Chapter 10 Number Ten Street

Number 10 Tenth Street.

Like all the recipient addresses before, an ordinary two-story house, a desolate front yard, no mailbox in front of the door.

Feng Bujue, having parked his bicycle, slung his messenger bag over his shoulder, held his shotgun, and quickly stepped onto the porch in front of the house.

*Pa pa pa*—

"Open the door!" he shouted loudly while knocking on the door.

The next thing, I'm sure you all can guess... After a short while, a fat man in slippers came down from the second floor, opened the door a crack wide enough for a palm, and stood in the shadows to ask, "Who are you looking for?"

"Mailman." Feng Bujue held up his temporary work permit and waved it in front of the other man, then put the permit away and took out the envelope. "Delivery."

"I... won't accept it." The Number Ten Fatty's reaction was exactly the same as the previous nine.

*Kacha*—

Feng Bujue took the opportunity to raise his shotgun, poked the muzzle into the crack of the door, and said in a deep voice, "Will you accept it now?"

"You... what are you going to do?" Although the Number Ten Fatty showed fear, he did not run away.

"It's either accepting the letter or accepting bullets. Your choice." Feng Bujue's tone didn't sound like he was joking at all. When necessary, he could be very ruthless.

"No... don't kill me..." The Number Ten Fatty raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Even if you shoot, I won't accept it... unless..."

"Unless I state your command code?" Feng Bujue took over the other man's sentence.

"Mm..." The Number Ten Fatty nodded.

"Tch..." Jue-Ge spat, thinking to himself, *'So, threatening with force really doesn't work either...'*

Two seconds later, he lowered the gun and said again, "How many digits is your code?"

"Eleven," the fatty replied truthfully.

After receiving the answer, Feng Bujue turned and left, heading for his bicycle.

…………

In the next forty minutes, Jue-Ge visited the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth recipients respectively.

Without exception, these last three were all fatties. Their voices, personalities, reactions, and so on... were also consistent with the previous ten recipients.

Feng Bujue didn't bother to talk too much with these guys. He had already tried to probe them as much as he could, so he didn't ask anything except the number of digits in the command code.

At 2:50 PM, Jue-Ge came to the abandoned mailbox in the North Town Cemetery once again.

At this moment, an envelope had already appeared on the ground next to the mailbox.

Although there was no wind around, a stone was still placed on top of the envelope.

"So, they really replied..." Feng Bujue muttered, walking over to pick up the envelope.

It was a yellowish-brown envelope, and he could feel that there was only a thin piece of paper inside. Jue-Ge carefully tore it open, took out the letter, and then... he discovered a very puzzling thing—both sides of the letter were blank.

"Again?" Feng Bujue couldn't help but complain. "Invisible ink? Wordless heavenly book?" His complaint was the same as when he received the "newspaper."

As he spoke, he also held the letter up to his eyes and carefully examined it, confirming that there were no traces of writing or any odor on the paper.

"Hmm... what does this mean..." While pondering, Feng Bujue subconsciously supported his right elbow with his left hand, and his right index and middle fingers slightly merged, sliding from his forehead across the tip of his nose. This habitual thinking action allowed his thoughts to run more smoothly. "If this piece of paper was simply lying next to the mailbox, it might be mistaken for—just a discarded piece of waste paper. But now, this piece of paper is in an envelope and is being held down by a stone... this setup is telling me that this blank piece of paper is indeed the 'reply.'"

After thinking for a moment, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck his mind: "Eh? Could it be..."

The next second, Jue-Ge took out the previous newspaper from his messenger bag and flipped to the blank pages in the middle: "Indirect hints..." Thinking of this, he simply sat down on the ground, holding the letter in one hand and the newspaper in the other, murmuring, "This 'reply' does not actually have any content... but 'no content' can also be a hint." His gaze moved to the newspaper. "A hint that... 'the answer lies in a place that looks blank.'"

Having thought of this, Feng Bujue tore off the first page of the newspaper.

On the front of this page was the meaningless headline, and on the back was the second edition, which had no text and only illustrations.

The illustration in the second edition was a photo of a brick wall with a tree standing in front of it. At first glance, it was just another landscape photo, but upon closer inspection, one could see... bicycle tire tracks on the ground at the bottom of the picture.

"Alright, let me see... the paper quality of this newspaper is average, so fire or water exposure is probably impossible..." Feng Bujue held the "experimental product" in his hand and pondered, "Right now, the methods I can try are..." As he thought, he reached for the shotgun, but pulled back a second later. "Wait... if the tool required to solve the puzzle is the gunpowder in the bullets, then Brother Ghost should have given the puzzle after I got this gun..." He rubbed his chin and said, "In other words... the thing that could make the hint 'appear' was already on me at the time..."

Then, Jue-Ge, like a child in a natural science class, revealed an interested expression and took out a pile of props from his pocket, lining them up on the grass.

"Let's try them one by one..." Saying that, he held up the first prop.

In the next five minutes, he first tried to look at the contents on the newspaper through the camera of his mobile phone; then he used a ballpoint pen and a pencil to draw small areas on the paper; then he gently scraped several areas on the newspaper with a coin, a key, and a credit card.

Unfortunately, all these attempts ended in failure...

"Hmm... this isn't right either, I have to change my way of thinking..." he murmured as he picked up the seasoning bottle containing salt. This was the last item on his body that could be used to solve the puzzle.

*Sssssss*...

Fortunately... this last attempt worked. When the white salt grains were sprinkled on the newspaper, wisps of white smoke rose from the paper, carrying a slight burnt smell. This was obviously not the reaction that paper should have when it encounters salt...

[14.52, 7.66, Tree Trunk] After a few seconds, a line of smoky carbon-colored text appeared on the blank page next to the illustration.

"Ha! Got it!" Feng Bujue's smile and the words on the newspaper appeared at the same time. He really didn't expect that the key item to solve the puzzle would be the salt bottle he had found on the Felt Hat Brother.

After the successful experiment, the next thing was simple. Jue-Ge followed suit and deciphered the other twelve pages in the middle of the newspaper one by one, obtaining a total of thirteen similar pieces of information.

"If there are no surprises... the first two numbers are coordinates." After Feng Bujue recorded all the hints, his expression became very relaxed. "Specific to two decimal places, most likely to match the mini-map I have on hand. And the noun that follows each coordinate is undoubtedly to be combined with the 'illustration' to see."

At this moment, Jue-Ge roughly understood the meaning of these hints. Coincidentally, the coordinate on the second edition was the one closest to him at the moment. So, in order to verify his reasoning, he quickly packed up the things at hand, returned to the bicycle, and set off in that direction.

In less than five minutes, Feng Bujue arrived near the coordinates [14.52, 7.66] on the mini-map (due to the size of the map, it was impossible for him to stand exactly on a certain point, at most it was nearby). After searching for a while, he saw the brick wall in the illustration photo, and the tree planted in front of the wall.

"Tree trunk, huh..." Feng Bujue parked his bicycle, took his shotgun, and walked over.

He approached the target cautiously, as if the tree would suddenly turn into a monster and attack him. However, the final result proved... that he was overthinking. The tree in front of him was just an ordinary tree, and there were no fLAgs or events at this location.

The only thing of value here was an Arabic numeral carved on the tree trunk—1.