soft landing and used one hand to wipe the hair that had fallen on her face back while holding the blade in the other. Her breathing did not even change after such a heroic action. Impressive was too weak a word to describe it.
Xiao Tan and Brother Long were stunned. The memory of Feng Bujue smashing the zombie's head in the day before paled in comparison. The warrior princess before them was at least ten times better than the man both in terms of skill and cruelty. Once one compared the fight scene of these two, it was like comparing the real deal and its counterfeit; there was no comparison.
"No need to thank me." Passing Rain saw Feng Bujue open his lips, so she cut him off first.
Feng Bujue swallowed the "thank you for your aid, wonderful heroine" down his throat and thought to himself, Thankfully, the words did not leave my lips. That sentence is often plied by little characters in wuxia movies.
He cleared his throat and said, "Hmm… Passing Rain, can you turn that lamp brighter?"
"No," Passing Rain answered bluntly.
"Hmm… Can you let me look at it?" Feng Bujue asked.
"Why?" Passing Rain bounced the question back.
"I have a skill that can repair a machinery-type object for a short period of time," Feng Bujue explained. "If your lamp is below normal quality…"
Before he finished, Passing Rain used her blade to pick up the lamp and shoved it toward him. "It's poor."
She preferred accurate and short descriptions, so he understood her perfectly. He accepted the lamp and activated a Hasty Repair. The system told him, "Skill activation failed." Feng Bujue was not that surprised because the chance of failure was higher. His workmanship mastery was F, and the chance of successful skill activation was twenty percent. In other words, he had been lucky when he managed to fix the flashlight on his first try the previous time. This time, that luck did not continue. He tried the skill two more times before activating it. He exhausted three hundred Stamina Points, but at least once the lamp was fixed, it managed to shower the entire dining room with its glow.
The dining room was huge. In fact, it was the biggest room of all the rooms that they had visited. When the light came on, in the furthest corner away from the group stood a shadow… a ghostly shadow.
It was the shape of a middle-aged man, and he was wearing a classic black suit. His skin was pale and his eyes sunken. He had a very recognizable face, his forehead was large, and his jaw was square. Based on common rumors, a ghost's appearance was a reflection of their appearance when they took their last breath or the appearance that they favored the most when they were still alive. From the ghost's appearance, there was no mistaking that this was Roderick Usher.
Originally, the shadow had been hiding in the corner where the light of the flashlights and lamp could not reach, but the sudden burst of brightness completely exposed him. Roderick seemed to be afraid of this light. He used his arms to shield his eyes, and his body doubled over as the man hissed.
Feng Bujue held the lamp and stepped fearlessly toward this spirit. He asked in a calm tone, "Mr. Usher, do you mind telling us how we can leave this place?"
"Don't come any closer," Roderick grumbled. "Or else…"
When he started the sentence, he sounded gentle, even kind, but once he reached the second half of the sentence, he removed his hands from his face to reveal a face that was definitely inhuman, and he roared like a wild beast, "You will pay!"
Feng Bujue did not react at all even though he was just standing one meter away from the spirit. The people behind him were shocked to different degrees by Roderick's sudden change.
"How exactly do you plan to make me pay? Control the chair to hit the back of my head?" Feng Bujue knew that the man was a spirit who could not attack him directly and only harass him by controlling the objects in the house.
He was perhaps that lucky because, at that moment, a chair really did float up and fly at Feng Bujue's back. This time, Long Aomin was the closest. With a lunge, he reached out and blocked the attack with Ultron's Fragment.
"There are five people here, but you seem particularly interested in me…" Feng Bujue's tone was pointed. "Where is Madeline's body? Did you place her next to you?"
"Ahhh!" Roderick wailed, and the objects in the room that were not glued to a surface like knives, plates, and candelabras all floated into the air. Feng Bujue wasted no time to grab Slowing Sands from his inventory, and he smashed it against the ground.
The item was able to slow 'monsters' within fifty meters by half and could not affect the movement speed of inanimate objects even if they were in the area of effect. However, Roderick's telekinesis seemed to have affected as well, and all the floating items cluttered to the ground. The items controlled by the ghost were like a bike with a person on it; if the force—i.e. the person—stopped pedaling, the bicycle would not slow down but would tip over.
Feng Bujue raised the lamp and aimed his flashlight at Roderick. Since the spirit could not hurt them directly, the reverse was true as well. All he could do was influence it with the light that it seemed to fear so much. An incomprehensible groan escaped from Roderick's lips, and he slowly turned around. He attempted to shield the light with his arms and escape, but he was too slow.
"This scenario's difficulty is not that high, it seems. As long as you have a powerful source of light, are careful when exploring the house, and do not get influenced by illusions, there is no need to worry about Life Points at all," Feng Bujue said. "This should be a scenario mainly designed to challenge one's courage, not fighting ability."
He held the lamp and walked into Roderick's body. The light turned the spirit lighter and lighter, but he could not completely vanquish it.
One minute soon passed, and Roderick retreated into the wall. Feng Bujue shrugged with some disappointment as he returned to the table and put the lamp down.
"Let us rearrange our thoughts." Feng Bujue grabbed a wooden chair and sat down. "After Brother Invincible died, the transferred plot item should be around here, we need to go look…"
Laughing Soul surrendered the item and said, "This is it, but the information inside is limited. The summary is that… the writer who was the owner of this house is suffering from an illness, and through the letter, he asked his friend to come visit him."
"May I take a look at that?" Feng Bujue asked.
"Of course." Laughing Soul passed him the letter and added, "If you intend to find some hidden message from the letter, you can save your time; it is just a normal letter."
She had glanced at it earlier, but that was enough for her to tell that the letter was just a normal plot item.
Feng Bujue read the letter for a whole minute and said, "Players who have read the novel might guess they're inside the House of Usher from this letter, and those who haven't will still get a brief idea of the setting."
He handed the letter back. "This item cannot be brought out of the scenario, so it does look like it is something to help explain the main plot and is not going to help us push the progress forward."
"Then please help explain our current situation to us. You seem to know the story very well, and the spirit earlier was obviously focusing his attacks on you even though I am the one with the plot item," Laughing Soul said. "There has to be a reason behind that as well, right?"