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During the day, the roses in the flower fields were closed, becoming buds that never bloomed, and the moist soil became dry. The flower fields looked harmless and peaceful, but after a while of experimenting, Bai Liu and his friends discovered that their spirit levels would drop faster when they stayed around the flower fields than when they stayed in other places.
They only had two bottles of low-grade perfume. In order to maintain a normal mental state, if they stayed around the flower fields, the perfume might not last until the evening. So Bai Liu decisively chose to stay away from the flower fields - to be more precise, Bai Liu wanted to stay away from this entire perfume factory with an unknown source of pollution.
Two bottles of perfume that last for four hours, they have to last until the next morning, and staying in a place that is more easily contaminated is obviously not a good idea.
Bai Liu decided to walk outside the factory to see what was going on in the area where the factory was located.
"What you can think of, others can think of too." Liu Jiayi, who was holding Bai Liu's hand, frowned. "If we go out like this, it's easy to run into other players. And don't you think of a way to deal with our 80kg rose task tonight? What I did last night was already the maximum effect of my ability, and I could only barely get 80kg. It's impossible to double it to 160kg."
Bai Liu was not in a hurry: "Didn't you hear what the processor said this morning? All the new flower pickers completed their tasks last night."
"There are six players in this game. At the beginning, the players are new flower pickers. If all the flower pickers complete the task, it means that the other four players besides us are also capable of picking 40kg of roses in one night."
Bai Liu smiled and said, "Four people can pick 40kg in one night. Isn't that exactly the 160kg we need?"
"..." Liu Jiayi rubbed her arms, which had goosebumps from Bai Liu's mysterious smile, and asked, "What do you want to do?"
"Let's investigate the situation near this factory first." Bai Liu's eyes deepened. "Every monster in the game has a origin and cause. Refugees are transformed from humans. Since I can trade with them, I think..."
"You want to make a deal with these refugees?" Liu Jiayi frowned and asked, "Many monsters in the game are polluted humans with zero mental value. They are already crazy. How can you make a deal with crazy creatures? They don't even have the mental capacity to understand what you are saying."
Bai Liu lowered her eyelids and looked at Liu Jiayi: "What if they can regain consciousness temporarily?"
Liu Jiayi was stunned and subconsciously retorted: "Impossible."
The transformation of monsters in the game is irreversible. This is the [rule] of the game. That is, after the spirit value reaches 0, the spirit value will freeze and turn gray, and cannot be restored with [spiritual bleach].
A monster is always a monster and can never turn back into a human.
But Liu Jiayi soon discovered something wrong - the [mental bleach] in this game was originally frozen!
Not only monsters, but they are also frozen, and the perfume has no restrictions on [refugees]. That is to say, if the perfume can be used on [refugees] and is effective, and this group of monsters regain consciousness and become normal [refugees], then maybe they can temporarily stop attacking them - just like the [mermaid statue] stopped moving forward when being stared at.
"Perfume is likely the weakness of this group of refugees." Liu Jiayi looked up at Bai Liu, "When did you think of this? The [perfume] in this game can be used as a [mental bleach] for monsters."
"Before entering the game." Bai Liu said.
"Before entering the game?!" Liu Jiayi was full of questions.
Bai Liu tossed the perfume bottle in his hand. His eyes followed the perfume up and down, and he raised his lips: "Before entering the game, someone told me that even if I use this perfume on crazy employees, I can restore their sanity and state. No matter how crazy they were before, once the perfume is sprayed, they will return to their normal state as if nothing happened."
“I was thinking at the time – this is just mental bleach.”
Bai Liu lowered his eyes and casually played with the two bottles of perfume in his hands: "It can restore and improve a person's state, and pull a person back from a crazy state. In addition, according to the game settings - for players, if they don't use [Mental Bleaching Agent] for a long time, the monsters in the game will pollute their mental values and make them go crazy."
"For players, [mental bleach] is [rose perfume]. Ordinary players like us are also "addicted" to it. In order to buy it to survive, we work in the game to earn points as [flower pickers]. Those who can't earn points as [refugees] will be [demoted] and sent to the [nameless area]. High-level players who earn points will be promoted to the front."
Bai Liu looked at Liu Jiayi and said, "Don't you think these mechanisms look familiar?"
Liu Jiayi felt a little creepy. She understood what Bai Liu meant: "...The game is a large-scale [Rose Factory]."
——If the game is a large factory that exploits players, then who is the "factory director" in this game who exploits everyone and gains the most profit?
Bai Liu's eyes darkened - they had reached the edge of the flower field.
Outside the gorgeous flower fields is not a fragrant town, but a desolate and dilapidated suburb, with curled up discarded newspapers and some long-abandoned factories. At a glance, no human eyes can be seen for dozens of meters away. It is like a picture of two different worlds compared to the colorful and beautiful flower fields and perfume factories behind them.
Bai Liu walked to the gate of one of the empty factories. There was a job advertisement posted on it, but the time was ten years ago.
However, it seems that this factory no longer needs to hire people - there is a big Chinese character "拆" written in yellow paint on the tin roller shutter door of the factory, and the paint at the bottom of the character is peeling, giving it a very old texture.
Liu Jiayi squatted down to look at the scattered newspaper fragments on the ground:
[Rose perfume is launched?! A new addictive substance is banned nationwide, sparking public protests!
——If these things are banned, why not ban coffee and cigarettes?! This is a serious violation of our people’s freedom of consumption!
(Mr. Wang, the convenience store owner who led the protest, said that his store has a lot of rose perfume in stock and has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit from rose perfume this year)]
[Factory explosion, perfume spread, protests won, rose leaf gas sold well around the world! ]
[Rose perfume gas makes people feel refreshed, students’ learning efficiency is improved, employees’ work efficiency is improved... It is ushering in a golden period of rapid development, and factories and enterprises will increase recruitment by 7.2% this year...]
[…Rose gas has experienced its third major price increase this year, causing massive protests around the world. As a necessity, this perfume has become a burden for most people whose annual income is less than 100,000…Rose perfume is a necessity for billions of people…and is showing signs of becoming a luxury product.]
[…The three consecutive price increases of this perfume are a signal that has sounded the death knell for countless poor ordinary people…]
[Governments around the world united to protest against the sky-high price of perfumes, sanctioned Rosehip Gas for its unlimited and repeated price increases, and demanded that the factory stop this behavior, otherwise it would be forced to close the factory...]
[…The heads of the three governments withered at the lecture tour because of the loss of perfume supply…The perfume factory promised to give priority to supplying premium perfume to countries willing to reach a friendly agreement with the factory…The joint sanctions association collapsed…]
[…The world’s richest people list is dominated by the rose perfume manufacturing and sales industry…]
[…During the Great Depression…many factories closed down…schools closed down…unemployment rates soared…riots broke out frequently…dry and dying refugees could be seen everywhere at the intersections…]
[…Rose manufacturing may become the only way out for today’s young people to find employment…]
【…Last year, the production of roses decreased, and the number of people dying worldwide increased further than in previous years…】
…
Bai Liu also squatted down next to Liu Jiayi to look at the newspapers on the ground.
Even though Liu Jiayi is not a particularly kind girl by nature, she felt a tingling sensation in her heart when she saw these newspapers and the shocking black and white pictures on them.
The chaotic crowd, the bloody road, the holes everywhere where dying people hanged themselves on the bridge to free themselves, and the numb eyes looking at the camera, all reveal a chilling chill in the black and white photos.
"This kind of thing can only destroy the ecology." Bai Liu picked up a photo from the ground with a clear mind. The title on it was [Desperate and withered refugees hanged themselves on the bridge arch, but the Rose Factory remained indifferent and refused to reduce the price of perfume].
[In the early days, the rose perfume was promoted for free and promised to be sold to the public at a low price. Now, the price has already risen to a sky-high price...]
“When it is promoted, it is given to you for free or at a low price. By the time you get used to it, it has already monopolized the market and you can’t find any substitutes. Then the price is raised. But you can no longer survive without it. You can only pay a higher price to buy it and become a slave to the rose.”
"This is a very common exploitation routine, but this routine is implemented on an addictive substance that causes death, which will lead to a criminal extinction that kills all of humanity - in this apocalyptic era, even money has lost its luster."
"So I don't like this thing, it erases the meaning of what I'm pursuing."
Bai Liu calmly loosened his fingers, and the cold wind blew past and took away the scraps of old newspaper in his hands.
Is this the kind of future that Tang Erda sees, one in which there is no solution except destruction?
He watched helplessly as Su Yang and his team members became those who were obsessed with roses and deformed, but he had no way to save them. He could only watch them wither away, or escape by entering the next timeline of reincarnation...
This kind of thing happened a few times, no wonder this person went crazy.
Bai Liu retracted his gaze. Several dark shadows flashed in the empty abandoned factory behind him. Dense tentacles spread out from the ground. Liu Jiayi approached Bai Liu vigilantly and stood in front of him - these "refugees" hiding in the factory were trying to attack them.
"Perfume! He smells like perfume!"
There was a crazy scream, and the swaying black shadows made a shrill cry, and all the black shadows rushed towards Bai Liu.
"There are so many refugees here." Liu Jiayi held the poison tightly on her back, "Are you sure our perfume is enough?"
"Not sure." Bai Liu answered honestly, "But don't you have it?"
Liu Jiayi: “…”
Liu Jiayi was angry: "Fuck!!!"
A large group of refugees came crawling over the ground with tentacles like a group of snakes. The newspapers on the ground were swept into the air by the rolling tentacles and floated far away in the dark sky with dust.
One of the photos shows a rose picker smiling happily with a broken face - [Even if you work overtime every day without rest, and you are not a formal employee, you can only get a bottle of low-grade perfume by picking 40kg of dried roses, but being able to work in a rose factory is the happiest thing in the world. ]
【We are doing the work of changing the world and saving others. 】
【As long as we work hard, maybe we can lower the price of perfume and let more people survive! 】
——A dying flower picker said weakly.
(When the report was published, the flower picker who was willing to be interviewed had been dismissed for disclosing work details in violation of rose factory regulations.)