Chapter 146 A Narrow Escape (Unrevised) I really broke down, family...

Liang Jun suddenly felt that the system was particularly talkative.

It was as if a fireworks display had suddenly gone off in her mind.

But what was twinkling in the sky was not dazzling starlight, but rather the sales revenue that had vanished after a long day of hard work.

One wave subsides, another rises.

The truth about Jiang Zhiling's disappearance hasn't been fully uncovered yet, and now everything has been thrown back to the first day of the game, forcing us to start from scratch.

Liang Jun seemed to disbelieve in superstition, wishing she could shove her head directly into the cash drawer. She even thought it might be the kind of magic drawer she played with as a child, the kind with a secret compartment.

But it wasn't until the system painstakingly gave a second progress report that Liang Jun finally lost all hope.

The previous day's revenue of over nine thousand simply vanished into thin air. And it wasn't just her; all the players in this instance had their daily revenue wiped out.

This only proves one thing: this is the system's default setting for replicas.

Liang Jun retrieved her phone from the cashier's counter and began typing rapidly on the screen.

Liang Jun: [It's not that there's a thief, but the system task can only count and monitor the daily turnover.]

Leung Yung: [Since no one reached the 10,000 sales target on the first day, all the money accumulated beforehand will be wiped out on the second day.]

This statement caused an uproar in the "Never Die" group chat.

Some people's thought processes completely miss the point.

Ge Lin: [Holy crap! Sister, you've lost all your money too?!]

Gu Keke: [So, in that case, the system is even more despicable than the thief!]

Some people continued to reason along Liang Jun's lines of thought—

Xin Sang: [As expected, this is more like the way a system operates.]

Luo Chuange: [If it's just about accumulating 10,000 in sales, that's a bit too easy... There's definitely a trap here...]

Of course, there are even more insightful analyses that get to the heart of the problem—

Qi Zhixia: [I'd like to ask, what was everyone's sales revenue on the first day?]

Once this question was raised, the entire group chat fell into an eerie silence.

Liang Jun answered the question with ease; those four numbers had been on her mind all night, and she couldn't forget them.

Liang Yan: [9155.]

As expected, the king of cheering is back online.

Ge Lin: [Holy crap?! So many?!]

Ge Lin: [I wouldn't get this much money even if I were sold!]

Ge Lin: [I only earned a little over two thousand yesterday!]

The others echoed her sentiments. Liang Jun glanced over and noticed that Ge Lin had earned the least among them, while Xin Sang had earned the most, with a turnover of about six thousand.

The average revenue of the players on the first day was around four thousand – which is consistent with Liang Jun's initial assumption.

After learning about everyone's performance on the first day, Qi Zhixia sent a voice message in the group chat.

"Do you all think it's possible to achieve a turnover of 10,000 in one day, given our current level of performance?"

If it's someone like Liang Yan, who encounters a sucker they can rip off, then things are fine.

In most cases, they encounter ordinary customers, and sometimes even invalid customers who do not meet the checkout requirements.

Based on this calculation, completing the system's mission is simply a pipe dream.

"How will you know there's no way if you don't try?"

Liang Jun pressed the record button and, abandoning her previous habit of typing which wasted most of her time, sent a voice message instead. "Because it's the first day on the job, everyone may still be a little unfamiliar with some things, and the operation and behavior will be a bit more constrained and meticulous, so the efficiency will be a bit slower in comparison—but even so, our performance on the first day was still very good."

At this moment, Liang Xuan is like a group leader mobilizing everyone to go to work and work hard.

“Now that we’ve figured out the pattern, we can speed things up a bit when we officially start work today.” She leaned on the counter with one hand. “For example, we can reduce unnecessary conversations with customers and shorten social time; we can also check membership cards from the beginning, and if the card is invalid, we can move the customer to the unmanned passage.”

Liang Jun took a deep breath. "In short, we need to do everything we can to get as many customers as possible through our passageway, so as to generate enough revenue."

This time, everyone responded very quickly, and the group chat was immediately filled with "received" messages from everyone. Every seemingly insignificant detail revealed their determination to be fully prepared.

Liang Jun exited WeChat, then turned on the two-hour alarm again, and put her phone in her pocket after turning off the screen.

She braced her arms on the table, occasionally practicing a standardized smile as she silently awaited the arrival of the eight chimes.

Game time: 08:00.

Leung Jung threw herself back into her busy work schedule.

Whether it was due to her inner thoughts or not, Liang Jun felt that the number of customers today seemed to be much higher than yesterday.

Or, there's a very small chance that the system took pity on everyone and filled each player's checkout lane with customers pushing shopping carts and waiting to pay.

This directly resulted in Liang Xun having no chance to catch her breath. She didn't even need to look up; she just had to mechanically repeat the actions of reading cards and scanning codes.

The customers in front of her seemed to have become merchandise on the checkout counter. Their moving footsteps and the rolling wheels of the shopping carts together formed a conveyor belt for the entire transportation process, which stretched endlessly forward under Liang Jun's robotic work.

The tedious work continued relentlessly, and it wasn't always smooth sailing; naturally, many unexpected obstacles arose along the way.

A dirty, homeless man didn't have a membership card. Liang Jun asked him repeatedly, but he pretended to be hard of hearing.

In the end, Liang Jun had no choice but to tell him to hurry up and go to the deserted passage, otherwise she would call security. Only then did the homeless man leave in a disheveled state.

There was also an ordinary office worker carrying a briefcase who only bought two bags of bread. Although it wasn't a large quantity, she should have been able to pay quickly, but the other person kept pestering her, claiming that he could take her to see the outside world.

To avoid increasing the unnecessary complaint rate, Leung Chung could only put on a fake smile and politely see him off.

Finally, a woman in her forties or fifties came in and insisted that she pay for a can of tuna without any barcode.

Leung Yung repeatedly emphasized that this product could not be paid for normally, but the aunt was very insistent on having this particular can of tuna, otherwise she would file a complaint against her.

Liang Jun, unable to bear it any longer, finally took out her own supplies from the shopping bag at her feet and threw the same can of tuna to the aunt, which finally ended the matter completely.

Her constant work made her completely unaware of the passage of time.

Just as the overhead loudspeaker announced twenty more bell rings, Liang Jun had just received the stack of banknotes from the customer in front of her.

It cost a full 1500 yuan.

Although it can't compare to the previous day's, this is still the highest single-day revenue for the day.

The closing bell seemed to be a urging signal to customers as well. The NPC in front of him didn't even have time to ask for a receipt; he simply picked up his shopping bag, turned around, and left.

Liang Jun hurriedly pressed the "checkout" button on the keyboard, trying to make the cash drawer full of various coins pop out again.

However, perhaps because it was outside of working hours, all the equipment on the cash register was automatically locked. No matter how Liang Yan operated it, she could not break the mechanism that had already locked the cash drawer.

Holding the thick wad of sweaty banknotes in her hand, she sat back down on the ground, looking somewhat disheveled.

This is the first real rest she's had today.

Her restless heartbeat couldn't calm down during the brief respite. Liang Jun let her eardrums fill with the intense sound of her heartbeat, and then casually took out her phone to check.

Her phone battery was down to 63%, which was a rather dangerous level for Liang Jun. But no one had expected them to seamlessly enter the dungeon, so the charger was still in the car. At this point, she could only lower the screen brightness to try and slow down the battery drain.

Unsurprisingly, everyone in the group was complaining bitterly.

Luo Chuange: [This is the closest I've ever come to victory...]

Ge Lin: [How much? Tell me and it'll shock your family.]

Luo Chuange: [Seven thousand three...]

Xin Sang: [I just broke 8,000, thank you for making me happy.]

Gu Keke: [I only have five thousand four...]

Gu Keke: [Even my live streams don't have this few viewers...]

Gu Keke: [I'm really shocked, everyone! How is it possible to achieve a turnover of 10,000?!]

Qi Zhixia: [I don't know if everyone has noticed, but the average order value seems to have dropped a lot today.]

Liang Jun naturally realized this as well. Therefore, she was not at all as anxious as she was yesterday, frantically seeking system verification of her current sales volume.

Because she knew she certainly hadn't reached that astronomical figure.

[Day Two Work Log]

Revenue: 8892 yuan.

[Customers served: 13.]

Number of complaints: 2.

Real-time complaint rate: 15.38%

[Do you want to view the details of the complaint?]

Liang Jun listlessly deleted the system message. "I'm not looking."

The pile of banknotes worth 1,500 yuan in her hand was crumpled into a mess.

Liang Jun felt this was a hot potato, so without even thinking about it, she stuffed the messy banknotes into her pocket.

Anyway, once a new day arrives, this useless 1500 yuan will be completely cleared by the system and disappear into thin air, just like the stack of banknotes in the cash drawer.

Why should she waste more emotions and time on this?

The feeling of physical and mental exhaustion swept over Liang Xun like a storm. Although the position of curling up behind the cashier counter was not comfortable, she couldn't think about anything else because her eyelids were too heavy to keep open.

Just a second before closing her eyes to rest, Liang Xun's exhausted and sluggish brain finally managed to glean a useful piece of information.

That is, apart from "turnover", all the statistics mentioned in the "work log" are the total number after entering the copy.

For example, Liang Jun only received one customer complaint notification today, but the "work log" counted two complaints for her.

This might be beneficial to the players, but before Liang Jun could even consider the specific pros and cons, she fell into a deep sleep.

She didn't sleep well that night. When Liang Jun was awakened by the sunlight outside, she felt that her cervical spine, lumbar spine and limbs were as if they had been dismembered and were in great pain.

She leaned against the wall and the counter to get up, and subconsciously restarted the cash drawer.

As expected, she was greeted by emptiness once again.

Liang Xun automatically ignored the system's mocking progress notifications. Instead, she squatted down, trying to carefully consider her next course of action.

It appears that the system has a certain degree of automatic balancing. For example, if the number of customers served by a player increases, the corresponding customer revenue will decrease.

In other words, it seems that all of this is being silently manipulated by the invisible hand of the system, preventing players from ever breaking through the 10,000 yuan mark in daily revenue.

Liang Jun always felt that something was lingering in her chest, neither rising nor falling.

Was all the player's efforts in vain?

If the system had eyes that could monitor the players, wouldn't it be enjoying the farce brought about by the players, who are like circus clowns, from a high and mighty position?

The vibration of her pocket phone interrupted her absurd thoughts.

Liang Jun, completely bewildered, reached into her pocket, but accidentally reached in the wrong direction.

What she pulled out was a pile of crumpled cash bills.

One thousand five hundred yuan, no more and no less.

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A message from the author: Happy Mid-Autumn Festival everyone!