Chapter 4: The Mysterious Old Man (Seeking Collection)

  (Collection and recommendation, seeking smashing!!)

  Special Mission!

  Li Feng's heart immediately stirred with excitement upon seeing these four words.

  In general, special tasks in the game have uniqueness. He is the first person in Red Cloud Village to complete the task of [Collecting Wild Boar Teeth], so he also became the first player to encounter this special task.

  According to previous gaming experience, after completing special tasks, players can obtain special items, which may be a special equipment, a special skill, or even a special profession. Everything is possible!

  "Accepted!" Li Feng quickly accepted the task and then opened the task scroll to view its contents:

  The Mysterious Stranger: At the east entrance of the village, there is a mysterious person sitting under a big tree. Nobody knows his origin. If you can figure out the secret of this mysterious person, you will get a mysterious reward.

  He rolled up the task scroll, Li Feng immediately rushed to the east of the village. Now the whole village is full of new players, all kinds of shouting and quarreling sounds gathered together, forming a sound wave that gives people the feeling of walking into a vegetable market, extremely noisy.

  Arriving at the east side of Red Cloud Village, looking around, everywhere were players grinding and leveling up. The number of people far exceeded that of monsters. Every monster that spawned was unable to escape being slaughtered, meeting a tragic fate. Li Feng could only silently mourn for the monsters in his heart.

  Li Feng's eyes scanned the surroundings, and soon he saw an old man sitting motionless under a large tree at the entrance of the village. The old man had a withered face, dull eyes that were dim and lifeless, and his body was covered with several leaves, making him look like a sculpture, almost devoid of any signs of life.

  Around the old man, there were not a few players, it was clear that they also saw the existence of this mysterious old man and wanted to try to take on some task, however, their various movements did not elicit any response from the old man.

  "Geez, I thought I was going to get some real task, but it's just an old fart with Alzheimer's!"

  "I'm even more miserable, I said a lot of words next to him, but this old man didn't have any reaction at all, wasting my precious upgrade time. It seems your judgment is correct, there's probably no task to accept here, let's go, go kill monsters and level up."

  In the end, those players surrounding the old man all left with a huff, and the surroundings became quiet once again.

  Li Feng did not try to communicate with the old man like other players, even the village NPCs could not interact with this strange old man, let alone the players. He kept observing the old man from the side, paying attention to any changes in his body.

  Wasting time leveling up? His goal is to be a life player, the ranking list and all that can be played on the side, it has nothing to do with him!

  Is it boring to observe the old man? His greatest advantage is that he has a strong patience, a guy who can squat on the ground and watch ants move for more than an hour, how bad can his patience be?

  Soon, a new human-shaped statue appeared under the big tree. At this time, Li Feng was like an old monk in meditation, sitting not far from the old man, observing the strange old man.

  Once Li Feng enters a state of calm, his powers of observation become incredibly sharp, which is another one of his more notable advantages, second only to his demonic patience.

  After observing for more than half an hour, he found that although the old man's eyes were dull and lifeless, they would occasionally flash a very complex gaze.

  It was a kind of inexplicable and strange gaze, inside which there were memories, pain, regret, self-blame, happiness... all sorts of emotions tangled together, jointly forming this gaze. The amount of information in it was too great, and each time it flashed by in an instant. If one didn't observe carefully, they would be completely unaware of it.

  Li Feng also noticed that whenever the old man showed this emotion, his gaze would fall on a certain house to the west of Hongyun Village, and even his body would shake slightly.

  It was a very old small wooden house, with two floors, many places have been rotten and collapsed, it's in a state of disrepair, and I don't know how long it has been uninhabited.

  "Could it be that this old man was originally a villager of Red Cloud Village, and that house was his home?" A thought flashed through Li Feng's mind, and in the old man's gaze, there was indeed a kind of nostalgia for home.

  To confirm the old man's true identity, he went back to the village to find the village head.

  Every village has a record of the villagers' files, and that old man is very old, at least over 80 years old. The people in the village seem to not recognize him, there are only two explanations: one is that all the villagers who knew this old man have passed away, or the other is that the old man's appearance has changed greatly, and no one can recognize him anymore.

  Both possibilities exist, Li Feng decided to first determine the origin of the old wooden hut in the village. He found the village head and explained his intention, soon he was allowed to enter the village's archives room.

  From the village chief, Li Feng got a stunning piece of information: the small wooden house in the village had not been inhabited for over 70 years. Its original owner was a young couple from outside, but later for some reason, after the man went out one day, he never came back, leaving only the woman to guard the house alone.

  A few years after the man left, the woman died of depression. The small wooden house was abandoned and has remained so until now, becoming the oldest house in the village.

  Because it was too long ago, the village chief himself also learned about this information from the conversations of his elders and didn't know if it was correct.

  "If that small wooden house is really the old man's home, then isn't his age over a hundred years old!" Li Feng was secretly shocked in his heart, he felt that the old man was very likely to be the man who had run away from home, which also explained why the old man would reveal such extremely complex emotions.

  Li Feng vaguely sensed the general trend of this whole thing, now it's just a matter of checking the files and learning more about the mysterious old man.

  With the help of the archivist, Li Feng found the file of the owner of that house and sat by the window to examine it carefully.

  Half an hour later, Li Feng walked out of the archives room. Now he had obtained the information he wanted. It turned out that the owner of the small wooden house was Weiren and Jenny, a couple from outside who lived in Red Cloud Village for five years. In the sixth year, Weiren left Red Cloud Village and never came back again, while Jenny stayed in Red Cloud Village and died of illness several years later.

  It's almost certain now that the old man sitting outside the village is Verlen, because only Verlen himself would have such a nostalgic feeling for that small wooden house.

  ;