Facts proved that the system apparently did not contain any database entries for the classic lines of Detective ○○.
After a long silence, Guan Jizhong did not react the way Bai Fuling had hoped.
Instead of exclaiming, “What an honor! So you’re the famous Detective Cabbage!” and treating him with reverence, the man simply reached out without saying a word and picked him up again.
Then he carried him straight back into the wooden cabin.
“There’s everything you need inside the house,” Guan Jizhong said while standing at the doorway. “Stay here and don’t run around. Once I find Liao Zhiqiu, I’ll come back and take you away.”
After speaking, he didn’t linger any longer.
He picked up the cloth bag resting on the cabinet near the entrance, slung it across his back, locked the door and left.
When Bai Fuling heard the distinct click of the latch locking from outside, he looked somewhat surprised.
He immediately jumped up from the stool inside the cabin and hurried to the door in two quick steps, reaching out to push against it.
“Wait, Uncle, you’re just leaving like this?!”
You haven’t even issued the quest yet!
You’re not even giving me any stage rewards either?!
This NPC was unbelievably stingy!
The door had been locked from the outside and wouldn’t budge.
Bai Fuling decided that since he was already here anyway, there was no rush to break out immediately.
He might as well search the cabin first.
When an NPC placed a player inside their own home, wasn’t that basically like inviting a mouse directly into a grain warehouse?
No, to be more accurate, it was like inviting a mouse into a room made entirely of cheese. Every corner practically begged to be explored.
Bai Fuling first walked around the interior of the cabin once, familiarizing himself with the overall layout.
It was a small house built from a mixture of wood and packed earth. The graying walls and worm-eaten wooden beams were enough to reveal that the structure was already very old.
However, because the interior was sparse and mostly empty of clutter, it didn’t appear dirty or messy.
The layout could roughly be described as one bedroom, one living area and one bathroom.
There was also a small side room of unknown purpose nearby.
The door to the small room was tightly locked.
But of course, to a player, there was no such thing as a truly locked door.
In real life, barging around like this would obviously be inappropriate.
But this was a game.
Players naturally didn’t care about those kinds of details.
After all, the entire point of games was to search every nook and cranny for clues.
Some games even required players to search toilets because NPCs would hide keys inside them!
Thinking about it carefully, that was honestly pretty ridiculous.
Why would NPCs put keys into toilets in the first place? Weren’t they afraid the keys would get flushed away?
Sometimes players genuinely couldn’t understand the bizarre logic behind game developers’ design decisions.
And developers themselves often intentionally created settings that completely defied common sense.
Therefore, the safest method was always the same:
Interact with absolutely everything that could possibly be interacted with.
So upon seeing the locked door, Bai Fuling naturally and skillfully pulled out the axe he had bought earlier that day from the farmers’ market.
Then he immediately began hacking at the wooden door with loud chopping sounds, attempting to force his way inside.
Apparently, this area wasn’t designed with any “you must solve the puzzle before entering” logic.
The wooden door gave way after only a few strikes.
Bai Fuling successfully stepped inside.
The room beyond was dimly lit but Bai Fuling remained completely calm.
He put away the axe and took out a flashlight from his inventory instead.
He knew it. The flashlight he had looted from Pang Chengyu earlier would definitely come in handy someday!
Thank you for the NPC’s generous donation.
And thank you to himself for consistently adhering to the philosophy of “if it’s useful, take it.”
Click.
The flashlight switched on and a beam of light pierced through the darkness.
The light shone straight ahead, onto a photograph hanging at the center of the wall.
There were two people in the picture.
One was the tall NPC he had met today.
The other was a young girl standing beside him, about a head shorter than the man. Their appearances resembled one another somewhat, both possessing reddish-brown hair.
They didn’t look like lovers.
And the age gap didn’t fit a father-and-daughter relationship either.
So they were probably siblings.
At this point, Bai Fuling already had a rough premonition.
Based on years of gaming experience, whenever only one sibling physically appeared in-game while the other existed only in a photograph… the absent one was usually already dead.
Combined with the earlier mention of the Crescent Sickle Murder Case by the tall NPC, the answer became obvious.
The girl in the photo was most likely the victim.
The tall NPC’s goal was revenge for his sister.
Now everything connected together.
Bai Fuling nodded thoughtfully.
Earlier, he had still been wondering why the NPC was so obsessed with finding the murderer when he clearly didn’t look like some righteous champion of justice.
Now it seemed obvious.
He must have reached some kind of agreement with Liao Zhiqiu’s grandfather in exchange for information about the killer, which then led to all the events afterward.
Below the photograph stood a table.
On top of it rested a small incense burner used for offerings.
Beside it were two plates.
One plate held candy.
The other contained a necklace.
Bai Fuling glanced at them but didn’t take anything.
Although players generally lacked moral standards, even he felt some things were better left alone…
Besides, not every item could be looted safely.
Some objects would increase an NPC’s hostility level if stolen, which would negatively affect future quests.
And more importantly, candy and necklaces weren’t particularly useful to Bai Fuling anyway.
His inventory was already completely full. There wasn’t even room to store anything else.
After wandering around the small room for a while and understanding the driving force behind the tall NPC’s actions, Bai Fuling finally walked back out.
He returned to the table where he had first sat down and began carefully organizing his thoughts regarding the current quest situation.
Just now, all of his famous-detective-style dialogue had completely failed to move the tall NPC.
Which meant the system’s internal judgment standards clearly weren’t based on the actual words typed into the dialogue box.
Then… after thinking it over, the answer was probably reputation.
Everyone knew that RPG games usually included a reputation system. Reputation affected how NPCs from different factions treated the player.
Right now, he was still in the completely unknown stage. He had no fame, no achievements and no favorability built up with anyone.
Under those circumstances, it was understandable that the NPC didn’t trust him.
After circling through the logic in his head, Bai Fuling felt he could now understand why the tall NPC had repeatedly ignored the player again and again.
Thinking further, this new storyline involving the tall NPC probably wasn’t meant to let him receive a quest from the new NPC at all.
Instead, it was likely intended to supplement the details of the main storyline while simultaneously teaching the player one important thing, reputation mattered.
Once he figured that out, Bai Fuling stopped obsessing over convincing the tall NPC to give him the quest.
Without enough reputation, spending more time here would only be a waste.
He might as well return to farming first. Once his reputation increased later, he could come back and interact further.
Having sorted everything out, Bai Fuling controlled his character to stand up from the table.
Then, completely naturally, he picked up the stool he had just been sitting on and smashed it straight into the nearby glass window.
Yes.
To him, the entire action had been completely natural.
Players were meant to use everything around them as tools. Picking locks and smashing windows were everyday occurrences.
With a loud crash of shattering glass, fragments scattered all across the floor. The cold forest wind immediately howled through the broken opening.
Bai Fuling directly controlled his character to climb out through the shattered window.
The little character on the screen instantly displayed a red damage effect and the health bar above his head slowly began decreasing.
Eh?!
Why was he losing HP too?
Was the escape posture wrong?
Would climbing faster reduce the damage?
Since the HP loss wasn’t very large, Bai Fuling became curious instead. He immediately climbed back and forth through the window several more times to test it.
After two or three experimental attempts, he finally figured it out.
No matter how he climbed through, whether entering or exiting, whether quickly or slowly, his HP would still decrease. The longer and more extensively the character touched the broken glass, the more damage he took.
So the health loss came from being cut by the glass.
The game’s mechanics were surprisingly detailed.
Even getting scratched by glass counted as damage! And the system could accurately distinguish different movement positions and levels of contact.
Bai Fuling clicked his tongue in amazement at the game system’s precision.
He climbed up from the ground and checked his character model.
At this moment, the little character’s white shirt was covered in red pixel stains. The exposed arms and legs were also marked with bloody scratches.
Only the clean, smiling face remained completely unchanged.
Bai Fuling raised a hand and zoomed in on the face through the control panel.
Then, using the blood effects, he carefully drew three red cat whiskers on each cheek.
Now the entire appearance finally looked coordinated.
“Haha, this actually looks pretty good.”
Bai Fuling was extremely satisfied with his new appearance.
He casually glanced at the status panel.
[Bleeding: You are currently bleeding heavily and look extremely frightening. (Passive Skill: Chance to trigger police report / emergency hospitalization)]
Bai Fuling didn’t see any obvious debuffs, so he calmly closed the status panel without concern.
As for the passive skill note attached to the bleeding status,
where in the middle of this deep mountain forest would there be people around to report him or send him to the hospital?
And if there really were people nearby, then that was even more reason not to remove the bleeding status.
Wasn’t a passive skill essentially just another form of forced fast travel back to town?
Everyone knew that ambulances and police cars were the fastest transportation methods in games.
Bai Fuling left the wooden cabin.
Before departing, he suddenly remembered what the tall NPC had mentioned earlier.
So he took the dagger out of his inventory and buried it in a corner of the courtyard.
Details determined success or failure.
Earlier, the tall NPC had said he tracked him down through the locator inside the dagger. Since he was escaping from the cabin now, it was safer to leave the dagger behind just in case.
Besides, he already had other weapons available now. He wasn’t lacking a single dagger.
After burying the weapon, Bai Fuling walked out of the courtyard.
The entire surrounding map consisted of forest but fortunately there were still directional indicators for north, south, east and west. Bai Fuling knew that as long as he continued walking in a single direction, eventually something would happen.
Based on the NPC’s earlier words, Bai Fuling suspected the forest might have system restrictions that required a guide in order to leave.
But whether that was truly the case could only be confirmed by personally testing it.
All around him were endless overlapping woods.
One thing Bai Fuling found impressive was that the trees weren’t merely copy-pasted assets.
The game developers were actually fairly conscientious. Even the pixel scenery changed constantly from place to place.
Still, after walking for a while, it inevitably started becoming boring.
Bai Fuling was already considering whether he should simply activate auto-walk and let the character continue moving forward automatically,
when suddenly, rustling sounds emerged from the forest.
A gray animal crawled out from the bushes.
Bai Fuling stared at the gray pixelated shape on the screen for several seconds before finally identifying it.
It was a wolf.
A lone wolf missing one ear and half its tail.
The gray creature’s nameplate, [Wolf], appeared in red, indicating it was hostile. It had apparently smelled the blood in the air and was growling lowly toward Bai Fuling.
A wild animal had appeared!
Rather than feeling afraid, Bai Fuling’s eyes lit up with excitement.
Wild animals meant meat, fur and fangs!!
Its entire body was treasure!
He immediately pulled out his axe from the inventory.
After staring at the lone wolf for several seconds in mutual silence, Bai Fuling suddenly reconsidered.
This wolf was missing an ear and part of its tail. Its fur quality probably wasn’t very good.
Could he maybe tame it as a pet or mount instead?
A wolf counted as a local guide too.
Maybe it satisfied the hidden condition for leading him out of the forest!
So Bai Fuling put away the axe and switched to a wooden stick instead.
The wolf lunged at him.
The player charged forward too.
And thus began a primitive brawl.
The wolf’s attack power was much higher than the player’s.
But unfortunately for it, the player could heal.
Bai Fuling still had [Unripe Apple ×2] and [Unknown Fruit ×11] left in his inventory.
Whenever his HP dropped, he ate fruit.
Whenever his HP dropped again, he ate more fruit.
In the end, he relied on pure endurance warfare to win the battle.
The lone wolf let out a painful howl and collapsed onto the ground.
Bai Fuling immediately clicked the nearby [Tame] button.
[Taming Failed]
Bai Fuling remained calm and decided to continue trying.
To prevent the wolf from dying accidentally, he shoved a fruit into the wolf’s mouth to restore its HP.
Who cared whether wolves were carnivores or not?
As long as food restored health bars, it should work universally.
And sure enough, the wolf stood back up.
Then Bai Fuling immediately hit it again with the stick until it was left with only a sliver of health.
The wolf collapsed once more.
Bai Fuling clicked [Tame].
[Taming Failed]
He refused to give up.
He still had six fruits remaining.
That was enough to repeat the process of “give a sweet treat, then smack it once” six more times!
The wolf stood up.
The wolf collapsed.
The wolf stood up.
The wolf collapsed.
……
After repeating the process four more times, on the fifth attempt, a new notification finally appeared on-screen:
[Taming Successful]
Great!
Hard work truly paid off!
Bai Fuling felt extremely happy inside. He stuffed the final fruit into the wolf’s mouth, fully restoring the HP of his newly acquired pet.
“Come on, Wolfie, let’s head back to town!”
A new notification immediately popped up:
[City regulations prohibit entry of: Wolf.]
What?
Bai Fuling stared at the screen for two seconds.
Then he thoughtfully opened the pet menu, selected the lone wolf’s status panel, clicked on its name and began editing.
[Would you like to rename [Lone Wolf] to [Big Dog]? (Yes / No)]
Bai Fuling pressed confirm.
[[Lone Wolf] has successfully been renamed to [Big Dog].]
Perfect.
Bai Fuling thought confidently.
Surely now he could enter the city without any problems.
Author’s Note:
Player: What wolf? This is clearly just a big dog.
✦ ✧ ✦
Vynellia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
Coffee is technically a form of emotional support.
☕ 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