During the day, the roses in the flower field were closed, turning into buds that didn’t blossom. The wet soil beca dry and the flower fields looked harmless and idyllic. Yet after so experintation, Bai Liu’s group found that their ntal value would drop faster if they stayed at the flower field.
They only had two bottles of low-grade perfu. In order to maintain a normal ntal value, they might run out of perfu before it even beca night if they stayed around the flower field. Therefore, Bai Liu chose to stay away from the flower field. To be precise, Bai Liu wanted to stay away from this entire perfu factory with an unknown pollution source.
There were two bottles of perfu that lasted for four hours. In order to endure until the next morning, staying in a place where they were more likely to be contaminated obviously wasn’t a good plan.
Bai Liu decided to walk outside the factory to see what was going on in the area where the factory was not located.
“What you can think of, others can also think of.” Liu Jiayi held Bai Liu’s hand and frowned. “It is easy to bump into other players when going out like this. Why don’t you think of a way for each of us to do the 80 kg rose task? The thod last night had already pulled my ability to the maximum. I could barely collect 80 kg. It is impossible to double it to 160 kg.”
Bai Liu wasn’t in a hurry. “Didn’t you hear the processing worker this morning? All the night flower pickers completed their tasks last night.”
“There are six players in the ga and our identity is a new flower picker. If all the flower pickers have completed their tasks, it ans that the other four players apart from us are also capable of picking 40 kg of roses in one night.”
Bai Liu smiled. “Four people can pick 40 kg a night. Isn’t that exactly the 160 kg we need?”
“……” Liu Jiayi rubbed her arms that were covered in goosebumps due to Bai Liu’s strange smile and asked, “What do you want to do?”
“Let’s investigate the situation near this factory first.” Bai Liu’s gaze deepened. “Every monster in this ga has its own origin and cause. The vagrants are transford from people. Since I can make deals with people, I think…”
“You want to make deals with these vagrants?” Liu Jiayi frowned. “Many of the monsters in the ga are contaminated humans with zero ntal value. They have gone crazy. How do you trade with crazy creatures? They don’t have enough sanity to understand you.”
Bai Liu lowered his eyes and looked at Liu Jiayi. “What if they can recover their sanity for a short ti?”
Liu Jiayi was stunned and instinctively retorted, “Impossible.”
The alienation of monsters in the ga was irreversible. This was the ‘rule’ of the ga. After the ntal value turned 0, it would freeze and turn gray. It couldn’t be restored with ntal bleach.
Monsters had always been monsters and it was impossible for them to change back to human.
Yet soon, Liu Jiayi found that sothing was wrong. The ntal bleach in this ga was originally frozen!
It wasn’t just for monsters but also for them. anwhile, the perfu had no restrictions on the vagrants. In other words, if this perfu could be used on vagrants and took effect, these monsters would regain their consciousness and beco normal ‘vagrants’. It might be possible to temporarily stop attacking them—it was just like how the rfolk statue stopped moving when stared at.
“The perfu is likely to be the weakness of this group of vagrants.” Liu Jiayi looked up at Bai Liu. “When did you think that this ga’s perfu could be used as the ntal bleach of monsters?”
“Before I entered the ga,” Bai Liu answered.
“Before you entered the ga?” Liu Jiayi was full of question marks.
Bai Liu threw the perfu bottle in his hand. His eyes moved up and down with the tossed perfu and his mouth twitched. “Before entering the ga, soone told that if this perfu was used for crazy employees, it could restore their sanity and status. No matter how crazy they were before, once this perfu was sprayed, they would return to their usual appearance like nothing had happened.”
“I was thinking at the ti—this is simply a remake of ntal bleach.”
Bai Liu looked down and casually played with the two bottles of perfu in his hand. “It can restore the state of a person and pull a person back from madness. I added it to the ga’s setting. For players, if we don’t use ntal bleach then we will go crazy from the contamination of the monsters in the ga.”
“For players, the ntal bleach is our rose perfu. Us ordinary players are ‘addicted’ to it and will buy it in order to survive. We will work for the ga as ‘flower pickers’ to earn points so we won’t be ‘laid off’ and beco ‘vagrants’, falling to the ‘naless area’. Senior gars will be promoted to the next stage.”
Bai Liu looked at Liu Jiayi. “Don’t you think these chanisms are very familiar?”
Liu Jiayi was a little creeped out because she understood Bai Liu’s aning. “…The ga is a large Rose Factory.”
If the ga was a large-scale factory that exploited players then who was the ‘factory manager’ who exploited everyone and gained the most benefits?
Bai Liu’s eyes darkened—they reached the edge of the flower field.
Outside the magnificent flower fields wasn’t a pleasant town but a desolate and dilapidated suburb with curled up newspapers and long-abandoned factories. At a glance, they couldn’t see anyone for dozens of ters. It was like a completely different world from the beautiful flower fields and perfu factory behind them.
Bai Liu walked to the door of an empty factory with a job posted on it but this was from 10 years ago.
It seed that this factory didn’t need to recruit people. The tin roller shutter door of the factory had ‘demolition’ written on it with yellow paint. The paint peeling at the bottom had a very old texture.
Liu Jiayi crouched down to look at the newspaper fragnts scattered on the ground.
[The ergence of the rose perfu? A new addictive substance banned nationwide, triggering public protests!
-if this type of thing is banned, why can’t we ban coffee and cigarettes? This is a serious violation of our freedom to consu!
(Mr Wang, the owner of the convenience store who led the protest, said that he hoarded a lot of rose perfu in his store. This year, he has made hundreds of yuan in profit from the rose perfu.)]
[There is a factory explosion. The perfu has spread and the protest has won. The Dry Leaf Rose Gas is the bestseller in the world!]
[Rose perfu lifts people’s spirits, improves students’ learning efficiency and improves staff mbers’ work efficiency… ushering in a golden period of rapid developnt. Factories and enterprises have expanded enrollnt this year by 7.2%…]
[…The rose perfu has ushered in the third major price increase this year, causing large-scale protests around the world. This perfu, which has beco a necessity, is now a burden for most people with an annual average inco of 100,000 yuan… the rose perfu is a necessity for billions of people but there is a faint trend of developing into luxury goods.]
[…The three consecutive price increases of this perfu are a signal. It has sounded the death knell for countless poor and ordinary people…]
[Global governnts jointly protest the sky-high price of the perfus and sanction the unlimited multiple price increases of the Dry Leaf Rose Gas. They demand that the factories stop this behavior or they will forcibly close factories…]
[…The heads of the governnts of three countries have withered during a tour due to the loss of perfu supply… The perfu factory has promised to give priority to the supply of premium perfus to countries willing to sign friendly agreents with the factories… the collapse of the Joint Sanctions Association…]
[…The world’s rich list is slaughtered by the rose perfu manufacturing and selling industry.]
[…During the Great Depression, a large number of factories closed down… schools are closed… unemploynt is on the rise… riots are frequent… withered and dying vagrants can be seen everywhere at street intersections…]
[…Rose manufacturing might be the only way of employnt for today’s young people.]
[…Last year, the production of rose perfus declined and the number of people withering globally has risen further compared to previous years…]
……
Bai Liu also crouched down beside Liu Jiayi to read these newspapers on the ground.
Liu Jiayi might not be a kind-hearted child but she still felt numb when she saw these newspapers and the shocking black and white photos.
ssy crowds, blood-stained roads, people on the verge of death everywhere and numb eyes looking at the cara—these black and white photos gave people the chills.
“This type of thing can only destroy the ecology.” Bai Liu picked up a photo on the ground with the caption ‘desperate and withered vagrants are staying collectively under the bridge. The rose factory remains indifferent and won’t sell perfus at a reduced price.’
[In the early days, the rose perfu that was promoted for free and promised to be sold to the public at a low price has now risen to a sky-high price…]
“It is given to you for free during the promotions and then at a low price. After you are used to it, it has already monopolized the market and you can’t find any substitutes. Then the price is raised. You can’t survive without this thing so you can only pay a higher price to buy it, becoming a slave to the rose.”
“This is a very routine exploitation thod but it causes death when implented with an addictive substance. It leads to a criminal-like demise that kills all humanity. In this apocalyptic era, even money has lost its luster.”
“Therefore, I don’t like this thing. It erases the aning of what I’m after.”
Bai Liu calmly loosened his fingers and the wind blew away the old newspaper fragnts in his hand.
Did Tang Erda see this future where there was no solution other than annihilation?
Watching Su Yang and his teammates beco people who were obsessed with roses and deford while there was no way to save them. He could only watch them wither or enter the next tiline to escape…
This type of thing had happened multiple tis so it was no wonder why this man went crazy.
Bai Liu’s eyes narrowed. Several dark shadows flashed through the empty abandoned factory behind him and dense tentacles spread over the ground. Liu Jiayi approached Bai Liu vigilantly and stood in front of him. These vagrants hiding in the factory were trying to attack them.
“Perfu! He slls of perfu!”
There was a frantic scream and the shaking shadows let out piercing cries. Then all the black shadows pounced on Bai Liu.
“There are so many vagrants here.” Liu Jiayi held the poison and her back tensed. “Are you sure our perfu is enough?”
“I’m not sure.” Bai Liu answered honestly. “Still, aren’t you here?”
Liu Jiayi, “…….”
Liu Jiayi was angry. “Da*n!”
The black vagrants with tentacles moved like snakes on the ground. The newspapers on the ground were swept into the air by the tentacles, floated in the dark sky covered with dust and were carried far away by the wind.
One of the photos showed a flower picker smiling happily with a cracked face. [Even if you work night and day without rest, you aren’t a regular employee. Picking 40 kg of dry rose petals can barely get you a bottle of low-grade perfu. Even so, working at the rose factory is the happiest thing in the world.]
[We are doing the work of changing the world and saving others.]
[If we work hard, we might be able to reduce the price of the perfu and let more people live!]
—A flower picker who was about to wither said weakly.
(At the ti of the report, the rose picker who was willing to be interviewed has been fired and laid off for disclosing details of his work in violation of the Rose Factory’s regulations.)
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