Chapter 2

Ma Le took out his phone and saw that it was the landlord calling.

"Hello, Brother Liu, what's up?"

"Little Ma, nothing, nothing. I just wanted to ask you if you're really not coming back, right?"

"Well, this..." Ma Le hesitated for a moment and then said, "I'm not coming back!"

"Oh, then I'll lock the main door. You won't be able to get in if you come back, so make sure you plan accordingly, don't get locked out in the middle of the night!"

"I know, Brother Liu, see you later!"

After hanging up, Ma Le couldn't help but sigh. The place he lived in was a single room in a three-bedroom apartment. The landlord's surname was Liu, and everyone usually called him Brother Liu. All three apartments on the same floor were his, which he had divided into nine single rooms for rent, housing a total of 12 tenants. Brother Liu himself lived downstairs in the same building, so he could keep an eye on things and collect rent conveniently.

Now, with the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, Brother Liu had invited the tenants to have dinner, sing karaoke, and stay up all night, scheduled for today. However, today was also the day when the employees of Hongyi Antiques were having a group dinner, and Ma Le had already agreed to attend that event, so he had declined the landlord's invitation. Who knew that such an incident would happen today. Ma Le definitely couldn't go back to the antique shop, and although he had considered attending the landlord's gathering, he couldn't bring himself to do it. After some hesitation, Ma Le still declined Brother Liu's invitation. Sigh, he was still a lonely and miserable loser, and it seemed that the internet cafe was the best place for him...

As Ma Le was thinking this, a strange feeling suddenly arose in his heart. It was understandable for Brother Liu to call and confirm, but why did he emphasize locking the door? Ma Le had a key to the main door of the suite, so what was the point of locking it?

The more Ma Le thought about it, the more strange it seemed. Since the internet cafe he planned to go to was also downstairs from his residence, he decided to go upstairs and see what was going on.

Thus, Ma Le returned to the apartment and stood in front of the door of the suite he lived in, only to be completely stunned by the sight of the main door...

Ma Le lived in an old-style apartment, and the main door of the suite was quite spacious, with a double door, one large and one small. The outside was a metal grille, and the inside was a metal plate. What made Ma Le gape in astonishment was not the retro design of the main door, but the thick iron chains crisscrossing the metal grille. The chains tightly bound both doors, and a large old-fashioned lock hung on them, jingling when moved, as if mocking the small key in Ma Le's hand.

Ma Le looked back and saw that the other two suites were also locked in the same primitive and brutal way... This piqued Ma Le's interest. It seemed that Brother Liu clearly didn't want anyone to enter these rooms, even the original tenants, whom he had sent away with the excuse of a gathering. What was Brother Liu hiding? What would happen in the rooms tonight? Ma Le's curiosity began to stir.

Ma Le found a piece of wire. If it were a security door, he might not have been able to do anything, but with this old-fashioned iron lock, he had learned how to open it when he was eight. However, the neighbor who taught him how to pick locks was now in prison.

He opened the lock in a few moves, took off his coat to pad the grille, and tried to make as little noise as possible. He carefully removed the chains and placed them aside, then used the key to open the door lock and gently pulled the door open. He picked up an old pipe standing by the door but didn't rush in. After waiting for about ten seconds, Ma Le suddenly crouched and rolled in, swinging the pipe around to check!

However, the room was empty. Ma Le stood up and tiptoed around the room a few times but found nothing suspicious. He pressed his ear to the doors of the other single rooms but heard no sound.

"Sure enough, I'm just being paranoid!" Ma Le said to himself, though the locked door was a bit scary, it wasn't that easy to encounter any conspiracy or supernatural events in real life.

Ma Le took a deep breath, took out the key to his single room, and opened the door. He sat on the bed. After all that, he no longer felt like going to the internet cafe for the night. Since he was already inside, he might as well rest in the room and buy a ticket to go home tomorrow with a clear mind!

It was still early, so Ma Le took out his laptop from the wardrobe. This place didn't even have an internet connection, so he could only play some single-player games to pass the time. His laptop was quite old and couldn't run the latest popular games, but it had many classic games that he used to be obsessed with. He browsed the E drive and chose an old RPG that had been stored for a long time.

Opening the game, the classic and ancient interface made Ma Le nostalgic for his student days. Looking at the old save files, he no longer had the motivation to grind monsters, so he decided to create a new character and relive the story.

Choosing a new game, he answered a few questions about the initial state and entered the character creation interface. The character attributes included Strength, Agility, Vitality, and Spirit, each with an initial value of 13 points. There were 5 free attribute points, 5 free skill points, and 100 free proficiency points to allocate.

Looking at these attributes and skills to be allocated, Ma Le recalled that there was a hidden treasure chest in the newbie village with an excellent light crossbow that required 15 points of Strength, which was a powerful weapon in the early stages! So he decisively added 2 points to Strength. He remembered that at the beginning, he could learn the basic healing spell from the village doctor, which cost 7 points of Spirit, so he increased his Spirit to 14 points, allowing him to cast the spell twice in a row. The remaining 2 points were all allocated to Vitality, as more health and higher defense made it less likely to die!

As for the skill points, there weren't many skills available at the beginning, and even fewer practical ones. Without hesitation, Ma Le chose Level 3 Iron Bones and Level 2 Swift. Iron Bones increased health, and Swift increased movement speed. With enough speed and health, combined with the excellent light crossbow, he could kite all the monsters around the newbie village.

As for the final 100 proficiency points, he naturally allocated them all to Crossbow Mastery.

Ma Le was enthusiastically creating his character, but he was completely unaware that in the suite next to his, separated by only a wall, another young man was also facing a computer. If there were no wall between them, the young man would be just one meter away from Ma Le, almost face to face.

The young man was of medium to slim build, slightly tall, with a refined appearance and a look of anxiety on his face. He was paying attention to the laptop in front of him and occasionally glancing at an old man sitting on the bed beside him.

The old man looked to be in his sixties, with an ordinary appearance but neatly dressed, standing straight, and with his hair combed meticulously. His eyes were closed, and he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, with his hands rapidly forming seals. A soft light was emanating from his body, changing colors and making the room flicker. Dozens of talismans were floating in the air around him, covered with strange symbols, moving in a certain pattern.

The young man seemed not to be surprised by this strange phenomenon. As the talismans around the old man moved faster, the anxiety in the young man's eyes grew. He opened his mouth several times, wanting to say something but stopping each time, just watching the old man.

Gradually, the speed of the talismans around the old man reached its limit, looking like a high-powered fan. The light from his body grew brighter and changed faster. Finally, with a short, sharp cry from the old man, all the strange phenomena disappeared, and the talismans stopped, slowly falling to the ground. Surprisingly, these talismans had turned into blank sheets of paper, with the strange symbols gone.

"Uncle Fu, how is it?" The young man, seeing this, knew that the old man had finished his ritual and asked urgently.

The old man slowly opened his eyes, and two white rays shot out, making his otherwise ordinary features appear majestic and ethereal, commanding respect and awe.

"I've made contact, Young Master, get ready!" The old man, called Uncle Fu, got off the bed, walked to the young man's side, and placed his hand on the young man's shoulder.

"Wait... Uncle Fu, I need to think about it a bit more!" The young man stopped, still somewhat hesitant. Uncle Fu persuaded him, "Don't hesitate, Young Master! If you want to gain the same power as me, successfully cure that illness, and reclaim what you've lost, you must enter that world! Don't worry, I've already made all the arrangements to make you grow strong as quickly as possible."

The young man thought for a moment and finally nodded. Seeing that he had made up his mind, the old man placed his hand on the young man's shoulder again, closed his eyes, and began to chant, seemingly communicating with someone: "Empress, Heavy Cannon, are you ready? Mo Yin, start the connection!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the computer screen in front of the young man burst into a bright light, and the young man seemed to resonate with the computer, emitting the same light.

At the same time, on the other side of the wall, Ma Le, who had just completed all the initial settings, was about to press Enter to confirm when he suddenly felt his right thigh start to heat up, and the temperature rose rapidly, becoming scorching in a moment! Ma Le quickly reached out to grab it, but as soon as he touched a hard object in his pocket, he was burned by the high temperature and pulled his hand back. In a panic, he took off his pants and threw them aside, and the hot object in the pocket burned through the fabric and floated up, hovering in the air.

"Good grief, what is this thing!" Ma Le was stunned. The object glowed red and floated in the air, slowly moving toward him. When it reached his face, it stopped, and Ma Le realized it was the jade pendant he had bought for 100 yuan that day!

"Damn, looks like the 100 yuan wasn't wasted, I got a monster!" Ma Le wanted to reach out to grab it but was afraid of the high temperature, so he leaned in to take a closer look. He noticed that the jade pendant seemed to have a row of numbers on it, which appeared to be... 110405!

Before Ma Le could look closely, the jade pendant suddenly accelerated and crashed into his face, disappearing into his forehead! Ma Le was startled, took a step back, and lost his balance, reaching out to steady himself on the keyboard and accidentally pressing the Enter key!

At the same time, on the other side of the wall, the young man's body also suddenly glowed brightly. The old man shouted, "Go!" and a huge light sphere burst from the young man's computer, enveloping him. Not only that, the light sphere penetrated the wall and swallowed Ma Le and his laptop on the other side!

At that moment, a strong flash of light appeared in the sky, and a thick bolt of lightning, attracted by this unknown energy, struck through the glass of Ma Le's room and hit him in the light sphere!

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