pjbooks Chapter 297 Immersive Role-Playing
Chapter 297 Immersive Role-Playing
Chapter 297 Immersive Role-Playing
Before the NPCs at Yan Xun's house returned, the crew-cut man and Du Yun left together.
“Keep an eye on him,” Yan Xun said. “Make him go back into the house.”
Du Yun made a gesture of acceptance, "I guarantee I will complete the mission."
"No!" The crew-cut man was speechless. "I still have a mission to complete. How could I possibly desert my post?"
He then said to Du Yun, "Don't pull me."
"You outlaw, behave yourself," Du Yun said.
"This is part of the dungeon's design, who are you calling an outlaw?" the crew-cut man said, annoyed.
Yan Xun was still looking down at the record. "How much of the detail do you remember?" he asked the crew-cut man.
"What details?"
"You really killed Xie Qingdu?"
"How could it be fake?" The man with the buzz cut seemed to be recalling everything from that time, his expression turning grim. "Anyway, there was blood everywhere."
"I don't remember much else, but I do remember that Fang Shuo was the first to make a move."
"A few of us followed."
He also heard Du Yun's mother mention Xie Qingdu's background, "Is that hidden mission related to him?"
Although the crew-cut man wasn't particularly clever, he did discover that the five people in the house all had connections to Xie Qingdu in their own way.
"Maybe," Yan Xun said vaguely.
He watched the two leave before pulling out a chair and sitting down. "Wrong direction," he muttered, slamming his head against the back of the chair.
"What direction are you going in the wrong direction?" Lou Yanchuan asked.
“Du Yun’s secret shouldn’t have been this complicated,” Yan Xun said, counting on his fingers. “The correct approach to this scenario should have been for him to go to Kong Ling and find clues from her home.”
"For example, that blood-stained beef bone, and that pet company."
Yan Xun rested his face on the back of the chair. "If you're not interested in hidden quests, the right approach is for players to visit their neighbors."
"Then he discovered the commonalities between himself and his neighbors with roofs of the same color, using them as a reference to uncover the secrets of his own home." Yan Xun looked up at Lou Yanchuan. "For example, he should have searched Kong Ling's house for information when Kong Ling wasn't paying attention to him, and then found the contact number for that pet company."
"Finally, the secret of Kong Ling's animal abuse was uncovered."
"Thus, they discovered similar situations in their own homes."
The breakthrough might be the pet company, or it might be Kong Ling's alma mater; Du Yun will find some clues from these two places.
Yan Xun thought for a moment, "This method does not involve hidden missions. The only secret Du Yun obtained is that he cruelly killed the stray dog his family adopted when he was young, and he has been continuously donating to various charitable organizations in recent years to repent."
“Side quest 1 only needs to decipher up to this point.” Yan Xun sighed. “It doesn’t matter who Dr. Du is, nor does it matter who the amulet or Granny Shi is.”
“He wouldn’t get any extra information even if he called his mother.”
As for not graduating or dropping out midway, these are irrelevant to this side quest 1.
“This instance offers a high degree of freedom,” Lou Yanchuan said.
"It really is very free," Yan Xun remarked.
Lou Yanchuan shook his head. "A dungeon has a very high degree of freedom, and you can complete the task in many ways, which only proves one thing."
"what?"
“This instance exists based on the consciousness of the instance boss.” Lou Yanchuan tapped his fingers on his wheelchair. “He designed the instance, allowing players to discover clues and clear it through various methods.”
Seeing that Yan Xun still didn't understand what he meant, Lou Yanchuan simply put it more bluntly.
"Simply put, he's in the instance and he's been watching us the whole time."
“Some dungeon bosses prefer a more immersive role-playing experience, deliberately forgetting their identity and disguising themselves as ordinary players or NPCs,” Lou Yanchuan said to Yan Xun. “Besides Xie Qingdu, do you have any other suspects?”
"What's the difference between this and a regular copy?" Yan Xun asked.
“Normal dungeons are generally managed by the system,” Lou Yanchuan said. “Players only need to complete the tasks set by the system to clear the dungeon.”
"Compared to regular dungeons, dungeons where the BOSS himself is present offer greater flexibility."
“Some players find that after entering this type of dungeon, they will deliberately seek out the BOSS and try to please the BOSS,” Lou Yanchuan said. “Because everyone is immersed in the role, the BOSS will also deliberately forget his identity. At this time, if players accumulate goodwill, it will be easier to clear the dungeon.”
"The world view of this type of dungeon is also related to the dungeon boss's experience."
Clearly, the boss of this instance is Xie Qingdu.
“Once you know that this instance is the type where the BOSS participates…” Lou Yanchuan gave an example, “you can treat this community as a maze.”
"The dungeons are specially designed for the dungeon bosses, but different dungeon bosses have different preferences, so the form of the dungeons is also different."
"In essence, no matter how he presents it, it's all just to disorient the players."
Yan Xun pondered for a moment and then understood Lou Yanchuan's meaning.
"So you mean, the key isn't why the community operates this way, but rather that similar things happen in houses of different colors," Yan Xun said. "The color of the roofs and the distribution of people inside the houses might just be arrangements that Xie Qingdu likes to make."
The difference between this and a regular instance is that in a regular instance, Xie Qingdu is just a key NPC with high participation, but in this instance, everything in the world is related to Xie Qingdu's consciousness; this is his instance world.
"No wonder the level isn't high, but there are dungeon maps." Yan Xun muttered.
The rule of the copy community is that residents who do not violate the rules after 30 days will become new members of the community.
Players only need to stay here for 15 days and not break the rules to safely survive and leave the instance, which is very suitable for beginner instances. As long as you don't make mistakes, you can pass the instance.
The mission didn't mention the fate of players who broke the rules, but the players wouldn't care, since in this kind of dungeon, players who broke the rules only faced death.
Yan Xun suddenly became curious, "The prerequisite for us to move into the community smoothly is that we don't break the rules."
"But as long as players do not break the rules, they can leave the instance smoothly."
He thought for a moment, "Then who moves into the community after the players leave?"
"Our clones?"
“Maybe this is ‘my secret’,” Lou Yanchuan said.
……
That evening, Yan Xun's parents took Shuangshuang home.
At the dinner table, Yan Xun seemed rather sullen, which caught the attention of his parents.
After dinner, Yan Xun found her father.
"Du Yun is Dr. Du's son." Without any hesitation, he dropped this bombshell on his father.
"...Dr. Du?" The father's expression was somewhat unnatural, probably because he hadn't expected to hear Dr. Du's name from Yan Xun.
“You know him, don’t you?” Yan Xun said.
Dad still didn't say anything until Yan Xun took out the diagnosis report.
Before her father could even question where Yan Xun had found the child, Yan Xun preemptively retorted, "Am I not Mom and Dad's child?"
"Was I adopted?"
"No wonder I look different from you guys."
—The appearances of the NPCs in the instance are all randomly generated, so of course they look different from Yan Xun.
Perhaps Yan Xun's question was too hurtful, because his father no longer cared why he had dug out the report from under the bed, but was instead led by the nose to answer his question—
“Of course you are our child,” Dad said.
They were chatting on the third-floor terrace, which Yan Xun had specifically called him over.
"What's the difference?" he asked, seemingly puzzled. "You are our child."
"Does Grandma know?" Yan Xun asked.
Yan Xun's father hesitated, then finally shook his head.
“She doesn’t know,” Dad said.
“We hid it very well,” he told Yan Xun. “She doesn’t know about it.”
Yan Xun was skeptical. Clearly, his grandmother was no ordinary person. Could she not have discovered this strange way of being born and that the child was not a living person?
Now that things have come to this, it seems that Dad has nothing left to hide.
Just as Du Yun's mother said, they sought help from Dr. Du, who quickly prescribed them a folk remedy.
"As long as we drink the corresponding medicine every day and pray sincerely, Dr. Du said we can conceive successfully in less than half a month," the father said.
He recounted those past events in detail.
The text also mentions the master Yan Xun's mother encountered after becoming pregnant.
The master said he could tell at a glance that Yan Xun's mother was pregnant. At the time, they thought the master was a charlatan. But when they went to the hospital for a checkup, it turned out that Yan Xun's mother was indeed pregnant.
He said you have a special destiny and will meet a benefactor when you reach a certain age.
Whether we can seize the opportunity depends on our fate.
“We wanted to ask him more questions, but he suddenly disappeared without leaving any contact information.”
"It wasn't until your grandmother fell ill and we realized that ordinary methods were ineffective, so we decided to look for a master, that we met him by chance."
Yan Xun recalled that Lou Yanchuan had mentioned that after his grandmother became seriously ill, his father asked Lou Yanchuan for money to seek help from a master.
"Where is our family's benefactor?" Yan Xun asked.
According to Du Yun's mother, wealthy families who are reincarnated will specifically seek out people who will be reborn through surrogacy at certain times, so as to bring the reincarnated person back to their home or establish contact with them.
"A benefactor?" Dad looked slightly puzzled. "We don't have any benefactors in our family."
Seemingly understanding what Yan Xun was asking, the father explained, "That master said that something went wrong with our benefactor, and he may not appear again."
"Although we were not destined to meet any benefactors, the most important thing is that our family is together."
Yan Xun didn't understand the meaning of those words at first, but after a little thought, he understood the master's implied meaning—
The wealthy family you were reborn into went bankrupt and couldn't be bothered to become your benefactor.
You should take good care of this child.
Yan Xun: "..." Can you really be so frivolous?
That's true, Yan Xun thought. When rich people are reincarnated, they never think that their family might go bankrupt and have no time to take care of them.
From this perspective, people who are reincarnated should not have any memories of their previous lives, otherwise there would be no need for a "benefactor" to specifically seek them out.
"Don't overthink it," Yan Xun's father comforted him. "Was it Dr. Du's son who told you all this?"
"No matter what, you are still our child."
“Du Yun said I need to take medication every month to maintain my current appearance,” Yan Xun said. “Could it be the vitamin pills my mother gave me?”
Dad seemed surprised that Du Yun had told Yan Xun this.
He opened his mouth as if to explain something, but then probably felt that the explanation was unnecessary, and in the end he just nodded and said, "Yes."
"Don't forget to eat," he instructed Yan Xun.
"According to Dr. Du, your health is already poor, and if you don't take your medicine on time, your body may collapse."
Didn't they ever have any doubts? Yan Xun wondered.
No, there must have been some suspicion, otherwise there wouldn't have been medical reports after his birth.
They were also puzzled as to why they suddenly became pregnant after seeing Dr. Du.
But perhaps because Yan Xun's grandmother herself studied witchcraft and sorcery, Yan Xun's parents interpreted this as something that was half scientific and half metaphysical, after all, there were legends about "pregnancy through feeling".
In any case, Dr. Du disguised the whole thing as very scientific.
After taking his unique folk remedy, one can conceive.
Unfortunately, these children are inherently unstable and will need to take his medication regularly as they grow up, otherwise their bodies will break down.
He suddenly remembered what Xie Qingdu had witnessed at that hospital—
After the other party stopped taking their monthly medication, they realized something was wrong and hurriedly sought help from Dr. Du.
According to Du Yun's mother, these things were originally ghost fetuses without a definite shape, and once they stopped taking the medicine prescribed by Dr. Du, they would be unable to maintain their human form.
That person probably witnessed the abnormality firsthand, which is why they sought help from Dr. Du.
As for the supply of medicine, after thinking it over, the only one who could help was that master.
Strangely, even though Yan Xun's father had revealed so many secrets, and Yan Xun had even learned the more hidden truth about "reincarnation" from Du Yun's mother,
Yan Xun's side quest 1 still shows no sign of completion.
So that's not the secret in his family?
After seeing her father off, Yan Xun stood on the terrace, lost in thought.
Since his grandmother was proficient in witchcraft and sorcery, and the master had clearly stated that his grandmother could perform the same fate-altering and fortune-changing techniques that he himself could not, it was impossible for her not to see what tricks the master had played.
Yan Xun leaned on the balcony railing. "Lou Yanchuan and my dad don't get along."
“The two of them had a big fight, and it wasn’t until Lou Yanchuan broke his leg that my dad suddenly contacted him and brought him back overnight.”
He lay there, looking at the white house in the center of the community, listening to the sound of the wheelchair turning behind him.
"Is it possible..." he said to Lou Yanchuan, "that my father already knew about your broken leg?"
According to Lou Yanchuan's memory, shortly after he broke his leg, Grandma Yanxun's health improved for a period of time.
At that time, she was already living in Anxin Sanatorium, and Yan Xun's parents tried their best to prevent Lou Yanchuan from visiting her, on the pretentious grounds that they were worried that seeing her would upset her and affect her condition.
“They said the hospital couldn’t find anything wrong with her before,” Yan Xun said. “But she started to get better after going to the sanatorium.”