Zuo Lin'an actually appreciated Feng Xingyun's suggestion. He nodded quietly and continued to ask, “Then what about my newly acquired Acceleration Rule?”
Feng Xingyun's expression remained unchanged. “That is also simple.”
“Going there every hour on the hour might also seem suspicious to you as the older brother. Therefore, you would occasionally pick a few off-hour times to check on your younger brother's condition.”
Xu Youyou frowned slightly upon hearing this.
He felt that Feng Xingyun's words made some sense, but something still felt off. “The younger brother is the one who turned into a specter, yet his rules are all related to the older brother. Is that really okay?”
Bai Yuan spoke up at the right moment. “Of course it is.”
“The rules of a naturally transformed specter are related to their life experiences, major turning points in their life, or the cause and manner of their death.”
“Since the older brother is the younger brother's closest family member, it is actually quite normal for all of his rules to be related to the older brother when you think about it.”
“I have seen this kind of situation more than once before.”
Only then did Xu Youyou slowly nod.
But he still felt a slight sense of contradiction in his heart. “But the older brother did those things out of care for his younger brother. After the younger brother transformed into a specter, that care turned into his rule for killing. Doesn't that seem a bit unreasonable?”
Bai Yuan's tone was calm. “There's nothing unreasonable about it.”
“After a specter transforms, the resulting rules are related to the older brother, but they are only related. The reality is that the person is already dead and has turned into a specter, and rules exist solely to kill.”
“So, there is absolutely no conflict between the rules being related to the older brother's care and the rules being used to kill.”
Xu Youyou only half-understood. “I see. Then I have no more questions.”
Zuo Lin'an, on the other hand, was listening and thinking, mentally connecting all the plot points he had just envisioned to form a generally complete storyline.
“For a Two-Star dungeon, a plot like this should be about enough, right?”
As soon as he said this, everyone present shook their heads in unison.
This reaction did not catch Zuo Lin'an by surprise. After all, even he himself felt it might not be quite enough.
Song Yangxia shook his head repeatedly. “No, no, no. How could such a simple plot match your status as a Human-Specter Symbiont, not to mention the special ability of your specter item, the gold hairpin?”
“We have to make it more complex.”
“As for the plot just now, we can treat it as a framework and carefully revise it on that basis.”
Bai Yuan thought so too.
Xu Youyou patted Zuo Lin'an on the shoulder. “It really is too simple. Why don't we make the plot we just came up with the surface narrative, while the actual truth is something else entirely?”
As he spoke, a mischievous smile appeared on his face.
“For example...”
“In reality, the older brother found his younger brother to be a massive burden. He always took up his time and had even affected his future prospects.”
“Especially since treating his illness had already cost a tremendous amount of money.”
“This time, when he quit his job and brought his younger brother back to their ancestral home, claiming he did so to accompany him through his final days, the resignation was actually fake.”
“He had only taken a period of leave, planning to bring his younger brother back to this desolate old house and secretly get rid of him here without anyone knowing.”
Zuo Lin'an listened and thought it sounded pretty good. “Go on.”
Xu Youyou cleared his throat.
“The younger brother was completely in the dark about this. To him, his older brother had taken care of him for so long that he was truly grateful and riddled with guilt, so he himself was already planning to commit suicide.”
“However, he was also somewhat lucky. Before committing suicide, he discovered the secret passage and secret room in his bedroom, where he found the gold hairpin.”
“Although he didn't know about the existence of specter items, he vaguely sensed that the gold hairpin was special. Since he was bent on dying at the time, he didn't think too much about it. He simply kept it on him and left the secret room.”
“Afterward, he planned to jump off a cliff to ensure a thorough death.”
“Yet, before dying, he still couldn't stop worrying about his older brother, so he secretly went to check on him. As a result, he happened to see his older brother with the family's only butler.”
He pointed at Feng Xingyun.
“He saw his older brother talking with the butler and overheard fragments of their conversation.”
“For example: ‘This place is great,’ ‘everything is ready,’ ‘this time we will guarantee his death,’ and so on.”
Everyone listened quietly.
It was rare to see Xu Youyou so serious.
“Although the younger brother didn't hear everything, he realized his older brother had brought him back to their ancestral home to kill him. Yet, he felt no resentment in his heart.”
“Because he wanted to die anyway and felt like he was dragging his brother down.”
“He didn't alert the two of them. Instead, he returned to his room alone to rest. Once his older brother and the butler fell asleep, he used the cover of night to jump off the cliff and end his life.”
“That very night, the younger brother transformed into a specter and accidentally triggered the specter item's special effect, binding himself to his sleeping brother.”
“This way, an information gap is created between the older brother and the butler.”
“From the butler's perspective, the older brother secretly killed the younger brother in the dead of night, pretended he went missing, and then put on a show of being a good brother, constantly searching for his terminally ill younger brother.”
“But to the older brother, the younger brother had simply vanished into thin air.”
“In his mind, there were two possibilities. First, the butler took matters into his own hands and killed the younger brother. Second, the younger brother found out about his plan to harm him and hid.”
“Escaping was out of the question.”
“After all, the younger brother was gravely ill and barely had any strength, let alone the ability to escape from the mountains.”
“Moreover, if the butler had killed the younger brother, there would be no reason for him to hide it or deny it. Thus, only the second possibility remained. So, the older brother stayed here, constantly searching for his younger brother.”
“Not for any other reason, but simply to ensure the younger brother's death.”
“And that is when the players enter the dungeon.”
After Xu Youyou finished speaking, he snapped his fingers with a look of self-satisfaction.
“In my opinion, we should change the main quest.”
“We can keep 【Find the Path of Survival】, but let's scrap 【Find the Brother】 and change it to 【Investigate the Truth】. What do you think?”
“According to the plotline I just described, the truth the players need to investigate is the truth behind the younger brother's death.”
“When players first enter the dungeon, the first layer of truth they uncover is that the younger brother didn't want to burden his older brother, so he chose to quietly die in a place where no one would find him.”
“But hidden beneath that is another layer: the older brother and the butler were secretly plotting to quietly kill the younger brother.”
“Yet, when they investigate to the very end, they will discover that although the younger brother knew his older brother wanted to kill him, he didn't resist. He wasn't murdered either; he truly committed suicide.”
“What do you think?”
Rate on N.U.
