He Feng Bujue didn't know where the music he was hearing came from, nor did he know what the shadowy figure before him was up to. He could only stay on guard, maintaining a distance of at least three meters to prevent the figure from making any aggressive moves.

The shadowy figure moonwalked backward, moving slowly out of the black room in time with the music. When it reached Feng Bujue’s front, it suddenly let out a shriek and made a crotch-grabbing gesture. In that instant, the background music changed to "Beat It."

Having played this game for so long, Feng Bujue thought that this was probably the most shocking thing he'd experienced.

The shadowy figure changed its dance steps, stepping, sliding, turning, its movements incredibly fluid and dashing, as it headed toward the first floor.

As it moved further and further away, the music grew softer and softer, until the shadow turned a corner on the stairs and disappeared from Feng Bujue’s sight. The background music stopped at the same time.

"Heh... hehe..." Feng Bujue's lips twitched, and he chuckled dryly. He didn't follow, because the first floor was completely dark, and he would lose sight of his target as soon as he left the storage room. He also wasn't sure if the shadow was an NPC or a monster, or whether it would attack him.

He was completely baffled by this inexplicable plot development, or event. The sense of substitution was too strong, and it didn't fit the script's atmosphere at all. It was more in line with the system's usual trolling spirit.

Feng Bujue didn't dwell on this nonsensical scene for too long. Now that the light from the corridor could shine into the room, he decided to search it.

As mentioned earlier, apart from the darkness, the room was empty. However, Feng Bujue quickly noticed something unusual in the spot where the shadow had been standing.

There was a patch of black stain on the floor. From a distance, it looked like a stain, but up close, it was a pattern.

The patterns were made up of black lines, drawn very delicately. There were six things in total.

"Soap, dentures, perfume, leather hat, blanket, artificial eye." Feng Bujue quickly identified the items represented by the six figures. "Are they all plot items that can be taken out of the script...?"

Without realizing it, Feng Bujue had already collected all six items since the beginning of the script, but he still didn't know what they represented.

"I think I smell a hidden mission..." Feng Bujue couldn't help but laugh.

He was very patient and carefully inspected the room again. After confirming that there was only this one clue, he left.

"Behind the white door, is there going to be a white shadow doing a horse-riding dance..." Feng Bujue joked as he pushed the door open.

The door opened, and the room's color was naturally white, completely enveloped in white light. But it wasn't a strong light, so it wasn't dazzling. It could be said that the visibility in the room was good. At first glance, it was clear that the white room was an operating room.

In the center of the room was an operating table, or rather... an experiment table. The table was wide and thick, made of metal, connected to the floor, and couldn't be moved. It was probably big enough for a synthetic human to lie on.

A strong, nauseating smell filled the room. The smell became even more pungent under the cover of disinfectant. Feng Bujue quickly brought up his gas mask again (he had removed the mask on the way back from the first floor; of course, in the eyes of NPCs and monsters, his image was always someone else, regardless of his attire) before stepping inside.

On either side of the experiment table were three or four small carts with tools on them. There were many conventional surgical instruments, as well as some tools used for woodworking, such as electric drills and circular saws. Without exception, these heavy tools were all damaged. It was clear from their appearance, but Feng Bujue still picked them up with great interest and checked their attributes one by one.

He had the skill [Not So Sloppy Repair], so even garbage could be made to work for fifteen minutes. That was what Feng Bujue thought...

Unfortunately, after reading the attributes of the garbage, he realized a problem. All of these heavy tools could only be used with AC-DC regulated power supplies. In other words... they needed to be plugged into an outlet.

There was a saying in a certain movie, "Everyone is blind," which wasn't without reason. For example, if I asked you right now how many outlets there were in the room you were in, you probably wouldn't know. If I asked you how many sockets there were on those outlets, probably no one would know.

The human brain has a protective mechanism that helps us filter out a lot of "useless" information in our daily lives. Therefore, even things that are often in our field of vision, we can be completely ignorant of.

We don't know how many window panes there are in our house; we don't know how many stops there are on the subway we take every day; we forget the color of the walls as soon as we leave a place, and we can't even say what pattern is on our slippers unless we look down at them.

This mechanism is gradually established as a person grows up and adapts to the surrounding environment. As for which information is "useless," it is a choice made by the brain autonomously.

And if there was no such innate protection... then, theoretically, the human brain could collect and remember about 86 million pieces of information in daily life, more than any computer in the world. You may not realize that so much information is entering your brain, because only 5% of the information collected and organized by the brain can be actually used by you subjectively, while the other 95% is automatically processed by the brain and enters your subconscious, in case it is needed.

That being said, that 95% is actually equivalent to being filtered out, and it is difficult to remember.

Here, I naturally have to say a "but."

But, there are differences between people. In the aforementioned unconscious situation, the more developed a person's brain, the more information they can remember. The details they remember about things will be more specific. These are the people who are said to have keen "observation skills."

Obviously, Feng Bujue was such a person, and he had trained in this area since he was a child. Even if he hadn't deliberately paid attention to the problem of outlets, he could get a very accurate conclusion just by taking a stroll in his subconscious—there were no outlets in the entire script map.

"Should I put it in my inventory and take it away... I can use a skill to fix it..." Feng Bujue considered, "But it doesn't seem to make much sense. The system store sells this kind of tool, and there are versions that don't need to be plugged in, but they're quite expensive."

After thinking it over, he didn't take it after all. After all, these things were all garbage, and he couldn't get much money for selling them to the store.

After searching for five or six minutes, Feng Bujue found nothing, so he had a whim and lay down on the experiment table that gave off an extremely disgusting smell. As a result, he actually triggered a CG...

...

This CG was a scene from the first-person perspective of someone lying on an operating table.

"Please... haa... haa... let me go... I have a lot of money, I'm a nobleman, how much do you want... ah—" The person pleaded for a while, then screamed.

The bloodshot lens lingered on the ceiling for a few seconds. As the test subject struggled to lift his head forward, two figures entered his field of vision.

In the scene, there was a short man with brown hair and a young man with blond hair. They were both wearing shirts and overalls, masks, and aprons, and were covered in blood. They looked like two butchers.

Just now, this nobleman's leg had been cut off whole from the thigh. Because the experiment required him to stay conscious, Arthur had used alchemy to make him some "special anesthetic" so that he couldn't even faint.

"Bastard! You two bastards..." The nobleman cursed. Suddenly, he paused, and the image became congested. "You! It's you! You're Arthur! That kid who lived on the farm!"

Arthur was about to use a circular saw to cut off the guy's other leg, but when he heard this, he stopped and slowly turned his head. "You know me?"

"I... yes! I know you! I remember... in that... that month, Old Jim had just died, and the market hadn't found a replacement for him yet, so you were responsible for delivering goods to the market for that month." The nobleman said, "I remember you, shorty, always wearing a cloak to cover your face, I can't be wrong, it's you!" He paused. "Kid, you're so bold, a mere farmer, daring to do this to me, do you know who I am! I and the Grand Duke of the Imperial City..."

"Is that all you have to say?" Arthur interrupted, his cold expression declaring that the other party's intimidation was meaningless. "You bloated, useless people only know how to consolidate your power and indulge in luxury, without doing anything beneficial to the world.

You occupy a lot of social resources, but only produce feces. You only bring oppression and burden to your fellow human beings, but you still force them to praise you while enduring this." Arthur sneered. "Even the cattle and horses in the pasture, the termites in the mound, are more noble than you... You disgust me." His eyes were full of mockery. "Let me help you unearth some value in the world... Your hair will be woven into a blanket, your eyeballs will be made into artificial eyes, your teeth will be made into dentures, your fat will be made into soap, your skin can be made into a hat, and finally... your corpse oil can be used to refine a good perfume."

Andrew just stood by and didn't say a word. He couldn't get a word in edgewise.

The nobleman's expression was terrified beyond compare, and beads of sweat rolled down his face. "No... no... no, I don't mean that... you... what do you want, I can give you money, even a title..."

"Hehehe..." Arthur couldn't help but laugh. "I'm not as greedy as you, so I don't think I need money. As for the title..." His eyes revealed obvious killing intent. "I'm a member of the Xing clan, what do you think I should recommend myself to the local Grand Duke for? A knight? A baron? Hahahaha..."

A few seconds later, the circular saw started up again, and the room was quickly drowned in continuous screams.

...

"Are you kidding me..." After watching the CG, Feng Bujue couldn't help but look down at his bulging outer pockets of his jacket.

Although he had put the leather hat, perfume, and blanket into his inventory, the soap, dentures, and artificial eye were in his pockets. When he learned that these things all came from the human body, he couldn't help but get goosebumps.

"Ah... I should have guessed it would be like this." Feng Bujue muttered, "Okay... now there's only one room left to go to. The pattern in the black room and the image in the white room are undoubtedly reminding me what these six items mean... They may determine whether I can see the 'true' ending." He calculated, "Is it telling me that if I didn't collect all six items in the previous game progress before opening the gray iron door, then I should go back and look for them now..."

Thinking of this, Feng Bujue walked out of the white room. He didn't open the gray iron door, but headed towards the first floor. He went up the stairs, opened the wooden door, and entered the storage room. Sure enough, when he looked over, the corridor was no longer completely dark.

Some light shone in through the windows of each room, allowing players to barely see the surrounding scenery. But looking out the windows, it was still a chaotic mess, with nothing to be seen.

"Hmm... now is undoubtedly the free exploration time before clearing the level. You can go up and down four floors, look for any missing props, or you can directly open the gray iron door to see the ending." Feng Bujue thought, "But it doesn't make much sense to me, because I searched carefully before, and I've already gotten all six items."

Even though he thought so, Feng Bujue still went to one place, the room on the second floor directly above the foyer.

He came to the iron door and tried to pull the doorknobs on both sides, but it still wouldn't open.

Feng Bujue left there helplessly, and then went from top to bottom, from the second floor to the second basement floor, walking through every room. He wasn't looking for anything, but his exploration OCD made him worry about missing something, so he had to take a walk around.

Finally, he returned to the gray iron door. Although he gained nothing from this trip, he gained psychological satisfaction...

"So... time to witness the miracle..." Feng Bujue muttered as he pushed open the iron door.

This room was gray, just like the atmosphere of the script: gloomy and somber.

Next to the wall facing the door, there was a chair and a small table. Arthur was sitting on the chair, quietly looking at Feng Bujue at the door.

"Are you awake..." Arthur said, "The prison cell really can't hold you..."

"Do you have a mirror?" This was the first question Feng Bujue asked.

"A mirror?" Arthur raised his eyes, looked at Feng Bujue for two seconds, then slowly raised his right arm and pressed his palm against the wall.

A second later, a piece of the wall next to Feng Bujue suddenly lit up, instantly being alchemized into a mirror.

"You can do this without drawing an alchemy array..." Feng Bujue thought. He turned around and looked at himself in the mirror.

Basically, the image in the mirror didn't exceed his expectations. To describe it, it was a zombified Andrew.

"My silly brother." Arthur said, "You thought you were very smart, and this... is the price."

"Can you explain it to me?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Don't you understand?" Arthur replied, "I know about you changing the experimental data; I also know about you swapping the formula; and the tampering you did on the alchemy array... was actually wrong." He sighed deeply, "You played the role of that innocent and kind younger brother, while plotting to plunder my body. But you never expected that from the beginning, the 'soul exchange' alchemy you found was forged by me." He paused, looked at the change in Feng Bujue's expression, and then said, "You thought you successfully tricked me, letting me perform the exchange alchemy without knowing it. But unfortunately, the opposite is true. You misunderstood the effect of that array."

"Hahaha..." Feng Bujue couldn't help but laugh. "Is it my fault?"

Arthur was a little surprised by his reaction, but he still maintained his inherent calmness. "Are you mentally disturbed?"

"No, no." Feng Bujue shook his head with a smile. He just felt that these two brothers were very interesting. He originally thought that Arthur was the big bad guy, but now it seemed that Andrew wasn't a good bird either. Thinking about it carefully, even if he was an accomplice, he had helped do so many crazy things over such a long period of time, could he really say that this Andrew was really kind?

"Then, brother, can you tell me, what is the real effect of this alchemy array?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Of course, it's the use of transforming me into a human." Arthur replied, "And the price is to turn an ordinary human into a demon."

"This is a demon?" Feng Bujue pointed to himself in the mirror. "Is the demon so lame?"

"Unfortunately, the alchemy failed." Arthur explained, "I didn't become a human, and you, you became like this..."

"Was it your miscalculation?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Of course not, I don't make mistakes." Arthur replied.

"I see, then there's only one answer..." Feng Bujue said, "I'm not a pure human either."

Arthur sighed bitterly, "A slip of the mind... I should have thought of it, how could the son of 'that woman' be an ordinary person..."

"You mean Mom?" Feng Bujue tentatively asked.

"Yes, Mom, hum..." Arthur's face showed a look of loss. "Do you know why she picked me up?"

"To take away your power?" Who was Feng Bujue? An absolute pessimist. He never believed that humans were born good, so he had a full psychological estimate of the degree of human heart's sinister nature.

"Oh? Did she tell you before she died?" Arthur responded.

"No, I'm just guessing." Feng Bujue said, "I know very well that that woman is not simple..." The previous CG images flashed through his mind. "She outwardly opposed your use of alchemy, but when you, a child under ten years old, held those profound books and studied them, she was indifferent. Humph... speaking of which, those books were simply arranged for you to get them, right?" He paused for a second, and then said, "Before she passed away, she knew that her plan was hopeless, so she hypocritically pretended to be a good mother who sincerely loved you, trying to tie you down with family affection, so that you would take care of her biological son." Feng Bujue took out the book *Advanced Alchemy* and took out the photo from the page and read the words on the back, "Arthur and Andrew, my children, my love. Hehe... when I first saw this photo, I thought it was very strange, why was it clipped in such a book? Now I understand, she was using this method to remind you that you are a family." Feng Bujue sneered, "Unfortunately... she underestimated you too much. I bet you saw through what kind of person she was at a very young age. If I'm not wrong, even her death..."

"Yes, it was me." Arthur continued, "I spent a year leading her to her death. She didn't know until she died that her 'incurable disease' was planned by me."