After leaping a short distance, Feng Bujue glanced back.

Although not too far away, his teammates' figures were already blurred. Clearly, the clumps of reeking air weren't just smelly; they also reduced visibility.

"Hmm... the visibility is really low..." Jue-ge muttered to himself, then scanned his surroundings again. "I'd better remember my location..."

After all, he'd been playing Thriller Paradise for two months. Even a complete noob would pick up some game experience, let alone Feng Bujue.

By now, Jue-ge had invented his own unique "map memorization method."

The specific method was to break down the memory: take a relatively broad area as a boundary, find a relatively open spot to stand, look around, lock onto a few details, and remember them. This way, he was essentially putting the entire area into his head like a jigsaw puzzle. Repeating the process a few times, he could construct multiple puzzles in his mind, and then slowly recall the complete map through the positional relationships between them, using chain thinking.

A swampy terrain like the one before him might seem difficult to remember to others, but in his eyes, it was very easy to recognize.

Of course... there were only two types of maps that Feng Bujue couldn't remember. The first was a repeating, identical space with obstructions (like doors); the second was a chaotic space that was random, had no obvious pattern, and couldn't be easily retraced (like a door that, when opened a second time, would lead to a different place).

In short, Feng Bujue walked and memorized in his own way, gradually venturing deeper into this treacherous land covered in dung.

About ten minutes later, an anomaly occurred...

"Ugh..."

"Ah..."

Moans rose and fell, sounding like both men and women, and even mixed with strange, animal-like wails.

(To avoid misunderstanding, I should note that the "moans" here were not the kind that aroused desire, but the kind that were terrifying.)

"Hmm... as expected..." Feng Bujue murmured, using the [Treading the Void] special effect to stop in mid-air and look down.

He saw streaks of filthy arms reaching out of the dung swamp below. The muddy palms were like hooks and claws, knuckles twisted, movements twitching. They kept stretching up and grabbing, as if searching for a lifeline.

Despairing wails accompanied bubbles rising from the bottom of the swamp, like a series of death curses constantly pouring into the players' ears, making their skin crawl.

But... Feng Bujue wouldn't get goosebumps. He was still calmly analyzing the situation before him.

"An event has been triggered, which means there's something ahead." He cautiously kept his feet out of the arms' reach, his gaze slowly moving. "There are basically no forks in the road here anymore. There's only one small path that can be followed..." He looked at the stone and mud path below. "And this path doesn't lead to the main quest route..." He was sure of this, because the direction that Uncle Waste and the others had taken was clearly the opposite of this. "Heh... that means I'm getting close... what could it be..."

In fact, there were generally only three kinds of things he might encounter ahead: one, reward-type items; two, a checkpoint leading to a new area; three, a death trap.

Naturally, Feng Bujue had this in mind as well. He was heading there for the first possibility. With no way to verify the result, a one-third risk was worth taking. Besides, he had an insurance policy...

Jue-ge cleverly took out the [Vajra Bell] from his knapsack and activated the item's third special effect: gaining the "Death Warning" function for five minutes.

Logically speaking, with his current abilities, he could mostly retreat unscathed even if he encountered a very powerful monster. But Jue-ge was just that cautious. For any plan, as long as the conditions allowed, he would leave a way out, or take the insurance measures he could to the extreme.

This kind of decisiveness at critical moments was precisely the watershed between experts and ordinary people. Choices that seemed insignificant to ordinary people were decisive in the eyes of experienced, intuitive players. If they saved one or two skills or item cooldowns, and ultimately caused a game over, then it would be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Ding-a-ling... ling-ling... ling-ling... The bell rang, but not very urgently.

"Hmm... seems like nothing's wrong." Feng Bujue pondered. "This frequency of ringing..." He cast his gaze at the arms below. "...It should be aimed at these guys below." He took a step, continuing forward, but his speed was clearly slowing down. "Ah~ souls who drowned in shit, their resentment must be very deep. If they grab me, it would probably be an instant-death scene..."

He guessed correctly. In this place, as long as a player was grabbed by those arms, they would be pulled down one hundred percent of the time, no matter how strong they were. The strong ones would simply be able to struggle for a little longer, and this struggle... would only allow them to experience that feeling of despair even more...

After walking another distance, the stone and mud path below was reduced to only a "vein" that was still extending; the air ahead became increasingly turbid and hot.

Even the moonlight in the sky was gradually becoming hazy. This haziness was not a change in the sky, but a special effect of the scene. In the setting, the lighting in this area was relatively dim.

"Oh... is that it." Feng Bujue's tone of voice was lukewarm, and his face was also calm.

As he said this, he had reached the end of the stone and mud path. There was a circular patch of mud with a radius of about five meters. The arms reaching out of the swamp clearly couldn't reach the middle area of the mud.

But Feng Bujue still didn't step onto it. He chose to stay in mid-air, staring intently at the only thing in the middle of the mud—an electric razor.

Yes, it was an electric razor. With Feng Bujue's vision in the game, he could clearly see its appearance.

The thing was placed flat in the middle of the circular mud, and there were no footprints around. No matter how you looked at it... this scene seemed inexplicable. This inconspicuous daily necessity was undoubtedly incompatible with the environment and setting of this script. This inexplicable sense of incongruity... was like finding a penguin's corpse in the desert, or seeing boxer briefs in the refrigerator.

But, this was Thriller Paradise, anything was possible. Let alone an electric razor, even an old model of a cell phone might be a God-slaying, demon-exterminating artifact.

"This is the reward item..." Feng Bujue muttered. "Hmm... before touching it, I should try to see its attributes first."

He perked up, concentrating his attention, and slowly walked onto the mud patch. After standing still, he didn't bend over, but slowly squatted down, maintaining a posture that allowed him to roll or jump up at any moment.

Finally, when he got within about twenty centimeters, the item description appeared.

[Name: Chuck Norris' Razor]

[Type: Other]

[Quality: Legendary]

[Special Effect: Gives you a stylish appearance]

[Can be brought out of this script: Yes]

[Remarks: One of the "CN" series of items, recording one of Chuck Norris' 100 widely known facts, bound upon pickup.

——Behind Chuck Norris' beard, there is no chin, there is only another fist.]

"Huh?" Feng Bujue was stunned. "What the hell? What does 'gives you a stylish appearance' mean?" He could only respond with吐槽 to the useless item description. "The CN series is the Chuck_norris series, right... Does this game have a hundred similar silly items?"

Although Jue-ge had doubts in his heart, the word "Legendary" in the quality column made it hard for him to resist. Besides, it was something that could be taken out of the script, so there was no reason not to take it.

Therefore, Feng Bujue made a decision that he would soon regret... He picked up the thing.

He didn't know that once he picked up this item, it would trigger an amazing plot—the Hidden Boss battle on Demon Chew Island.

That's right, the location where Feng Bujue was standing was the Hidden Boss's spawn point. Jue-ge realized later that... this place was actually an extremely secretive and difficult-to-reach location.

In a place like the Ghost Swamp, where staying for one more second made one feel uncomfortable, it was hard to imagine... that anyone would deliberately look for such a remote fork in the road. Even if someone accidentally walked this way, they would be blocked by the arms reaching out of the swamp. Because under normal circumstances, players walked on the stone and mud path. To avoid the pulling of those arms and reach this place by walking on the ground required extremely precise operation.

However, Feng Bujue had relied on his legendary boots to come here easily. The advantage of his equipment kept him in a relatively safe situation, which was why the Vajra Bell's alarm was so infrequent.

In short, whether it was a coincidence or fate... things had happened.

Rumbling—

A very heavy sound came, sounding like the noise of mixing cement.

"Hmm?" Feng Bujue had just put the razor into his knapsack when he heard the sound.

After hesitating for only half a second, he flipped and leaped backwards, darting out several zhang, and hovered three meters above the ground. His gaze swept around like lightning...

Soon, Jue-ge locked onto the source of the sound.

In front of the circular mud, on the vast swamp where there were no paths, a vortex slowly appeared.

Rumbling... hoo-rumbling...

The sound grew louder and louder, and the vortex spun faster and faster.

Suddenly, a giant hand stretched out from the center of the vortex, stirring up a sky full of shit.

In the nick of time, Feng Bujue stepped on Moonwalk and retreated swiftly, barely dodging the falling filth.

At the same instant, another sound suddenly rang out.

Ding-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling...

The hand-cranked bell of the Vajra Bell was now ringing at a high frequency like an electric bell...