Resident 702's gaze was vicious, yet filled with pent-up frustration.
Ji Yan flicked the chopper embedded in his forehead with a fingertip and said with a smile, "Let me borrow that knife."
The moment he heard Ji Yan was after the chopper, the other man gritted his teeth. "Don't even think about it. This knife only...!"
"It only kills my father. I know. He's the one I'm here to butcher."
Room 702 Owner was a little dumbfounded.
"You're not his child?"
Ji Yan did not hide anything and explained the entire sequence of events.
After hearing this, the other man remained doubtful.
After all, the chopper in his head was a Rare Eerie Item. Players had targeted it more than once, trying every possible interaction trick to obtain the equipment.
Ji Yan had seen through it from the start.
That chopper was not merely rare equipment. It was also damaged, which meant it could be repaired, and its quality was far beyond this.
To put it plainly, Room 702 Owner was a free NPC.
Any Player could interact with him.
The chopper in his head was the reward equipment.
There were generally two ways to obtain equipment from a free NPC.
The first was forced seizure: use brute strength, kill the NPC, and take the equipment.
But forcibly picked melons were never sweet.
A chopper obtained this way would be severely damaged, its quality drastically reduced.
To obtain the equipment in perfect condition, there was only the second method: interact with the NPC, trigger their background information, accept the quest, complete it, and make the NPC willingly hand over the equipment.
That was why Ji Yan had been so patient.
Otherwise, given his dislike for pointless chatter, he would not have merely given Room 702 Owner three simple blows to calm him down. He would have smashed his head apart, taken the chopper, and left.
The reduced quality was not the main concern.
The real issue was that he might not be able to kill the Gourmand Eerie!
"Can you tell me what grudge you have against my father?"
Ji Yan continued trying to interact with him. After all, without triggering the background story, the game quest could not be activated.
"Heh, what a touching father-son bond. But why should I believe you?"
Room 702 Owner wiped the bloody slurry from his head, still refusing to reveal his background story.
Ji Yan suppressed his irritation. He knew time was short, and he did not want to waste too much of it here.
"I'll give you my heart as collateral."
"You give me the chopper as the wager."
"When I bring that bastard's head to you, you return my heart."
Ji Yan proposed a simple, direct, and utterly insane deal.
Room 702 Owner narrowed his eyes slightly. "You're betting your life with me?"
"At least if I bet with you, I still have a chance to live."
Ji Yan shrugged, his tone calm and natural.
He knew that only by letting the other party hold his lifeline could there be any trust between them.
The other man stared deeply at Ji Yan, then suddenly thrust a hand into Ji Yan's chest and violently pulled it out.
A violently beating heart, with no blood spilling from it, was pulled free.
Room 702 Owner gripped Ji Yan's heart. Seeing that Ji Yan did not resist in the slightest, he nodded. "Good. Now that's a fair deal."
"As long as you bring me that bastard's head, I'll return your heart. This knife will be yours too."
He placed the heart inside a black box.
Then he turned and sat in a chair, one hand stroking the rust-covered chopper in his head.
"That bastard used the knife in my head to chop off my wife's head, all for a mouthful of liquor."
"Some resident promised him that if he could find a woman's body, they would give him a bottle of Collector's grain liquor. That night, he set his sights on my wife in the hallway."
"He knew I was looking for him, so he kept hiding inside Room 404, using the Apartment's rules to protect himself..."
Ji Yan picked at his ear, feeling little emotion. He had already learned this background story when the other man grabbed him by the throat.
It was just that unless the man said it aloud himself, the quest could not be triggered.
Ji Yan said, "So I'm the only one who isn't restricted by the rules and can get close to him."
"He would never expect his slave-like child to be plotting patricide!"
The moment Ji Yan said this sentence, the Information Panel immediately appeared.
"Ding! Congratulations player, you have successfully triggered an Open-Ended Quest. Rank: A+." "You have received Resident 702's request. No time limit: kill Resident 404, the Gourmand Eerie!"
A+ Rank!
Killing an eerie was A+ Rank. What kind of quest would an S Rank one be?
Ji Yan thought.
Over there, as Resident 702 recalled his most painful memories, his emotions grew more and more intense until he finally burst into loud sobs.
He still wanted to continue pouring out his pain to Ji Yan, but now that the quest had been triggered, Ji Yan had no interest whatsoever in the background story.
It was like playing a game. What Player would honestly read a long, tedious background introduction? Anyone who did not click skip deserved a thumbs-up.
Resident 702 gripped the knife hilt with one hand and pulled out the rusted chopper wrapped in rotting strips of cloth.
A flood of bloody slurry sprayed from the wound in his forehead. The terrifying pain made Resident 702 clench his teeth until they shattered.
To remember the hatred of his wife's murder, he had embedded the chopper in his forehead, using the occasional pain to ensure that time would not erase his hatred.
Resident 702 handed over the chopper, still intending to ramble on about his late wife's background story. "My name is Liu Nianqing. The reason I'm called Nianqing is because..."
But Ji Yan took the chopper, turned, and left, leaving Liu Nianqing sitting in the chair with his mouth open before he eventually fell silent.
Although he had obtained the chopper, the Eerie Item had not been activated because the quest was still ongoing.
In other words, in Ji Yan's hands, the chopper could only deal fatal damage to the quest target, the Gourmand Eerie. Used elsewhere, it was nothing more than a rusted scrap knife that could not even cut skin...
The knife was in hand, but killing the Gourmand Eerie would not be easy.
After all, an eerie would not just sit there and wait for someone to stab it.
"You must stab its chest. Not its head either—only that spot can kill it in one blow!"
"If you give it a chance to react, you'll die horribly."
"So you only have one chance!"
Those were Liu Nianqing's exact words, and they had pushed Ji Yan's pressure to the limit.
Ji Yan tightly gripped the chopper in his hand. He needed to make a plan.
Tonight, Room 404 was destined to be lively...
Soon, Ji Yan returned to Room 404.
The moment he entered, Ji Yan sensed that something was wrong.
A strong stench of corpses.
An eerie smell!
Then he saw Liu Yitong busying herself at the dining table.
Just as Ji Yan was about to speak, Liu Yitong made a silencing gesture and pointed toward the kitchen.
Ji Yan looked in that direction and saw a blurred figure moving about in the kitchen through the floor-to-ceiling glass window.
"Eerie Mother left her room?"
Ji Yan froze for a moment.
The resident eeries of Room 404 rarely left their rooms. Once they came out and moved around the living room, there could only be two possibilities.
The first was Grace.
Simply put, it was a pure reward interaction.
The eerie would take the initiative to perform certain actions, and Players could actively participate. During the process, all sorts of rewards could drop at random.
As for what rewards they were, or how valuable they would be, that depended entirely on the Player's luck.
Even if you messed it up, the eerie would not turn hostile. At worst, you simply gained nothing.
This type of event could generally only be triggered after favorability reached a certain level, and only a single Player could enjoy it.
The second was Punishment.
The meaning was obviously the opposite. When a Player severely violated Room 404's rules, or caused an eerie's favorability to plummet to rock bottom and turn hostile, she would leave her room and punish specific Players.
Seeing the uncontrollable smile at the corner of Liu Yitong's mouth, with joy practically written all over her face, Ji Yan knew it was Grace.
Who knew what that girl had done to keep increasing Eerie Mother's favorability? She had even triggered Grace!
The method of interaction was to have dinner with Eerie Mother.
As for how many rewards Liu Yitong could obtain during the twenty-minute dinner, that would depend on her own skill and luck!
This sort of welfare event had nothing to do with the other Players. They could only stare enviously.
So Ji Yan had no mind to pay attention to it. He left the dining table on his own, took out the coarse grain left over from that morning, and ate at the living room coffee table.
His mind was completely occupied with killing Eerie Father!
Even the biscuits in his mouth tasted utterly bland...
Before you continue