The sky gradually darkened.
Bruised and battered, Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi lay beside the flower field. They had been unconscious for quite some time and were now taking the opportunity to recover. Their battle with the refugees during the day had nearly killed them both—Liu Jiayi’s stamina bar had almost been emptied, while Bai Liu had already been in a weakened state to begin with.
But in the end, they had still managed to escape.
After coming out, Bai Liu discovered two new burlap sacks by the edge of the flower field, larger than before. The processor had apparently delivered them in advance for tonight’s rose-picking work.
Liu Jiayi remained sprawled beside Bai Liu, breathing heavily. “It’ll probably take another hour or two before my stamina bar recovers. So what’s the plan? Wait here? Or head into the field and start picking roses to lure the refugees over?”
She propped herself up and stretched her arms behind her neck, loosening her stiff shoulders as she warmed up.
“That plan of yours that uses the other four players requires a huge number of refugees, doesn’t it?” Liu Jiayi glanced sideways at Bai Liu. “Personally, I think it’s insanely dangerous and way too easy to backfire. But you’re not going to change your mind, are you?”
Bai Liu turned to look at her calmly.
“No.”
Liu Jiayi sighed deeply with the weary maturity of a little old lady worrying over her hopeless unemployed son. Pressing a hand to her forehead, she looked at Bai Liu helplessly.
“Sometimes I really wish you, a grown man in his twenties, could act a little more responsibly. Stop obsessing over high-risk gambles and learn to clear games the normal way, like ordinary players do.”
“But I guess it’s still too early to say that to someone with a C-rank panel.” Liu Jiayi shook her head. “Grow up a bit first. Until then, you can keep relying on me. Once you mature, you can rely on yourself.”
Bai Liu: “...”
“So?” Liu Jiayi asked. “Your plan is to use the refugees to draw the other four players over, right? Then how are you planning to attract the refugees without picking roses?”
Without a word, Bai Liu slowly pulled a bottle of perfume from his pocket.
Liu Jiayi stared blankly at the perfume for a moment before expressionlessly lifting her gaze to Bai Liu’s face.
“This is our last bottle of perfume.” Her voice was perfectly calm. “If you waste the perfume I worked so hard to earn last night by using it as bait, I’ll kill you.”
Bai Liu: “...”
He cautiously placed a hand on the perfume cap.
Liu Jiayi smiled sweetly as she raised her poison bottle.
“I’m serious, Bai Liu-gege. This is the first thing I’ve ever earned through my own work. You’d better not waste it for me again. You already squandered one bottle during the day.”
Bai Liu: “...”
She was genuinely furious this time.
Though, to be fair, his actions during the day really had been recklessly provocative...
Thinking back to what happened afterward, Bai Liu’s gaze drifted slightly.
“But perfume really is the fastest way to attract refugees.”
“If you knew we’d need it tonight, then you shouldn’t have used it recklessly on me during the day!!” Liu Jiayi finally snapped. “Could you please value the results of our labor a little?! Stop clearing games with these insane ‘one step from death’ strategies all the time!”
Bai Liu immediately dropped to his knees in an extremely proper posture, resting his hands on his thighs as he apologized at lightning speed.
“I’m sorry. My thoughts were entirely focused on maximizing profit and achieving optimal perfume efficiency. I neglected our survival rate. That was my mistake.”
Eight-year-old Liu Jiayi pointed furiously at the kneeling Bai Liu.
“Are you a child?! You can’t just do whatever you want all the time!”
“Your survival rate should be your number one priority when clearing games! If you keep playing like this, how are you supposed to survive in the League, where survival rate determines victory?!”
As the team healer, Liu Jiayi furiously lectured Bai Liu, the tactician whose brain seemed to contain nothing except calculations for points and kill efficiency.
“Next time, I’ll take survival rate into consideration.” Bai Liu nodded obediently, pretending he had sincerely absorbed her criticism. Then, without missing a beat, he smoothly redirected the conversation back to the mission. “But for the sake of obtaining the maximum number of Dried Leaf Roses tonight, let’s proceed with the original plan for now. I’m opening the perfume.”
His hand was already on the cap.
Liu Jiayi: “...”
That apology was so perfunctory she couldn’t feel even the slightest trace of sincerity in it at all!!!
——————————
Night deepened.
Tang Erda gripped his gun warily as he scanned the surroundings, preparing to hunt.
His burlap sack had been casually tossed nearby. Inside were only a few Dried Leaf Roses—not many.
Tonight, Tang Erda had stopped working after picking only that amount, because he had already figured out the true rules of this game.
The purpose of picking roses was never for players to actually gather them themselves.
The real objective was to plunder the labor of others through the refugees.
And if collecting forty kilograms of roses last night had still been barely achievable through ordinary labor, then the eighty kilograms required tonight made Tang Erda abandon the idea entirely. Instead, he chose to spend the entire night hunting refugees.
Yet something felt strange.
At this same time yesterday, countless refugees had already been attacking him nonstop.
But tonight—
Tang Erda stepped onto the ridge between the flower fields and looked into the distance. Aside from a handful of refugees that had appeared earlier in the evening, not a single one had shown up during the latter half of the night.
He glanced down at the discarded sack beside him and frowned thoughtfully.
Could it be because he hadn’t picked enough roses tonight? Had the bait effect weakened compared to yesterday?
But even so, with Dried Leaf Roses present here, it shouldn’t be possible for not even one refugee to be drawn over.
On this type of map—one filled with repetitive scenery and mental pollution—experienced players generally avoided moving around unnecessarily. But the current situation was clearly abnormal. If refugees still failed to appear, Tang Erda would have no way to complete tonight’s task.
Left with no choice, he decided to move.
If the refugees wouldn’t come to him, then he would go find them himself.
The flower fields at night were deathly silent.
Tang Erda walked carefully along the narrow ridges dividing the fields. Around him, numerous flower pickers dressed in black gauze hoods bent over mechanically, silently harvesting roses.
They worked with terrifying speed.
Through the thin black gauze, Tang Erda could vaguely see pieces of flesh and tissue occasionally falling from their faces and bodies, sliding down into the mud below. Yet the workers appeared numb to it, continuing to pick flowers frantically as though they noticed nothing at all.
Some of them had hands so withered that only white bone remained, yet they still trembled as they continued working desperately.
The slower workers showed visible fear on their faces. They forced themselves to pick faster, coughing violently while harvesting roses.
Even at this point, what they feared wasn’t withering.
It was unemployment.
In this world, losing one’s job was more terrifying than death itself.
Tang Erda withdrew his gaze and tightened his grip on the gun at his waist.
He had seen scenes like this too many times.
So many times that by now, he felt nothing except cold indifference.
Or perhaps...
a powerless despair.
This was a world beyond saving.
Once Dried Rose Leaf Gas became fully widespread, there would no longer be any room left to turn things around. Every deceived and polluted ordinary person would willingly become fertilizer for the roses, pouring their labor and their life savings into them while believing it was their own salvation.
A perfectly round pale moon hung high in the northern sky, casting down a hazy silver glow.
Yet that soft white moonlight stopped abruptly at the edge of the flower field, sharply dividing the inside from the outside into two entirely different worlds.
Outside the fields was only crude darkness, like a rough charcoal sketch untouched by moonlight.
Inside the fields was an oil painting drenched in the colors of dawn.
Deep ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) crimson roses in full bloom.
A dark sapphire sky without clouds.
Soft pink, moisture-rich soil.
Workers in black gauze silently laboring between the flower rows.
The sweet scent of roses lingering at the tip of one’s nose, intoxicating enough to make the mind drift.
Everything looked harmonious.
Quiet.
Peaceful.
Perfect.
If this scene were photographed in vivid color and spread across newspapers and the internet, endlessly promoted by the media, it would undoubtedly become a paradise countless people longed for.
And the bloody truth hidden beneath the flower field would disappear completely beneath that beauty.
The desperate masses stared blankly at this breathtaking paradise while paid media outlets endlessly praised the rarity and preciousness of the roses, glorifying the beauty of the Rose Factory until people subconsciously accepted the absurd price of the perfume.
After all, compared to hating the Rose Factory—the last beautiful place left in the world—it was easier to hate themselves for being ugly, withered, and too poor to afford it.
That’s right.
The roses were so rare.
The effects of Dried Rose Leaf Gas were so miraculous.
Of course it deserved to be sold at such exorbitant prices.
If they couldn’t afford it, that was simply because they were poor. Because they lacked ability.
That was their own fault.
Not the fault of the roses.
The roses were beautiful. The roses were useful.
How could the roses possibly be wrong?
Every piece of information they received told them exactly that.
And so, the suffering masses gradually began treating the very roses pushing them into the abyss as their final salvation. They forbade anyone from speaking ill of the roses. They rejected anyone who tried to expose the truth. They turned against all who denied the value of the roses.
Because by then, the roses had already become their final hope.
The first time Tang Erda witnessed this kind of self-inflicted destruction, he had felt anger.
Later came disappointment.
Then numbness.
And now...
all that remained was a kind of almost frenzied calm.
A dark figure suddenly flashed across the flower field.
Tang Erda’s eyes sharpened instantly.
At the far edge of the field, countless refugees clustered together like swarming black ants, staggering in unison toward a single destination.
Unlike yesterday, they were no longer wandering aimlessly.
Something was drawing them in one fixed direction.
Frowning, Tang Erda followed them closely.
After advancing for some distance, he saw a scene horrifying enough to make his scalp go numb.
At the center of the flower field sat an opened bottle of perfume.
Around it gathered a dense mass of refugees, writhing tentacles trembling violently as they snarled and gnashed rows of pale white teeth.
Yet no matter how desperately they lunged forward, none of them could reach the perfume.
It was as though an invisible wall of glass separated them from it.
The instant Tang Erda saw the scene, a certain item flashed through his mind—
[Magic Space].
This was a trap.
Someone had deliberately set this up to lure players over.
Tang Erda immediately drew his gun without hesitation, intending to destroy the perfume trapped within the invisible “glass case” with a single shot.
But the moment he moved, he felt an indescribable restraint.
The air around him seemed to solidify into invisible walls, compressing into an impossibly narrow glass corridor around his body.
His smooth draw motion stalled for one brief second.
[System Notification: Player Bai Liu has expanded and extended (Magic Space) to trap player Tang Erda.]
—
Author’s Note:
Bestie: No. 2 really works for No. 6 every single day. I’m officially calling him the strongest office worker alive. Hang in there, No. 2! As long as you keep working hard, you’ll be able to let No. 6 live the life he wants sooner!
Me: I’m dying laughing.
