"Phew."
Chen Miao exhaled deeply, calming his emotions as much as possible. He realized that he was very likely being led astray, and it was the kind of astray that was completely off course.
The Secret Realm Introduction was indeed tempting him.
But it wasn't tempting him to act rashly, instead, through this clumsy temptation, it was making him do nothing but stand still and wait for death to come.
Just now, a rather bold speculation had suddenly surfaced in his mind.
Could it be that these elders, out of extreme loneliness and boredom, conspired to kill the young people who strayed into the village? To have something to talk about and alleviate their boredom and loneliness, to add some excitement to their lives?
This speculation was too audacious and nonsensical, and he had intended to discard this thought the moment it appeared.
However, various things from before resurfaced in his mind.
The busiest farming season, yet the hoe is spotlessly clean without a speck of dirt? What kind of farmer washes their hoe every day?
Digging soil, weeding, making ridges, plowing, covering soil, breaking soil, middle cultivating, earthing up—the hoe is practically an all-purpose tool. It could also serve as a murder weapon if need be.
The sharp edge and the sturdy feel when swung, those who often commit murders know that a hoe is a decent murder weapon.
Easy to handle and effective upon the first strike.
It indeed needs to be washed if stained with blood and flesh; not washing it is definitely not proper.
The abandoned diaries, the clean hoes, the lonely and resentful elders.
A series of fragmented images began to flash crazily through Chen Miao's mind. At this moment, with his eyes tightly closed, he was constantly calculating the likelihood of each guess. He had to be extremely cautious—he did not want to die here like this.
The previous team's progress through the challenge, 12%.
Under what circumstances would one achieve a 12% completion rate?
If the previous team, like him, chose to wait in place, then when danger came in the dead of night and they realized something was amiss, did they rise up to resist and killed several villagers, thereby attaining that 12% progress rate?
The Secret Realm would reset after a team's death or after they cleared it and departed, leaving no trace of the previous team.
If killing a villager added a 3% completion rate, two Supernatural Occupations, under special circumstances—like being weak or something else—should have no problem killing four weapon-wielding villagers before dying.
He had counted just now.
The elders sitting at the entrance of the village chatting, plus some other elders in the village, added up to exactly 33 people.
Killing all these villagers would result in exactly a 99% completion rate, just 1% shy of the perfect completion.
And the remaining 1% for the perfect completion...
Chen Miao, expressionless, pulled out the dusty diary from his chest, laid it in his palm, and stared at it in silence for a while before suddenly cracking a smile, "Perhaps these lonely elders need some redemption from God."
When he had found the diary moments before.
A prompt suddenly appeared before him.
'Ding, congratulations on finding an important item 'An Elder's Notes' in the F-rank Secret Realm 'Blood Night Cannibal Village', increasing your completion progress by 1%'.'
Now it all made sense.
Up to this point—
He had at least an eighty percent guess about this Secret Realm.
Clearing this Secret Realm was really simple: you just need to slaughter all the elders in this village before nightfall.
As simple as that.
But the Secret Realm Introduction might lead you astray with some messy introductions to make players doubt themselves, causing them to question their own judgments and to reshape their cognition.
It's akin to you sitting a primary school exam, encountering a question that reads, '1+1=?'. Answer correctly, gain 3 points. You smirk confidently and write down '1+1=2' as the answer.
But when you sat down for the civil service exam and saw the question "1+1=?" on the paper, you fell silent, your sweat soaking through your clothes as you pondered the significance behind each character, your head filled with teachings such as looking at issues from different angles, breaking free from established patterns of thought, unleashing creativity, linking theory with practice, developing a firm execution mindset, and so on.
Finally, filled with confidence, you wrote "1+1=1", reasoning that our country is currently in a crucial stage of a new journey, facing new challenges and tasks. What we need to do is turn the impossible into the possible, and since 1 kilometer + 1 kilometer equals 1 kilometer, it means that with external empowerment, we can better achieve the impossible, and when introducing foreign capital, we should break the mold, exuding...
And other such nonsense.
It was only afterward that you realized the correct answer was simply 2, and everything above was just to tease everyone.
A person's cognition always changes with the environment.
Yet there's one person... whose cognition seemingly remains unchanged regardless of the surroundings.
"..."
At this thought, Chen Miao turned to look at Hungry Monkey with a complicated expression. He didn't quite know how to face him anymore, feeling somewhat embarrassed. He had racked his brain only to arrive at the same answer that Hungry Monkey had blurted out upon first entering the secret realm?
If Hungry Monkey had entered this secret realm alone,
he probably would have cleared it by now and been out eating barbecue.
"Miao, have you found the answer?"
With a shiver, Hungry Monkey took a deep breath: "After getting tricked last time, I thought about trying my luck in the secret realm. Fortunately, my coworker held me back. Otherwise, with my brains, I'd probably have died in the very first secret realm."
"Who would have thought this seemingly straightforward realm would be so complicated."
"Hmm."
After a long silence, Chen Miao finally turned and walked towards the stone bridge outside the village, now finally understanding the helplessness of programmers. Sometimes, a program runs perfectly with a logic that's hard to understand.
It was like when his computer broke, and he reinstalled the system and fixed network issues after much toil, only to have Hungry Monkey punch the mainframe hard with a fist, and the computer worked again just the same.
Logic?
Ha?
This world has no such thing as logic!
Kill them, kill them all, I'll kill them all!!
Perhaps out of frustration turning to anger, Chen Miao strode even faster towards the elderly at the village entrance, while Hungry Monkey quickly followed: "Miao, what did you mean when you said these old people needed some sort of salvation from God?"
The next second—
"Bang!"
An abrupt gunshot rang out on the stone bridge at the village entrance.
The Python R6 Revolver in Chen Miao's hand, pressed against an old man's forehead, emitted trails of white smoke drifting from the barrel, while the man's face was filled with disbelief, his eyes rapidly dimming, a horrifying blood hole appearing on his forehead as he slowly fell backward and lifelessly dropped into the river.
"Splash."
A water splash, not too big, not too small.
Seeing this, the other old people on the bridge were stunned, but then they all pulled out cleavers from inside their clothing with ferocious expressions, horrifyingly angry, and charged towards Chen Miao and his group!
But after all, being old, they were not fast and even appeared to stagger.
"So this is the salvation from God..."
Carrying a hammer and running behind Miao, Hungry Monkey didn't understand what he had just witnessed, but soon after, he grinned: "You should've said so earlier. Sending people to meet God is something Hungry Monkey excels at more than anything else!"
...
PS: Thank you to 'The Grand Skyscraper 111' for their patronage. Hahaha, no extra chapters for this leader; this is a war indemnity from The Grand!