All players: I can choose my own dungeon rewards.

A middle-aged man in ragged clothes and with messy long hair walked step by step into the living room and stopped one meter away from Wang Zhifan. He did not even move to reach out for the dishes on the table, and even lowered his head deliberately, not daring to look at the sumptuous dishes on the table.

"Don't just stand there, eat! Why don't you eat? I can hear your stomach growling with hunger!"

Wang Zhifan asked in confusion upon seeing this, his eyes fixed on the local man who was in his thirties.

The appearance of this middle-aged man was actually very unsightly. His cloth clothes were tattered and covered with dust, emitting an unspeakable stench. His long weed-like hair was mixed with a lot of dirt and hay. He was very thin, with sunken cheeks, and his eyes were obviously bloodshot. He was so afraid of the light that he squinted his eyes under the light of the red candles around him. He looked like a beggar who had lived in the sewer all year round.

But Wang Zhifan knew that it was normal for the other party to be like this. In this dark world filled with strange monsters, it was a miracle for a person to survive. There was no time to pay attention to personal cleanliness and hygiene. So he was very tolerant towards the first NPC he met, and did not dislike his presence affecting his appetite.

The middle-aged man didn't know what Wang Zhifan thought of him. He just stood aside carefully, lowered his head and replied in a low voice:

"My dear sir, the food on the table is a death-death meal set by ghosts. You cannot eat it! You should find a way to leave the village quickly. Otherwise, when the female ghost comes out, it will be too late. No one can survive after seeing the female ghost..."

"Oh? This food is inedible? I feel good about it. It's all genuine, not some kind of trick. If you don't believe me, try it."

Wang Zhifan found it a little funny that the local called him "sir", since he looked much younger than the other person. However, he understood the background style of this world. Seeing that the man, who was obviously very hungry, refused to eat the food on the table, he did not continue to persuade him, but asked another question:
"You said that eating here will attract a scary female ghost. How did you know that? Have you been here before? Or have you heard about it from someone?"

The middle-aged man, with his head down and drooling from the corners of his mouth, nodded immediately after hearing this, raised his dusty rag sleeve to wipe his mouth, and then replied:
"My Lord, I learned about this ghost village from another Lord. That Lord said that the feast here is a life-threatening meal. Anyone who can't resist eating it will surely die. The more they eat, the more miserable their death will be. The female ghost will torture them for every dish they eat..."

As the middle-aged man spoke at a fast pace, Wang Zhifan's interest was immediately piqued, and even the speed at which he picked up meat and drank wine slowed down a lot, because he felt that the NPC he rescued would become an important source of intelligence.

Without waiting for the man to finish his words, he activated the power of time stagnation, and then penetrated the man's thoughts in the state of time stagnation, and learned everything he knew.

In a short while, Wang Zhifan knew everything about this NPC's past from birth to the present.

He discovered that the other person was born after the darkness fell, and had lived a precarious life since childhood. He survived to the present by relying on his caution and ruthlessness, and had been among different groups of survivors.

About a year ago, a "big shot" visited their group and wanted to select so-called "seeds" from them, but in the end no one met the requirements to become a "seed". The big shot stayed for a while and left some "treasures" before leaving. This middle-aged man unilaterally called the big shot his master, because he really wanted to become his apprentice, and it had almost become an obsession.

"From this man's memory, that master is indeed quite capable. First of all, he is dressed very normally, which is very different from the beggar-like style of the others. He probably comes from a relatively normal social system. He also has the ability to travel through the darkness alone and knows about many dangerous secret realms. At the same time, his combat power is relatively strong... So my next plan is to find this person, or find the local forces behind this person, and learn from them why the darkness has descended."

After secretly exploring the middle-aged man's memory, Wang Zhifan lifted the other party's time stagnation state and replied:
"Don't worry about the death meal or the last meal! If that female ghost comes, I will block her! After you finish eating, I will help you leave this village!"

After saying that, he pulled out a table and chair and motioned for the middle-aged man to sit down and start eating, but the other party still endured the torture of hunger and the temptation of the food in front of him, and insisted on not sitting down. He also repeatedly thanked Wang Zhifan and said that he was not hungry, even though his saliva was almost running dry.

At this point, Wang Zhifan finally understood how cautious and ruthless this local was. Even if he was about to starve to death, he would never give in when faced with a table full of delicious food that might bring him disaster. If he were an ordinary person, he would probably eat as much as he wanted even though he knew the danger. This ruthlessness definitely contributed to his survival until now.

Speak of the devil and he will appear. Just after Wang Zhifan made his threats, strange changes suddenly occurred in the living room where he and the middle-aged man were.

The red candles around the table where they were sitting were seen floating up in the air strangely, and the color of the flames changed from scarlet to eerie dark green. These ghostly candles kept moving slowly and approaching the table in the middle. The temperature in the living room dropped by several degrees with every second.

After a while, the middle-aged man standing there was so frightened that he was trembling with fear, and ice crystals appeared on his messy long hair. But at this moment, he still held his bronze mirror in both hands, and did not completely collapse or panic.

"My Lord! It's coming! Please take me away! Please take me away!"

The middle-aged man, surrounded by the eerie green light, looked at Wang Zhifan next to him, knelt down and shouted, appearing very scared.

Wang Zhifan was still enjoying the delicious food and wine on the table, and seemed not to have heard his call.

Suddenly, Wang Zhifan turned his head and looked at the middle-aged man kneeling on the ground, but what he showed was an extremely terrifying female ghost face. She also smiled grimly at the middle-aged man holding the bronze mirror in both hands:
"Don't worry... it will be your turn soon..."

This extremely horrifying scene instantly frightened the middle-aged man who regarded Wang Zhifan as his life-saving straw. He fell to the ground stiffly without even catching his breath, and even the bronze mirror in his hand rolled several meters away.

At the same time, from Wang Zhifan's perspective, he saw the middle-aged man kneeling on the ground suddenly die at his sight, and he couldn't help but wonder:
"What happened? Why did this man suddenly die? Haha...it turns out that the female ghost didn't dare to attack me, so she picked on him, a weak persimmon."

Until now, Wang Zhifan has never taken the so-called life-threatening meal seriously. He has been enjoying the food and waiting very relaxedly for the so-called scary female ghost to come to him. However, he did not expect that the female ghost did not dare to find such a tough guy like him, and created illusions to kill the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man was dead, and Wang Zhifan didn't pay much attention to him. He continued to eat the food on the table. His primary goal was to fill his stomach.

The reason why Wang Zhifan was so addicted to eating was that he missed eating for a long time, and he was very surprised that the food in the haunted house was actually delicious, not disgusting fakes made by ghosts. He was very curious about where this table of fresh and delicious food came from, and wanted to eat it to find out the clues. But the female ghost was obviously not as relaxed as he was. After finding that he was still eating without caring about his companions, she had evil thoughts and once again targeted the body of the middle-aged man who was scared to death, and launched a strange power.

Then, next to the table full of delicious food, the corpse of the middle-aged man with horrified eyes suddenly changed in a trance and turned into a terrifying female ghost with dancing hair. Its face was covered with bloodstains and its eyes were only blood holes, which was extremely terrifying. It walked step by step towards Wang Zhifan who was eating.

Wang Zhifan's perception was so strong that he knew everything from the very beginning of the change, but he remained unmoved. He didn't care about the terrifying female ghost approaching him at all. He pretended not to notice and continued to drink and eat meat.

The female ghost had never been ignored like this before. Although she could see that Wang Zhifan was not easy to deal with, she could not stand being treated as air. After all, she was a fierce ghost who had killed countless people and had basic dignity. She immediately let out a shrill scream that was enough to crush the body and spirit of an ordinary person, and suddenly stretched out her strange black, slender claws to grab Wang Zhifan at the table.

Wang Zhifan was really disturbed by this. He said impatiently: "Get lost!"

He killed the female ghost who tried to attack him instantly, without even a trace of evil thoughts or soul left, and the living room was clean.

When the gap in strength is too great, the battle becomes simple and brutal. It requires no process or strategy. Just a thought can turn any enemy who dares to provoke you into nothingness, even invisible ghosts are no exception.

After killing the female ghost, together with the ghost butler who was killed instantly by Wang Zhifan before, the banquet hosting the life-threatening meal theoretically became an empty shell. Wang Zhifan planned to leave directly after eating.

But before leaving, he discovered something strange. He felt that the ghost butler and the female ghost he had killed were slowly reuniting and reviving. By peeking into the laws of time, he knew that they would reappear in this haunted house in about two days.

"It even has a resurrection mechanism? Because they are two elite monsters? This world really looks more and more like a game..."

Wang Zhifan was quite surprised. He stood up from the table, turned his head and looked behind him. There, a red candle was very conspicuous, because he didn't know when it was the only candle left in the room, emitting a bright red light.

As soon as he thought of it, the candle appeared in Wang Zhifan's hand and he collected it with the power of space. Then he felt that the red candle transmitted a warm power. People illuminated by its light would have a sense of fullness, and their body's energy would be continuously replenished, and they would become stronger little by little.

Of course, these are all based on Wang Zhifan's powerful perception and mastery of the laws, not his completely real experience. With his physical strength, it is too difficult for external objects to have an effect on him, and most of the time they don't work at all.

"So this strange candle is the reward for killing those two ghosts? Filling your stomach, restoring your physical strength, gradually becoming stronger, and providing light are all pretty good rewards in this world. Could this really be a game world? A dark game world created by some being?"

Looking at the red candle with miraculous effects in his hand, Wang Zhifan became more and more confused.

He had been to many dungeon worlds of various styles, and had encountered many places where rewards could be dropped by killing monsters, but this was the first time he had encountered rewards dropped in another way, which gave him a strange sense of déjà vu.

"The goal of this dungeon is to find out the secret of the coming of darkness, but it gives me more and more of a game world feeling. So what I need to do is to find out the existence that created this game world? And then ask it why it made this world so dark?"

After thinking about it, Wang Zhifan had a certain understanding of the road ahead, and at the same time, he felt more excited, because an existence that can create a game world is obviously not weak, and there is at least a 50% chance of killing the other party and exploding the myth point.

With such expectations, he immediately started to finish the work. He waved his hand and activated the time travel to revive the dead middle-aged man out of thin air, and said to him:
"This village will be safe for two days. Leave the village on your own and we will meet again."

After saying this, his figure disappeared out of thin air in front of the shocked middle-aged man. When he reappeared, he was already on the back of the red deer horse in the inner courtyard, almost making the middle-aged man think he had seen a ghost again.

In the middle-aged man's memory, he was knocked unconscious by the female ghost before. Although it was similar to being frightened, without the influence of the female ghost's power, it was impossible for him to be directly hit, so he did not feel ashamed at all.

"My Lord! Is it really safe here? Please wait for me!"

Seeing that Wang Zhifan in the yard outside the door had already ridden through the gate, the middle-aged man quickly picked up the bronze statue on the ground, picked up a plate of leftovers from the wine table, and chased after Wang Zhifan.

But after he rushed out the door, he found that Wang Zhifan had disappeared, which made him feel a little annoyed.

"These big shots are so elusive... But according to the bronze mirror, this place is really safe. There is still a lot of food. I'd better have a good meal before leaving!"

He had never dared to eat the food on the table before, but now that the danger was over, there was no reason to stop him from eating heartily. He turned around and rushed to the table and started to eat up everything in no time.

At the same time, Wang Zhifan had already left the previous secret realm and returned to the dark wilderness, looking for his next target.

With the information he had just obtained from the middle-aged man, it was not difficult for him to find the special people in this world. After all, he had a lot of search tools in his hands, and relying on the existing information, he was able to lock the other party's location. (End of this chapter)