Chapter 1 Agreement

After this conversation, Feng Bujue and the succubus had reached an "agreement." At this point, the succubus switched from being a monster to an NPC, no longer harboring any intention to attack.

However, the system didn't provide any hints about this; whether to release the succubus after receiving the key was Feng Bujue's own decision.

"Hmm..." Feng Bujue first examined the key for a few seconds, then looked at the item description.

【Name: Key of Curse】

【Type: Story-Related】

【Quality: Normal】

【Function: The holder will be haunted by bad luck (this item cannot be discarded, destroyed, or traded)】

【Can it be brought out of this scenario: No】

【Note: The key is consumed after opening the corresponding door.】

Seeing the effects of this thing, Feng Bujue thought of the second message: 【When you think you have obtained what you want, you have actually lost more】

"Sigh... I think I understand why you were trapped on my bed," Feng Bujue muttered.

"I'm just unlucky," the succubus replied. "Your room is so small, I flew in through the wall and only went forward one meter before reaching the top of the bed. Who would have thought... someone would use King Solomon's magic circle as a bed sheet pattern."

From her response, she didn't seem to know the nature of this "Key of Curse."

Feng Bujue wasn't surprised, because he completely understood why... a scenario character's perspective is different from that of an "interdimensional traveler" like himself.

In the eyes of the succubus, this was just a key. If no one told her that this thing would bring bad luck to the holder, she naturally wouldn't know.

But from the player's perspective, one could directly see the item's relevant information through the game menu.

Of course, the player's perspective also brought corresponding problems. For example, the succubus could hand over the key, but Feng Bujue couldn't discard or transfer this thing anymore...

"Can I ask where you got this key?" Feng Bujue asked again.

"The boss asked me to bring it to you," the succubus replied.

"Huh?" Feng Bujue said, puzzled. "He asked you to bring me something, so why didn't you just state your purpose? Instead, after falling into the trap, you kept trying to lure and kill me."

"Who said I wanted to kill you?" The succubus patted the edge of the bed and smiled charmingly. "Just because I asked you to come over, does that necessarily mean I wanted to kill you? Couldn't I have done something else? I could have given you the key afterward."

Hearing this, Feng Bujue rethought it. It seemed that this sentence was the one that corresponded to the statement 【When you think you have obtained what you want, you have actually lost more】

But he also knew very well that Thriller Paradise wouldn't have any erotic elements. It was probably because the key was already in hand that the succubus said this line, as if the player originally had an opportunity. In fact... if he had really gone over just now, he would definitely have been attacked, possibly triggering an instant-kill flag.

Feng Bujue had seen this kind of trick a lot when playing single-player games. Some depressing games loved to use this trick... before the ending, they give you a choice. If you choose A, you end up with a terrible ending. Then you reload and choose B, thinking you'll see the true ending this time, only to find that the true ending is even more terrible.

It's like someone putting a cake in front of you and letting you choose to eat it or not. If you eat it, you'll be poisoned to death; if you don't eat it, they'll eat the cake and smack their lips, saying, "Too delicious, too bad you couldn't have it."

*Whoosh—*

Just then, the water in the kitchen boiled, and the kettle started to beep.

Feng Bujue turned and was about to leave.

"Hey! You haven't..." The succubus wanted to stop him.

"I'll be back after I turn off the stove," Feng Bujue knew what she wanted to say and interrupted her directly, heading to the kitchen.

Two minutes later, he turned off the gas stove and returned to the bedroom with a pair of scissors.

To be on the safe side, Feng Bujue still took out the [Vajra Bell] and activated its special effect before approaching the bed. The effect that was triggered was Command One (Observe the detailed information of an NPC).

【Name: Succubus】

【NPC Faction: Reasoning Club】

【Level: ???】

【Height: 165 cm】

【Weight: 42 kg】

【Is combat triggerable: Yes】

【Attached Scenario: Key of Curse】

"Since it shows NPC information instead of monster data, it means that combat can be avoided. Judging from the current state of my interaction with her, as long as I don't actively attack her next, there shouldn't be any problems..." Feng Bujue thought.

"What are you dawdling for?" The succubus urged.

Feng Bujue was worried about complications, so he didn't delay unnecessarily. "Um... nothing." As he spoke, he took two steps forward, grabbed a corner of the bed sheet, and quickly cut towards the center area.

A being trapped by Solomon's magic circle cannot destroy the magic circle by its own power. No matter how fragile that magic circle is, even if it's made of fallen leaves or building blocks that would scatter in the wind, the trapped being is still helpless. But if a creature unaffected by this magic circle, such as a human, enters the magic circle, then the trapped being can use that creature's blood to taint the magic circle, allowing it to escape.

Earlier, when Feng Bujue opened the bedroom door, he was not at all moved by the suggestive scene, but quickly saw through the other party's trapped state, thus gaining the initiative and entering a storyline that could be advanced without fighting.

A dozen seconds later, the moment a gap was cut in the outer edge of the heptagram, Feng Bujue suddenly felt a weight on his shoulders, and an invisible pressure suddenly appeared. This was undoubtedly a sign of the succubus regaining her power.

At the same time, the pair of small bat wings behind the succubus trembled slightly, and then she floated up. "Hmph... I guess I'm out of luck today." She said unhappily, turned around, and left the room through the wall.

"Sigh~" Feng Bujue looked down at the key in his hand. "From now on, it's my turn to be unlucky." He put the key in his coat pocket and left the bedroom.

Returning to the kitchen, Feng Bujue put the scissors in the drawer and closed the drawer completely. Then, he looked around warily, surveying every scene and object. "How severe is this 'bad luck' exactly..." His eyes quickly fell on the knife rack. "Is it like 'Final Destination,' where death can happen at any moment..." As he spoke, his gaze shifted to the ground. "Or is it the kind where you're walking normally and trip on flat ground, breaking two front teeth..."

In fact, he was overthinking it. If the Key of Curse really had such an immediate and fatal effect, the succubus would have noticed the anomaly on the way here, and wouldn't have been careless enough to fall into the trap in Feng Bujue's bedroom.

…………

Five minutes later, Feng Bujue came to the living room with a cup of instant coffee brewed with hot water. He put the coffee on the coffee table first, then put the overturned sofa back in place and sat down comfortably.

He picked up the coffee, took a sip, and then let out a satisfied "Ah—," as if he were a drug addict who had just taken a hit of powder.

"If I remember correctly, pages 599 to 602 should be..." Feng Bujue put down his coffee cup, crossed his legs, and opened the book he had placed here earlier. "Aha! It's Return of Sherlock Holmes."

That's right, S.H.'s hint referred to the Complete Sherlock Holmes on Feng Bujue's bookshelf.

A reading habit is not developed in a day.

As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For Feng Bujue, this book was the starting point of a long journey.

When he was a child, he was indeed different from other children. Although he also liked to play games and read comics, his talent and enthusiasm for reading were clearly much stronger than his peers, even surpassing adults.

This Complete Sherlock Holmes, which contained all the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle, was bought by Feng Bujue with his allowance that he had saved for a long time when he was in elementary school. His family was not wealthy, and his allowance was pitifully small, so he bought the abridged version. The book had more than 1,400 pages, and the words were printed very small, making it quite tiring to read.

But Feng Bujue still read this book countless times and kept the book in good condition. He never turned pages while eating, nor would he touch the paper with oily or stained hands. He couldn't even bear to fold the corners, and always remembered which page he had read.

More than ten years have passed, and the book is still on his bookshelf. Although the paper looks slightly yellowed, the words inside are still very clear, and not a single crease can be found.

"I never thought I would open this again," Feng Bujue muttered, and his attention quickly turned to the words in front of him.

These pages, 599 to 602, are a section from the story "The Empty House," which is one of the stories in Return of Sherlock Holmes.

From the perspective of Feng Bujue, a veteran reader, the Return of Sherlock Holmes stories should be considered the beginning of the decline of the entire series. Later stories such as The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes no longer had the logical rigor of the earlier works. During this period, Sherlock Holmes seemed to be able to correctly determine a person's thoughts and the cause and effect of a case from "changes in the face, changes in the eyes, the closing of the lips, the tightening or loosening of the fist..."

This phenomenon also reflects to some extent that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had gradually lost his enthusiasm for creating such stories and was only writing to satisfy the wishes of publishers and readers. This is why the Sherlock Holmes stories after 1902 were not as successful as the previous works.

Today, Feng Bujue can actually understand Conan Doyle's state at the time. Many writers are like this: when they write stories with great enthusiasm, no one cares. But when they become famous, even if they fall into a creative slump, people are willing to pay a high price to get them to submit manuscripts.

A Study in Scarlet was written in April 1886, and Conan Doyle submitted it everywhere, but it couldn't be published. It was not until Christmas 1887 that it was published in a Christmas annual.

And only five years later, even though he had intentionally declined, The Strand Magazine was willing to pay him a fee of one thousand pounds for twelve short stories.

As a writer who didn't want to write anymore but was "forced to Liangshan" for many years and couldn't get off, Conan Doyle was indeed not easy.

"Oh... is it the passage where Sherlock Holmes recounts his escape at Reichenbach Falls to Watson..." Feng Bujue finished reading the content on page 599 and basically recalled what the next three pages were about, but he still continued reading.

"'I did not drop into it,' 'When I saw the fiendish face of Professor Moriarty peering over the edge of the path which led to safety, I knew that it was doomed to see no friend again,' 'In his grey eyes I saw a merciless intent.'" Feng Bujue recited Sherlock Holmes' description. "The description of the fight... haha, it's basically non-existent, and then Moriarty fell down. The scene is... 'I craned over and saw him fall for a long distance. Then he struck a rock, bounced off, and splashed into the water.'"

Feng Bujue picked up the coffee and took another sip. "From this passage, Moriarty is definitely dead. Unless his physical fitness is close to Captain America, and he can get out of the waterfall downstream after suffering such serious injuries." He paused. "In that case... is the boss of the Reasoning Club essentially a ghost?" Something suddenly flashed in his eyes. "If he's alive... could the one who fell down be a substitute? But what kind of substitute can fool Sherlock Holmes' eyes..."

He put down his coffee cup: "Well... or perhaps, the Moriarty of the Reasoning Club is just a projection of Moriarty from a certain period in the original work, like the other fairy tale and novel characters in the testing tower."

This question could probably only be answered by the Professor himself, so Feng Bujue put it aside for now and continued reading.

Although he could read ten lines at a glance, he carefully examined every word at this moment, and recalled what the original English sentences of this passage were like (he also had an English version of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but those books were divided into series volumes, and each volume had no more than 500 pages).

"'In that instant, however, the idea came to me that this was the supreme moment which destiny was offering me.' 'On the path there was a small ledge, and then a few feet of sheer wall. I clambered along this ledge, and then by a desperate spring I reached the path above.'" Feng Bujue couldn't help but complain when he saw this. "Worthy of being a role model for us, he thought of faking his death and carried it out to the end, risking real death by climbing a cliff."

Looking further on, the descriptions on 600 to 601 mainly concern Sherlock Holmes' climbing experience. During this process, one of Moriarty's accomplices, who had been lying in ambush nearby, attacked Sherlock Holmes with large rocks twice. If this were a Xianxia novel, our great detective would probably have fallen to his death, followed by the unfolding of events where he didn't die from the fall, but gained divine power, magical treasures, beauties, or a grandpa accompanying him...

Unfortunately, in this novel from the beginning of the twentieth century, the effect of the protagonist's aura is only: "As I held on by my hands, my body hanging down, there was a rush of wings, and then another stone hurtled down from above. My feet lost their grip, and I was hurled over the edge. But, by some miracle, I landed upon the narrow path. I scrambled up, covered with blood, and hurried on along the road."

Feng Bujue finished reading this passage and said, "Well... the content of this week could be written into a wilderness survival fan fiction..."

Finally, there's the content from 601 to 602, which is also the end of this description.

This section is mainly composed of two parts. The first part describes where Sherlock Holmes went to level up during the years of his disappearance.

"I travelled for two years in Tibet, and I entertained myself by visiting Lhassa, and spending some days with the head lama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. Then I passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. On my way home I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives at Montpellier, in the south of France. Having concluded this research, and hearing that my 'enemies' had departed from London, I came back to set my affairs in order."

And the second part is about the situation of Moriarty's remaining gang.

This section is not described very clearly, because on page 600, Sherlock Holmes said, "It was not merely Moriarty who had sworn my destruction. There were at least three others who were in his pay and who had their own reasons for wishing me ill."

But in the narrative on page 601, this number changed to two people, who were said to be important figures in Moriarty's criminal gang, and who had successfully acquitted themselves in the trial and were at large.

By page 602, it had become one person again.

Feng Bujue had already thought about these issues when he read it back then. Of course, the simplest explanation is that the author was just writing casually. Indeed, this change in number is not important in the original work and has nothing to do with the main story.

Moriarty's criminal empire collapsed when its king fell.

However, now in Thriller Paradise, in a scenario directly facing the virtual character of Moriarty, the system has set such a clear hint of 599-602. Then Jue-ge had to treat this as a real situation...

"The 'Swiss boy' who appeared in The Final Problem escaped, and Watson's analysis is very reliable. This kid should also be one of Moriarty's henchmen, but he is obviously insignificant." Feng Bujue closed the book, looked up, and muttered, "Assuming that the person who attacked Sherlock Holmes on the ledge was one of the 'three,' then the other two are characters who have never appeared, only existing in descriptions." His brain was working intensely. "Did the decrease in number occur due to death, arrest, or seclusion..." He turned his gaze to the key in his hand again. "Also, what is the direct connection between the content of these four pages, this key, and my escape from this room?"