travel frog

Five minutes later, an old-fashioned bicycle stopped in front of Gin.

The pitch-black car body is old and strong. Although it looks like it is about to fall apart, the main structure is very solid. Only the chain below is rubbing against each other due to long-term rust, making a slightly harsh sound.

The young man riding a bicycle was wearing a plain coarse cloth shirt, the cuffs and trouser legs were tightly tied, and the soles of his shoes were stained with wet mud, as if he had just finished working in the fields.A peaked cap was buckled on his head, blocking most of the sunlight, and the light illuminated half of his face from the side along the contour of the brim of the hat, reflecting a smile all over his face.

"Are you the gentleman who called Zhang Ke and said he wanted to rent a house?" The young man turned his hat aside, revealing a pair of glass-like eyes between his thin bangs, with a warm smile, "I am also his The tenant, named Pei Yu, is entrusted by him to pick you up."

Qin Jiu was noncommittal, but just exited the phone booth, looked again at the name next to the number next to the small advertisement on the telephone pole, and confirmed that it was "Zhang Ke", before saying, "Is his home far from here?"

Pei Yu nodded with an innocent face: "It's far away, otherwise I wouldn't have asked someone to borrow this car to pick you up. Come up, and I'll take you there right away."

"...you did borrow a nice car."

Gin used his eyes to compare the height of the back seat when he got out of the car, and when he sat on it, he bent his legs and stepped on the nut in front of the cockpit with his heels.

The movements are very skilled.

Pei Yu kicked up the wheel, went down the slope easily, and rode into a field after a few turns.There are golden rice fields on both sides. The wind blows the rice waves to meet the sky, and the rustling sound is accompanied by the sound of the wind, drifting across the mountains and plains.

The straight road in the middle is the uplifted loess, with bumps and bumps all the way, either rolling over stones or riding into pits. Cycling is not much more comfortable than walking.

Pei Yu rang the bell a few times, and the sound was crisp, like broken jade hitting the thin ice of early winter. become interesting.

The fragrance of rice lingering on the tip of the nose is a strange taste for gin.Looking around, the golden waves seemed to be boundless, spreading to the place where the sky and the earth meet, real and illusory.

This is the real world, not a map in a puzzle game.

Qin Jiu suddenly realized this, and found that his mentality had gone astray from the very beginning.

He has always regarded this place as a game world, dealing with everyone and everything with the attitude of playing a puzzle game, so he only cares about the main part, that is, the people and things that he thinks can tell him clues, so that he misses many details.

On the train, if he had reacted earlier, he would have thought of using the time before the lights were turned off to communicate with other passengers and learn more about the world; matter.

In the taxi, if he responds to the driver's gossip and asks a few more questions about the hotel, he doesn't have to wait until he meets Mr. Su Jiu to find out that there is a problem with the hotel. Details relevant to the investigative task.

He could even directly ask Mr. Su Jiu about Zhuang Wumei's private house.

This is not a puzzle-solving game. There is no need to follow the designer's thinking to find out the interlocking clues to solve the puzzle. He can skip some links that can be directly deduced instead of following the information given by the characters in the plot.

What's more, is what the characters say must be true?They are not pre-set NPCs, they are living people, they must have their own considerations and difficulties, and they will also have their own calculations, and these factors will affect his judgment and cognition invisibly.

The system did not limit him, but he used his preconceived ideas as a prison and missed many key points.

Thinking of this verse, Qin Jiu's face was gloomy, and he regretted that he had made such a serious mistake.

"Sir, what do you do? Are you an outsider?"

Annoyed, Pei Yu suddenly spoke, his tone was cheerful and bright, with curiosity that did not make people feel offended.

Qin Jiu suddenly woke up from the negative emotions, frowned, suppressed his unsteady mood and replied casually: "I came to work, but it didn't go well, and I'm still looking for a solution."

"Everything is difficult at the beginning, as long as the mistake is not too big to be solved, it doesn't matter, just correct it in time." Pei Yu pedaled hard on the wheel, and the words he said still had a youthful heart, "Is your work very hard? I saw your brow just now Wrinkled tightly, as if unable to relax for a moment."

"...It's not hard work, I'm the one who bothers me." Qin Jiu's eyebrows stretched, and he relaxed a lot. He squinted his eyes to appreciate the scenery in front of him, and temporarily put the task aside, "How long will it take to arrive?"

"Hurry up, walk through this field, and turn a corner along the river." Pei Yu laughed twice, the hem of his coat was blown by the wind, and it was full of rice fragrance, "The scenery next to Zhang Ke's house is very good, sir If work is not going well and you are in a bad mood, you can row a boat to the depths of the reeds to fish for a while to change your mood."

"Well, I'll think about it."

Qin Jiu adjusted his mind, no longer treated the young man in front of him as an NPC, and no longer racked his brains to think about the so-called "key questions", but only asked casually, "Are you a local?"

"I'm not, I came to work from Shuangxing Town, but I've been here for many years." Pei Yu was originally a talkative person, and now he was asked about the most familiar topics, and couldn't help but start talking.

"Sir, you can ask me anything you want to know. I know all the delicious and interesting things in Tianxing Town!"

"Oh, let me just ask."

Before it was changed, Qin Jiu didn't think that Pei Yu was in the game, and he would never talk too much to him, just like he wouldn't talk too much to the conductor and driver before.But after changing his mind, he found that Pei Yu's understanding of Tianxing Town was of great value to him. At least in his current capacity, it would not be awkward to ask anything in the name of being familiar with the environment, and it would be of great help to his future investigations. benefit.

In fact, he can ask Pei Yu about Mr. Su Jiu's affairs, the situation of the two hotels in the town, including Zhuang Wumei's private house, as long as he packs it a little—

"I just came out of the new hotel because I couldn't afford the house price. Then I went to the old hotel and was not satisfied with the environment there, so I thought of renting a room."

Gin laid the groundwork for his own question first, and then asked pretending to be confused: "I'm just wondering, the new hotel is not the best place to go, why does it cost so much for one night?"

The high price of the new hotel is the information given by the driver. He uses it very smoothly and plays out the doubts well.

Sure enough, Pei Yu didn't suspect him, and snorted disdainfully: "Don't mention those two hotels, the new one and the old one won't work, sir, you are a foreigner, you don't know what's going on here, no wonder you will be cheated."

"Oh? Did anything happen in those two places?" Qin Jiu secretly felt something was going on, and immediately asked.

"The new hotel was opened by Mr. Su Jialiu. I heard that he spent a lot of money to buy a lot of new gadgets, so the house price is very expensive. He said he was going to compete with the Hongmen Hotel in Shuangxing Town. However, the arena has not yet set up. Since then, something has happened in the store."

Pei Yu's tone was a little weird: "September last year, half a month after the hotel opened, I went to apply for a job as a chef in the hotel. I only went in and worked for a few days, and I heard that Mr. Su Liu and his elder sister were talking in the VIP room... Cough cough, then when I was caught, my reputation plummeted. Another day later, these two people were found dead in the VIP room... I found it."

As he spoke, he shivered and couldn't help but gather his collar.

"But do you think it's strange? After that day, no one in the town mentioned Mr. Su Liu and his eldest sister-in-law, as if these two people didn't exist, and no one talked about it. I thought about how big the town is, Such a provocative matter, but those slanderous people in the streets and alleys seem to have no idea, no one dares to say a word, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would have thought that it didn't exist!"

Qin Jiu faintly felt that something was wrong, but he didn't agree with it: "The Su family is a well-known family here, so it's not surprising that everyone doesn't talk about their affairs."

"No, you can see that the news about Mr. Su Jiu has spread all over the city, and the big family can't resist everyone's gossip." Pei Yu retorted.

"The strangest thing is that the Su family claims that there is no such thing as Mr. Su Liu, saying that Master Su's sixth child is a daughter who has been married long ago. As for the eldest son and his wife, they have divorced a few years ago. There is no elder sister-in-law and Su Mr. Liu's adultery story. I'm a little puzzled, to cover up the family scandal, as for this?"

"Well, it's not like that." Gin began to feel familiar, and he seemed to have heard a similar story not long ago, "Are you the only one who knows about this?"

"Yes, I told the people in the new hotel that they didn't believe me. Instead, they believed the Su family's excuse. They used their words to block my mouth, scolded me for being whimsical, and fired me."

Pei Yu curled his lips: "Since then, the prices of the new hotels have become even more expensive. It seems that they deliberately concealed something, and refused guests from other places with high prices. The business is getting worse and worse."

"..."

Gin paused: "Don't you think that your memory is wrong?"

"How is it possible, I saw it with my own eyes, there is absolutely no mistake! I watched a few guys carry people out with my own eyes at the time, but I asked them later, but they all said they didn't know, saying that I was daydreaming and lying! "

Pei Yu's teeth itch when he thought of this.

Gin raised the corners of his mouth slightly, so absurd that he wanted to laugh.

Mr. Su Jiu said that his brain must be "sick", otherwise the world will be so sick.Qin Jiu had doubts about his words at first, but now, the second "patient" jumped out by himself.

But he didn't make a judgment right away: "What happened to that old hotel?"

"This, that's what Zhang Ke experienced. You can ask him yourself when you get there. The matter is more complicated, and I can't explain it."

As Pei Yu said, he slowed down and went downhill, bypassing the intersection with a few plum trees in front of him, and a deep river with still water appeared beside the road, and there were three or two families by the river.

The bicycle was parked at the door of the house closest to the river bank. Pei Yu pushed open the fence door to welcome Gin in, and at the same time, he did not forget to shout into the house: "Zhang Ke! Your new tenant has arrived!"

The door opened with a "squeak", and a young man in a dark green robe walked out, holding a pot of pruned bougainvillea in his arms, full of bookishness.

"Hello." He put down the bougainvillea, patted the dust off his clothes casually, and greeted Qin Jiu with a smile, "I've tidied up your room, do you want to go up and have a look?"

Before Qin Jiu could answer, Pei Yu enthusiastically pulled him inside: "Look, of course you have to look, and while you're watching, tell him about the old hotel, he almost went to live there!"

"Huh?" Zhang Ke turned around in surprise, "Sir went to the old hotel?"

Qin Jiu nodded, and lied so blushingly: "I took a look and left after feeling that the environment was not good."

"That's lucky."

Zhang Ke breathed a sigh of relief, but instead became curious about the gin: "Is there anything weird about that store?"

"It can't be considered weird, but it is very noisy at night. It is adjacent to the old house of the dealer, and it is often not just people who make noise."

After entering the room, Zhang Ke poured a cup of tea for the gin.

"Not just people... What do you mean?" Gin asked while holding a teacup.

The system has said that there are no non-scientific factors in this world.

"The Zhuangjia's old house is a famous ghost house in the ghost stories of Tianxing Town. Everyone thought it was fabricated, but Zhang Ke said that it really existed, and it was the old house next to the old hotel." Pei Yu found the cup by himself. Pour tea and drink, "I don't know if it's true or not."

"I've told you that I lived in that house for a few years when I was a child, and I knew the owner of the house and took you to see it. Why don't you believe me?"

Zhang Ke shook his head disapprovingly, and looked at Qin Jiu again: "Listen to me, sir, don't go to the old hotel. People who lived there said that it was very noisy at night, but when they got up and looked at the street, it was very deserted. The sound came from It was rumored from that old house. Everyone who lived there fell seriously ill after leaving, so it’s not a good place to go, it’s worse than a new hotel.”

"Hey, it's better not to stay in the new hotel!" Pei Yu emphasized quickly.

Qin Jiu looked at the two confident people in front of him, if his expressions were not so serious that they seemed to be lying, he would have suspected that they were deliberately trying to attract tenants.

After thinking about it, Qin Jiu was not in a hurry to find out the truth of what they said, but asked: "Mr. Zhang, you said you know the owner of the old house of the Zhuang family?"

Zhang Ke nodded and said: "Yes, he has the same name as Mrs. Su Jiu, also named Zhuang Wumei, but he is a man, and he disappeared five years ago."

"Disappeared five years ago?" Pei Yu's ending sounded high in surprise, "But everyone said that no one lived in that old house for more than ten years!"

"Do you believe me or them?" Zhang Ke looked over with a smile on his face.

"I believe you, I believe you." Pei Yu said with a smile.

Qin Jiu ignored the bickering between the two, he remembered that Mr. Su Jiu said that he had a male lover named Zhuang Wumei, and he married his current wife exactly five years ago.

Two Zhuang Wumei, two five years ago, three or even more experiences that do not match the cognition of others.

This case is so interesting.