After this conversation, Feng Bujue formed a ’contract’ of sorts with the succubus. By then, the succubus had turned from a monster into an NPC and did not have any hostility toward Feng Bujue. But the system did not provide any notice about this change. After getting the key, whether he should let the succubus go or not, it was still Feng Bujue’s choice alone.

“Hmm…” Feng Bujue first held the key in his fingers for several seconds to study its item description.

———

Name: Cursed Key

Item Type: Plot Item

Quality: Normal

Function: The owner will be followed by misfortune. This item cannot be abandoned, traded away, or ruined.

Can be taken out of the scenario: No

Remark: After opening the corresponding door, the key will be exhausted.

———

When he saw the description for this item, Feng Bujue was immediately reminded of the second message they had seen.

When you think you have gotten what you want, you will have lost even more.

“Sigh… Now I think I understand why you are trapped in my bed,” Feng Bujue grumbled under his breath.

“The only reason for that is my bad luck,” the succubus replied. “Your room is only so big. After I came in through the wall, I only flew for a meter when I reached the top of your bed. Who would have thought… that there is someone in this world who uses Solomon’s magic circles as the pattern on their bedsheet?”

From her answer, it did not appear like the succubus knew about the Cursed Key’s special property. Feng Bujue did not think that was so weird because he understood what the reason behind that was. The perspective taken by the characters in the scenario was naturally different from the one employed by travelers from another world like himself.

In the succubus’ eyes, this was only a normal key. If no one told her that this thing would bring misfortune to anyone who carried it, naturally, she would have had no way of finding that out. But from a player’s perspective, they could directly see the related description of this item through the use of the game menu. Of course, the player’s angle had its own problem as well. For example, the succubus could easily surrender the key to Feng Bujue, but Feng Bujue was unable to drop it or give this thing to someone else…

“Do you mind telling me where you got this key?” Feng Bujue asked.

“It was the boss who told me to pass it to you,” the succubus replied.

“Huh?” Feng Bujue was baffled. “If he ordered you to give this to me, why didn’t you just state that from the right beginning? Instead, you have been trying to seduce and kill me when you are still inside the trap.”

“Who said I was trying to kill you?” The succubus patted the side of the bed and smiled seductively. “How can you be sure that I was trying to kill you when I asked you to join me in bed earlier? Couldn’t it be that I was in the mood for something else? I could have handed you the key after the deed. It’s still the same.”

Hearing that, Feng Bujue had a renewed understanding of the message.

When you think you have gotten what you want, you will have lost even more.

It corresponded perfectly with this situation. But of course, the man knew that there would not be any overtly sexual element in Thriller Paradise. The succubus only said something like this because the player had already obtained the key. It made an impression like there was a chance for the player to both have the cake and eat it. Actually… if he had really fallen for the seduction earlier, he would definitely have been attacked, and the attack could quite possibly have claimed his life in one hit.

This kind of design, Feng Bujue had seen it a lot in a single-player game. Those depressing games liked to use this kind of design a lot. Before the final ending, the player would be given a choice. If they chose A, when they reached the end, they would realize that it was a bad ending. So, they would load up the game and chose B, thinking they would finally get the true ending, but in the end, the real ending was even sadder than the first one.

This was like someone placing a cookie before you and giving you the choice of eating it or not. If you ate it, you would die from food poisoning, but if you chose not to eat it, the other person would grab the cookie and stuff it in their mouth, mocking you with their mouth full, “This cookie is so delicious, but unfortunately, there is only one, and you have given it to me. Sorry.”

At that moment, the kettle in the kitchen reached the boil, and it whistled to signify that. Feng Bujue turned and prepared to leave.

“Hey! You still have not…” The succubus called after him.

“I will be back after I switch off the fire.” Feng Bujue knew what the NPC was going to say, so he cut her off and strode into the kitchen. Two minutes later, he switched off the stove and returned to the bedroom with a pair of scissors. To ensure that there was no danger, before Feng Bujue got close to the bed, he still took out the Bell of Jin Gang and activated its special effect. The first function was the one being activated, which allowed him to observe the detailed information of an NPC.

———

Name: Succubus

NPC affiliation: Detective Club

Level: ???

Height: 165 cm

Weight: Forty-two kg

Can engage in battle with it: Yes

Related Plot Scenario: Cursed Key

———

Since it is not a monster’s information that is revealed, it means quite clearly that battle can be avoided. Based on the current relationship that I have with her, as long as I do not actively attack her, there should be no problem, Feng Bujue thought to himself.

“What are you doing dawdling over there?” the succubus urged.

Feng Bujue worried that dragging this out would lead to more trouble, so he stopped the meaningless struggle.

“Hmm… It is nothing,” he said as he took two step forward. He grabbed a corner of the bedsheet and made a straight cut right to the middle. Creatures who were entrapped in the circle of Solomon were unable to destroy the magic with their own power. No matter how weak the magic circle was, even if it was made from fallen leaves or Lego blocks and would be dispersed by the blow of a wind, the trapped creature was helpless when they were inside it. But as long as a creature that was not affected by this magic circle like a human being walked into this magic circle, the trapped creature could use this new creature’s blood to corrupt the magic circle and gain their escape.

When Feng Bujue opened the bedroom door earlier, he had not been affected by the seduction, but he had noticed the fact that the creature was trapped inside the magic circle instantly. Therefore, he had gained the upper hand in the negotiation and could move forward into the next step of the plot without the need for a battle.

Several ten seconds later, when there was a cut there was had at the edge of the heptagram, Feng Bujue suddenly felt a pressure on his shoulders. An invisible pressure suffocated him. This undeniably was a sign of the succubus’ power returning. At the same time, the pair of bat wing behind the succubus fluttered like a butterfly. Then, the creature floated up into the air. “Humph… Today sure is my unlucky day.”

She groaned with displeasure before turning around and leaving the room through the wall.

“Sigh…” Feng Bujue lowered his head to look at the key he was holding. “But from this moment on, that unluckiness has fallen on my shoulders.”

He placed the key inside his shirt pocket and then left the bedroom. When he returned to the kitchen, he replaced the scissors inside the drawer and then closed the drawer promptly. He used an alert gaze to study the object and environment around him.

“Just how serious will the influence of this ’misfortune’ be?” His gaze soon fell on the rack of cooking knives. “Is it the constant threat of death like the characters in Final Destination?”

As he spoke, his eyes moved to the ground again. “Or will I trip and fall on flat ground and knock out my two front teeth?”

Actually, he had overestimated the influence of misfortune. If the cursed key had so lethal and had such an instant effect on its carrier, the succubus would have noticed it when she was travelling there, and she would not have waited until she entered Feng Bujue’s bedroom and accidentally triggered the trap.

…

Five minutes later, Feng Bujue held a cup of instant coffee in his hand and came to the living room. He placed the cup of coffee on the table. He then replaced the upturned sofa and sat down on it with ease and pleasure. He took a light tasting sip of the coffee and let out a satisfied breath like a drug addict who had taken a sniff of the best stuff.

“If I am not mistaken, page 599 to page 602 should be…” Feng Bujue put down the cup of coffee, crossed his legs, and flipped open the book that he had placed on the coffee table earlier. “A ha! I knew it was the Return of Sherlock Holmes!”

Indeed, according to the hint S H, the book that it was referring on Feng Bujue’s bookshelf was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A reading habit was not made in a day.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

For Feng Bujue, this book was the beginning of that long yet rewarding journey. When he was young, he had been different from other children. Even though he also liked games and liked to reading comics, his talent and passion for reading was obviously much stronger than his peers and even surpassed adults.

This tome, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, contained all the case files on Sherlock Holmes that had been written by Conan Doyle. Feng Bujue had used his childhood pocket money that he had saved for a long time to purchase it. His family was not rich by any means, and he had not been given a lot of pocket money, but he had purchased a miniature copy. The book had over 1,400 pages, but the font was incredibly small, and it took quite a bit of effort to read it. But Feng Bujue had still finished the book multiple times, and he had preserved it well. He would never eat while reading and would not use dirty fingers or stained fingers to touch any pages. He did not even have the heart to fold the edge of the pages, and he used his memory to remember which page he had last read. More than a decade had passed, and the book was still placed on his bookshelf. Even though the pages had yellowed over time, the printed words were still perfectly legible, and there was no folds to be seen.

“It is quite a surprise that I would one day return to this.” Feng Bujue sighed with lamentation, but soon, his attention was palled to the words that he was reading. Page 599 to page 602 was a part from the story ’Empty House’, and Empty House was one of the stories from the Return of Sherlock Holmes.

From the perspective of Feng Bujue, a great fan of the book, the Return of Sherlock Holmes was where the whole series started to dip in quality. The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes had lost the earlier spark and seriousness that colored the analytical section of the famed series. Sherlock Holmes of this period appeared to be able to correctly predict a person’s thoughts and conclude the sequence of events in a case from ’the change to one’s facial muscle, the shift of their gaze, the open and close of their lips, the loosening and tightening of one’s fist…’ This kind of phenomenon reflected Mr. Conan Doyle’s lack of passion in creating this kind of story. He was continuing his writing from his need to satisfy the hunger of the publisher and the readers. That was why the Sherlock Holmes stories after 1902 were not as successfully as the stories before then.

The current Feng Bujue could actually see himself in the shoes of Mr. Conan Doyle back then. This was the situation for many writers. When they wrote at the height of their creativity and passion, no one paid them any attention. But after they gained popularity, even if they were facing writer’s block, there would be people lining up to pay them great money to have them hand over the script. A Study in Scarlet was completed in April of 1886. At the time, Conan Doyle offered his manuscript to many publishers, but none paid him any attention. It was not until Christmas of 1887 that he was able to publish it in a Christmas annual. And five years after that, with Conan Doyle himself already showing signs of wishing to retire, The Strand Magazine begged him to pick up his pen again, willing to pay one thousand pounds in exchange for twenty short stories. As a writer who had already lost the will to write but was forced by the popularity of his own writing to continue to work, life was indeed not that easy for Conan Doyle.

“Oh… It is the part where Holmes was explaining to Watson how he escaped from Reichenbach Falls…” Feng Bujue finished reading the content on the page 599 and soon remembered what the next three pages were about. Even so, he continued to read.

“No, Watson, I was never in it. My note to you was absolutely genuine. I had little doubt that I had come to the end of my career when I perceived the somewhat sinister figure of the late Professor Moriarty standing upon the narrow pathway that led to safety. I read an inexorable purpose in his gray eyes. I exchanged some remarks with him,” Feng Bujue recited directly from the book. “The description of the fight… is basically a lack of description, and then Moriarty fell, and the situation that followed was… ’With my face over the brink, I saw him fall a long way down. Then he struck a rock, bounced off, and splashed into the water’.”

Feng Bujue picked up the coffee to take another sip.

“From this paragraph alone, it appears like Moriarty is indeed dead. Unless his physique was as powerful as Captain America, after suffering such a serious injury, it is impossible for him to be able to have swum away from the waterfall.

“In that case… is the boss of the Detective Club himself a ghost? If he is a living person… could it be a doppelganger that fell into the rapids that day? But what kind doppelganger would be able to fool the sharp eye of Sherlock Holmes?”

He put down the cup of coffee.

“Hmm… or perhaps the Moriarty of the Detective Club is the projection of Moriarty from a certain period, just like the other characters from the other fairytales inside the experiment zone.”

Perhaps only the professor himself knew the answer to that question, so for now, Feng Bujue moved it out of his mind and continued to read. Even though Feng Bujue had mastered the ability of speed reading, in this instance, he read every single word carefully and tried to remember how they were in their original English. After all, Feng Bujue was reading the Chinese translated version of the book. As an extra note, Feng Bujue owned the English version of the case files of Sherlock Holmes, but those books came in a separate series, and each book was no longer than five hundred pages.

“It came about in this way. The instant the professor disappeared, it struck me what a really extraordinarily lucky chance Fate had placed in my way. I stood up and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer. This was not literally true. A few small footholds presented themselves, and there was some indication of a ledge. The cliff is so high that to climb it all was an obvious impossibility, and it was equally impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving some tracks.”

At this point, Feng Bujue could not help but admire in mock admiration. “It is no surprise that I view you as my idol. Even if you want to fake death, you wish to make it as perfect as possible. You would risk your own life to climb up the dangerous cliff face.”

Turning another page, the description from page 600 to page 601 mainly was about Sherlock Holmes’ rock climbing experience. During this process, another accomplice of Moriarty’s, who had been hiding nearby, used two big rocks to attack Sherlock Holmes twice. If this was a Xuanhuan novel, our great detective would have been hit, and then he would have fallen down the cliff, which would have led to him gaining some superpower, mysterious treasure, a beauty or a reincarnation to another era to begin another new adventure…

Unfortunately in this novel published in the early 20th century, plot armor served a different purpose…

“I did not take long to think about it, Watson. Again, I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down onto the path. I don’t think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, for another stone sang past me as I hung by my hands from the edge of the ledge. Halfway down, I slipped, but by the blessing of God, I landed, torn and bleeding, upon the path. I took to my heels, trekked ten miles over the mountains in the darkness, and a week later, found myself in Florence with the certainty that no one in the world knew what had become of me.”

After reading this part, Feng Bujue commented, “Hmm… the content for this one week could’ve been expanded to fill up the story with his survival in the wild…”

The last content from page 601 to 602 was the end of the description for this part. This part was mainly made up of two sections. The first section was mainly about how Sherlock Holmes had gone to train during the few years that he was assumed dead.

“I traveled for two years in Tibet and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the Dalai Llama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office.

“Returning to France, I spent some months researching coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpelier, in the south of France. Having concluded this to my satisfaction, and learning that only one of my enemies was now left in London, I was about to return when my movements were hastened by the news of this very remarkable Park Lane Mystery, which not only appealed to me by its own merits, but which seemed to offer some most peculiar personal opportunities. I came over at once to London, called in my own person at Baker Street, threw Mrs. Hudson into violent hysterics, and found that Mycroft had preserved my rooms and my papers exactly as they had always been. So, it was, my dear Watson, at two o’clock today that I found myself in my old arm-chair in my own old room, only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair, which he has so often adorned.”

The second section was about what happened to the remnants of Moriarty’s syndicate. The description of this part was not that detailed because on page 600, Sherlock Holmes said, “I knew that Moriarty was not the only man who had sworn my death. There were at least three others whose desire for vengeance upon me would only be increased by the death of their leader. They were all the most dangerous men. One or the other would certainly get me.”

But in the description in page 601, this number turned to two. These two were made out to be the important figures in Moriarty’s gang, and they managed to be acquitted of their crimes in court. But at page 602, the number had dwindled down to one person. Feng Bujue had considered these inconsistencies when he first read the book so many years ago. Of course, the simplest explanation was that the author had made a careless mistake. Indeed, this change of number was not that important in the book, and it had no connection or influence to the main plot. Moriarty’s gang had already started to crumble when the kingpin himself had literally fallen.

But in the current Thriller Paradise, in the scenario where a virtual Moriarty existed, the system had pinpointed such a clear hint between page 599 and 602. Brother Jue had to consider it from a realistic perspective…

“The ’swiss youth’ that appeared in The Final Problem has managed to escape. We can rely on Watson’s analysis in this case. The kid should be a part of Moriarty’s group, but obviously, he does not play that big of a role in it.”

Feng Bujue closed the book and lifted his head.

“Assuming that person is one of the ’three’ that ambushed Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls, then the other two were people who had not been clearly described. They only existed in the background.” His brain started to turn like wheel. “The decrease of number is due to their death, capture, or disappearance from the public eye…”

He turned his focus back to the key he was holding.

“And the content of these four pages, how is that related to this key, and how it will help me escape from this room?”