Chapter 1172: Exploration
Jiang Huan tried to lift the already grimy tripod, wondering if it could be used as a weapon.
Clearly, it could not.
This tripod was tall, nearly one and a half meters, and it was the kind used for video cameras, so it was very heavy. Just carrying it was a struggle, let alone swinging it as a weapon.
Moreover, after being exposed to wind and rain for so long, the three legs had rusted solid. Trying to dismantle them was a pipe dream.
Qin Guan examined the minivan as well. It looked thoroughly weathered. The clutter inside the van and the tripod outside all hinted at one thing: the people who had been in the van had gone inside and never come out.
If those people had come out, even if they had taken a different exit, they would have driven the van back. But now the van was just abandoned here, everything left exactly as it was when they departed. This fact alone was already extremely eerie.
"A normal person seeing this would have turned back and called the police long ago, right? But as a player, you still have to stubbornly push forward."
Jiang Huan silently complained. This was just the opening, and it was already frantically hinting at the protagonist's fate, yet he couldn't just back down from the difficulty. That was incredibly frustrating.
There was a gap in the iron fence ahead. Jiang Huan squeezed through, wading through knee-high weeds. After several twists and turns, he arrived at a peculiar "door."
Many rotten cow hind legs were tied together with rope, forming a bizarre sun totem shape. In the center was a cow skull, looking like some kind of evil ritual.
As soon as he got close, Jiang Huan smelled a foul stench. Although the Matrix game pod's olfactory system was dampened, it was still nauseating.
Jiang Huan held his breath, crouched down, and crawled through, waving away the swarming flies as he went.
"This is getting more and more excessive."
Continuing forward, there was a pile of burned trash. Among it, a half-burned women's handbag stood out conspicuously.
Jiang Huan picked up the handbag and found a driver's license belonging to Mia inside, along with some tattered clothes.
These clothes all reeked and were torn to shreds. Only the driver's license had any value, confirming that Mia should indeed be on this farm.
Going deeper, he finally reached the backyard of the house.
This should have been the farm owner's residence, but there was no sign of human habitation. Everything was decayed beyond recognition. There was a swing and a bench in the backyard, but their paint had completely peeled off, leaving a grayish-white color. Wildly growing vines covered the house, and wooden boards were nailed haphazardly onto the walls for repairs, looking very half-hearted.
"Anyone who could live here is definitely not normal. I think I still need to find something to defend myself."
"And this protagonist, seriously. You were born in the Land of the Free. Carrying a gun should be a natural right. Not bringing a gun is one thing, but not even a knife? Isn't that going too far?"
Jiang Huan grumbled as he searched the area for anything that could be used as a weapon.
Although Jiang Huan hadn't played many of these next-gen games, he understood many of their mechanics.
The new next-gen games were all pursuing a "perfect blend of freedom and story." Players had more and more choices.
In older games, limited by hardware performance and technology, to give players the ultimate experience, the progression was often quite linear, like in Uncharted or The Last of Us.
But with the development of next-gen technology, these new games encouraged players to use various methods to play, no longer sticking to the official paths.
For example, you could craft weapons in the game using your own ingenuity, like dismantling a broken chair to use as a weapon against monsters. The various props in the scenes were no longer just decorations; they could be repurposed.
However, after searching the yard, Jiang Huan really couldn't find anything that could be used as a weapon.
Maybe the wooden boards nailed to the house walls could be pried off and reused, but after so long exposed to wind, rain, and insects, they were quite decayed. Their hardness was terrible. Against an ordinary person, you'd be better off just throwing a punch. Against a twisted monster, these little boards could only serve a comedic purpose.
"The higher the skill, the greater the challenge. It seems Serent never intended for the player to find any usable weapon in this yard. Time to move on."
Jiang Huan entered the house, and soon everything around him went pitch black.
Most of the windows were boarded up, with only a sliver of sunlight getting through, instantly cutting off the daylight. Fortunately, the protagonist carried the "nuclear-powered flashlight" essential for horror games, so he didn't have to fumble in the dark.
Arriving at a place that looked like a dining room, Jiang Huan was hit with a triple assault on his sight, touch, and smell.
In a pot on the table was a sticky, gooey substance, with hints of large intestines and organs visible, crawling with oversized cockroaches. As soon as he lifted the lid, the disgusting stench nearly overwhelmed Jiang Huan. Many cockroaches took the chance to crawl up his hand. This spine-chilling sensation made Jiang Huan throw the lid aside and frantically shake his hand to get the bugs off.
After calming down, Jiang Huan picked up the lid, considering that at least it was metal and could barely serve as a makeshift shield.
The microwave and refrigerator were both full of rotten food. The three strange odors mixed together made the room nearly unbearable. Jiang Huan, very exasperated, finished searching the house for any hidden items and went up to the second floor.
Here, Jiang Huan found a videotape and a button, but pressing it did nothing.
Many doors in the house were locked. Jiang Huan recklessly kicked at them with all his might, but even after his feet went numb, the doors wouldn't budge. It made him wonder if something heavy was blocking them from the other side, or if the protagonist was just too weak to kick them open.
Continuing deeper into the house, he reached a living room.
There was a TV and a VCR, clearly meant for playing the videotape.
Following his usual habit, Jiang Huan searched the entire living room thoroughly before inserting the tape into the VCR.
He had actually noticed a strange lever in the fireplace, but Jiang Huan still followed his habit of making sure every prop was used to its fullest. His goal was not to miss any key information, not to rush through the story blindly.
Soon, an image appeared on the TV. It was indeed the people from the minivan earlier.
It looked like a reckless trio, there to record a haunted house show, but they ended up staying there forever.