There is a mountain village outside the mine. No one knows what it is called. All we know is that the people who live here have a humble name that is easy to feed.

Ever since the manager started recruiting people, everyone who could move freely in the village came here, signed up for a salary, got a hoe, and worked among the rocks.

At 1:00 am, five players mixed in with the people in the cabin were sent to the steward by a burly man.

Not long after the new arrivals dispersed, there was a commotion in the east.

"Uncle Zhang!"

The man lying on the ground was twitching all over, his forehead was marked with old age marks, his temples were weathered by time, and his face looked sickly from long hours of fatigue.

A girl who looked to be in her teens squatted down in a panic and shook his shoulders vigorously: "Uncle Zhang, Uncle Zhang, how are you? Don't scare me..."

“Pah—”

The whip hit the girl's shoulders hard, throwing her several meters away. Then the manager's voice rang out: "What are you doing? Are you still going to work here?!"

The girl was in so much pain that her eyes were filled with tears and she bit her lips to prevent herself from moaning.

The manager only glanced at her, then turned his hand and hit the man on the ground: "Lazy guy, get up!"

"don't want--!"

The man twitched twice, and a big hole appeared in his linen clothes.

The girl crawled over using her hands and feet, and her hands were covered in blood from the wound.

The whip was not an ordinary whip, but one specially obtained by the manager. It was long enough to exert force, and was covered with dense barbs. If you touched it with your hand, it would hook off a piece of skin, and if it fell on a person, it would directly tear off a whole piece of flesh.

Another whip lashed over: "Get up!"

"He has been doing this non-stop since yesterday. Can't you see that he has fainted from exhaustion?!" The girl subconsciously blocked his attack, and her entire palm was torn apart. She couldn't hold back her tears in pain. "Can't you just let him rest for a while? Why are you still hitting him?"

The steward sneered and whipped her mercilessly.

The girl felt a burning pain from her shoulders to her thighs, and her body was shaking so much that she could not even stand steadily.

"Rest?" The steward stepped forward and looked down at her crawling on the ground. "If you don't want to do it, you can just leave."

The girl trembled with her lips, but remained silent.

"He was the one who came to me and begged me to take him in. He also said that he would never complain no matter how I ordered him around. Of course, it's not just him, you too, all of you!"

Another whip.

"You eat my food, wear my clothes, live in my place, your life belongs to me, so you should work hard for me!"

The second whip.

"Aren't you very arrogant? If you have the guts, just leave! When you leave, even if you are starving to death, don't come to my door and kneel down, dirtying my ground!"

The steward whipped the man three times in a row, causing him to tremble all over and his hands and feet to become weak. The blood under his rags soaked the rags on his body.

When the girl was thrown again, the man on the ground supported his battered body and stood in front of her tremblingly, "Stop, stop hitting me!"

The voice is rough and hoarse.

"Uncle Zhang!"

There were blood marks on his back, but he didn't dare to fall down. He staggered around and kowtowed to the manager: "Please, stop hitting me. It's all my fault. I'll go and continue digging. I'll go now..."

The steward sneered: "How come you couldn't even walk just now? Now you can move again?"

The girl burst into tears: "Uncle Zhang!"

But he didn't even look at her, he just kept kowtowed, his forehead was broken and bleeding.

The steward slapped him on the face with his backhand, venting his anger, and then put away the whip: "Go now!"

No one dared to stay.

No one dared to speak.

The manager was right, they came here voluntarily in the beginning, their indentures were held in someone else's hands, and their lives belonged to others.

To put it another way, even if they really escaped, they would not survive.

Because of poverty.

This mineral source is located in the remote northern border of the country. The village is used to being isolated from the outside world. The land is not suitable for planting. The heavy corvée can bend the spine of a living person. In addition, due to natural disasters in recent years, the vegetation on the mountain has been almost plucked out, and there are many starving and freezing corpses on the road.

It is never that the job needs them, but that they need the job. Without them, there are plenty of people out there vying to take over. Those who cannot bend will eventually be broken inch by inch by death.

So what if it’s hard? At least there is food to eat, and two meals of thin porridge a day are enough to stay alive.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, the steward ordered everyone to rest.

Everyone took bowls to the cave to fetch water, and drank it mouthful by mouthful. As soon as their buttocks touched the ground, they collapsed into the mud. The sweat on the palms of their hands was immediately burned into white steam when it touched the ground.

"Don't come over here!"

The woman was wearing tattered clothes, the fabric stained with blood and sand.

Four or five men surrounded her. The leader was a rare strong man among the old, weak and sick. He had dirty yellow hair and reached out to pull the woman's arm. "What are you wasting your time on? Come here!"

The woman was pulled and staggered, and fell directly in front of the man. The next moment, the male body covered in mud and sweat came directly over her and clamped her arms.

Overworked and malnourished for many years, how could a thin woman push an adult man twice her size? She was pressed down by the weight as heavy as a mountain and couldn't straighten her back. She cried and shouted, "No! Save me, save me..."

The man next to him whistled: "This little girl's screams are quite pleasant."

The leader had already torn off the woman's clothes: "Come on, everyone is like this, do you think you are more noble than others? Lie down right here!"

Until a shovel came crashing down on him.

The man was hit so hard that he saw stars. The shovel exerted force again and hit him hard on the back of the head, knocking him unconscious and falling to the ground.

The men around were stunned, their eyes blazing with anger: "There are still people who meddle in other people's business."

"This is indeed a top-notch product." A man also looked at her with dirty eyes, "Now that you are here, don't leave."

Wu'er looked at the man approaching her and chuckled. The sunlight disappeared from her eyes, and she grasped the handle of the shovel and smashed it.

The people lying on the ground were piled up one by one, like piles of smelly garbage.

Wu Er turned around and looked at the woman on the ground. Her long hair was tied up, and a few strands of sweat stuck to her forehead. "Are you not leaving yet?"

The woman thanked him repeatedly and stood up tremblingly: "I'm leaving now and I won't come here again."

Wu Er rolled up his sleeves, his long eyelashes flickering: "I'm talking about this place, why don't you leave?"

The woman was stunned for a moment, staring blankly at her fair skin, sadness gradually emerging in her eyes: "I won't leave."

No one dared to stay.

No one dared to comfort her.

This is the unspoken rule here. No matter if it is a man or a woman, once the physiological reaction comes up, they will directly find someone else to solve it. Anyway, we are all people struggling in the mud, no one can turn over, no one is nobler than anyone else, and no one cares whether it is rotten skin or rotten roots.

It’s not that no one has resisted, but unfortunately the resistance was unsuccessful; it’s not that no one has informed on others, but unfortunately the manager never paid any attention and implemented to the end what he said, “It doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman, or young or old, when hiring people”; it’s also not that no one has thought about reporting to the authorities, but unfortunately the emperor is far away, and the only county magistrate in the vicinity is the most biased backer of the manager here, because the mine pays the highest tribute every year.

Of course you can escape, but as I said before, you can't survive if you escape because you are poor.

No matter how noble your body is, can it be more precious than your life?

If you can beat them, then your life is not hard enough, your situation is not close enough to death, and the pressure you bear is not heavy enough. Otherwise, why wouldn't you bow down?

At 1 p.m., the manager received news that a woman in the area under his charge had killed five laborers with a shovel.

At that time, Wu Er had just untied her messy hair, and the sound of the wind behind her was close to her ears. She bent down and turned over to avoid it, looking up at the manager who came over.

The steward held the whip, his eyes filled with poison: "Who gave you permission to kill someone?"

Wu Er smiled with his eyes bent: "They are not human, so what if I kill them?"

"I don't care what happens to them. Their lives belong to me. What right do you, a poor guy, have to touch them?" The whip with barbs flew past her shoulder, and the steward's eyes were filled with anger. "Can you replace them if they die? Can you take over the mines they dug? Even if they sold you for the money they should have earned for me, you can't afford to pay for it!"

Wu Er dodged the whip and ran directly to the steward. But before she could get close, more people came forward and surrounded her.

Why has this kind of oppression not been overturned?

The manager stood in the middle of the hired thugs and said, "Whoever can catch her will be rewarded with a thousand taels of silver!"

Dozens of strong thugs tensed their bodies even more and subconsciously leaned towards the girl in the middle.

The steward sneered, "Including everyone present! Whoever catches her will get a reward!"

The men, women, old and young who had been lowering their heads and looking obedient all raised their heads subconsciously. As people who sold themselves in the mine, all kinds of eyes were gathered at the same place, as if they were not looking at a person like them, but a magnified silver bill.

The smile in Wuer's eyes faded little by little.

"Come on, everyone! Take her down!"

It’s really no wonder that no one escaped, not only because they were poor and weak, but also because the people here were too easy to manipulate. They could be pushed to the opposite side with just one sentence.

You can beat one person, two people, three, four, five or six people, but how can you stand out among thousands of people?

Wuer was conscious when he was thrown into the cellar.

She wiped the blood off her shoulder with her right hand, and her fingertips rubbed the scarlet warm liquid, staining her entire hand red. Her eyebrows moved slightly, and she looked up at the person who came and smiled: "Brother."

The light in the cellar was very dim and only a vague shadow could be seen.

Shi Yu listened to her voice and asked, "Can you see clearly?"

"I can't see clearly." Wu Er wiped the blood on his hands on the hem of his clothes and looked at his figure, "But only you will come."

Shi Yu clicked on the bracelet: "Hand."

Wu Er opened her hand, and the next moment a porcelain bottle fell into her palm. She was stunned for a moment: "Didn't I say I gave it to you?"

"It's yours."

"You're just lending me flowers and presenting them to me. How perfunctory."

Shi Yu didn't respond: "Wait until night before leaving."

Wu Er paused: "Where are you leaving?"

"Chonglian Mountain."

That was where they were before they were surrounded by the white mist of the Faceless Ghost.

She turned her head and asked: "What is the connection between this place and that cheeky ghost?"

According to her experience in the game, people become ghosts after death. She had inquired about the face-skinned ghost during the day. If the face-skinned ghost really died here, it should be very memorable to look like that, but no one around claimed to have seen such a person.

Shi Yu: "Its face has both male and female faces, young and old, and it doesn't necessarily refer to a specific person."

Wu Er uncorked the bottle. Because the light was dim and he was half blind, he could only rely on his experience to measure the distance between his hands. He poured the powder into his palms and remained silent for a few seconds before he said, "So that ghost is a collection of many resentful souls?"

"The power limit of a single ghost is unlikely to create such an illusion." Shi Yu said, "What if its original intention in attacking the players was not to kill them, but to let everyone come in and experience everything it had experienced?"

Wu Er: "Why us?"

What is so special about the identity assigned to the player by the system that makes him targeted by the Shameless Ghost?

She asked, “What does it want us to go through?”

Shi Yu stood against the wall, looking at the tiny glimmer of light coming through the crack in the door in the distance: "Those innocent souls who died under the emperor's incomplete rule are seeking revenge on the ruling officials, making them feel the same way about life at the bottom. Does that sound reasonable?"

Wu Er was stunned.

“Although no one is qualified to own the mine, the capital is transferred upwards in one direction. All the money they mine and sell eventually flows into the palace, and is labeled as a great country and an emperor. Their hunger and coldness enable the superiors to live in luxury, but their extravagance and debauchery exacerbate their hardships.”

"The Imperial Censor, the Grand Marshal, the Princess, the Imperial Concubine, the Supreme Court Justice, these are either the oppressors or the beneficiaries of oppression. If you count carefully, no one can escape a murder lawsuit, and the number of lives directly or indirectly lost by them may not be less than those lost at their hands."

Shi Yu said: "Emperor Cheng is dead, but the player is still alive."

Wu Er wiped off the blood stains on the porcelain bottle bit by bit: "Why aren't you angry that you were taken to this place by that shameless ghost as a scum to exploit them?"

The hatred of the Shameless Ghost was a complete disaster for the player who had only been in this world for less than three days.

Shi Yu listened to this question: "It's natural for them to hate, why are they angry?"

Wu Er stared at the figure outside the gate without blinking: "Brother, you are such a good person."

“…”

Shi Yu: "If I were a good person, I wouldn't just stand by and watch you get beaten."

Wu Er smiled so hard that his eyes curved. “But if you hadn’t stood by and watched, the steward would have beaten me even harder and more severely.”

※

Qu Liannian had a radio on his ear and listened to the sound coming from the other end of the bug, and the corners of his mouth rose slightly.

After a long conversation, Shi Yu returned to the surface from underground.

When the two met, Qu Liannian had already put away the thing in his ears, raised his head and wiped the sweat off his face, and greeted him with a pure and kind face: "Boss."

Shi Yu nodded at him and continued to move forward, passing him.