Chapter 105

"Do you want to see the IOU?" Hou An's teammate enthusiastically pushed the box towards Bei Qiao.

"No, just looking around." Bei Qiao threw the IOU back into the box, shook his head, and turned to leave. "An hour is limited. Since we can't be sure of the ownership of the items, we can just pick the ones we like. If the items we choose are all borrowed from the Tan family, then the worst that can happen is that we've come here for nothing. What's there to be afraid of?"

Players' wealth in the alternate world isn't linked to their real-world accounts, leaving countless people struggling for years only to find their journey wasted. The Novice Village in the alternate world is like a small plot of land for ordinary people; some struggle for years but never even make it out of it.

"There are fewer and fewer places that have not been searched by anyone. We have to speed up." Bei Qiao muttered to himself as he slowly walked away with the map in his hand.

"If it's not from the Tan Mansion and I can't take it, why bother looking for it?" Among players, there are those who are open-minded, like Bei Qiao, but there are also those who are more open-minded. A lone player with difficulty choosing, after discovering the IOUs, casually flipped through a few of them, just to give it a try. Whether it was bad luck or good fortune, she discovered that all the items she had painstakingly selected were on the IOUs, without a single one missing.

Silently stuffing her previously reluctant treasure into the box along with the IOU, the lone ranger player plopped down on the ground, staring at the yard in deep thought for a moment. Then, she wiped her face, stood up, angrily picked up the potted orange plant in the yard, which was already bearing fruit, tucked it in her arms, and climbed over the wall to leave, picking oranges and stuffing them into her mouth as she walked. "Pah, no wonder no one eats them, they're so sour and bitter!" Shaking the potted plant in her hand, she decided to go back and use the sour oranges to tease the landlord's child, to teach her from a young age the dangers of the world and stop her from always eating things given by strangers.

The landlord's child, who had already fallen asleep, said: "A-choo! This is so strange. I feel like someone is plotting against me. Maybe they're after the snacks I hid?"

This box of IOUs was just the beginning. Later, people found IOUs with different contents in other warehouses.

"No way, not even a single banknote?" The desperate player flipped through the IOUs one by one, trying to find a banknote. "Although players can log off to eat, and it's not impossible to survive in this other world without making money, but, not having even a single cent is too outrageous, isn't it?"

"What's so outrageous? Isn't this just another world's version of a deadbeat?" Another player put down the IOU in his hand and shook his wrist, which was a little cramped from flipping the IOU: "There is a company run by a deadbeat in the office building above my third uncle's company. All the computers have been moved away to pay off debts." It is said that all the things in the deadbeat boss's house are rented, even the house itself. If you don't know, you would think he is very rich.

Pushing aside the chests devoid of valuables, the two players set their sights on the plants in the yard. While other items might be borrowed, the plants in the yard must have grown naturally, right? After all, the Tan family had been here for decades, right?

"But plants are not easy to convert into cash, right?"

"That's true. If we were to sell flowers ourselves, we'd definitely be undercut... Put down that lucky bamboo."

The two men started arguing about whether or not to bring lucky bamboo. If Bei Qiao, who was passing by, had not taken a detour in time, he would have been forcibly dragged by the two men to be the referee.

Looking at the map in his hand and then at the time, Bei Qiao turned around and walked towards the kitchen: "The time period was not chosen well. The fellow villagers who came here before have almost cleared out the place...ah, it's empty here too." Perhaps because they thought that the pots and pans were less likely to be borrowed, the kitchen had been emptied out, to the point that even a mouse would come out with tears in its eyes and empty hands.

After entering the house and quickly knocking on the kitchen wall, Bei Qiao found a coin in the grid on the beam. He didn't know what it was used for, but it looked pretty good.

"Finally, I got some gains, I guess." Bei Qiao stuffed the coins into his sleeves and jumped down from the beam: "I don't know who is so idle to hide things on the beam...ah, sorry, I didn't see you just now." An unknown player was squatting next to the stove and tinkering with it silently, even holding his breath, so that Bei Qiao didn't notice the other person's existence when he landed, and almost stepped on the other person's head.

"Hmph." The man in black, who wrapped himself so that only his eyes were exposed, glanced up and down at Bei Qiao without replying, but his eyes were not very friendly: Another guy who is pretending.

Seeing that the other party didn't want to talk to her, Bei Qiao gave up the thought of apologizing and turned to leave the kitchen without going far. Her intuition told her that she had just seen something very familiar, and that the identity of the person just now was different.

"What is it that makes me feel familiar? The body shape? The eyes? It's the eyes after all?" Bei Qiao recalled the people and things he had met on the road before: "The look in his eyes just now was more like jealousy... wait, it's... oh!" Swallowing the name he hadn't said yet, Bei Qiao turned around and ran back to the kitchen. He raised his hand and knocked the man in black to the ground: No wonder he felt familiar and something was wrong. This guy is not a player at all, but Cen Xi, who he had met a few times before!

"Holy crap! Why are they suddenly hitting people?" Cen Xi fell to the ground with a loud thud, attracting the attention of the other players. However, none of them were new players, so when they saw someone hitting someone, their first reaction wasn't to seek justice. Instead, they checked with Bei Qiao to see if there was some misunderstanding.

"We have to beat him. This man is not from the same hometown." Bei Qiao pulled off the mask of the man in black and took a look. After making sure that he had not recognized the wrong person, he tied the mask over Cen Xi's eyes, and took out a few rags from the kitchen and tied up his hands and feet.

"Not a fellow villager?" Upon hearing this, the nearby players quickly gathered around, asking in unison: "Really? How can you be sure?" "Did he sneak up on you?" "Did the code not match?"

"Neither, he is a member of the Cen family." Bei Qiao picked up Cen Xi, and then picked up the sack that Cen Xi had held in his hand before. Surrounded by other players, he ran straight to the front yard hall, intending to throw this hot potato to the staff to deal with.

The staff member in charge of this treasure hunt was a civil servant from a local sect in Luodan City. When she saw the group approaching, she thought someone was arguing over a distribution issue: "What's the quarrel about this time?"

"Hello, I found a native here. What should I do with him?" Bei Qiao placed the unconscious Cen Xi in front of the staff.

"Are there natives sneaking in?" The staff's face changed immediately: The player's affairs will not be exposed, right?

"We've only found him so far. He might have sneaked in to look for something." Bei Qiao handed the sack over again: "This is what he collected before."

What's that? The crowd craned their necks to peer into the sack: A bag of coal?

"Coal balls... No, these are blackened silver nuggets!" Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, the staff member took out a few small black nuggets from the sack. After weighing them, he found that the weight was abnormal. He decisively went into the house and sent a message to Li Geng on the forum.

"What? Players said he was Cen Xi?" Li Geng, who was guarding the duty room, spit out a mouthful of wine. "No one in the prison said Cen Xi ran away!" What's going on?

Since the player who sent the person there had indeed seen Cen Xi in person before, although he felt it was unlikely, Li Geng still left the government office and went to the Tan residence to investigate. This observation was significant, as he discovered that the Cen Xi in the Tan residence was not a fake. The peculiarly shaped jade pendant in Cen Xi's hand had been worn around the neck of someone in the cell just an hour ago.

"This jade pendant is like a special key that can open a secret compartment under the stove." Bei Qiao gestured and said, "The contents are all in the sack. The secret compartment in the kitchen stove is still open, but it's empty."

"I understand, thank you." Li Geng rubbed his brows as he looked at Cen Xi lying on the ground: Good guy, it turns out that the fight they had in the cell before was for others to see, and the purpose was to take away this jade pendant and take away the things hidden in the Tan family.

Did the Tan family know that the Cen family's property was hidden in their own stove? Most likely, they didn't.

"Only one secret compartment?" One player among the onlookers questioned, "He's a prominent member of the Cen family after all, and he only hid this little bit of silver? Are you planning to keep it all for yourself?"

"This is something Cenxi hid in the Tan family. It's not the Tan family's thing. Even if I hide it, I can't take it away." Bei Qiao spread his hands: "He may have hidden it in more than one place, but I only saw one."

"Ah, that's right." The envious and jealous eyes of the other players instantly turned into sympathy and gloating: Although we are not friends, we are still afraid of you driving a Land Rover.

Bei Qiao didn't care whether others were jealous or gloating. The one-hour mission was about to end. While coordinating with the staff to complete the record, Bei Qiao settled the treasure mission in advance and was lucky enough to get the money.

Helping to capture Cen Xi has nothing to do with the treasure mission, but Li Geng said there will be a reward. It’s just that this matter is a bit complicated and we have to wait until he reports it. There will be no results on the same day.

"I understand." Bei Qiao nodded: Then let's stay in Luodan City for a few days.

While Bei Qiao was talking with Li Geng, other players also settled their mission rewards one after another. Some of them had good gains, while others were very unlucky and got nothing.

"Everyone, please put the things that are not your task rewards back to their original places. Of course, you don't have to put them back. When the next wave of players comes, they will automatically be eliminated..." As soon as the staff finished speaking, the players quickly picked up their things and started running, as if they would not stop until everything was restored to its original state.

Players: Automatically excluded? Don't even think about it! You have to suffer the same hardships I've endured!