Deep in the Living

It was midnight.

Luo Di was almost fully undressed, wearing only shark-patterned shorts purchased in Mingwang City.

He sat on a round stool with all four corners bent into question marks.

Mr. Question Mark hadn't taken his clothes off, maintaining the same posture while crouching before Luo Di, extending his finger to lightly touch the surface of Luo Di's body.

It wasn't a touch,

It wasn't a strike,

Nor was it some strange play.

The part touched by the fingertips would immediately develop a hole.

Mr. Question Mark would then lean forward and press his eyes against the hole to peer inside.

If he doesn't find what he's searching for, he would continue making holes, repeating the same behavior.

The purpose is singular,

To explore the inner essence of Luo Di, to find the "source" of the anomaly noise... But even as the holes covered him from head to toe, the anomaly was not found.

Ultimately, a conclusion was drawn.

Luo Di was neither marked nor materially affected; his body was completely healthy.

The noise only came from Jiang Huaishan's memory. As long as Luo Di held onto this memory, he might hear the sounds from the deepest part of the dungeon.

Snap! A snap of the fingers.

All the holes on Luo Di's body vanished.

After Mr. Question Mark stood up, he took a disinfectant wipe from his pocket to clean his fingers, and a voice came from beneath the sack head: "I personally suggest you completely forget that memory, since Teacher Guo and I have both acquired detailed information."

"Forget it? Fine, I'll try."

Luo Di indeed could perform some microscopic adjustments to his own brain; to erase a memory, he just needed to enter the pituitary space, find the memory, and erase it like beheading a creature.

Not to mention, the memory belonged to Jiang Huaishan anyway, and had physical manifestations.

Although Jiang Huaishan's dungeon diary might still contain some undiscovered details, considering the greater potential risks, it was better to deal with them in advance.

On the moon surface,

Luo Di found the wooden box from Jiang Huaishan's memory.

Inside were "Dragon Zombie," "Jiang Mansion's Secret Collection," and the zombie skin-sewn diary.

He took out the diary,

Gently tossed it,

And beheaded it.

Just as Luo Di was about to close the box, he froze; he smelled a familiar corpse stench, and a completely identical dungeon diary lay pressed at the bottom of the box!

Luo Di quickly leafed through the contents of the first page, exactly the same.

The memory thought erased, yet reappeared.

Beheaded again, the contents of the box also refreshed. Hence, Luo Di had to destroy the memory-storing wooden box together.

As for "Dragon Zombie" and "Secret Collection," these memories had to be kept, especially the former. If Luo Di forgot Jiang Huaishan's life experiences, especially the transformation node, it could affect the legacy he struggled to inherit.

Crack!

Watching the wooden box being slashed, being obliterated.

Thinking the matter finally resolved, as Luo Di was about to leave,

He stepped on something, something that hadn't been there before as if newly refreshed.

The shattered wooden box was buried within the moon soil, more importantly, the diary was still within.

Seeing this scene, Luo Di chuckled feeling somewhat relieved, without attempting to slash again.

"Seems impossible to forget. This memory is stuck deep in my consciousness like the sticky zombie skin."

Or perhaps, when I peered into the deepest dungeon through Jiang Huaishan's memories, those 'images' also took notice of my existence.

Even if forgotten, the memory itself would come back.

Considering Jiang Huaishan's dungeon exploration, he might have found a suitable solution to resist the noise. The blank ten to twenty pages should contain those records.

It's possible he always suffered noise interference, which led him to choose the wrong path in the dungeon, lost his body. Though escaping back to Jiang Mansion, he became uneasy, extremely paranoid, resulting in making completely wrong judgments when meeting me.

This possibility seems higher, for Jiang Huaishan's mental condition was indeed poor, allowing me to reap substantial benefits."

Luo Di returned to the corporeal form, Mr. Question Mark, upon learning this, slightly twisted the question mark on the burlap sack.

"During closed-door cultivation, I never expected such an amusement to come straight to me... very well, I shall return to school with you in the morning."

"Alright."

Luo Di's eyes lit up, as if achieving some goal.

"As for the noise affecting you, I cannot directly handle it. Forcefully blocking this memory might bring far worse and unpredictable consequences.

I'll leave a mark for you; when you approach the dungeon, the game rules will activate, allowing you to regain clarity."

"Okay."

Along with the swiping of the finger, a mark appeared on the back of Luo Di's hand.

Mr. Question Mark glanced at his watch, "It's already two in the morning, you can stay here overnight; treat it as a long-awaited supplementary lesson, come with me."

"Okay."

Receiving this late-night invitation, Luo Di instinctively swirled his tongue, unwittingly thinking of Gust.

Passing through the hole passage into a simple bedroom, or say a newly created twin room, with a style inclined towards Mr. Question Mark's preferred minimalist European style.

Upon entering the room,

The burlap sack was removed,

Hand brushed aside the fallen bangs before the eyes, while removing the outer clothing to hang on the rack, and walked toward the bathroom.

When the shower noise ended,

He came out wearing question-mark-pattern pajamas, sat by the bed, and began blow-drying his hair.

Luo Di sat obediently by his bed, appeared slightly uneasy, remained silent.

Suddenly, Mr. Question Mark spoke: "Who else participated in Jiang Huaishan's death? Even if influenced by the dungeon, even if body destroyed, it shouldn't have been so easily killed, right?"

"Well... here's what happened."

Luo Di straightforwardly detailed the whole experience.

"Did Rose intervene? Plus he set up a new organization on the remains of Jiang Mansion... Looks like I failed to receive the corner notification while staying in this near Outer Realm hole zone.

Rose, like you, is also a Black Door.

Some murderous methods of his are worth learning; with your talent, you should learn many useful things."

"Does Mr. Question Mark know him?"

"Of course, Gust also knows. During the videotape incident, Rose was one of the participants, one of the most dangerous competitors.

He managed to defeat Jia Wen and had a one-on-one showdown with me.

If it weren't for Jia Wen leaving interference viruses on him, I might have lost... After obtaining the videotape's final reward, my plant ranking then surpassed his."

Luo Di seized the opportunity to inquire about something always curious, "It's after receiving the reward, and then in the front?! During my own videotape incident, the final reward was a corpse containing Mist Origin.

What reward did Mr. Question Mark receive back then?"

"What you're seeing now, isn't it the reward?"

"The Question Mark?"

"Exactly, my reward was a body containing [Unknown]. Perfectly matches my own 'Death Game' attribute, combined to achieve the Question Mark, hence I renamed myself."

"So that's how it is! By the way, since Jiang Huaishan is dead, and given your closed-door training, Mr. Question Mark, your plant ranking should rise, right?"

"Don't stray from the subject~ Since you chose the Black Door path, according to the corner's filtering mechanism, you surely will eventually have a showdown with Rose, be prepared, that guy is very dangerous."

"I understand."

"Sleep now, I'm quite tired."

Luo Di hadn't washed yet and tried to keep noise down as he headed to the bathroom, turning the faucet to the smallest flow possible.

When he emerged, he saw a peculiar sleeping posture.

Mr. Question Mark lay on the bed, with bent legs, vertically oriented body, head and torso almost detached, resembling a humanoid question mark.

Leveraging the privilege of intercommunication among organization members, Luo Di attempted to query Mr. Question Mark's information.

The corner promptly responded in thought.

§?§

——NO.4——