Bai Liu looked at the hand. He leaned over and crawled under the dark bed, trying to reach the snow-white statue's hand model. But at the moment when he was about to touch the hand model, a rose-like vine emerged from under the bed, making the rustling crawling sound that Bai Liu had just heard.

The vine wrapped around the hand model in front of Bai Liu's eyes, as if it was going to drag the hand model into the ground. Bai Liu stretched his body forward and swung the whip to try to break the vine, but the vine had already shrunk and wrapped around the hand model tightly. Bai Liu grabbed it a second before the hand model was dragged into the ground.

The broken, cold right hand statue curled up gently in Bai Liu's palm, as if it was shaking his hand back, and then turned into scattered rose petals in Bai Liu's hand, and the vines also slowly sank into the ground and disappeared.

The snow-white severed hand turned into scattered petals that ignited a phosphorescent light blue flame, then turned into ashes and smoke before Bai Liu's eyes and completely dissipated.

There was nothing under the dim bed. All this hazy reflection in the empty and dark eyes of Bai Liu and Rose was an illusion that no one knew whether it had happened or not.

Bai Liu did not feel the real touch of the object just now. He thought that the severed hand he was holding tightly was just an illusion.

Bai Liu felt nothing except a vague feeling of coldness lingering on his clenched fingers.

Liu Jiayi was still awakened by Bai Liu's movements. She rubbed her eyes sleepily and sat up. She groped for the goggles beside her pillow and put them on. After her vision recovered, she lowered her head and saw Bai Liu crawling under her bed.

Liu Jiayi was sobered up instantly, and her voice was a little off: "What are you doing, Bai Liu!"

Bai Liu slowly stepped out from under the bed. After he swayed on the edge of the bed and raised his head to look at Liu Jiayi, Liu Jiayi was stunned.

...Bai Liu's expression had a rare kind of confusion, as if his soul was bewitched and carried away by something, and he was in a floating trance. The rose in his eyes was swaying and blooming its fourth petal. The black crack under his right eye socket deepened, and the skin and flesh under his right eye peeled off, giving him a shaky and "falling" texture.

"...Bai Liu." Liu Jiayi's voice was inexplicably dry. "Call up your panel and show me your current spirit value."

Bai Liu was silent for a while, and then he seemed to realize what Liu Jiayi was saying to him. He obediently lowered his head and dug out the coins on his chest. He half-squinted his eyes and called up the system panel. He leaned over to show Liu Jiayi, and his shoulders exuded a very tempting scent of burnt roses.

The fragrance made Liu Jiayi dazed for a moment, then she quickly opened the panel and bought two breathing masks, and put them on Bai Liu and herself before her head started to feel dizzy.

But it was still a little late.

[System prompt: Player Liu Jiayi smelled a high concentration of original rose fragrance. Since the player is now intolerant to this concentration of rose fragrance, he entered a (dizzy) debuff effect, and his mental value dropped to 63. He is about to see hallucinations. ]

[System warning: Player Bai Liu smelled a high concentration of original rose fragrance. Since the player is now intolerant to this concentration of rose fragrance, he entered a (dizzy) debuff effect, and his spirit value dropped to 46! Please quickly restore your spirit value! ]

Liu Jiayi's eyes were spinning. She fell back on the small bed, covered her mask and breathed hard. Bai Liu also fell backwards to the ground. His weak breathing created a layer of mist on the mask.

A strong, alluring, and intoxicating aroma that made them unable to move and could only allow themselves to be tortured flowed through their brains, making them almost nauseous. Liu Jiayi coughed violently several times. And everything in front of Bai Liu became twisted and swirled.

He was trapped in some rosy, underwater, suffocating darkness - as if an invisible, severed right hand was quietly grasping him by the throat.

Bai Liu's eyelids drooped slowly.

"Get up! Get up quickly!" A very annoyed and impatient voice was heard along with the sound of "pa pa pa" clapping. "It's so damn late and you're still sleeping! Do you know how much it costs to stay in this tent for a night around the Rose Festival in May?"

"If we weren't short of people, we wouldn't let lowly people like you come in to work as flower pickers!"

Along with the scolding, Bai Liu felt someone grabbing his arm and pulling him up from the ground in a half-asleep state. His head felt dizzy and as if he had worked overtime for a week, was forced by a colleague to go to a social gathering, drank ten bottles of vodka, and then was dragged up to continue working overtime after only one hour of sleep.

——Perhaps he only needed to blow gently on him, and Bai Liu would die suddenly on the spot and never wake up from his sleep.

Bai Liu shook his tingling head, leaned on the back of a chair nearby to steady his uncoordinated body, and took several deep breaths before he put the swaying and spinning scene in front of his eyes back together.

It was still the same old, shabby little tent, but it was much brighter. After all, it was already bright outside.

Bai Liu looked at Liu Jiayi who had staggered down from the bed. After the worker lifted Liu Jiayi down, he turned around and started yelling at them, "Where are the roses? The roses I asked you to pick all night long! You did nothing but got high on them! You two useless bastards!"

As he said this, the factory worker raised his foot angrily and kicked Liu Jiayi in the back while she was still staggering.

The kick did not land, Bai Liu knelt on the ground with a pale face, and the kick landed steadily on Bai Liu's knee. He looked calm and composed, not at all like Zhan Du who was unsteady ten seconds ago.

Bai Liu nodded respectfully to the processor and pointed to the bulging sacks and roses covered with blankets behind him.

"All the roses we picked last night are here." Bai Liu raised her eyes, "a total of 83.7 kg."

The worker's expression changed several times, and he finally retracted his feet and walked behind Bai Liu to check the roses. After roughly confirming that the weight Bai Liu said was correct, the worker turned around with a look of fear and resentment in his eyes and stared at Bai Liu for a while before saying, "You have barely completed the task."

"Don't be complacent! Even if all of you newcomers complete your tasks, it's still too early for you to be promoted to processors and eliminate us old employees who have worked hard and made great contributions!"

He had already walked to the edge of the tent. Without warning, he turned around and kicked Bai Liu viciously, curling his lips with malice:

"Tonight your task will be doubled. Each person must pick 80kg of roses. If you can't do it, you will be exiled from your post!"

The kick landed on Bai Liu's shoulder. Bai Liu, who was still in the dizzy debuff, was "weak" and had no resistance. He was kicked backwards for a distance and hit the chair he had just used as an armrest.

The processor snorted coldly, took the roses picked by Bai Liu and the others and left. He casually tossed them two bottles of light pink perfume in small glass bottles, which Liu Jiayi caught quickly so that they did not fall to the ground.

[System prompt: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for completing the rose side quest (picking 40kg) and receiving a bottle of low-level rose dried leaf gas perfume]

[System prompt: Player Bai Liu has triggered a new mission. Please pick 80kg of roses tonight. If successful, you will receive a reward (two bottles of low-grade rose leaf gas perfume) and progress on the main mission (processor promotion qualification)]

Liu Jiayi staggered towards Bai Liu who was sitting on the ground, took out the perfume and sprayed it towards Bai Liu's face.

[System prompt: Player Bai Liu's (dizziness) debuff is removed, and the spirit value rises to 81]

The cracked openings on Bai Liu's face healed visibly, turning into a shallow depression, but the rose in her eyes seemed to be nourished in some way, shaking its branches and leaves and stretching out its petals. This change, which was obviously not good, made Liu Jiayi stop spraying perfume.

She hesitated for a moment before gritting her teeth and spraying it on her face a few times to relieve herself from the dizziness.

Liu Jiayi leaned back in the chair, half exhausted, and waved her hands in front of Bai Liu to attract his attention. She said in a gloomy tone, "Hey, are you awake? What did you encounter under the bed last night? It almost killed us."

The smell of cheap perfume made Bai Liu, who had just woken up, sniffle a little uncomfortably. He leaned his heavy head back on the chair and looked up at Liu Jiayi with sleepy eyes. Bai Liu told her clearly what he had seen and what had happened last night.

"Something got into our tent when the [Magic Space] was in effect?" Liu Jiayi's brows furrowed as he listened. "This is unlikely."

Bai Liu gave her an inquiring look.

Liu Jiayi turned around, lowered her head and looked at Bai Liu and continued to explain: "I know what you mean. In a new level 3 game, there may indeed be monsters that can break through the boundaries of the [Magic Space]. But think about it, Bai Liu. If it was really such a monster last night, we were attacked, right? Did you trigger the monster book?"

"And if this monster that is strong enough to break through the [Magic Space] really got into our tent—" Liu Jiayi crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows calmly, "—why didn't it kill the two of us players? Why did it get into your tent in the middle of the night? I was under my bed just to hold your hand and show you the rose it turned into?"

"What you said makes some sense." Bai Liu said slowly, "But if its original intention was not to attack and harm, then its entity did not appear last night, and I was not attacked to trigger the monster book. What I saw was just a phantom that it wanted to show me."

Liu Jiayi subconsciously wanted to refute: "No monster's ultimate intention towards the player is not to attack and harm the player. There is no such thing..."

Bai Liu looked at her quietly.

Liu Jiayi stopped talking abruptly. She remembered something and her expression turned serious: "... the god-level wandering NPC in "Love Welfare Home"... what is your relationship with him?"

She had indeed never seen a monster that did not intend to harm players before, but the god-level NPC in the previous copy took the initiative to donate blood to save Bai Liu even though he could have killed her.

This was the first and only time that Liu Jiayi saw a monster saving a player after playing so many games.

"…What's the relationship?" Bai Liu's eyes paused, and began to wander subtly over the top of the tent.

He wanted to find a precise and straightforward definition of the relationship between himself and Xie Ta, but Bai Liu felt that it was indescribable, strange and difficult.

If before entering the game, Bai Liu could tell Liu Jiayi with a clear conscience that he and Xie Ta were just friends.

...But now, the word "friend" was on his lips, and Bai Liu inexplicably thought of Tavel's pure, yet slightly confused eyes, and the cool, yet pious kisses that fell on his lips and forehead again and again.

And the two of them reunited in "Siren Town", and after a long separation, Bai Liu's greasy opening line to Xie Ta was a teasing one - [What do I want... maybe you can give me a kiss? ]

Bai Liu: “…”

Liu Jiayi asked this question, thinking that she would get an answer like "This monster is a player who was transformed after the soul I purchased" but Bai Liu's strange reaction made her have a lot of question marks in her head.

Bai Liu said calmly, "We were friends before, but when we met again, I wasn't sober at the time (my mental state was too low), so I did some things that crossed the line with him. We did some things that shouldn't happen between friends (referring to kissing)."

"But after I sobered up, I still wanted to be friends with him again. Although I don't know what he thinks, from my perspective, we are still friends - this is probably the current relationship between him and me."

Bai Liu gave a high-level summary of what happened between him and Xie Ta.

Liu Jiayi said slowly: "Huh?"

What kind of scumbag statement is this?! Have you ever done this to an NPC before, Bai Liu!?

The author has something to say:

Bai Liu (shameless): We are innocent friends.

Tawil (didn’t understand the situation, but believed what Bai Liu said) said seriously: Yeah

+1 (flipping the table): Don’t use the word “friend” to insult me!! And Bai Liu, you told me that your only friend is Lu Yizhan, right?

Tawil (his eyes slowly move towards Bai Liu): Besides me, does Bai Liu also maintain this kind of relationship with other people?

Bai Liu: ...

You may not believe it, but Lu Yizhan and I are really just friends.jpg