The monsters crawling around spread out their petal-shaped skin limbs and moved rapidly on the old wall. Their bloody faces opened their mouths miserably, and low, hoarse roars emanated from their squirming throats as if to scare Bai Liu and the others.

The skill [Heart to Heart] that Liu Jiayi activated directly swapped the bodies of the two people, which meant that his current body was his own. However, Bai Liu's panel numerical value of movement speed was not high, so he quickly fell behind while being chased by these monsters.

Members of another King's Guild saw that Liu Jiayi was about to be stuck by the monster behind him, and opened its "bud" to swallow him.

Seeing this situation, the guy from the King's Guild had to grit his teeth, reach out and grab Liu Jiayi by the back of the collar and run with him.

Soon, they ran to the door of the old shop. The member turned the rusty door handle twice, but it didn't open.

"Fuck." The member cursed angrily, and quickly turned around and pressed his back against the door. He looked gloomily at the rose monsters that kept approaching them, and pulled out a long hammer in his hand, "These monsters are all S-level. You and I can't hold out for long."

Bai Liu suddenly asked a question: "If you hold on by yourself, how long can you hold on?"

"??? About five or six minutes." The member asked back in confusion, "Wait, why do I have to do this alone? Little witch, aren't you by my side..."

Bai Liu gave him a gentle smile, holding up a bottle of low-end perfume that he had just received this morning, and sprayed it without hesitation at the team members who had not yet reacted.

The suffocating perfume made this member cough several times, covering his face. As the perfume spread, a light rose scent emanated from his body. The lewd monsters that had been staring at the two of them now turned their gazes at the same time and looked at the team member next to Bai Liu. A greedy smile appeared on the monster's blurry bloody face.

[System prompt: Warning! The concentration of the player's perfume is too high! It has attracted the attention of the (corrupt employees)! They are about to come over and suck the scent from you!]

The team member raised his head: "..."

The team member roared in resentment: "Fuck you! You are Bai Liu!!"

The monsters rushed towards the team member like a spider whose nest was stabbed, and soon formed an airtight circle around this team member. The team member cursed Bai Liu's ancestors while being trapped in the spot helplessly, picking up the hammer to attract the monsters' attention for Bai Liu.

Bai Liu quickly got out of the encirclement and began to search for clues in the big shop in the inner world.

The "inner world" setting in the game can usually be explained as follows: two different time branches, or parallel worlds at different time points overlap at one location, and players who enter here can freely travel between the two world lines when certain conditions are met.

Generally speaking, this method of supplementing the world line is to make it easier for players to return to a certain point in the past or future to explore the hidden information behind the game world view, so there is usually a lot of key information in the world.

What Bai Liu needs to do now is to find out the key information he wants.

There were more than a dozen dead bodies of workers lying in a crooked arrangement on the large shop. The uniforms they wore were different from the ones Bai Liu and the others were wearing now, and they looked even older - this was most likely an "other world" from the past.

Soon, Bai Liu found a newspaper under a corpse to prove this.

This was a report in the Jingcheng Evening News. The headline of the news was: [Illegal perfumes may contain toxic and addictive substances, which have caused several employees to become addicted. Several employees are missing and have now been arrested by relevant departments].

Bai Liu read the article and soon his eyebrows raised.

The report states:

[…The illegal perfume factory manager is an orphan named Zhang. He has poor vision in his left eye due to congenital cataracts. He grew up in a private welfare home called Ai Xin Welfare Home. He aspires to become a billionaire. Zhang was adopted at the age of thirteen and inherited the inheritance after his adoptive parents passed away. He was later imprisoned three times for illegal smuggling. He also secretly accumulated a lot of wealth and connections, but he was still not satisfied…]

[In September this year, when the poisoning incident broke out in the welfare home, Zhang saw the news and returned to the original welfare home to collect donations, but Zhang put forward a condition for the donation. He liked the original statue sculpture of the welfare home very much and wanted to buy the original statue of the welfare home on the pretext of donating...]

[…The director of the welfare home agreed, and in the end Zhang donated 10 million yuan in exchange for the statue that was buried underground during the welfare home’s renovation…]

[Not long after, the director of the welfare home was imprisoned for the blood ganoderma incident. The relevant department investigated and found Zhang, who had a financial relationship with the director of the welfare home. Zhang said that he knew nothing about all the bad deeds done by the director, and just wanted to donate money to help the children and liked the statue. Subsequently, the relevant department searched all fixed residences and bank safes under Zhang's name, but never saw the statue.]

【Afterwards, relevant personnel inquired about the origin of the statue from the director of the welfare home. The director said frantically that the statue was an unknown, evil statue. Investors bought the statue from a museum in a declining seaside town that specialized in selling amulet statues in order to pray for the success of blood ganoderma cultivation. It was said to be the most expensive statue in that town.】

[She said that the reason these investors thought this statue could protect the smooth cultivation of blood ganoderma is because the face of this statue looks exactly like a more evil child who gave birth to blood ganoderma and has been dead for a long time!!]

[After that, Zhang started to cultivate new roses and develop perfumes. He rented a large piece of land in the suburbs and hired a large number of workers to start large-scale rose planting. He named the roses whose leaves withered after blooming as dry leaf roses.]

[The growth cycle of this crop (referring to the dry leaf rose in this article) is extremely magical. It can still grow rapidly in land that is completely unsuitable for the growth of rose flowers, and it can grow all over the suburbs overnight.]

【Later, Zhang used the crop to make a perfume with caffeine-like effects, which was sold on the Internet and became very popular in the market. However, the regulatory authorities intervened and found that the perfume had serious safety hazards. In the same month, the license was confiscated and a large fine was imposed. Zhang was strictly prohibited from planting and selling the perfume again.】

[A week later, Zhang disappeared and has not been heard from since.]

That’s all for this report.

But from the reality, Zhang, the first director of the Rose Factory, obviously did not stop there, but secretly set up a larger Rose Factory again, which eventually attracted the intervention of the Dangerous Heresy Bureau.

These employees lying here should be the first batch of employees of the rose factory, who died due to intolerance to rose perfume and whose bodies were dumped here. They are also the employees whose whereabouts are unknown in the news headlines.

After reading the newspaper, Bai Liu continued to search under the beds and around each corpse, looking for anything that might be an information carrier - there are only a few types of information carriers in horror games.

Newspapers, scraps of paper, calendars, videotapes or diaries.

Soon, Bai Liu found a diary in the abdomen of a corpse in a large dormitory room. The corpse was lying face up with a knife in his hand and a painful expression on his face.

Bai Liu opened the diary. On the first page of the diary, which was covered with dust and rot, there was a regretful inscription in the lower right corner:

[I have never regretted so much for opening up something so evil. I thought my own desires without limits were the scariest thing in the world, but later I realized that it wasn't. The statue I bought was the scariest thing!]

[The dried rose is a flower created by the evil god. It will not wither, fade, or decay. It will only bloom and wither in the human body that it has completely bewitched. As a product favored by the gods, it lives forever in the bones and flesh of the human body, in the crazy fragrance.]

[Rose leaf gas is the most perfect perfume, but it is also a poison without an antidote. I understand the first point as a discoverer, and I can prove the second point as a deceased person.]

Bai Liu looked at the last word of the paragraph and turned to the next page without stopping.

[I grew up in a private welfare home that was sponsored by others. I understand that the investors here have a strange kind of sorcery. This sorcery is inseparable from a strange child in the welfare home. It is a very, very strange child. I can't see his face clearly because he always hangs down his long hair to cover his eyes.]

[But I am sure that no matter who it is, as long as they have seen this child once, they will definitely be able to recognize him when they see him again! ]

[Because he was so scary, the moment I saw him, there was only one terrifying thought in my mind that makes me tremble even when I think about it now. I was indeed afraid of him, but when I accidentally looked into his eyes, which were as light blue as those of a giant beast in the deep sea, through his soft hair, I only had an impulse in my mind as if I was possessed by a demon——]

[——I will kill him! I will break him into pieces!]

The author has something to say:

I'm late! The second update is late! Don't wait!

Once again, I reiterate that this article is just a game and has no social significance at all. Various things in this game are applied to business models, such as the equity system and the dividend system. Bai Liu is just inciting employees to leave with him and start a new factory. This is very common in the history of various commercial companies. Please don't make it worse. I beg you all very seriously. This article has no social significance at all. At most, it is a satire on 996. If I see any comments that make it worse, I will report them and delete them. Just read the plot. There is no need to dig into the meaning behind it, because there is really no meaning. The plots I write are just average, not to mention other things. Please don't flatter me. I don't deserve it (bow)

Thank you, thank you. I bow.