The blood-colored light filled the entire scene. Before long, the intense light dissipated, and two figures lay collapsed in the center of the alchemic circle.

About half a minute later, a blonde figure was the first to stand up.

"How could this happen… How! Ah—" Andrew saw his skin gradually becoming as dry as tree bark, and his hair began to fall out. He roared violently.

Seconds later, Arthur also climbed up from the ground. Outwardly, he didn't seem to have anything wrong. However, Arthur's eyes were dull at this moment. He looked at his brother in front of him, without saying a word.

"Why… how could this happen?" Andrew roared, "The alchemic circle can't be wrong. We should have succeeded. Why am I… Ah—" The pain in his body began to erupt. His pain at this time far exceeded the limit that ordinary people could bear.

Hearing the desperate roar, Arthur seemed to have just come back to his senses. He quickly stepped forward and knocked Andrew unconscious. In fact, even if he hadn't done this, the other party would have fainted from the pain.

"Haa… haa…" Arthur's body also seemed to be in some kind of trouble. This simple action had exhausted him, and he was panting non-stop. But compared to Andrew, his pain was nothing. At least his body showed no signs of zombification.

Arthur stood there, his eyes filled with suspicion, obviously thinking…

About a minute later, Arthur walked towards the unconscious Andrew, lifted his upper body, turned his back to himself, and then passed his hands through Andrew's armpits on both sides, maintaining this posture, and dragged him out of the room.

...

"The two brothers wanted to work together to alchemize something… and failed in the end?" Feng Bujue had this thought as soon as he saw this CG. "Could it be something as cliché as trying to alchemize their mother back to life?" he wondered. "But this image should explain the few sentences Arthur kept repeating at the beginning… 'Don't worry… everything will be alright… something must have gone wrong… I'll think of a way…' He's not only saying these sentences to his unconscious brother, but also to himself."

Jue-ge stroked his chin and pondered, "It seems that 'I' ended up in this miserable state not because Arthur went crazy and turned Andrew into a test subject or something, but simply due to the failure of an alchemic process. And Arthur temporarily locked me in Cell Zero to find a way to cure me…"

"Hmm… it seems the whole picture of the plot is gradually emerging." While he pondered, he walked into the room in front of him. "In any case, let's find the gray key first."

Unexpectedly, the next second, something went wrong.

Feng Bujue had been probing for physical traps with the iron bar every time he entered a room, but there were none. Only this last one, after watching the CG, he was careless… and just walked in.

Only a series of cracking sounds could be heard, and the floor of this room began to collapse completely from the magic circle in the middle. Feng Bujue couldn't react in time and fell straight down.

Of course, at the moment of falling, in addition to the body's instinctive shrinking reaction, Feng Bujue was very calm mentally. His heartbeat was still steady, and his consciousness was very clear.

The structure of the house was in his head. He knew very well that underneath was just that empty room. He had also estimated the height between the first and second floors, and counting the floor spacing, it was only a little over four meters. With his current physical fitness, he could fall in any position except landing face first and breaking his neck. Anyway, he was at full health now and definitely wouldn't die from the fall.

In less than two seconds, the fall ended. He didn't die, but the kerosene lamp was shattered…

"Okay, perfect timing." Feng Bujue sat in the darkness, surrounded by debris and building fragments that had fallen with him from the room upstairs. Even if the key was right in front of him, he wouldn't be able to see it.

"Speaking of which, where did Arthur go after locking me in Cell Zero? He made such a big commotion but didn't show up." Feng Bujue observed his Survival Value, which had only dropped by 15%, as expected.

He stood up and went to pat the dust off his body. Unexpectedly, he had only patted twice when he heard a few light tinkling sounds.

"No way…" Feng Bujue's mouth twitched, and he bent down, groping in the direction of the sound.

[Name: Gray Key]

[Type: Story Related]

[Quality: Ordinary]

[Function: Permanently unlocks the gray iron door, disappears immediately after use]

[Can this item be brought out of the scenario: No]

[Remarks: Fell out of the shattered kerosene lamp and landed on a dusty guy]

"Hehe." Feng Bujue said two meaningful words.

Only a few seconds after obtaining the key, a system prompt sounded: [A door somewhere seems to have opened.]

"Okay… now that I don't have any lighting equipment, I can only go back underground." Feng Bujue muttered, taking out the iron bar.

The room itself was empty, so he just needed to stick out the iron bar and, after it touched the wall, follow the wall for a few meters to find the door.

It took him more than ten seconds to find the door using this method, and then he walked over.

Once he confirmed his location, the next things were easy to handle, because the floor plan of the house was in his head. He knew the length of the corridor and approximately how many steps it would take to walk through.

Human fear of the dark is innate. The narrowing of the visual field means the expansion of the unknown field, and a person's level of vigilance will increase as the amount of information he possesses decreases, and his "will to self-preservation" will therefore remain at a certain level.

Simply put, people's fear of darkness stems from the psychological need to maintain the intensity level of their "will to self-preservation." Fear can make people highly value even the smallest and most superficial information leaked in the darkness.

But Feng Bujue had no fear, nor did he need to rely on the positive or negative effects of the fear instinct.

Relying on his memory of the surrounding environment and excellent imagination, he could completely be in the dark, but still know the way.

In just one minute, he found the storage room. After pushing the door open, he went straight to the door leading to the underground first floor.

At this moment, the system's restriction had been lifted. Feng Bujue turned the doorknob and easily opened the door. The light from the underground corridor re-illuminated his vision.

As Feng Bujue walked down the stairs, he took out all six keys from his pocket and held them in his hand.

The two doors closer to the stairwell were the blue and black doors. Feng Bujue first chose the blue one. After the lock was opened, the key disappeared immediately. He then tried to push the door, but heard the following prompt: [The red iron door has not been opened yet.]

"Oh… it needs to be in order, huh…" Seeing this, Feng Bujue decided to just convert all six doors to the unlocked state first.

A little over a minute later, as he used up the last key, a system prompt sounded in a timely manner: [Current quest completed, main quest updated]

The quest [Explore the ground floor, find the red, yellow, blue, black, white, and gray keys, and return to the underground first floor to open the six iron doors] was checked off, and the newly emerged quest was: [Explore the six rooms on the underground first floor in the order of red, yellow, blue, black, white, and gray.]

"Okay, let me see what you two brothers are up to." Feng Bujue came to the red iron door, grabbed the doorknob, and pushed it inward.

He stood at the door and observed. The interior of the room was also red. The entire room was shrouded in a red light, but he couldn't see the light source.

Feng Bujue took out the iron bar again to test it. Who knew that as soon as he extended the rusty bar into the room, an arm popped out from beside the door, grabbed the iron bar, and pulled it forcefully into the room.

Feng Bujue was caught off guard. In order not to be pulled in with it, he quickly let go.

Here, it should be explained that Jue-ge's hands simultaneously possessed equipment and clothing. The equipment was [Spider Silk Gloves], and the clothing was a pair of dark leather gloves. Usually, he would usually set his hands to appear bare. If there was a need for gloves, he would definitely display the clothing, rather than the equipment. The reason being, he thought the appearance of the Spider Silk Gloves was too ugly…

But regardless of the appearance settings, as long as the Spider Silk Gloves were in the equipped state in the equipment bar, they would naturally take effect. And what was the effect of these gloves… Apart from that ordinary defense power, its special effect, let me help everyone recall, was five words—can stick to objects.

Because of this slight difference, Feng Bujue's act of letting go didn't help him escape his misfortune. He was dragged in by the iron bar from a distance of two steps from the door frame…

Feng Bujue had a strong ability to adapt to changes. When he staggered and hadn't gained a firm foothold, he had already activated Spirit Sense Gathering Technique and taken out the pipe wrench. The sudden increase in physical skills gave him room to adjust his body.

Feng Bujue used the momentum to lunge forward, supported himself on the ground with one hand, and somersaulted forward, creating a certain distance from the unknown enemy hiding beside the door and changing to a state of facing the opponent.

He thought it would be another Synthesized Person-style monster, but when he looked at it, he found that the other person was also human.

That was a man in his early thirties, wearing a uniform that looked like military attire. His right arm, which was the arm that had just grabbed the iron bar, was actually a metal arm.

The man's expression changed drastically when he saw Feng Bujue. He said fiercely, "You monster… you want to kill me? I won't…"

"Wait!" Feng Bujue extended a hand. "I don't want to fight you." He looked at the iron bar that had been broken into two pieces on the ground and thought, This guy's combat power is off the charts. The hardness of that mechanical arm is clearly above my pipe wrench.

"Hmph… don't want to fight…" The other party sneered and charged over with a stomp of his foot. "What a joke! Do you think I'll believe you!"

That being said, Feng Bujue didn't deactivate Spirit Sense Gathering Technique. Seeing the other party charging over without saying anything, he could only helplessly start the battle.