Tang Erda took a deep breath, stood up with the sack, and began to pick roses quickly again. His movements were fast and skillful. Although he looked a little unexperienced and clumsy, the roses in the sack were still growing very fast - at least much faster than the speed when Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi worked together to pick them.
After all, he is a strong man who is good at physical work. There is still a certain gap between him and a child like Liu Jiayi and a social animal like Bai Liu who sits in front of the computer and works 996 all day long.
But when Tang Erda filled half of the sack with dried rose leaves, there was a rustling sound from the surrounding flower fields - as if some animal was crawling on the soil of the flower fields, quickly digging with its limbs, or more than four limbs, approaching him.
The sound of tiny, sticky, densely packed limbs being inserted into the soil and then pulled out made Tang Erda turn his head alertly. A silver revolver appeared out of thin air in his hand, and he held it tightly up.
Tang Er carefully moved around the place where the strange sound came from, lightly moved the magazine with his thumb to load the gun, and aimed the gun at the trembling rose cluster.
The gorgeous and lush flowers kept swaying and trembling, and something hidden in the soil moved closer to Tang Erda little by little along with the trembling flowers. A strong, rotten smell, like that of dead leaves that had been deposited for a long time, blew over his face.
The tremor continued to approach, and finally stopped about a dozen and a half meters away from Tang Er.
Tang Erda took careful steps, half-crouched ready to strike, and used his other hand that was not holding the gun to cover the branches and flowers of the creature approaching him, while the hand holding the gun was aimed steadily at the place where the trembling last stopped.
The thing seemed to know that Tang Erda was pointing his weapon at it. It remained silent for a while, but was eventually defeated by the scent of the petals in Tang Erda's sack, and a roaring humanoid monster rushed out of the mud.
Its body was covered in scarlet mud, which was still dripping down. Only the outline of a humanoid creature could be vaguely seen. The skin and flesh on its body were all peeling off one by one, like a withered leaf sticking out from the outside, and its bones were like the stems of a plant, with the black flesh and blood cracking from the bones in a withered manner. The skin was the same withered yellow color as the dry leaves.
With every step the monster took, the "leaves" hanging on its body trembled. As it walked, the dirt on its face finally dripped off, revealing its true appearance - its eyeballs were sunken and black, and the flesh on the right side of its face had all withered away, leaving only bones. But strangely, some white, dense, granulation-like bone spurs were wriggling on its cheekbones, as if they were about to grow out in the next second.
The monster raised its eyeballs that were about to fall off. Inside them were a pair of withered roses that were about to die. It opened its mouth, which had rotted all the way to its nostrils and gums, and uttered an eerie, hoarse voice through its white teeth: "I want perfume! Give me perfume!!"
The flesh buds that were wriggling on its bones instantly stretched out and turned into long, flesh-colored tentacles with pores, which stabbed towards Tang Er. The places on its body that had no flesh and were only bones were immediately filled with these thumb-thick wriggling tentacles.
Tang Erda was just waiting for the monster to attack him first. Only after the monster attacked him could he trigger the monster book.
[System prompt: Congratulations to player Tang Er for triggering the monster book]
["Rose Factory Monster Book" Refresh - Dry Leaf Addict (1/3)]
[Monster Name: Dry Leaf Addict (Refugee)]
[Features: After being unable to obtain low-concentration perfumes, low-level refugees gradually wither. However, before they completely wither, these refugees who cannot obtain perfumes to alleviate their withering will first fall into a madness caused by perfume addiction. This madness makes them imagine that they can do anything...]
[In order to obtain the last pleasure before withering and death, the daring low-class addicts came to the flower fields that can produce dried roses to steal roses, but unfortunately, these low-class refugees have a strong stench on their bodies and cannot touch the roses in the flower fields, so they can only steal the roses that the flower pickers have already picked. Dear flower pickers, be careful of these rose thieves]
[Weakness: ? ? ? (to be explored)]
[Attack method: Stealing roses (A+), use tentacles to attack flower pickers to steal their labor results]
This monster had very long tentacles, and the sweeping attacks from all directions forced Tang Erda to take several steps back, but he did not attack immediately.
According to the factory worker who brought him here before, there must be more than one such monster in the flower field. Tang Erda prepared to lure this monster to attack several times so as to understand all of its attack methods.
He was very agile, so it wouldn't be difficult for him to deal with a level A+ monster, but this thought only lasted for less than a second.
When the monster extended its tentacles to attack Tang Erda again, Tang Erda watched the tentacles rolling and brushing past his eyes less than two centimeters away - the tentacle was a bit like the root of some plant, and there were occasional scars on the tentacle as if something had fallen off.
Tang Er soon figured out what those scars were - these scars were traces of the connection points left on the bones after the flesh and blood "leaves" dried up and fell off. The tentacles that grew from the bones also had these scars.
——This mark is exactly the same as the mark left on the rhizome of the dry-leaf rose that Tang Erda picked just now, after the leaves withered and fell.
Tang Erda took a few steps back with an ugly look on his face. He realized something and immediately took out his gun and shot the monster in front of him to death.
The monster screamed and fell to the ground, but it was too late. More and more rose bushes began to sway.
Tang Erda felt that he was stepping on a piece of soft, fleshy ground that was twisting as he retreated. He looked down and saw countless root-like tentacles twisting and entwining under his feet, like a group of mating pythons, spreading from Tang Erda's feet all the way to every corner of the undulating flower field.
In the vast rose garden, shadowy figures of refugees crawled out from the soil, their faces and bodies covered with tentacles, crawling all the way down to the mud on the ground. The twisting tentacles on these refugees were connected to the roots and leaves of the roses in the flower field, which became more and more beautiful under the moonlight.
These "refugees" are parasites of the dry-leaf roses, and they live underground in these roses.
They have been hiding in the earth, struggling to survive, looking out of the earth day and night with their two eyes stained with roses, greedily and crazily, just waiting for the full flowers with withered leaves to be plucked by the flower pickers.
In the end, even his bones were parasitized by the rose roots, and he didn't care that his body was covered with scars from the falling dry leaves.
The flower fields changed from soft crimson mud to a swamp of rotting flesh and blood. The slippery red mud was formed by the accumulation of leaves that fell from the refugees' bodies and were trampled upon. However, the smell was masked by the rich and intense fragrance of the roses and could not be smelled at all.
Growing out from the ground, the refugees with tentacles all over their bodies stared at Rose's eyes fixed on them, and approached Tang Erda step by step like reversed puppets. Tang Erda's ankles were also entangled by the tentacles that emerged from the ground.
A human face emerged from Tang Erda's feet. Nearly two-thirds of the face was rotten and covered with tentacles. Tentacles also emerged from its open mouth. The tentacles in its mouth retracted and wrapped around Tang Erda's ankles, pulling him underground.
It mumbled with its tentacles in its mouth:
“Give me perfume!!”
"Give me a rose!"
The lingering sounds of the wronged ghosts were like a chorus, coming from all directions. The moon was shining brightly on the crimson ground. Tang Erda gritted his teeth and shot at the tentacle on his ankle. The moment the tentacle broke off, the rose in his eyes bloomed its second petal.
[System prompt: Player Tang Erda's spirit value has dropped to 78. Please use perfume to restore the spirit value as soon as possible to prevent being transformed.]
Walking along the flower field under the pure white moonlight, at the other end of this endless flower field, Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi were lying on the shore salting fish.
The two men stood still with their eyes staring at the sky. Except for their chests rising and falling due to the intense physical activity, they looked like two corpses that had just been carried here.
"I've rested for five minutes, it's time to get up and pick some flowers," said Liu Jiayi.
"Do you think that taking a five-minute break or a ten-minute break now will have any impact on our ability to complete the work?" Bai Liu asked back calmly.
Liu Jiayi was silent for a while: "...It seems not."
After all, they have only collected six kilograms so far, and it seems that it will be difficult to complete the task of picking 40 kilograms of roses before dawn.
Bai Liu said calmly: "Then we can rest for a while longer."
Liu Jiayi: “…”
What on earth is going on with this lazy mentality? !
"You were in a very depressed mood when playing the game this time, Bai Liu." Liu Jiayi sat up and looked at the motionless Bai Liu. She crossed her arms and looked down at the salted fish lying next to her. "You usually operate at your limit to complete the game. I don't believe that you don't have any ideas to break through."
Bai Liu squinted his eyes and looked at Liu Jiayi: "I don't believe you don't have it in your mind either, so the reason why we are not taking action now should be the same."
Liu Jiayi remained silent for a while.
Bai Liu turned his head back to look at the sky and continued, "First, it is impossible for you and I to obtain 40kg of roses through conventional labor. If we cannot pass the customs through this method, our labor will be unrewarding, low cost-effective, and will accelerate the speed at which we are polluted."
"After calculating the results of your and my first hour of work, we are sure that this method will not work, so there is no need to continue this meaningless work."