Chapter 72, Chapter Nineteen: The Fantasy Mansion
Wen Ting breathed a sigh of relief after receiving a reply from Chaochao DD confirming that they were safe.
Fearing the two wouldn't have time to check the group chat, she compiled the latest distribution map of the zombies in the group for them.
Thanks to this, the two of them didn't encounter a single corpse monster on their way back.
They arrived safely at the office of the Character Design Team 9, and Wen Ting let them in.
She immediately locked the door and pulled down the blinds on the glass wall, leaving them half-open to block the monsters' vision without completely obscuring their own.
Chaochao chattered on and on about their amazing adventure, "So picking them won't hurt, and you'll even gain skills!"
Wen Ting was shocked. "Besides you, is there anyone else with such abilities?"
“I didn’t run into anyone,” DD said.
“We need to tell the others immediately.” Wen Ting took out her phone, typed a line of text, then deleted it, and pointed the camera at the two of them. “Let me take a picture of you taking off your name tags.”
"Okay, why?"
"To increase persuasiveness," Wen Ting said.
To prevent people from taking off their work badges and getting into trouble, and then being blamed for fraud and harming others.
She posted photos of Chaochao and DD without their work badges, explaining her situation briefly and asking if anyone had a similar experience, hoping everyone could share more information.
The group chat became lively again, filled with amazement about the two people's experiences.
Thinking of something, Wen Ting immediately went to look up the employee handbook.
Sure enough, text appeared out of nowhere below Rule Six:
"7. During working hours, employees must wear their employee ID cards. The company will not be responsible for any consequences arising from employees removing their ID cards without authorization."
She frowned. The description wasn't friendly; it could be called a warning... or a blustering, insincere act.
Chaochao didn't care about any of that; she only believed in her own personal experience.
She urged Wen Ting impatiently, "Sister Windy, hurry up and take off your name tag! Let's see what skills you'll get!"
Wen Ting hesitated for a moment.
She looked behind her but still couldn't see Gong Baidie, so she agreed with Chaochao, "I'll give it a try."
She lifted her work badge, just above her chin, and a sharp pain shot through her neck.
It wasn't an illusion; she clearly felt the tearing sensation of skin and flesh separating, as if she wasn't holding a work badge, but rather the skin of her entire neck, with each inch of skin above the badge being torn apart.
"Sister!" The two stared in astonishment at her pained and contorted face.
Wen Ting gritted her teeth and changed the method of acquisition.
She looked down, trying to squeeze out of the blue rope noose.
This time, it wasn't just the pain of having my skin and flesh peeled off; even my cervical vertebrae were being dug out piece by piece.
"No...no..." She suddenly let go of her employee badge, clutched her neck, her back was soaked with cold sweat, and her face was filled with the lingering horror of excruciating pain.
"It hurts too much, I can't take it off."
The fallen name tag wobbled a few times, then slowly came to rest in front of her abdomen, returning to its original position.
DD handed her a glass of water, saying, "Don't force yourself."
"Yes, yes." Chaochao was also startled. "Sister, stop taking them off, your lips are all white."
Wen Ting coughed twice, rubbing her neck.
She was in so much pain she couldn't speak. She glanced at the group chat and her heart sank.
Most people said it was too painful to remove their work badges and couldn't, but three people did manage to remove them.
The leader of the fourth training group was the first to reply: "I took it off, let me show you."
He sent a picture, which Wen Ting clicked on.
An exaggeratedly heavy submachine gun.
Just as they opened the picture, the three of them suddenly heard a series of loud noises coming from downstairs, like renovations or firecrackers.
Wen Ting suddenly realized that it was a gunshot.
After the gunfire subsided, the older brother posted a photo in the group chat.
Two bullet-riddled corpses lay on the ground.
A group of people cheered and applauded below. Wen Ting immediately sent him a private message: "Brother, the skill's validity period is very short, and it seems that it cannot be refreshed in a short time. Protect yourself and don't get carried away in battle."
The other person replied with a positive emoji.
Besides him, someone else acquired the skill: Amy, who was in the same class as Wen Ting and was four months pregnant.
She posted a photo of a tennis racket.
Someone commented, "Did you post the wrong picture?"
Everyone in the company knows that Amy is a fan of The Prince of Tennis.
“No mistake, this is what I came out of after taking off my employee badge,” Amy replied.
A series of astonishments erupted below, but Amy didn't reply.
After a while, she suddenly posted several photos in a row.
The photos are blurry because they were taken while the camera was moving. Most of them are unreadable, and only a few show a zombie.
In the last blurry image, the upper body of the ghoul has flipped out of the corridor window, with only a lower leg and foot remaining inside, as if it had been thrown out.
Following these images, Amy sent two more voice messages: "It's Tokugawa! It's a black hole!"
Her voice was breathless, sounding terrified: "I tried it on a monster. When I swung the racket, it stopped. When I swung it again, it flew out the way I wanted. It's Tokugawa's black hole!"
Two other colleagues immediately followed: "Yes, yes! We saw it too, it really is!" and "After Amy knocked the monster away, we opened the window and let it fly out."
Tokugawa is a character who appears later in the story. Wen Ting doesn't know much about the new Prince of Tennis, but judging from Amy's description, it's a very useful skill.
Seeing her silently staring at her phone, Chaochao patted Wenting's back and said, "It's okay, sis. We both have it now, so we'll protect you."
Wen Ting snapped out of her daze and smiled apologetically, "Sorry, I'm so useless."
"How could that be, sister!" Chaochao's eyes widened. "Don't say that. I've caused you so much trouble before, and you've never said I was useless."
DD nodded in agreement.
Wen Ting lowered her head and took Chaochao's hand. "Thank you."
"No need to thank me," Chaochao said optimistically. "There are only a few monsters. With so many of us, we can defeat them even without using any skills. Besides, we've already eliminated seven today. The rest, the rest..."
“Four,” DD added.
"Yes, just four! There won't be any more danger."
Wen Ting looked out of the blinds. "Originally there were only 11, but the people killed by the monster today have been arranged into the same shape as the monster. This is probably more than just the monster's perverse sense of humor."
DD understood what she was worried about, "But as we've come all this way, the corpses are just corpses, they won't move at all."
After thinking for a moment, he asked again, "Do you want to cremate them? There is a fire in the kitchen."
Wen Ting shook her head, "That fire is too small, it won't burn anything."
"Then throw it out the window?"
“Last time, the bodies disappeared the next day, and there was a risk of them coming back even if you threw them out the window,” Wen Ting said. “The safest thing to do is to dismember them and chop them up as finely as possible.”
After she finished speaking, she saw the two of them pause in surprise, their eyes filled with astonishment.
DD spoke first, "It's safer, but the initial estimate is that there are close to twenty dead. Whether the knives in the kitchen can cut so many corpses, and whether there are enough people willing to dismember the dead, are all questions."
"Wait a minute!" Chaochao interrupted. "If this is a magical fantasy world, the dead should be able to be resurrected easily, right? Why don't we wait and see if someone awakens a resurrection skill? There are so many healer characters, surely some of us like healers."
As she was speaking, a new message popped up: "Look! Someone else has taken off their employee badge!"
Wen Ting looked at her phone. The person speaking was the leader of the sixth character design team, who was not far from them. Her first message was: "I took it off too."
Article Two: "Nothing happened."
Everyone was surprised. How could there be a situation where nothing happened after the employee badge was removed?
Chaochao immediately shared her experience: "Think about your favorite character?"
About two or three minutes later, the other side replied: "I've thought about it again, but nothing has appeared yet."
The experienced Dong Si and Amy also gave her some advice: "Draw your favorite character in your mind?"
"If your imagination isn't vivid enough, just shout it out! Shout it out like you're at a concert!"
"Perhaps it's an abstract, intangible skill, like telekinesis or spatial manipulation?"
Various suggestions sprang up like mushrooms after rain, but no matter whose method it was, the other party always replied, "No, nothing at all."
The group chat went silent for a moment.
Until DD sent a message: "Are you sure you have a favorite painting?"
No one replied.
His message ended the group chat, just like he ended an interview back then.
After a long pause, the other party replied, "It's probably gone."
"Painting is as natural to me as drinking water."
Drinking water is as natural as drinking water, as ordinary as drinking water.
No job can be enjoyed with the same passion year after year.
Upon seeing this sentence, many people who were trying to remove their employee badges stopped what they were doing.
It's not just the fear of not making a profit that's more worrying, but also the "uncertainty".
According to existing patterns, removing the employee badge will grant those who have a particular fondness for a particular work the skills from that work, such as the guns from the anime "Dong Si" (动四), the Prince of Tennis from "Amy" (阿MY), the magical girl from "Asahina" (朝朝), and the fusion fish from "DD" (DD).
People who are indifferent to a work lack skills, such as the head of the character design team.
"If I really hate my job, I'll take off my employee badge, won't I die...?"
+1
“.
"I carefully read through the new rules [During working hours, employees must wear their own name tags. The company will not be responsible for any consequences arising from removing the name tag without authorization.] Isn't this a clear warning? It shows that there may indeed be negative consequences."
Wen Ting pursed her lips.
She certainly doesn't hate painting, but does she have any works she's particularly passionate about...?
Wen Ting thought of the first painting she ever made—she couldn't remember when she painted it, let alone what she painted. Logically, it might have been a circle? Or maybe just a line?
What about the first portrait?
It could be a big-faced person drawn with oil pastels, or it could be a stick figure.
She doesn't remember such trivial matters at all.
Clutching her employee badge, Wen Ting sat back down in her seat.
This day was exceptionally difficult to endure.
While awakening skills is exciting, it was soon discovered that skills are likely one-time use, or at least limited to once per day.
In the time that followed, even when they repeated the action of removing their work badges, they never regained their skills.
Of the first five people who had their employee badges removed, four possessed skills.
Subsequently, seven more people removed their name tags. The pain they experienced when removing their name tags was far greater than that of the first group, and their skill acquisition rate was also much lower, with only three people possessing skills.
Wen Ting compiled a list of people who had removed their work badges in her memo.
Regardless of whether they possess skills, these individuals share two characteristics: youth or wealth.
Pain is inversely proportional to these two factors. The youngest, Chaochao, and the richest, Dong Si, removed their work badges almost painlessly.
The second group, led by DD, felt sore when they picked them;
Among the 11 people, Max, the man with the highest pain level, felt a suffocating and congested sensation, like being hanged.
Max and Wen Ting are the same age, with no difference in age; his salary is only half that of Wen Ting, but as a local of the capital, he owns three houses in the city, one house in the suburbs that is about to be demolished, and three mid-to-high-end cars.
Even the most painful conditions far exceed those of Wen Ting.
Young and wealthy are a minority; only 11 people were able to remove their work badges that day, while the rest succumbed to excruciating pain.
As darkness fell, the presence of the corpses in the corridor grew stronger.
They remain silent and motionless, and apart from being transformed into an alternative artistic form, they are no different from ordinary corpses.
The current calm doesn't mean anything; Wen Ting instinctively feels that they will become a big problem.
She contacted the eldest brother of the fourth-ranked worker, explained her idea, and hoped that he could organize people to dispose of the body.
The eldest brother disagreed, giving a similar reason to Chaochao's, plus another point: "I think your idea makes sense. You feel that they could move and hurt people at any time—so, Wenting, how can you guarantee that they won't suddenly attack while we're dealing with them?"
Wen Ting was speechless.
There's no way to guarantee that.
Dismembering a dozen or so corpses is no easy task; it takes a lot of time, and during the process, no one can guarantee that the corpses will remain obediently dead.
She glanced at her phone again.
The bottom right corner is empty.
If Gong Baidie were here, she could ask him to do this.
He disappeared just when she needed him most.
It's possible that the assessment day restricted him, or perhaps he deliberately hid away to observe.
Wen Ting suspected that he was a monster from a ghost story disguised as a human.
But since there are two men of the same age with the surname Gong and the given name Bai here, the character "Gong Baidie" becomes intriguing.
The obverse of the coin features a white palace butterfly, while the reverse features a black palace butterfly.
There are two possibilities, fifty-fifty.
At first, she almost blindly chose the positive option;
Now, however, various doubts have forced her to choose the opposite side.
Wen Ting felt regret first. If Gong Baidie had become twisted and evil, he probably wouldn't have agreed to be her crane and weave cloth for her at home to sell for money.
But if he has some connection to this ghost story—or is even the mastermind behind it—then he has a way to unlock it!
Wen Ting drew a "凸" on the paper, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, an abstract butterfly symbol.
As long as He is Gong Baidie, the situation is not the worst.
While the white palace butterfly brought her peace of mind, compared to a kind male nanny suppressed by ghost stories and unable to do anything, the black palace butterfly, capable of opening the entrance to the ghost stories, was more advantageous to the situation.
But why did he have to play the role of a nanny for her? Why didn't he go all the way and disappear at such a crucial moment?
This wavering behavior—is he struggling with his decision?
The reason for my hesitation is...
Wen Ting drew several horizontal lines on the blank paper, deleted her thoughts, and changed them to:
Something was restricting him, preventing him from appearing.
"Something" can be objective rules or barriers;
It could also be his thoughts, his mood, or his ideas.
Regardless of the reason, it's a fact that his state of mind is unstable, and it's even more true that he is no longer worthy of her trust.
If colleagues are unreliable, and roles are unreliable, then she'll have to do it herself.
Wen Ting opened the drawer and took out a small knife for cutting fruit.
The dagger her fourth brother gave her was unopened; this fruit knife was her only weapon.
She lifted the blinds and cautiously peered outside.
There are no more corpses in this corridor.
After the awakened ones swept through the area, only two corpse monsters remain in the ghost stories. As long as she's not too unlucky, it shouldn't be difficult for her to have a safe time of more than ten minutes.
Seeing Wen Ting unlock the door, Chaochao, who was lying on the table, was startled. "Sister, where are you going?"
"Lend me your gun." Wen Ting took Chaochao's long gun, pointed to the corridor, and said, "You two, one watch the left and the other the right, keep watch for me."
"What are you going to do?" DD stood up.
"The first batch of dead turned into corpse monsters on the first day of the assessment, and their appearance and numbers were exactly the same. I am at least 80% sure that those who died today will appear as corpse monsters on the next day of the assessment," Wen Ting said. "The corpses will likely disappear before dawn, and I must do something."
"It's too dangerous!" Chaochao exclaimed. "Besides, with so many corpses, how many can you handle by yourself?"
“Assuming there are 20 corpses, each one I deal with reduces the danger rate by 5%, which increases my survival chance for the next assessment day by 5%.” Wen Ting looked at the two of them. “You should understand what a 5% stat increase means in the game.”
DD picked up the katana. "I'll go with you."
"!" Chaochao opened her mouth, scratching her hair in annoyance.
After a long pause, she gave in defeat and said, "Fine, I'll help too."
She also understood that it was more practical to fight for the lives of the living than to wait for someone to awaken a resurrection skill to save their dead colleagues.
They crept out of the room quietly, and there were three corpses on that floor.
Wen Ting chose the nearest unfortunate one that Gulanda had arranged into a floral arrangement;
DD walked a little further away and squatted down next to the corpse that Ge had torn apart;
Chaochao pressed himself against the wall, nervously watching from both sides.
They didn't have many tools, so it wasn't realistic to cut the corpse into pieces directly. Wen Ting only planned to damage the vital parts.
The strong stench of blood assaulted her senses, but she steeled herself, avoiding the face that was half flowers and half eyes, and pressed the blade against the corpse's neck.
The skin tissue was much harder to cut than she had imagined, and it was not something that could be completed in the ten or so minutes she had expected.
She grabbed the corpse's jaw, her male colleague's stubble-covered chin in her hand, the blood creating an indescribable sensation.
Suppressing the urge to vomit, she used a fruit knife to make a series of cratered cuts around his neck.
Blood splattered, soaking her sleeves red.
Wen Ting sniffed. After staring at the bloodshot eyes for a while, her eyes felt sore and hot, and her entire field of vision seemed to be covered with a light red layer.
She severed the artery, gripped the knife, and stabbed the corpse in the eyeball.
She then used a fruit knife to cut open the corpse's chest and thrust the unopened gun tip into the wound.
The gun was stuck in her ribs. Wen Ting stood up, grabbed the gun barrel with both hands, and used her full weight to press down.
She couldn't tell if the gun had pierced her heart; she just kept pushing, using all her strength. Her blood-stained, slippery hands left a two-foot-long red mark on the gun barrel.
She heard Chaochao's suppressed sobs, and Wenting's face was also wet and cold.
She was crying too, but her mood wasn't as devastated as she had expected; she was much calmer than she thought.
For a moment, a thought flashed through Wen Ting's mind: At least killing someone is easier than killing a living person.
Has she become this cold-blooded?
As she slaughtered the corpses, she even had the energy to reflect on whether she was an antisocial personality.
The movements of her hands felt strangely familiar, as if she had done them before.
She could never have killed anyone—not because she had any confidence in her own moral principles, but because she had confidence in the capital's police force.
As Wen Ting poked, she analyzed that this was probably just an illusion caused by the hippocampal effect.
It took her nearly half an hour to slit the corpse's neck, pierce its eyeballs, and puncture its heart.
The three returned to the office. Two people covered in blood sat on the floor, panting. The only sound in the room was Chaochao's occasional sobs.
She was terrified.
Wen Ting reached into her pocket, found her hands sticky, and pulled out a tissue.
She took out two candies through a tissue, tried to put on a reassuring smile, and handed them to the two children.
Chaochao had almost finished crying when she took the candy from Wenting and burst into tears again.
She buried her face in Wen Ting's arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
DD unwrapped the candy, silently sucked on it, and her bloodied cheeks bulged slightly.
Wen Ting wanted to pat Chaochao's back, but her hands were covered in blood, and she was afraid of getting her clothes dirty. So she lowered her head and nuzzled Chaochao with her forehead, offering silent comfort.
The phone screen on the ground lit up, and a private message quietly popped up.
When Wen Ting sent a message to Chaochao DD, she put her phone on silent mode. She was slightly surprised to see who sent the message.
Max: Where are you?
Wen Ting picked up her phone, but her thumb, congealed with blood, couldn't unlock it with her fingerprint. She had to enter a password to access the OA system.
Max was the last person to remove his employee badge today and acquire the skill.
Above this newly sent message were his previous posts: "Happy New Year! When are you coming back to the capital?" and "Back to work tomorrow, let's have dinner together, and I'll show you my new ride [smug.jpg]".
The chat stopped for a week after that, and Wen Ting never received any more messages from Max since the ghost story began.
She tapped the screen with her fingernail, thought for a moment, then turned off her phone and put it aside.
Several bloody fingerprints were left on the black screen.
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The author's note: The coin has a white palace butterfly on one side and a black palace butterfly on the other. Let's guess...
Wen Ting: Opposite side.
Let's guess which way fate will fall.
Wen Ting: The opposite side. The opposite side, the opposite side, the opposite side, the opposite side.
Lu Qi: The obverse of the coin features a white Lulu, and the reverse features a black...
Lu Qi: Front.
The reverse side is black and exposed...
Lu Qi: Front! Front! Front! Front! Front! Front! Front! Front! Front!
Do you understand? This is why Unit One is an angel dog fairy tale, and you are a damp male ghost. Stop saying it's unfair.
Wen Ting: Opposite side.
...Enough, shut up.
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