I picked up a boyfriend in the infinite game

Song Guicheng held a flashlight and carefully examined the entire mural from top to bottom, trying to find more clues.

He was watching intently when his ears suddenly caught a slight sound of footsteps, followed by the sound of rain boots stepping into the wet and sticky mud.

The body reacted faster than the brain. He quickly turned off the flashlight, pulled up Zheng Jiyan next to him, and hid in the confessional next to him and locked the door.

The series of actions caused Zheng Jiyan's glasses to slide down. He noticed Song Guicheng's gloomy expression and realized that something might have happened. He asked silently, "What's wrong?"

Song Guicheng looked at Zheng Jiyan's mouth shape and replied in the same way: "There are footsteps."

The two men pressed close to the wall and hid behind the door of the confessional. After a while, the footsteps reached the door and even Zheng Ji Yan heard it.

Song Guicheng caught the sound of an umbrella being folded, and then the sound of rain boots being taken off. After the person outside the door did these two actions, he seemed to stop moving, neither leaving nor pushing the door in.

The person outside the door was carrying an umbrella and wearing rain boots, which was the outfit of the hostess in the morning.

She left home much earlier than Song Guicheng and the others. They thought the hostess had already gone back, but they didn't expect her to arrive just now.

But why did she stand at the door and not come in? The church door was not locked.

Soon, Song Guicheng thought of the answer - there were their footprints under the eaves.

They had just walked up the muddy path, and the soles of their rain boots were covered in mud, leaving a few messy footprints on the floor of the porch.

The long silence made people feel uneasy. Zheng Jiyan lowered his eyebrows and said softly, "She will push the door in a while. I have a prop here that can conceal her aura for one minute."

What he meant was that when the hostess pushed the door open, he could run away quickly at that moment. One minute would be enough.

Song Guicheng thought for a moment and said, "I'll stay."

"You still want to stay?" Zheng Jiyan frowned and lowered his voice, "The hostess will come in soon and it will be easy for her to find us. It will be difficult for the two of us to defeat her. Besides, we have already found very important clues here. There is no need to take this risk."

After so many days of investigation and exploration, Zheng Jiyan has been able to deduce the general background of the copy based on the information in the painting and the clues given to him by Song Guicheng.

Many years ago, there was a couple who ran a hotel and an apple orchard on Timo Farm.

Timo Farm is located in a remote area and there are no special tourist attractions in the area. What attracts tourists is the famous apples in the orchard.

A few years later, they gave birth to a son, whom the old lady called Calvin. When Calvin was very young, his mother died and his father married a stepmother.

His stepmother treated him very badly, and his father also thought he was a burden. Calvin's miserable days began from then on.

For some unknown reason, the apple orchard gradually stopped producing apples, the number of tourists dropped sharply, the family’s income became less and less, and finally reached a point where their income was not enough to cover their expenses.

It was also at this time that the male owner suddenly came up with a solution. As long as he sacrificed a life to the apple tree in the orchard, the apple tree would be revived. Calvin was ruthlessly abandoned.

After Calvin's death, the apple tree really began to grow apples again, and they were bigger, redder and more delicious than before. They not only attracted many tourists, but were also sold all over the place.

However, one life was not enough to keep the apple orchard running, so the man and his stepmother began to kill the people on the farm until everyone died at their hands.

But they didn't know that under the apple orchard, a green fruit tree sapling had grown in the soil that had absorbed countless blood, bones and flesh. The sapling grew bigger and bigger, but what it produced was not fruit, but human souls.

The dead villagers began to resurrect and continued to live the same life as before, then continued to die, over and over again, but the murderer, the male owner and stepmother escaped it all.

The farm is no longer as lively as before, the villagers are like zombies, and the male owner and stepmother are also affected by the apple tree and gradually transformed into monsters.

Without the villagers, the apple orchard would be difficult to maintain. At this time, a group of foreign tourists came to the farm to taste the apples, and a new sacrifice appeared...

The reasoning of this background is obviously not complete, and some details are worth pondering, but for Zheng Jiyan, it is enough.

"I have a clue about the main quest to find the apple. What we are looking for is not the apple, but the reason why this farm cycle started, the source of all disasters," Zheng Jiyan said while pulling Song Guicheng, "As long as we can break this cycle, we can get out. There are no important clues in the church anymore. Come with me quickly, it will be too late."

He tried earnestly to persuade the young man in front of him, and a strand of his smoothly combed hair fell down. He looked so anxious and irritated that he really looked like a teacher encountering a naughty student who refused to listen to his advice.

Song Guicheng was surprised at Zheng Jiyan's intelligence and sharpness. What he said about finding the source of the beginning of the cycle was similar to the previous reasoning of finding Calvin's residual soul.

Perhaps it was because Calvin's remaining soul was still alive that his presence caused this space and time to keep repeating. Everyone was trapped in this besieged city, and only outsiders could come in, but those who came in could never go out.

The dry warmth from Zheng Jiyan's palm came from his arm, passing along the veins to his fingertips. Song Guicheng curled his fingers slightly.

He shook his head and broke free from Zheng Jiyan's hand: "I can't leave, you should leave quickly. Don't worry about me, I have some life-saving props."

He didn't say I wouldn't leave, he said I couldn't leave.

Although Song Guicheng was vague about the details, this was probably the most candid he had ever been to a player in the same dungeon. This candidness was not about telling Zheng Jiyan so many clues, but about telling Zheng Jiyan information about himself.

At least in previous instances, Song Guicheng had never revealed his true situation to other players in the same instance. He was used to being half-hidden, mixing truth with falsehood.

Zheng Jiyan probably saw what Song Guicheng was hiding, so he stopped trying to persuade him. Instead, he took out a black cloak from his backpack and said, "I'll go first."

Song Guicheng nodded, and the next second, he could no longer feel Zheng Ji Yan's presence, and the sound and smell disappeared in front of him.

Only the door in front was opened a narrow crack and quickly closed again, as if it was blown open by a breeze.

The space behind the door suddenly became spacious. Song Guicheng leaned against the wall in a relaxed manner, his eyes half closed, listening attentively to the movements outside.

Less than half a minute after Zheng Ji Yan left, the door opened.

The next moment, a heavy breathing sound suddenly appeared in the noisy sound of rain, like a dangerous signal issued by a wild beast in extreme anger.

Song Guicheng guessed correctly, it was indeed the hostess.

He looked out through the gap in the door frame, but what he could see through the gap was very limited. He could only see one hand of the hostess hanging by her side.

The hand was rough and enlarged, with veins all over it. There were a lot of sawdust stuck in the palm side, and there were many bloodstains all over it. It would be easy to crush someone to death with that hand.

The hostess first looked around the church, her tiny black eyeballs moving several circles in her huge white eye sockets, with an indescribable horror.

She did not see the figure she had imagined. There was no place in the church where anyone could hide, except... The hostess's eyes fell on the door of the confessional.

Song Guicheng's heart tightened when he heard the hostess take a heavy breath and then let out a rough laugh.

Then he saw the hostess move slowly, her rough hands, plump body, wrinkled skin, and upturned mouth corners flashing through the crack in the door one by one.

The sound of footsteps rubbing against the ground was getting closer and closer, making Song Guicheng, who was hiding in the confessional, feel his scalp tingling.

He stood there motionless, thinking quickly in his mind that he probably couldn't beat the hostess, but he couldn't kill her for the time being. Song Guicheng wanted to see what she did every day.

He made up his mind, observed for a while, bought a small prop, and planned to climb up to the ceiling in a while.

Just as he was about to take action, Song Guicheng suddenly heard a deep and magnetic voice: "Madam, are you here again?"

Song Guicheng suddenly froze as if he had been electrocuted, and his hands stopped moving. It was the priest's voice.