In the end, Tang Erda still didn't pull the trigger.

The factory worker told him that this was the only way for him to be promoted to factory worker and then perfumer. The rose was the core instrument for the operation of the entire rose factory.

Tang Erda has reason to believe that this magical heart is also related to the main mission of this game - [Becoming a Factory Director].

When he saw this thing, he felt uncontrollable, as if someone had induced him to have murderous intent from the bottom of his heart. This was not normal, as if something was deliberately making him want to kill, which made him feel uncomfortable.

And this heart is dirty. What if the person he judged was not a monster, but just the polluted heart of an innocent person?

This kind of thing had happened to Tang Er before, so he thought for a moment, controlled the sudden murderous intent in his heart, calmly put down the gun, and decided to find the source of the game pollution before making a decision.

Under the guidance of the factory worker, Tang Erda took a bottle of rose essence, walked up the stairs and poured it down. The employee in charge of guarding the instrument next to him looked at Tang Erda's hand nervously, with his hand on the water gate ready to pull it down at any time - the previous incident by Bai Liu left him with a big shadow.

The perfume liquid dripping from Tang Erda only revealed a light rose-red color.

The factory workers and guards who were waiting for the results felt disappointed but also relieved - but this was still a good result.

It's just that the difference is too great compared to the previous inspector.

"You don't have much talent, but it's not completely hopeless to be promoted to a factory worker, because the Rose Festival in May is coming, and we are in great need of factory workers." The factory worker who led Tang Er in raised his head and looked at him, "You need to go through the test paper test again. If it is confirmed that you have a certain basic talent, you can become a regular employee."

Tang Er frowned: "What perfume test paper?"

At the same time, in the factory office on the third floor.

Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked at the factory manager behind the desk: "What do you mean by perfume paper testing?"

The factory manager replied: "In order to further confirm whether your talent is sufficient to be promoted to a full-time perfumer, we are afraid to take the risk of using instruments again. Although the accuracy of the test paper is not as high as that of the instrument, it can also determine a rough range."

"But judging by your ability to damage the instrument, you are likely to damage the scent paper during the test."

The factory director placed his hands on the table with his fingers crossed. He looked directly at Bai Liu and tapped the application form on the table. "Although perfume test papers are a non-renewable and precious resource for any perfumer, if your talent is as obvious as it is on this application form, then it is worth the risk of losing a perfume test paper to conduct another test."

A perfume tester?

This strange quantifier made Bai Liu raise an eyebrow.

Bai Liu had seen perfume test papers in perfume counters in some shopping malls. In his impression, perfume test papers were a kind of hard cardboard similar to pH test paper, which had good water absorption and could absorb perfume better and retain the fragrance for a long time.

Place a piece of perfume-soaked test paper about ten centimeters in front of the tip of your nose and fan it to better smell the pure perfume or the scent of spices. This should be a common device in the perfumer industry.

But no matter what, the quantifier for this kind of test paper should be "片" or "张", but it should be "个".

Bai Liu did not ask in return, but waited for the factory director to continue.

"Next, if you are fine, we will continue the inspection." The factory director nodded to the factory worker who had led Bai Liu to the instrument test, then turned to look at Bai Liu, "I will let this person take you to the lower level, where the perfume test papers and Rose's death row prisoners are held, to conduct the perfume test paper inspection."

After that, the director handed the factory worker a set of keys and said, "Take him down to have a look."

Rose, the death row inmate Bai Liu, actually knew what was going on.

He had been educated on this concept by the refugees before. If the Rose Factory was willing to take over the prisoners who committed the death penalty for dried roses and accept some kind of labor from them in exchange for their right to survive, then these prisoners could be sentenced to life imprisonment and the Rose Factory would have full control over their right to life and the right to use their lives.

But the lockup of the scent paper... and the quantifier unit of "个"...

Bai Liu felt a vaguely unhappy feeling in his heart. He remembered an idea that he didn't like very much, as well as the game designer's malicious intentions towards him from the beginning to the end. This made the smile on Bai Liu's face fade a lot.

The factory worker led Bai Liu downstairs, and they walked through the corridor they had walked through before, and turned a very dark corner before reaching the dormitory corridor.

There was a wooden door that smelled completely different from the entire rose factory. It was not fragrant at all, but instead had a particularly foul odor.

The factory worker took out a bunch of keys, picked one out and inserted it into the wooden door. The door creaked and slowly opened inward. A sour odor of meat and clothes wafted in my face, smelling a bit like methane.

Opposite the wooden door was a staircase leading down into bottomless darkness. The stone walls on both sides of the staircase were extremely narrow. A dim yellow light bulb was installed at a distance above it, but it did little to illuminate the area. Bai Liu glanced around and could not see much beyond a dozen meters.

As if he had anticipated this situation, the factory worker brought a flashlight when he came down and led Bai Liu down with the light.

As they walked, the factory worker began to explain to Bai Liu: "This is the negative level of the factory. Only senior factory workers and perfumers are qualified to enter here."

Bai Liu estimated that he walked down about twenty meters and reached the bottom. He looked up and saw a structure that was very similar to a prison.

In the middle of the damp and dim underground there is a narrow path, with cage-like iron fences on the left and right, embedded in the walls one by one and extending closely inward. Inside are death row prisoners who are neither human nor ghost.

The reason why Bai Liu described them like this was because they were just like the refugees Bai Liu saw in the rose field, and they no longer looked like human beings.

These death row inmates made some vague sounds, as if they wanted to reach out and grab Bai Liu and the factory worker who were walking through the middle aisle, but they were so weak that they could not move at all. They watched helplessly as the factory worker walked past with Bai Liu, and then they lay on the ground and struggled weakly for a few times, only letting out a mournful, desperate roar.

This roar even made Bai Liu feel that they were not reaching out to ask for help, but to ask them to give him a quick death.

Some were already dead, lying on their backs with their eyes open and mouths open. All that was left was some decayed flesh from which maggots were hatching. There were sounds of flies flying around their bodies, which must have been the maggots hatching from the corpses.

What is more bizarre is that most of the dead bodies here, if they still have the structure to show facial expressions, have a contented smile on their faces.

It was as if living was an extremely painful and tormenting thing for them. They seemed to have been waiting for the moment of death for too long, and finally they finally got that happiness.

Bai Liu's eyes slowly scanned the death row inmates who had committed the rose crime, one by one, as if he wanted to read something from their expressions.

The factory worker seemed to notice Bai Liu's gaze and couldn't help but tilt his head to explain: "The factory has no hobby of abusing these death row prisoners. After the factory took over these death row prisoners, we almost always fumigated them with perfume every day to keep them alive - this is better than the treatment of most flower pickers."

"Oh, really?" Bai Liu asked calmly, "In that case, you are philanthropists. You give perfume to these criminals for free. Why don't you ask them whether they want to die or want to be taken over by you?"

The factory worker was choked by Bai Liu's mild tone and said nothing.

The Rose Factory is definitely not a factory that would do good things by wasting perfume. They did not take over all the death row prisoners, but only took over some of them, which shows that there is a problem here - from the perspective of interests, certain characteristics of these death row prisoners taken over by the Rose Factory should be beneficial to the development of this factory.

At first, Bai Liu was not sure what this "profit" was - after all, no matter from which angle you looked at it, spending money on perfume to support people with low labor force was not a smart business.

But now he finally understood what this "benefit" was.

The factory worker was silent for a while, sighed, and then spoke awkwardly: "...these death row prisoners were specially selected by the factory. They have a certain resistance to rose perfume."

"… Even if these people are corrupted by perfume, they will not easily show signs of addiction to perfume. They insist on being themselves and stick to their hearts. They would rather die than succumb to the dried rose gas. In fact, most of the reasons why they were arrested for crimes were to develop an antidote for rose perfume."

The factory worker was silent for a while, then spoke again: "At a time when most people have already succumbed to the addictive nature of rose perfume, it is difficult for us to specifically test the concentration and longevity of a rose perfume through ordinary perfume test strips, except for instruments."

"Perfumers are highly addicted people, so it is difficult for them to judge the quality of a perfume through their own reactions to the perfume. Most perfumers have become numb to the scent because they use high-concentration rose perfume day and night."

"But as you can see, the equipment is very valuable and we can't always use it to test perfume."

"At this time, we need people who can resist rose perfume and are more sensitive to it as experimental subjects, and infer the effectiveness of this perfume through their painful reactions - we call this group of people perfume test papers."

As the factory worker spoke, he led Bai Liu deeper inside: "What you saw just now were all almost scrapped perfume test papers. They are almost worn out, but they can still be used one or two times. However, I am taking you through a special channel this time. The perfume test paper you are using is one of the oldest brands in our factory."

As he spoke, the factory worker sighed and said, "These old-fashioned perfume test papers are almost useless. Yesterday, it was said that for the May Rose Festival, a perfumer tried a bottle of premium perfume and discarded another one. It has been transferred to the low-end peripheral area. However, the one you used this time is the highest quality perfume test paper in our factory. He seems to be in good spirits and his rejection reaction to rose perfume is also very stable."

At this point, the factory worker couldn't help but sigh: "I've never seen anyone who is so steadfast in rejecting rose perfume. Even though he is in so much pain, he still never changes his rejection of rose perfume. His mental fortitude is admirable."

"May Rose Festival has tested several bottles of premium perfume on him. Although his body has been poisoned to a certain extent, his organs are failing and he is much weaker, his rejection reaction has not changed in the past ten years."

"I doubt whether such people are really human beings. They are too stubborn."

Bai Liu said nothing. He looked at the death row inmates around him, his eyes becoming darker and darker. Finally, he said softly, "I think so too. He is too stubborn."

The factory worker didn't hear Bai Liu's words clearly, so he turned around and asked him, "What did you say?"

This time Bai Liu didn't answer him.

The factory worker led him further inside. As the tunnel became darker, the cages on both sides of the tunnel became larger, and the living facilities inside became more and more complete, making it look more and more like a room where a person lives temporarily.

Finally, the factory worker stopped beside an independent cage. This cage was larger, with a bed at the innermost. The "perfume tester paper" inside was hard to see in the darkness, and one could only vaguely see the black outline of a hunched human figure sitting next to the bed.

This cage was much cleaner than the other ones. There were two old, yellowed pieces of clothing hanging on the bars. Some books, papers, and pens were neatly placed on the table inside, as well as a few scattered cigarette boxes, which were already empty.

The factory worker who brought Bai Liu here looked at the cage, which was so clean that it didn't look like a dungeon, with a complicated expression: "...He cleaned it himself...It's really unlike someone who has been tested for so long to be so rational."

"This is the perfume test paper you are testing today." The factory worker took out the key and inserted it into the keyhole.

At the same time, in another tunnel separated by a wall, another factory worker led Tang Er inside and was chattering and proudly explaining to him the dungeon of the Rose Factory.

Tang Erda looked at the death row prisoners in the cages with a frown that looked like it could pinch a fly to death. He subconsciously drew his gun the moment he saw these death row prisoners who looked like rose refugees. But he soon realized the difference between these death row prisoners and rose refugees.

But this difference made his brows furrow even more.

——Although these guys have been corroded and polluted by perfume to this extent, they are all sober. They are struggling hard against the rose perfume that is corroding their consciousness.

The factory worker walked in front of Tang Erda and knocked on the iron door of the prison. He said enviously, "You are lucky, kid. This is an old brand of perfume test paper that is about to be scrapped. It was scrapped by a senior perfumer's bottle of premium perfume yesterday. Now it looks half-dead, so it can be used for testing you."

Tang Er turned his head and looked into the gloomy and dark prison cage.

There was no lighting in the dungeon, and visibility was extremely low. He could only roughly see a human-shaped dark figure leaning against the wall, his body rising and falling weakly with his breathing. A foul odor that was almost like decay emanated from the man, causing the factory worker to wipe his nose at the air in disgust.

This person, or rather this perfume test paper, only had one arm and half of its face sticking out of the shadow. In the dim light, it could be roughly seen, so Tang Er raised his head and looked at the other person's hand and face.

His hands were almost completely cracked, with dark, bloody lines extending from the base of his palms to his elbows. The half of his face that was exposed was unrecognizable, cracked and bloody, and his light-colored eyeballs were blurred, staring at Tang Erda outside the fence without any focus.

For a moment, an unspeakable fear surged into Tang Erda's heart - this half face, this half bloody face, he seemed to have seen it in some nightmarish world line, which made Tang Erda's hand holding the gun tremble uncontrollably and convulsively.

Tang Erda's chest was still heaving violently, but his breathing had almost stopped. He stood there motionless, as if frozen, staring straight at this face.

The pistol slipped from his palm and fell to the ground in a speck of light.

But the factory worker did not notice Tang Erda's abnormality and he inserted the key into the rotary hole.

The door covered with dust and rust slowly opened in front of Bai Liu and Tang Erda at the same time.

The factory worker made way so that Bai Liu behind him could see the scene inside the cage. He handed the flashlight to Bai Liu and tilted his head to signal him to go in. He waited outside and explained, "The rose scent on us is too strong and will interfere with the perfume test paper. Generally, one person can go in."

"After you go in, this scent tester will teach you how to test your talent. It is very experienced and has a good temper. It will not attack you." The factory worker thought for a moment and added, "Although this scent tester sometimes says some strange things to the testers, it is generally very cooperative."

Bai Liu nodded to indicate that he understood. He calmly took the flashlight handed to him by the factory worker, adjusted it to the highest brightness, and walked into the cage step by step.

The beam of the flashlight followed Bai Liu's approach, slowly moving from the ground to the bedside. In the pale light, first a pair of old leather shoes that looked familiar to Bai Liu appeared, then a pair of washed-out uniform pants. Sweeping upwards, a person could be seen sitting on the edge of the bed with his head lowered, holding an unlit cigarette butt.

This man's face and arms had been completely deformed. The joints of his fingers were exposed and covered with bones with tentacles. His breathing was so faint that it was almost non-existent. His face was extremely pale and his eyes were prominent. His originally square and handsome cheeks were sunken on both sides, as if he had not eaten meat in decades. He was so thin that he was almost just a skeleton.

Bai Liu had never seen him like this, even when they were at their most miserable.

Even when this person was in the welfare home and gave a lot of food to Bai Liu, he had never been so hungry and haggard.

There was only a pair of eyes, still unchangingly gentle and firm, without even a rose growing in them.

Bai Liu finally spoke. He pointed the flashlight at the man's head and said in a flat voice, "Lu Yizhang, you finally have no money to buy cigarettes, right?"

The man finally raised his head. He looked at Liu Jiayi standing in front of him in astonishment. He was stunned for a moment, as if he suddenly realized something. He shook his head a little embarrassedly and muttered to himself foolishly: "Ah, did I just see an illusion again?"

"This time it's Bai Liu's voice and that little girl Liu Jiayi - wow, this Liu Jiayi's expression really looks like Bai Liu." As he spoke, Lu Yizhan reluctantly propped himself up with his hands and moved a little closer to the bed. He curiously moved closer to look at Bai Liu, whose face was expressionless.

Bai Liu looked at him expressionlessly.

Then Lu Yizhan suddenly curled his eyes and smiled softly, and stretched out his bony hand towards Bai Liu: "But even if it's an illusion, I'm still quite happy."

"Because even in the illusion world, we haven't seen each other for a long time, Bai Liu."