Chapter 365: The Johnsons
Miaobishenghua is not a fan of horror games.
Even when it comes to suspense and puzzle games, her upper limit is limited to the Rusty Lake series of mouse puzzle games, or 2D horizontal-scrolling games with a cute style... She won't play any immersive 3D story-based horror blockbusters.
Security guard Layton had just finished introducing the two families in Liujiao Lane who were related to the cult when he turned around and looked at me and said, "Why don't we give up this mission? Just abort it. I haven't coded today's update yet."
Give me medicine: "..."
Detective Stanford & Sheriff Layton and Watts: "???"
"Undead lady?! We have just begun the investigation, how can we stop it?" Agent Stanford was confused.
Miao Bi Sheng Hua didn't care about the NPC's attempt to keep him. Who cares about the NPC's opinion when playing a game? He stood up and was about to leave.
"Hey wait Huahua." Give Me the Medicine quickly grabbed his friend, "It's a hidden quest after all. What if it's aborted and we can't take it? Anyway, we're just running the pre-plot now. The boss won't appear for us to fight before we finish the pre-plot, right? Wait until the boss appears before you leave, okay?"
The monster described in NPS sounds like a BOSS level. As someone who loves to kill monsters and defeat BOSSes, how can I give up at this time?
Miao Bi Sheng Hua thought about it and sat back down reluctantly.
Detective Stanford & Sheriff Layton and Watts: "..."
With the insistence of the boss who was determined to push me to take medicine, the investigation continued.
The youngest son of the Gustav family had a close relationship with a neighbor who was suspected of believing in evil gods. After the priest of the Gold Coin Church blessed the frightened young man and restored his sanity temporarily, the night watchman pulled out a very important clue from him:
The neighbor whose body disappeared after the "Dark Day" had close contacts with a man with long hair who looked like a wandering artist within three months of his death.
The night watchman searched for this man in the city and found his body in the sewer in the south city half a month later. His face had been destroyed with a sharp weapon, as if someone wanted to conceal his identity. Fortunately, this man had seen a dentist in the south city. After comparing the dental molds, the night watchman confirmed his identity as a wandering artist. He then followed the clues and found a cultist's hideout disguised as a used clothing store (second-hand clothing store). He arrested several cultists and seized a number of sacrificial utensils and statues of evil gods.
The problem lies with this second-hand clothing store.
This second-hand clothing store is located in the northwest of the slum, close to the southwest city gate road. The original operator should have been a family that moved out from the south city area. However, when the night watchmen sealed up the store and arrested the cultists, the original owner and his family mysteriously disappeared.
The night watchman originally thought that the family of the owner of the used clothing store had been harmed by the cultists, but after prying open the mouth of a new convert, he found that the problem was more serious than they had imagined - the owner who often leaned on the window and greeted passers-by with a smile was the main person in charge of this cult's den.
The wandering artist from another place was brought by the shop owner.
The night watchman rushed to the South City District to investigate the background of the shop owner, and found out that... the shop owner's wife was a widow whose husband had died in a civilian neighborhood in the South City District, and the child was a former street kid and had no blood relationship with the shop owner.
The night watchman retrieved the store owner's household registration file from the city hall and found that the man with this name in the city hall file had died of illness four years ago and his household registration had been cancelled...
Last winter, when Innadeli was causing a stir in the city because of the vampire incident, the night watchman of Dutata City found the "wife" and "child" of the second-hand clothing store owner on a suburban farm outside the west gate of the city. There were only corpses left, and the skeletonized heads and facial bones showed signs of being hit by heavy objects and were severely damaged.
The brilliant writing makes the hair stand on end... even though the skeleton doesn't have any hair on it.
"The man pretending to be the owner of the used clothing store is likely still alive, hiding in the crowd under a different appearance - this is the conclusion of the Night Watch's final report on the 'Dark Day' last summer." Sheriff Layton said solemnly, "The Night Watch also announced the possible physical features of this man, but there are too many similar people. Even the church has no way to distinguish this man from the hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers."
After saying that, Layton motioned to Miaobishenghua, who was holding the file, to turn the folder to the back, where a bounty warrant for the Night Watch was clipped with a paper clip.
I turned to the end as I was told and saw a piece of paper printed with red pigment. There was no photo on it, only a description: "An unknown cultist, about 165-170 cm tall, weighing between 120-130 kg, about 28-35 years old, with brown-black hair, a long and thin face, and a round nose..."
Cameras are not popular in this world, and most people seldom take photos. There are no photos in household registration files. The night watchman could not find any photos left by the cultist who took someone else's identity, so naturally he could only describe the man's appearance as best as possible on the bounty order - but this man's appearance was so unremarkable that there were no obvious features to use as clues.
Agent Stanford gave the two ghosts enough information about the situation and took them to Mrs. John's home and Gustav's home.
Mrs. John's family of four lived in a low-rent apartment of less than 50 square meters. They seemed to have recovered from the loss of their loved ones. Although they were frightened by the undead who came to their door, they still provided as much information as possible about their second daughter before she disappeared.
The situation of the Gustav family was much more miserable. The father and daughter took care of their half-crazy son. They barely repeated what they had told the night watchman, and then showed strong resistance.
Agent Stanford understood that the family was reluctant to recall the tragic memories that had caused such a huge change in their lives, so he politely led the deceased away.
Next, the agent and the two players ran through several low-rent neighborhoods...
There are many original inhabitants of the slums who are still alive and were once implicated in cult incidents.
The situations of most families are similar to that of Mrs. John's. A relative of the family leaves and disappears quietly, and when the news is received again, they are no longer together.
Even so, this is still a relatively lucky situation. A worse case scenario is that the whole family is wiped out - if Mrs. John had really found her second daughter and forcibly brought her home, it is possible that Mrs. John and her family would not exist now.
A small number of families were similar to Gustav’s family—someone in the same alley or living nearby had an accident, a bunch of people died, and they realized later that they were the only survivors…
After listening to more than ten similar stories in one go, even I, who had no interest in the lengthy plot missions, felt particularly horrified: "This kind of world setting is too unreasonable. One person's religious belief affects the whole family, and the neighbors' religious belief affects the whole street. There is no way to prevent it . It's outrageous!"
"It's okay, it's just a setting in the game." Miaobishenghua, who didn't like horror stories in the first place, covered his chest with a pale face, "I can't stand living in a world like this."
Agent Stanford stared at the two undeads stiffly...
He felt very offended when the dark creatures, who were the undead, openly disdained the place where he lived without treating him as an outsider.
——Aren’t the places where the dead live the dimensional demon world? Shouldn’t the dimensional demon world be closer to the void than the material plane and more easily polluted by evil gods? ! How dare you despise the material plane!
Agent Stanford really wanted to roar like this...but considering the terrifying combat power of the Tarantan Undead after they turned against him, he gritted his teeth and endured it.
He was so good at "blackmailing" people in front of him, and then he said to Agent Stanford as if nothing had happened: "Should we go outside the city now?"
Agent Stanford nodded and led the way with a stern face.
The last low-rent housing site that the two players followed Agent to investigate was the low-rent neighborhood on the northern section of Central Avenue.
As the three of them turned back along the sidewalk of the central avenue, two pairs of eyes from behind the curtains of the street-facing building stared coldly at the backs of the two Skeleton Agents.
There were two people standing behind the curtain, a man and a woman, both in their thirties, with very ordinary looks, the kind of passers-by who would be hard to find in a crowd.
"As expected, the Innadri people sent the undead to investigate us."
The ghost disappeared, and then the man who looked like the husband, who was holding a simple cane, spoke in a low voice.
The thin woman with sunken cheeks, who looked not much different from other slum housewives, narrowed her eyes slightly and said coldly: "It took the Tarantan Undead less than half a month to deal with all the unresolved cases for the Moses Port Church. The Innadri people will certainly not waste this ability."
The man frowned and looked at the woman disguised as his wife: "Then why are you proposing to do it?"
"If we don't act now, once the slums are demolished and the prisoners are taken away from the city to build roads, we won't have any chance at all." The woman said angrily, "If I had known that these hypocritical Innadri people really wanted to make the slums disappear, why would we have waited until now!"
The man wanted to say something, but the woman glared at him fiercely: "Don't forget how many of us have died for this matter - if you want to escape, none of your companions will forgive you."
The man's face turned pale, and he looked flustered for a moment, but he quickly adjusted himself and growled fiercely, "Shut up, I'm not that kind of cowardly loser!"
"You'd better not." The woman sneered and turned her gaze back to the street, her face full of unwillingness.
"Mrs. Johnson, are you home?"
Suddenly there was a knock on the door and a woman called out, and the expressions of the couple in front of the window changed slightly.
The man quickly returned to the bed and lay down. The woman tidied up her hair and her cold voice turned into a normal voice with a hint of fatigue: "Yes, wait a moment ."
While responding, the woman ran out of the inner room and went to the living room to open the door.
In the low-rent block on Central Avenue, room sizes vary, but most are two-bedroom units with a small balcony that may be wide or narrow, and a cramped but independent kitchen and toilet.
The woman opened the door and standing in the hallway was a woman with the same hollow cheeks and a warm smile on her face.
"Good-day, Mrs. Johnson. Your husband has been out of work for a few days. Is his leg better? My children have brought back some potato flour. If you don't mind, take some."
The woman who knocked on the door enthusiastically handed the roll of potato vermicelli in her hand to the woman.
"Thank you so much, Mrs. Cooper. I'm having a headache about dinner tonight." The woman showed a grateful smile and bowed repeatedly. "My husband has been unable to go to work these few days, and I have used up all the meal allowance I received before."
"You're welcome. We are neighbors. We should help each other." The kind-hearted Mrs. Cooper waved her hand and did not come in to disturb us. She just smiled and said, "Please convey my best wishes to your husband. I hope he gets better soon."
The woman thanked him repeatedly until Mrs. Cooper returned to her home on the same floor, then she closed the door with a grateful look on her face.
As soon as the door closed, the woman's face twisted.
"These poor bastards are so well-off that they can share their food with others!"
The woman was filled with hatred and threw the roll of vermicelli sent by the neighbor's wife onto the cabinet.
The man limped out of the inner room, and his face turned ugly when he saw the roll of vermicelli sent by his neighbor.
The house that this couple disguised as cultists were allocated by lottery was a converted casino. The living quarters were quite dense, with eight families living on the same floor.
This kind of "pigeon cage"-like residence has poor sound insulation. If a quarrel occurs in one family, the seven neighboring families, including those upstairs and downstairs, can hear it clearly.
But in the half month they lived here, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson never heard any quarrels among the people living in the same building. Instead, they could hear laughter from their neighbors from time to time.
After all… even if it was just a “pigeon cage” residence, even if it was a two-bedroom apartment with only one inner room, it was already an unimaginably good place for people who had lived in shacks for many years—
There is no need to worry about rain leaks, or being unable to sleep because of a strong wind at night; no snakes or mice will run into the bed, or worry about whether the thick soup for dinner is mixed with a lot of flying insects and ants; women don’t have to worry about going to the toilet at night, because there is a toilet with a water pipe in their own home!
Not to mention that all families have working people who have formal jobs and can often bring home meal allowances, so no one in the family has to go through the long nights hungry!
Living in a warm, solid house, with the kitchen cupboards stocked with food for the whole family for tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and even next week, without having to worry about how to get through the coming winter, or what is worth arguing about?
But for cultists who need sacrifices, people being in this state where they can relax and live their lives is obviously the worst.
"Those hypocritical Innaderis are trying so hard to please these poor guys, just to go against us!" The woman tried her best to control her anger and squeezed out a hoarse growl from her throat.
