Chapter 446: The Forsaken Realm (35) (1st + 2nd update) [VIP]
The elf boy with face blindness doesn't seem to know that he is face blind.
"I'm not face-blind," he said confidently, "How could I not recognize the person I'm loyal to?"
"Wake up." Xu Zichen couldn't help but say to him, "That's the dead sister of the noble lady you were loyal to."
The elf boy said, "I don't believe it. She is the only one wearing a skirt here. If she is not a noble lady, then who is a noble lady?"
Everyone:?
"Why don't you take another look?" Bai E twitched his lips.
The elf boy looked around the crowd, not stopping at Hector at all: "You are all ordinary adventurers."
"Then look at him," Zhao Yinglai pushed Hector and carefully observed the elf boy's gaze, "You really don't know him?"
The elf boy looked at Hector blankly: "Isn't this a male adventurer?"
Hector: ...
Hector was speechless: "...Can't you tell that I'm a man?"
He just changed out of the dress he was wearing, his appearance and hair didn't change at all!
How can someone fall in love at first sight based solely on clothes? Is it the clothes or the person that you fall in love with at first sight?
"I see. He recognizes people by their clothes. He is clothes-sexual," Guan Hongyan understood and turned the elf boy in another direction. "If you don't believe me, I'll do an experiment for you."
She winked at Bai Jinshu and said, "Dermis, please, please."
Bai Jinshu: ...
If you have something to ask for, please do it. If you have nothing to do, just keep thinking about love.
He was silent for a moment, then snapped his fingers as Guan Hongyan had thought: "...Okay."
The clothes on Su Hao in front of the elf boy suddenly turned into a golden pink princess dress.
Su Hao was caught off guard:!
"Do you think he looks like you, a noble lady who is loyal to him?" Guan Hongyan said patiently.
The elf boy was excited: "Miss!"
"Then do you think he looks like him?" Guan Hongyan pointed at Xu Zichen with ill intent.
A snap of fingers.
Xu Zichen's clothes turned into a dark green skirt.
Xu Zichen looked at Guan Hongyan with a questioning look as if to say, "Did you plan this a long time ago?"
The elf boy was excited: "Miss!"
"Then look at him again." She pointed at Yun Guang.
Yun Guang's clothes turned into a red and white skirt.
Yun Guang lowered his head and smiled helplessly.
The elf boy frowned and shook his head: "This is not a noble lady."
Guan Hongyan: “Hmm?”
She asked curiously, "Why isn't he?"
Is there any difference between Yun Guang’s skirt and others’?
Aren't they the same? Didn't he tell them apart by the skirt?
The elf boy said seriously: "I don't like red."
Guan Hongyan: ...
Guan Hongyan turned around and said, "Look, I said he is a clothing-sexual."
The three male team members who were used as test subjects declined to comment.
Su Hao asked unwillingly: "Why don't you let the rice noodle rolls try it?"
Guan Hongyan replied immediately: "It's too eye-catching to see rice noodle rolls in a skirt. You three are more pleasing to the eye."
"Isn't this the only way to prove that he is indeed a cross-dresser?" Su Hao was unwilling to accept it. "None of us three can prove it. Only when Lu Changfeng wears it can it be proved!"
Guan Hongyan was in deep thought.
Guan Hongyan: "That makes sense..."
“Rice roll…” Before she could finish her words, she saw Dermis walking away without looking back, “Hey—Hey? Dermis! Don’t go!”
She raised her hand and shouted a few times: "Aren't you going to test the rice noodle rolls?"
Delmis responded with a hooded back of her head.
The only boss who could change clothes with one click left, and Guan Hongyan put down his hand with regret: "Alas, there is no fun anymore..."
"You still know that you are playing." Xu Zichen complained bluntly.
"Isn't this a test?" Guan Hongyan muttered. "Now it seems that this guy is a clothing fetishist. So when he goes to the clothing store, isn't it a blind date meeting..."
"Stop, stop, stop, stop for a moment," Su Hao interrupted her, "So now there are three noble ladies here, even if he is slow, he should have noticed something is wrong, right? And we have to explain why he is here, right?"
The elf boy drew three arrows from his quiver: "I am willing to offer my…"
Su Hao:?
"Don't offer it yet," Xu Zichen snatched the three arrows from his hand, "We will no longer be your noble ladies soon."
"I think you still have to do this for a while," Guan Hongyan said dimly, "Dermis is gone..."
The guy who could change clothes with one click is gone, who will change them back?
Xu Zichen:?
Xu Zichen: "Wouldn't I take off my skirt?"
Guan Hongyan:?
Guan Hongyan: "It's bad, you are not a fool like Hector who is easy to deceive."
Hector: “Huh?”
The voices of the exploration team members behind him were getting farther and farther away. Bai Jinshu walked to Enoch and saw that he was still frowning and thinking about something.
"Did you remember anything?"
Enoch saw a skeletal hand tapping on the railing next to him, and looking up along the hand bones, he saw Delmis and his partner standing next to him.
"No," he shook his head decisively, "You said I must have seen the Great Mage before, but I really haven't seen him..."
"Then can you remember when you saw the magic pattern?" Bai Jinshu raised his eyebrows.
"I can't remember," Enoch said in a confused voice, "Maybe I saw it wrong?"
He said hesitantly: "Maybe the pattern is very similar to some other magic patterns I have seen before, and I am mistaken..."
Enoch's voice became lower and lower, and it was obvious that he did not believe this guess. He must have seen this thing at some point, but the strange thing was that no memory of it remained in his mind.
"Then let me ask you another question," Bai Jinshu changed his posture and half leaned on the railing, "Do you know what a player is?"
Enoch: “Huh?”
He was stunned for a few seconds: "What is this?"
"Players," Bai Jinshu repeated, "like yesterday's [Grudge is heavier than a ghost] and [Pure and wild female cockroach]."
"These two adventurers..." Enoch hesitated, "Is there any problem?"
"Don't you think their names are strange?" Bai Jinshu asked.
"Strange? Not strange..." Enoch scratched his head, "Isn't it normal?"
Bai Jinshu nodded: "Okay, I understand."
The hooded necromancer came over and asked a few inexplicable questions before leaving, leaving Enoch sitting there. He didn't know what he knew, but he did feel that there must be something missing in his mind.
Someone in the comments noticed what Bai Jinshu was doing:
[Is this to confirm whether Enoch is Lao Zhang? ]
[It should be. I feel like Enoch really doesn’t know anything about the players.]
[I think so too, but I think he should be Lao Zhang, otherwise how would he know that magic pattern. ]
[How can you be sure that he is Lao Zhang himself? What if he is an NPC modeled after himself? ]
…
The last sunset glow in the sky also sank, and a faint blue-green light appeared on the ghost ship, floating in the air like a real ghost ship.
The exploration team members sat on the edge of the deck. There was a small kerosene lamp on the table in the middle. Bai Jinshu sat next to the lamp and asked, "What did you do in the end?"
What happened to that elf?
"We sacrificed the looks of three teammates," Guan Hongyan said seriously, "and now he is the shared knight of three young ladies."
"Go, go," Xu Zichen waved his hand. "We told him about the current situation and said that our team of adventurers actually accepted a commission and dug up the Hunter Association's supply point in order to investigate something."
"Then the elf said that he and the others were just temporary partners," Su Hao added shirtless, "It's none of their business whether he leaves or not."
"It seems like he has some XP issues," Xu Zichen complained, "No matter who it is, as long as she wears a skirt, she is a noble lady, and a male noble lady is also a noble lady."
White Moth slammed the table and said, "A male mother is also a mother!"
"In short," Yun Guang explained with a light cough, "this elf's cognition is different from that of most people. He identifies identities entirely by clothing, and has an extraordinary fascination with women or men wearing gorgeous dresses."
"It's commonly known as clothing-sexuality." Guan Hongyan muttered.
"He is in a state where he can't listen to our explanation, but he doesn't show any signs of wanting to leave," Yun Guang nodded and continued, "I don't think he is important. Our focus now is to figure out the emblems and Enoch's identity. This elf is likely a character that must appear in the main cast of characters due to the inevitability of the plot. No matter what we do, this person will definitely appear."
It's like no matter what they do, the final destination will inexplicably become the player's next destination in the original plot.
This is a much more serious statement.
Guan Hongyan put away the gloating on her face and added, "Yes, so we don't have to pay too much attention to him. If we need him to follow us, we can just find someone wearing a skirt to make him pledge his loyalty. I don't think he cares what we do."
He only cares about "the noble lady".
"Dermis, can you tell if Enoch is Lao Zhang?" Lu Changfeng was a little curious, "I don't think he looks like a player."
"Not sure," Bai Jinshu shook his head, "but Enoch knows nothing about players, and his attitude towards players is the same as other natives."
If a former Breath of Slenkmed player hadn't recognized Lao Zhang, they wouldn't have suspected Enoch.
"Let me summarize Enoch's current situation," White Moth held a pen in his hand and a piece of paper in front of him. "First, the players of Breath of Slenkmed said that Enoch was the account of the producer Lao Zhang. Because the GM enabled the ID to display the same color as the n.pc, many people who met Lao Zhang at that time mistook him for the n.pc."
"A few years ago, Lao Zhang had a car accident and became a vegetable, so the Enoch in this game is unlikely to be Lao Zhang himself," Bai E said as he listed the characters. "The Enoch in the game doesn't look like a player either, but a real native."
"Oh, and there's one more thing," she added, "after holographic technology became popular, many vegetative people were reborn in the holographic world. But according to them, when Lao Zhang had the accident, the technology was not yet mature. After the technology matured, these vegetative people all had a special holographic community to live in. This community is just like the real world. You can't just live wherever you want. So it's impossible for Lao Zhang to become a vegetative person in the game."
"Well," Yun Guang pondered for a moment, "I have a question about the condition of this producer. Is he still in a vegetative state? Hongyan, ask the owner of the mother space."
"Yes," Guan Hongyan replied, "I contacted them and they said they went into the Mother World to ask, but there was too little information about the producer. Now they are also trying to find out whether Old Zhang, who has become a vegetable, is dead or not."
A game producer who has long been out of date has not updated his Weibo for several years. No one knows where the people in his former studio have scattered to. The foundation team members in the mother space are also worried about this news.
"Okay, let's make some assumptions," Yun Guang knocked on the table. "Now there are two possibilities. Old Zhang is dead, Old Zhang is not dead, Enoch is Old Zhang, and Enoch is not Old Zhang. These four possibilities can be combined to produce four results. But no matter which result, Enoch may have participated in what the great mage did back then and saw those magic patterns with his own eyes."
"Enoch must be connected to Lao Zhang. Now the game has suddenly turned into the real world for unknown reasons," Zhao Yinglai yawned. "I don't think this rule is necessarily related to our previous speculation of traveling across the continent. This news was released by the Grand Mage. Who knows if it's true or not? The clue may be in Enoch."
After all, he seems to be the only indigenous person who has established contact with the outside world. He may be the "account" of producer Lao Zhang.
"Enoch doesn't look like someone who can get in touch with the Grand Mage. He is just an ordinary alchemy shop owner and has no ability to resist Delmis," Guan Hongyan held up her chin. "Could it be that he and Lao Zhang are two different people, and it was Lao Zhang who got in touch with the Grand Mage?"
"No," Bai Jinshu tapped the table, "Enoch is Lao Zhang."
He was so sure in what he said that everyone looked at him in surprise.
"Why?" Lu Changfeng asked without understanding.
"Plot," Bai Jinshu paused and explained, "The first time you said the plot was inevitable, it was when he chased us out of Besser City. This plot overlapped with the original plot."
From now on, they will be guided to go wherever the players in the original plot go, and they will meet the same people as the players in the original plot meet.
Before this, this group of exploration team members were obviously not controlled by the plot, and the place they landed was Rossburg, which was completely unrelated to the Novice Village.
Guan Hongyan and the others thought that Hector looked more and more like a player, so he was judged as a player by this world and started to follow the plot.
But what if it isn’t?
"Ihekto is a pretend player," Yun Guang thought, "but if Enoch is Lao Zhang, then there is a real player in our team."
They discovered that the inevitability of the plot also began after they came into contact with Enoch.
It is natural for players to accept quests to trigger the plot. But what if the one who triggered the plot was not the unlucky guy Hector, but actually "Lao Zhang"?
"How long will it take to get to the next destination?" Bai Jinshu didn't notice that everyone had become thoughtful, and looked down at the ghost ship.
"About four hours." White Moth answered proactively.
*
In the early hours of the morning, the ghost ship landed in front of the next marked target point.
Everyone was just rushing to the next unloading point to prove the speculation that "there are magic patterns under the ground paved with magic sand", but compared to the previous stop, the Hunter Association supply point where at least there were living people living there, this place seemed even more desolate.
"What is this place?" Guan Hongyan swept the area with a flashlight, and the beam of light stopped on a dilapidated wooden house in front of her.
"It seems to be the church of the God of Light?" Xu Zichen looked at the dilapidated little building with doubt in his tone, "Did someone really build a church here?"
Normally there aren't many living people passing by here, right?
"How do you know it's a church?" Guan Hongyan whispered.
"That symbol," Xu Zichen pointed to the pattern on the top of the building, "seems to be the emblem of the God of Light. There is also one at the entrance of the Church of the God of Light in Besser City."
There are mountains and forests all around. This small wooden house has no light at all and stands quietly in the mountains. If Xu Zichen hadn't seen some patterns similar to those on the buildings of the Church of the God of Light in the city of Besser, this place would be more like a haunted house than a church.
Su Hao gently pushed the half-open door, and the wooden door creaked open, revealing a dark room.
Bai Moth held a small kerosene lamp in his hand and shone it inside: "It really seems to be a church."
With the dim light of the kerosene lamp, everyone could see clearly the church-like furnishings in the middle of the wooden house, with two rows of chairs on each side and a blurry statue in the middle whose image was unclear.
"A church in the middle of nowhere?" Lu Changfeng shuddered. "Is there no one here?"
Why would an uninhabited place become one of the unloading points of the Perrin Mine?
"Go in and take a look." Yun Guang took the kerosene lamp from Bai E and walked a few steps inside. "Why is there a church deep in the mountains?"
"I heard that it was built by some ascetic monks," Enoch answered subconsciously, although he was still confused about his memory. "Some believers in the Church of the God of Light believe that the simpler their lives, the closer they can be to God. These ascetic monks stay away from cities and practice in the mountains, hoping to get closer to God in this way."
The clergy passing by would also enter these churches to pray. If there was a team of adventurers that did not go to the prosperous cities all year round, the clergy in the team would even take the initiative to find the churches built by these ascetics.
So if there is a simple church in the deep mountains, it must have been built by them.
"Is anyone here?" Zhao Yinglai walked around the small church curiously and shouted in a loud voice, "Hello? Hello! Is anyone here?"
"No." White Moth shook his head.
She looked around. "Could this be the ascetic's church? Does he live somewhere else?"
No one knows about that.
The "church" was very small and had no lighting facilities. Bai Jinshu combined the fire element into small point light sources that floated around and served as lighting.
"It's more like a horror movie." He heard Guan Hongyan complain quietly.
The room was small to begin with, and now with so many red flames floating in the air, the eeriness increased several levels.
Yun Guang squatted down in front and pinched the sand on the ground with his fingers.
"Magic sand," he looked up, "This is the same stuff that's laid on the floor here."
So if the speculation is correct, there should be a part of the magic pattern underneath.
Zhao Yinglai and Guan Hongyan, who were standing nearby, had already dismantled the benches in the church and started digging downwards.
The magic sand in the church is looser than that in the Hunter's Association's rest area, and it is faster to dig.
Bai Jinshu guessed that it was because not many people came here normally, so not many people stepped on the ground.
The exploration team dug for a whole night. When they dug a pit about as deep as a person's height, magic patterns appeared underground again.
"Dermis!" Xu Zichen raised his head, "Look!"
Where he was standing, a pattern emitting a faint glow had already emerged from its edges.
"Enoch," Yun Guang also made some distance, "Does this look familiar to you?"
Enoch was silent longer this time.
After everyone had cleared out the pattern, he hesitantly said, "It looks familiar."
"I've seen this pattern too," he observed for a few minutes and suddenly added, "and this pattern seems incomplete."
"Didn't Delmis say that this was just a small part of a larger magic pattern?" Guan Hongyan was surprised.
"No," Enoch took a few steps forward and picked up a wooden stick beside him, "it's this small pattern... incomplete."
He dug a little deeper where Xu Zichen had originally stood.
As he moved, a small pattern that had been ignored by everyone appeared on the ground.
"It's complete now," Enoch frowned, looking even more confused about his memory loss, "but when have I seen this pattern before..."
He had no impression at all.
The details of the pattern seemed to appear in his mind suddenly, abrupt yet familiar. He had never seen this magic pattern before, and it was even just a small part of a large magic pattern, but he knew where this small part was missing and where it was not complete.
"Let's make a copy of this first," Guan Hongyan took out the prepared paper and pen, copied the small pattern onto the paper, and then pieced it together with the pattern found at the Hunter Association's supply point. "These two pieces should be together, right?"
"It's a bit hard to connect." Xu Zichen came over to take a look and gestured. "According to Delmis, all the lines of the magic pattern are connected end to end, but these two lines can't be connected. It feels like there is a short connecting line missing in the middle."
However, there are only two pieces of paper at the moment, so it is a bit too early to put them together now.
"Let's take a break first," White Moth yawned wildly, "We have been digging this hole all night, and now it's dawn."
Outside the cabin, a little light had appeared on the horizon, and it was already early morning.
"Go back to the ghost ship to rest?" Guan Hongyan yawned as she led him there. "We have already dismantled all the tables, chairs, benches, etc. It's immoral to rest here."
The rest of the people nodded in agreement.
With the ghost ship resting, this small shabby church is indeed not very comfortable.
Everyone roughly filled in the big hole and decided to help the ascetic monk restore it to its original state after a rest.
Just as Bai Jinshu, who was walking in the front, was about to leave the church, he suddenly discovered that there was a small room next to the church.
It was so dark last night that no one noticed that there was a small room right outside the church door.
Could the person sleeping here be the clergyman who built this church?
Then why didn't this person react at all when they made such a big fuss last night?
He paused, suddenly feeling something was wrong, and immediately broke the door lock and pushed open the door of the room.
With the sound of a door being violently destroyed, light shone into the small room. The room was simply furnished and in poor condition. There were gray walls on all four sides. There were some manuscripts on the table and a priest's robe draped over the back of the chair.
The owner of the room did not respond to the intruder.
He fell to the ground, his skin as dry as a dead tree in winter.
This is a priest who has been dead for who knows how long.
The author has something to say:
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