The bicycle creaked steadily onward, traveling smoothly along the road toward the agricultural market.
Taking advantage of the travel time, Bai Fuling continued reading the newspaper and carefully examined the first report from beginning to end.
The [Crescent Sickle Murder Case] had first appeared three months ago.
Because every incident occurred on nights when the moon hung in a crescent shape, the case received that name.
Up until now, all three victims had been young people under thirty years old.
Two men.
One woman.
None of them knew each other and their lives showed almost no overlap whatsoever.
Each of them had been discovered dead on the streets the following morning.
Their throats had been slit open.
Their hearts were missing.
The police warned citizens to stay safe while going out at night, travel in groups whenever possible, avoid being alone and immediately report suspicious individuals upon discovery.
Beyond that, no additional details were revealed.
Alright then.
Bai Fuling folded the newspaper shut and stored this clue filled newspaper inside his backpack.
It was normal for introductory quest clues to be scarce.
Next, he needed to interrogate a relevant NPC.
Bai Fuling controlled the pixel character and poked the glasses wearing NPC riding the bicycle.
The bespectacled young man, suddenly poked sharply in the lower back without warning, stiffened instantly like a startled rabbit. The bicycle nearly swerved sideways.
However, he quickly regained control and continued wobbling forward.
How strange.
Why was there no dialogue?
Bai Fuling waited for a moment but nothing happened.
So he used his finger to poke the NPC in front of him three more times in succession.
The glasses wearing NPC leaned forward desperately in an attempt to escape but there was only so much distance a tiny bicycle could create.
By the end, he was practically flattened against the handlebars, almost parallel to the ground.
Finally, unable to endure anymore, he spoke:
“Um… may I ask what’s wrong?”
Shouldn’t NPCs immediately start delivering a flood of clue containing dialogue after interaction triggers?
Why was he reversing the roles instead?
Bai Fuling tilted his head.
“You’re asking me?”
The bespectacled NPC replied weakly, “…You’re asking me?”
Bai Fuling: “You’re asking me???”
The glasses wearing NPC: “……”
He fell silent for two seconds before slowly speaking.
“Alright then, young friend, you… just read the newspaper, right? So you want to know about the front page news regarding the Crescent Sickle Murder Case?”
“Yes, yes, exactly.” Bai Fuling nodded in satisfaction.
He had discovered something.
Just like the situation at the bus stop last time, this NPC required multiple interactions before reaching a hidden “hint threshold,” after which he would finally provide guidance.
Exploring things independently was certainly fun but repeatedly harassing NPCs to obtain hints and shortcuts was another kind of joy altogether!
“The Crescent Sickle Murder Case…” the glasses wearing NPC said quietly, “has been one of the biggest incidents recently. A vicious serial murder case but honestly speaking, I don’t really know the specific details either.”
Bai Fuling waited several seconds before unable to resist asking:
“That’s it?”
The bespectacled NPC blinked.
“…What?”
That was just meaningless filler dialogue!
That shouldn’t be right.
Normally speaking, the first NPC should provide some sort of follow up clue pointing toward the next objective.
Bai Fuling continued questioning him.
“Don’t you have any unofficial rumors or secret information? Like whether suspicious figures appeared on the streets during those nights, or if there have been any strange incidents in town over the past three months? Were there any signs of sewer manhole covers being pried open?”
The glasses wearing NPC: “…I’m just a library employee.”
Meaning: there was no way he would know that much.
Yet Bai Fuling seriously recorded every keyword the NPC mentioned.
“Good. Library.”
Libraries were excellent places.
In games, they usually hid countless secrets about the city.
He would definitely go investigate later.
The bespectacled NPC continued:
“The police have been handling this murder case from beginning to end. It seems they considered multiple factors and therefore didn’t release much information publicly.”
Bai Fuling noted down another keyword.
“Police records.”
Although stealing the car last time had resulted in him being locked inside Perland Academy’s confinement room, judging from the NPC’s words, this town probably did have a police station map model.
When he got the chance later, he would personally go rummage through the archives room.
“Anyway,” the glasses wearing NPC said, “for safety’s sake… it’s best to stay home properly at night and avoid going out as much as possible. Otherwise, you might run into the killer and suffer misfortune.”
“In other words…” Bai Fuling instantly reversed the logic. His eyes lit up brightly.
“If I go out more often at night, there’s a chance I might directly encounter the killer committing murder? That’s great!”
The bespectacled NPC: ?
Bai Fuling: If going outside allowed him to encounter the murderer in the middle of a crime scene, then that was practically the simplest method of solving the case imaginable.
Rewards would arrive in minutes.
A player naturally had to confront fear head on and remain fearless!
The black text at the side of the screen shifted the moment he made his original remark.
[Please pay attention to your HP. During the quest, if your HP reaches zero, there are no save files and no resurrection.]
Oh.
Alright then.
Bai Fuling guessed that his earlier line of dialogue had probably triggered some sort of system detection, causing the warning prompt to appear.
It seemed he could not simply rush recklessly into everything,
Unless he wanted to restart from a new save file.
Currently, Bai Fuling was extremely satisfied with this save and had no intention of replaying everything from the beginning.
Besides, if someone restarted every time something happened while gaming, they would remain trapped in the beginner village forever.
Bai Fuling adjusted his train of thought and returned to approaching things like a proper mystery solving game.
Following normal game logic, if he wanted to find more clues next, he would need to follow the glasses wearing NPC’s hints and investigate the archives at either the library or the police station.
Of course, there was another location the NPC had not mentioned that could still serve as an exploration point,
The funeral home.
One indispensable part of detective mystery games was investigating corpses.
Bai Fuling thought:
The bodies shouldn’t have been cremated yet, right?
No.
In games, corpses were usually preserved intact for the convenience of player investigation.
Sometimes they even remained perfectly fresh.
So if the bodies were not at the funeral home, then they were probably inside coffins.
And if he could not find them at the funeral home, he would simply head to the cemetery and dig up graves!
As a player, Bai Fuling felt absolutely zero psychological burden toward grave robbing.
If necessary, he could even steal the coffins themselves and carry them away while running.
But no matter what he planned to do next, he first needed tools.
Therefore, the agricultural market still remained the first stop on his journey.
The glasses wearing NPC delivered Bai Fuling to the agricultural market.
Almost the instant Bai Fuling jumped off the back seat, the other party furiously pedaled the bicycle and disappeared around the road corner in the blink of an eye.
Watching the rapidly vanishing figure, Bai Fuling sighed emotionally.
“This NPC resets pretty fast, huh.”
A second later, another realization suddenly struck him.
“Wait. The game still hasn’t explained how to summon mounts. How am I supposed to call back that bicycle later???”
Bai Fuling stood there thinking for a moment before recalling that the glasses wearing NPC had mentioned earlier that he worked at the library.
Then fine.
He would just look for him again next time he explored the library.
NPCs could not leave their designated activity zones anyway.
Thoughts flowed continuously through Bai Fuling’s mind but his movements never stopped.
He controlled the pixel character and stepped into the agricultural market.
The market overflowed with dazzling goods, causing the “appropriation philosophy” inside Bai Fuling’s heart to stir restlessly once again.
But the probability of getting caught here was far too high.
If he got locked in confinement again, it would waste precious time.
So Bai Fuling forcibly restrained himself.
Although players naturally wanted to shop for free, for now he would temporarily act as a law abiding citizen.
He still had the 199 yuan obtained earlier from the delinquent gang leader.
That was enough to buy farming tools like hoes, sickles and axes.
As for a watering can, he had already dug one out of a trash can previously, so there was no need to purchase another.
After wandering around for a while, Bai Fuling also bought fertilizer, pesticides and seeds.
He stuffed all those items into his backpack and the backpack’s initial twenty inventory slots were already nearly full.
Expanding the backpack required money.
Each additional slot cost 250 × 2 yuan,
Which meant 500 yuan total.
But the game interface stubbornly refused to simply write “500.” Instead, it deliberately displayed “250 × 2.”
Bai Fuling felt that this was probably some sort of cold joke from the game developers.
Perhaps the developers wanted to amuse the players.
Unfortunately, the players would absolutely not laugh.
Up until now, Bai Fuling had never even possessed 500 yuan before!
That “250 × 2” price tag practically felt like mockery.
Farming, solving cases and earning money,
All three were currently top priorities.
As Bai Fuling pondered this, his fingers casually slid across the screen, causing the little pixel character to wander around aimlessly.
Whenever he got stuck somewhere, he would simply press the jump button and leap directly onto other people’s stalls before vaulting across them.
Honestly speaking, the passerby NPCs in this game were remarkably intelligent.
Whenever he jumped onto stalls or stepped over people’s heads, those NPCs would actually scream dramatically in response. A few of them even started chasing after him.
Bai Fuling controlled his little character to avoid the pursuing NPCs and weave through the crowd.
He circled around the area several times before finally climbing a tree and vaulting over an alley wall to leave the agricultural market.
Outside the wall was a somewhat narrow road.
A van was parked beside the roadside and leaning against the vehicle stood a tall man.
As Bai Fuling walked past, the man beside the van suddenly moved closer and pressed a cloth over him. One arm hooked around his body and a line of text appeared on the screen.
[…You feel a wave of dizziness…]
The final image showed him being dragged into the trunk compartment of the nearby van before the door slammed shut with a loud bang.
The gray pixel van immediately started moving and drove out of the narrow road.
Bai Fuling stared at the darkened screen for a moment before reacting.
Had he triggered some new plotline?!
Ah, what a pity.
He had not even gotten the chance to return to school and plant the seeds yet.
But rare, exciting new story events were hard to come by, so naturally he should play through the new plot first.
What if this was some sort of hidden limited time easter egg trigger?
Bai Fuling rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
After the screen remained black for a short while, it slowly brightened once more.
The surrounding scenery had changed completely.
What entered his vision were lime coated walls, along with a few simple living necessities. Beyond that, there was almost nothing else inside.
Through the window, he could see overlapping shadows of forests and mountains outside.
This place seemed to be deep within the wilderness, far away from the city.
Leaning against the wall sat a tall man.
He wore an eyepatch covering one eye and was currently smoking. Pixelated rings of smoke slowly drifted upward.
“Hey, kid,” the man said in a hoarse voice. “You awake?”
“Haha!”
Bai Fuling excitedly jumped to his feet, ran two laps around the inside of the room, then grabbed onto the window frame and looked outside.
“Whoa, whoa! We left the city?!”
The man: ?
He paused briefly, apparently surprised by the reaction of the person in front of him.
“Hey, kid,” he called out again.
“Wow! I can’t even see the end of it. This really is a brand new map area!” Bai Fuling completely ignored the NPC and continued clinging to the window.
“…Kid!”
“Hey, there’s a kettle over there. Taking that, taking that… Mm? What’s this on the table? Wooden arrows?”
Bai Fuling immediately began looting everything openly and without restraint.
At this moment, the tall man leaning against the wall finally could not sit still anymore. He stood up abruptly.
“You!”
“What’s the quest? Hurry and say it already.”
Hearing the sound, Bai Fuling finally looked up with a grin. His eyes sparkled like gemstones.
“The sooner we finish, the sooner this is over. I still need to rush back and farm. I absolutely have to plant everything before midnight refresh today, otherwise the day counter will reset!”
Author’s Note:
Players are like locusts.
Wherever they pass, everything gets looted clean.
✦ ✧ ✦
Vynellia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
A coffee would be extremely convenient right about now. Just saying.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Escape game freezesChapter 2 · Players aren’t allowed to use the main entranceChapter 3 · Players have created a medical miracle!Chapter 4 · If I hit the NPC more, will the NPC drop gold coins?Chapter 5 · Players earn the title of “bus weirdo”Chapter 6 · Players get a prison experienceChapter 7 · So the red bar isn’t for favorability, it’s for anger!Chapter 8 · The player is a nimble catChapter 9 · The player is a “law-abiding” good studentChapter 10 · Players have no morals and are fearlessChapter 11 · Player: What’s wrong? It’s called “Cai Cai Shui Ling LingChapter 12 · The player is the famous Farmer Detective!Chapter 13 · The player raised a new petChapter 14 · The player is a genius dog-riding boyChapter 15 · The player is a sticky, helpful, and kind comradeChapter 16 · It turns out that players aren’t considered human by NPCsChapter 17 · Players are like angels descending upon my side!Chapter 18 · Player: There’s only one truth!Chapter 19 · Why are players farming at the school?!Chapter 20 · Players came to the cafeteria to buy suppliesChapter 21 · Are NPCs model workers?Chapter 22 · If you’re a gay manChapter 23 · Player: Wheelchairs are a useful mode of transportation!Chapter 24 · So the player is actually part of Cat Returns (?)Chapter 25 · Liao Zhi Qiu, a large pet belonging to the playerChapter 26 · Player: Hello, I picked up this corpse.Chapter 27 · Bai Fuling: Players will never dieChapter 28 · Has the murderer been caught?Chapter 29 · Player: Visiting the mental hospital felt as familiar as coming homeChapter 30 · Players’ Adventure in the Mental Hospital: Round 1Chapter 31 · Player: Kid, fly!Chapter 32 · The player who does good deeds every day is truly a good personChapter 33 · The kitten brought back some local specialtiesChapter 34 · Let this adorable kitten stay forever?Chapter 35 · Players, don’t give up on being human!Chapter 36 · A kitten is just a kitten, isn’t it?Chapter 37 · Players want it, players get itChapter 38 · Angel Player and Unlucky Bear NPCChapter 39 · In short, players choose to throw at NPCsChapter 40 · The player just flew away!Chapter 41 · Player: You need to thoroughly understand the bookChapter 42 · Players love to tease honest NPCs.Chapter 43 · He said he was a little hungry.Chapter 44 · Even if cotton essence mutatesChapter 45 · Pure Love TentaclesChapter 46 · Choose to be a kitten?Chapter 47 · Players’ tears are weaponsChapter 48 · Players do not need to breatheChapter 49 · It’s on fire!Chapter 50 · The player is a top-tier rescue masterChapter 51 · How did the player manage to resurrect after killing themselves?!Chapter 52 · Call the player “Little Cat King”!Chapter 53 · What are the consequences of raising the cat-like alienation