Chapter 1025: The Thing That Was Taken
After he finished speaking, he turned and went downstairs. The others thought he had thought of some clue and followed him without hesitation. However, after reaching the first floor, Xu Huo went straight into the room where he was resting and casually closed the door behind him.
Chi Minghong and the others looked at each other in confusion. They waited for a full minute, and just as they were hesitating whether to leave, Xu Huo opened the door and walked out again. He glanced at everyone and said, "Shouldn't we start looking for the notes?"
"Let's start from the serial numbers."
The others had no objections, so the first local zone player went upstairs with Xu Huo.
"What was the place before the White Snow Ji Villa was built?" Xu Huo took the initiative to ask.
The local zone player paused for a moment and said, "It was a protected area."
"Snow City was overdeveloped. The environmental protection department and the city developers fought a legal battle for nearly ten years to preserve this forest. In the end, it was classified as a 'private residential area.'"
"Large-scale development is not allowed here. Only the original residents living here have the right to build."
"However, houses cannot be built arbitrarily. You have to apply to the relevant departments. But the scope of this application is also a matter of opinion. Residents only have one chance to apply for renovation rights. That is, once the first plan is set, no matter how many times the house is repaired in the future, it cannot exceed the initial scale."
"Of course, the first application doesn't mean you can apply for as much as you want. In theory, residents of this area can equally divide all the land except for the important protected forest areas. But once you get approval, you must complete the construction within the specified time."
"The White Snow Ji Villa was built by Jin Li's grandfather, and the area was fixed at that time. Later, before her death, Jin Li left a will requiring that subsequent heirs could not renovate the villa within a hundred years after her death. So her adopted son could only modify the rooms for rental purposes."
"When was the magnetite ore discovered beneath the White Snow Ji Villa?" Xu Huo asked again.
"Just in recent years," the local zone player said. "At first, electronic devices just couldn't function properly. Later, quite a few people died. After an investigation, the government discovered there was ore here. But due to the nature of the land and the existence of an heir, it hasn't been developed."
"Besides, the quality of this magnetite ore is average. Otherwise, it would have long become government property."
Xu Huo nodded slightly and asked to borrow the records of the previous villa owners. According to the records, the builder of the White Snow Ji Villa was a mixed-race descendant of an outer zone player and a local. He himself was confirmed not to be a player, but he had likely taken high-quality evolution agents regularly, so his physical health and mental state were normal.
Jin Li's father, the builder's son, was a player but died before Jin Li reached adulthood. His psychological state was also very healthy.
However, both of them had undergone psychological treatment during their childhood and adolescence, but they were much better off than others in District 002.
Overall, the three generations of the family were basically developing in a positive direction. From grandfather to son to granddaughter, they had completely transitioned into positive, upwardly mobile normal people.
District 002 had been in darkness for quite some time. According to publicly available government research data, a lack of sunlight exposure could subtly alter the genes of offspring. Currently, it only appeared as external changes, but in reality, the increasingly developed psychotherapy industry shows that this influence is not just superficial.
A family like Jin Li's, especially with Jin Li being born with a disability, is considered a special case.
Perhaps there was some special reason for this, but whether it was the same reason Dr. Zhang came here is unknown.
"Mr. Xu, do you have some connection with the owner of this villa?" the local zone player probed.
Xu Huo glanced at him and said, "Let's go find the next room."
The other didn't ask further and continued walking forward.
Soon, a new note was found in a room on the third floor. Serial number 5, the person in the picture had their hands and feet broken.
The two brought the note downstairs. Chi Minghong was the happiest and eagerly began searching through books, saying, "I remember I saw this in some book before!"
"Serial number 5, the second note has eliminated another possible person," the bespectacled male player said with a smile.
Eliminating one person meant that the probability for the local zone player, the lip-piercing player, and the freckled player had increased again.
The freckled player had already been beaten to the point of having no say. The local zone player was mostly silent, making it hard to gauge his depth. The lip-piercing player snorted with a laugh, "Anyway, I can find a note too."
The others said nothing and waited, counting the time.
Xu Huo didn't stay long in the hall. After sitting for a while, he returned to Dr. Zhang's room to rest. He also bought a detection device on the bounty platform.
A floating spherical detector automatically rotated in the room, marking the magnetic strength of the walls and floor. The magnetic field inside and outside Dr. Zhang's room was similar. The secret small room had the strongest magnetic force, and with this as the center, the magnetic force in the villa weakened from strong to weak.
He wasn't detecting the magnetite ore, but the stone used to build the house.
This meant that starting from the secret room, the entire villa had been magnetized to varying degrees.
To verify his idea, Xu Huo dug down from the floor of the secret room and tested the soil at different depths. The final result was the same: starting from the secret room, the degree of magnetization weakened with increasing depth. However, compared to the villa building, the underground magnetization was stronger—clearly, something that could assimilate other substances had once been placed in this secret room.
So far, he had only heard of one thing with such an effect: Primordial Stone.
A Primordial Stone is an ore that can cause qualitative changes in other substances. Usually, this type of stone will cause large nearby ore deposits to change. The newly generated stones with special properties are called Subclass Stones or Evolution Stones.
Such stones could be high-value gems or raw materials for crafting items. Among them, the best quality ones even possess special attributes that can be used to create time-space items. Of course, Subclass Stones capable of crafting time-space items are very rare because they only appear near a type of Primordial Stone called the "Origin of Time." This type of Primordial Stone is also extremely rare. Bai Kou once said that someone used such a Primordial Stone to exchange for a game district, which shows its value.
Therefore, it is highly likely that there is a Primordial Stone of unknown quality inside the White Snow Ji Villa.
However, this is just Xu Huo's speculation. Even if his guess is correct, this stone should have been taken away by Dr. Zhang.
But the location of this stone is a bit off.
He didn't know whether the stone was accidentally built into the wall during the initial construction of the White Snow Ji Villa or was deliberately placed here, which later caused the magnetic field chaos.
Putting away the detection device, Xu Huo turned around and looked at the entrance of the secret room. Through the dense spots of light hitting the spatial barrier of the "Inviolable Domain," he "looked" at the person hiding outside who hadn't shown their face. He directly activated his spiritual realm, moved the wall that stood between them, and shortened the distance between the two!