Chapter 165: A review of the facilities surrounding the apartment, including the delicious slaughterhouse production line…
Seemingly sensing Zhou Fangdong's desire to express his art, the system's electronic voice urgently issued a warning:
Please don't squander your ghost coins on renovations.
While investigating the status of unsealed vengeful spirits, the host can activate the local temples in various communities or upgrade the City God Temple to enhance city defenses.
"What does activating the temple have to do with me spending ghost coins to decorate it..." Zhou Fangdong suddenly became alert halfway through his sentence, "System, you're not trying to say that activating the temple requires ghost coins, are you? Don't try to trick me out of my ghost coins. When I activated the first temple, I didn't need anything."
That was a newbie perk given when you first unlocked the City God Temple page. Currently, there's only one City God Temple left that can be activated/upgraded for free.
Because the current apartment reputation is too low, activating other temples requires spending reputation or ghost coins.
Zhou Fangdong remembered that when the City God interface was first unlocked, the system did indeed prompt him to improve the apartment's reputation as soon as possible.
When he first unlocked the City God page, the system gave him two activation slots for temples. He used one of them to activate the temple near the Linjiang Nursing Home, which is where the ghost tenant, Grandpa Chen, now works.
All the reputation I've gained recently has been used to pay for the [Sandalwood Rosary] purification area, and my apartment reputation is still a negative number, crimson.
Zhou Fangdong opened the City God interface, wanting to see how much it would cost to activate the Realm Temple now.
Goodness, a temple requires 500 reputation points, or 50,000 ghost coins.
Reputation is too hard to accumulate; it takes 1000 incense points to exchange for 100 reputation points. It seems more worthwhile to use ghost coins.
Zhou Fangdong sighed and decided to postpone the matter with the Decoration Supervision Bureau.
The safety of the citizens is of utmost importance, so the investigators will have to make do with staying in the simple and unpretentious dormitories for a while longer.
Zhou Fangdong moved all of Hou San's loot to a hidden room on the fourth floor.
Then he took pictures of everything in the ghost unsealing record book with his phone and sent it to the director of the inspection bureau, asking the director to send investigators to check the location where the cultists placed the unsealing devices and to see the status of the ghost's unsealing.
He is now restricted in his movements and cannot leave the apartment freely. He depends entirely on the activities of the apartment's tenants to get out, which is very inconvenient.
First, we should ask the supervisory bureau to help investigate. If the supervisory bureau is capable of removing all those timed unlocking devices, that would be the best outcome.
If the Bureau of Supervision can't handle it, he can only arrange for the tenant to make a trip so he can deal with the vengeful spirits himself. He needs to break the seal before the spirits are unsealed and exchange them all for ghost coins... but that would be a waste of time.
Activating the temples will have to wait. He currently only has enough ghost coins to activate a maximum of nine temples. He needs to reserve the slots to protect areas in danger—he needs to activate temples based on the location where the evil spirits have been unsealed, so that while he is dealing with other evil spirits, the unsealed evil spirits in other locations will not harm ordinary citizens.
Moreover, if the gods in the temple cannot be revived, he will have to place nightmare clones, which will cause his mental energy to continue to drop.
Zhou Fangdong sighed and glanced at room 303 on the rental preview page.
Li Ou's pixelated figure was still working hard in the living room, with beads of sweat constantly dripping from its head.
This pixelated planar image also shows that the statue he has in hand is almost finished.
Li Ou can make a statue in about three days, which is incredibly fast for an ordinary person, but for Zhou Fangdong, this progress is still a bit slow.
He needs to find a way to increase the speed of idol production, otherwise, once the Realm Temple is activated, the Nightmare clone will continue to lose mental energy, and he'll have another headache...
Thinking about this, a thought suddenly popped into Zhou Fangdong's mind: "System, what exactly are the facilities around the Delicious Slaughterhouse apartment for?"
Since it's a factory, with a production line, it doesn't matter what it produces... Zhou Fangdong is thinking of transforming the facilities around this apartment into a factory for producing statues.
[A delicious slaughterhouse is a place to enhance the tenants' fighting power]
“I know this place can increase the tenants’ combat power. What I mean is, what does the slaughterhouse manager do? What does the factory slaughter?” After saying that, Zhou Fangdong realized that he seemed to have said something pointless… What kind of work could a slaughterhouse manager do?
Just as he was trying to rephrase it, he suddenly heard the system reply:
The slaughterhouse manager's job is to slaughter, but those slaughtered are the factory security guards and workers.
"Huh?" Zhou Fangdong doubted his ears.
Sun Dali, the manager of the Delicious Slaughterhouse, was the first ghost tenant the apartment attempted to create. Due to his lack of skill and unstable state, he possessed a demonic nature, so the apartment banished him to the Delicious Slaughterhouse.
Zhou Fangdong noticed something unusual about the statement.
The apartment's first ghost tenant attempt... Does the word "apartment" represent his partner? It can't be that the apartment has actually come to life, can it?
Zhou Fangdong's first ghost tenant was a ghost bus driver, and he suspected that he and his partner might have become acquainted through creating ghost tenants.
From Tang Huili's horror comics, we can learn that the manager of the Guijia Furniture Store is also a ghost tenant in the apartment... The manager might have been created through their collaboration.
The system continued:
The apartment assigned Sun Dali the responsibility of attracting and killing highly dangerous ghosts.
Zhou Fangdong paused for a moment, "Could it be that they're just using security guards and workers to lure us in?"
Yes, they mainly rely on security guards to attract customers.
The Delicious Slaughterhouse is the first surrounding facility of the apartment; ghosts that enter the factory area will materialize.
If the security guards follow the rules, identify any vengeful spirits lurking within the factory and report them to the factory manager, and complete their daily duties, they will receive the manager's protection. They will not only have a well-paid job but also be protected from suburban ghosts. If the security guards fail to follow the rules, they will be possessed by vengeful spirits or corrupted by their resentment, and then killed by the factory manager.
Because the factory manager has a bad temper, the work in the factory is dangerous, and the rules are strict, the factory has very strict recruitment requirements. Only people who are desperate will see the factory security guard recruitment advertisement.
The system's description made Zhou Fangdong feel that the Delicious Slaughterhouse was like a dangerous version of an apartment room.
The factory workers and security guards are like tenants, and the factory manager is like a ghost in the room... Human tenants need to follow the rules set by the factory manager in order to be safe in the ghost-infested suburbs.
Later, there were too many vengeful ghosts in the factory, so the factory manager built a slaughtering assembly line and hired some ordinary people as factory workers to help him slaughter them.
Workers inside the factory must follow a different set of rules; if they violate them, they will be contaminated by the meat produced on the assembly line and become one of the meats that need to be slaughtered.
The slaughterhouse is a major supplier of meat to the "ghost market," and the butcher shop owners at the ghost market are among the factory's major clients. Factory manager Sun Dali sometimes also goes to the ghost market to purchase raw materials or small snacks.
Snacks... Zhou Fangdong thought of investigator Li Zhe, who lived in room 201.
This unfortunate investigator was sold to the ghost market while investigating a peddler, then bought by the factory manager, and then bought by Miao Zheng from the slaughterhouse.
After a moment of silence, Zhou Fangdong couldn't help but ask, "Could the factory manager add a production line to the factory... By the way, can the vengeful spirits in the factory be used as materials to make statues?"
He initially wanted to transform the slaughterhouse into a sculpture factory, but now it seems that as the main meat supplier to the Ghost Market, the Delicious Slaughterhouse should have a large production scale. If the production structure is changed directly, it may lead to the closure of many shops in the Ghost Market.
The shops in the Ghost Market are his future businesses, and he doesn't want to see his Ghost Market management mini-game page end up with only paper craft shops and auctions.
Upon hearing Zhou Fangdong's question, the system paused for a moment before continuing:
Using vengeful ghosts as materials to make statues is very suitable and has a strong deterrent effect.
[The host can use force to persuade the factory manager to increase production lines; the factory manager is very receptive to advice.]
Zhou Fangdong was relieved.
It's good that he's willing to listen to advice. Once Li Ou finishes this statue, he'll go to the slaughterhouse and ask the manager to add a statue production line. He'll also arrange a job for Li Ou at the factory—as an apartment tenant, he won't encounter any danger within the surrounding facilities, so Li Ou's safety is well guaranteed.
With the issue of the deity statues more or less resolved, Zhou Fangdong checked the current incense offerings at the City God Temple.
More than 6,000 incense sticks can be exchanged for more than 600 reputation points.
Let's hold off on exchanging it for now, and wait until we've accumulated 10,000 incense points before making a decision.
Just as Zhou Fangdong was about to close the City God page, he suddenly noticed a pixelated figure with a star above its head in the office building of the Department of Extraordinary Investigations.
This immediately caught Zhou Fangdong's attention.
Because this pixelated figure isn't dressed as a pilgrim, but as an investigator.
Zhou Fangdong was puzzled as to why the investigator also had the mark of a special pilgrim on his head.
It was lunchtime, and the junior investigator with a star above his head carried a plate full of food and returned to his office to eat, looking dejected.
Zhou Fangdong clicked on the pixelated figure, and a dialogue box appeared above its head: [The cafeteria food is awful...]
Although the cafeteria's menu is designed according to optimal nutritional ratios, eating this kind of healthy food every day makes me feel hopeless.
[I really want to go on a mission, I really want to go out and eat junk food... spicy hot pot, skewers, roast duck, spicy stir-fry, snail rice noodles, braised chicken rice, pork trotter rice, braised pork rice...]
Clicking again, only the names of the food items will appear above the pixelated figure eating, indicating a deep-seated resentment towards the cafeteria.
But Zhou Fangdong still didn't know why there was a star above the junior investigator's head.
He searched through the City God's page and finally found the junior investigator in the list of special worshippers.
—It turns out this person was the investigator who came to the apartment to deliver sculpture materials to Li Ou, and was then forgotten by him in the apartment's activity room.
The reason there's a star above his head is because after this investigator 'escaped death' and returned to the Supervisory Bureau, he devoutly offered incense at the City God Temple, contributing 100 incense points, equivalent to ten ordinary worshippers, and was thus marked as a devout worshipper on the City God's page.
I almost forgot about him again. Zhou Fangdong remembered that this investigator really wanted to rent a room in the apartment building, so let's clean out a room for him to move in today.
This young investigator is such a kind tenant. He not only genuinely loves the apartment but also contributed so many "incense points" to it. I'm quite touched.
Moreover, he seems to really enjoy playing with the kids in the activity room. Maybe he could become a part-time teacher at the abandoned elementary school and help Professor Sun relieve some of his burden.
After closing the City God page, Zhou Fangdong was directly teleported to the abandoned primary school in the eastern suburbs.
After dealing with the matter in Xiahe Village, the system said it had placed the items of those three infinite flow players in the ghost school, and he wanted to see what was going on.
Zhou Fangdong appeared on the playground of the abandoned elementary school, and at the same time, a brand new system page popped up:
[Ghost School Management Page]
The business pages for Heliwan Hospital and Chenghuang Temple have the same configuration.
Zhou Fangdong clicked on this page.
The first thing that catches the eye is a pixelated floor plan of the entire school.
The only usable facilities at this abandoned primary school are a five-story teaching building and a large playground. Everything else is in a state of disrepair and requires ghost coins for repair.
At the very top of the school map floated a speech bubble: "[The Ghost School Principal, Xiao Di's Request]"
Zhou Fangdong clicked on the bubble to check and found that Xiao Di was applying for a salary for Professor Sun.
He wanted to apply for a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan for Professor Sun, a year-end bonus of 13 months' salary, and lifetime free medical care at Liwan Hospital.
Considering that Professor Sun was the only teacher at the entire ghost school, Zhou Fangdong agreed immediately.
It's not like he's spending ghost money. This small amount of money is nothing compared to his nine-figure savings. Back then, Hong Zhong earned 50,000 per hour.
After processing Xiao Di's application, Zhou Fangdong continued to check the operation page of this ghost school.
When he clicked on a large classroom on the first floor, the system pop-up window appeared again:
This classroom was used as an examination room in a ghost school.
After the students at the haunted school finish their exams, they may drop upgrade blueprints for workers, blacksmith equipment blueprints, and rare skill blueprints for haunted tenants.
What are the worker upgrade blueprints?
[The "worker" refers to the worker in the lamp oil worker crafting page. For example, after a worker repairing a collapsed area uses an upgrade blueprint, their intelligence can be increased, allowing multiple repair workers to work together to repair collapsed areas on the same floor.]
Zhou Fangdong's eyes lit up.
He originally just wanted to mess with the kids in the apartment, but he never expected to unlock such a useful feature.
Yesterday, he planned to have two workers work together to repair the collapsed area on the sixth floor, so that the sixth floor could be repaired overnight.
The system informed the repair workers that their intelligence was low. If two workers' work areas overlapped and they both wanted to repair the same collapsed area, they would get stuck due to a bug, causing the repair work to stop.
Now that we have the blueprints, this problem can be solved.
"System, what's the maximum number of exams per day?"
Given the current level of resentment and intelligence among the students at this ghost school, they can only take one exam per day; otherwise, the little devils will go into rebellious mode.
"Rebellious mode?"
In Rebellion Mode, the school principal will have to spend half a day every day suppressing the truants, study time will be halved, and exams will be held every five days.
[Rebellion Mode activated, lasting at least ten days. Please keep an eye on the resentment levels of the little devils.]
Renovating schools or adding outdoor activity facilities can reduce resentment levels.
Based on his workers' blueprints, Zhou Fangdong decided to renovate the haunted school properly.
The decoration page for the ghost school is similar to that of an apartment.
In addition to [ceiling][floor][walls][decorations], there is now an option to [add/repair building facilities].
Within the category of "Decorations," there are further subcategories such as "Teaching Equipment" and "Recreational Equipment."
While looking through the decorations, Zhou Fangdong noticed that there were many supernatural props among them.
[Supernatural Gadget - Surveillance Device]: This surveillance device can be placed on a student or in the classroom and is very effective in monitoring problem students.
[Supernatural Props - Patrol Paper Doll]: Can be installed in the examination room to act as an invigilator; disposable item.
[Supernatural Item - Seven Wolves Belt]: Can be used to intimidate disobedient little ghosts.
...
It seems these items belonged to those three players from the Infinite Flow game, and were stuffed into the Ghost School's [decorations] by the system.
Zhou Fangdong exited the decoration interface and began decorating the ghost school.
Building outdoor facilities...
The combination slides are installed, as are the climbing frames, swings, rocking horses, and turntables... What's with the pirate ship and giant pendulum? Is this a school playground or an amusement park? Oh well, as long as it calms the kids' resentment.
This whole set only cost 40,000 ghost coins.
Zhou Fangdong also repaired several other buildings and facilities, such as the library, laboratory building, canteen, and convenience store...
These buildings cost him 60,000 ghost coins. The renovation of almost the entire primary school was not as expensive as the renovation of his five-story building. So cheap.
As for why they didn't renovate the building's exterior and classroom decorations... because this awful school doesn't allow for color customization, and the available colors are all basic and boring, so Zhou Fangdong had absolutely no interest in them.
Just as he was about to close the renovation page, the system suddenly popped up another notification:
[The pollution at the Underworld Offering Pavilion has not been completely cleaned up; ghost food cannot be sold in the shop or canteen.]
[Note: Offering incense is prohibited in the convenience store and canteen. The little devils have no self-control and eating too much will cause indigestion.]
Zhou Fangdong had never thought of putting incense sticks in the convenience store and canteen... In his mind, incense sticks were a form of salary; these kids didn't pay tuition, so he wouldn't offer them incense sticks for free.
However, [the Underworld Offering Pavilion]... He remembered that this place was where the souls of the dead in the underworld received offerings from their descendants in the mortal world, such as burned paper money or fruit offerings, which was equivalent to a courier station in the underworld.
The fact that the school cafeteria and convenience store can get their supplies directly from here suggests that the system and the underworld have a really good relationship.
Zhou Fangdong closed the ghost school's management page and teleported back to his apartment.
The ghost school renovation is almost done. Let's go back to the apartment and renovate the garden too. There are still six ghost tenants waiting.
I originally planned to come here to renovate the garden this morning, but it was delayed until now because of the Xiahe Village matter... Oh right, I only checked one room on the 16th floor, there are still two rooms I haven't checked.
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