Chapter 117

Everyone turned to look at Lin Tu, who remained composed and asked, "This little finger—does it have to be a human's?"

"Of course!" The salesclerk took a small step back, as if bracing against the possibility of them fleeing.

Lin Tu continued, "Anyone's will do? Doesn't matter if it's from a living person or a dead one?"

"Naturally, as long as it's your property." Perhaps unsettled by the naked look in Lin Tu's eyes, the salesclerk added, "Not ours, though. Every part of a supermarket employee belongs to the supermarket."

Luo Yongzhi sighed.

The others looked at him speechlessly. "..." Seriously, was he still thinking about robbing the place?

Given the size of this supermarket and the number of staff, it wasn't something they could just take down!

Seeing that no one said a word, the salesclerk said with malice dripping from his voice, "Upon entering the supermarket, you must make at least one purchase. If you cannot pay the currency, you may choose to work off your debt. Work here for a day, and you'll earn one free purchase right."

"Can we buy anything?" Luo Yongzhi asked.

"Of course," the salesclerk said with a grin, his dry tongue rolling around in his mouth. "Anything at all."

Luo Yongzhi muttered, "Something feels off about this. My labor can't be worth that much..."

Lin Tu: "..." At least you have some self-awareness.

Working off the debt was obviously a trap. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and for laborers, there's no such thing as a free perk. A company hands out a company T-shirt today, not because it worries you have nothing to wear, but because it expects you to bring it back tomorrow and wear it as pajamas.

"Is this how you treat your customers?" Lin Tu let out a cold laugh. "You want your guests to stay here and work for you? Where's your manager? I want to file a complaint..."

"No, no, no, no!" The salesclerk hastily apologized. "We only have our customers' best interests at heart. Please, come this way! Our next category of products is over here."

Sure enough, no matter where you went, the boss was always an employee's Achilles' heel. Lin Tu followed him with a bright smile.

The salesclerk led the players to the clothing section next, where there were far more products—and the prices went from one little finger to an index finger, a middle finger, and even an entire palm.

"This is what you show your big customers?" Lin Tu pressed on. "Where's your manager? I want to file a com—"

The salesclerk hurriedly guided them through one section after another: bedding, kitchenware, car accessories, premium food... The prices grew steeper and steeper, until some items demanded a head, or a heart, liver, and lungs.

"Sister Lin," Yi Ying said, feeling like she'd stumbled into a luxury boutique with barely enough money for a meal at a cheap diner, "are we really big customers? Maybe we should just forget it. I'm scared the manager might actually come out."

"How are we not?" Luo Yongzhi was optimistic. "Every one of us has a full set of organs!"

Liu Sheng took him at his word and began trembling. "Really? But I don't want to end up short a piece or two!"

"Don't rush," Lin Tu said, exasperated. "I've got it. I just happen to have twelve full sets on me."

Twelve sets? Twelve sets of what? The players stared at Lin Tu in horror.

Anyone who's killed before knows—killing is easy, but disposing of the body is hard. So for convenience, she just carried them around, never bothering to get rid of them?

"An accident," Lin Tu said, noticing their shock. "I didn't kill them. I found them."

They were the corpses of those twelve debt-collecting thugs. For some reason, they'd been lured by monsters in search of Lin Tu and had ended up killed on her Back Mountain. Afraid the police might suspect her, she hadn't dared bury them properly, so she'd kept them in her backpack ever since.

They'd done plenty of evil in their lives, so trading their bodies for goods shouldn't invite any vengeful spirits knocking at her door, Lin Tu figured. The only question was whether they'd started to stink—she hadn't taken any preservation measures.

"I've got some too," Dong Huadan said. "The Black Market sells human organs. They're a bit pricey, but the sources are all legitimate, so don't worry."

The other four: "..." So they were the only ones who didn't have any!

But since their teammates had some, it was almost like they did. They felt a little more at ease.

"Um, Sister Lin," Liu Sheng said, rubbing his hands together and sidling up to her, "I don't have much desire to shop. How about I buy a little finger from you and get that cheapest bread-and-water package? We can just count it as clearing the requirement."

"Me too," Yi Ying chimed in.

"Hold on," Lin Tu said. "It's not that simple. If those things were really that cheap, there wouldn't be so many salesclerks here."

A supermarket employee was just a wage worker at best. How could every part of their body belong to the supermarket? If she guessed right, those salesclerks had once been ordinary travelers, even players, who had come into the supermarket and—unable to afford anything, or having chosen to work off their debts—ended up like this.

After the salesclerk gave them a complete tour of the supermarket and saw that they still had empty hands, he finally couldn't hold back a nasty grin. "Guests, is there something unsatisfying about our supermarket? Why haven't you purchased a single item?"

"There is something," Lin Tu said. "You're running a false advertisement. Didn't you say there was a promotion? We only came because the road sign said you were having a sale."

The salesclerk quickly said, "We are having a promotion! All the products we just showed you were carefully selected by our supermarket—"

Before he could finish, Lin Tu cut in, "Where's your manager? I want to see your manager. I want to file a—"

"Guest! Guest!" The salesclerk panicked. "Please stop calling for the manager! Whatever it is, you can talk to me! I have full authority to handle it!"

"Then tell me—where's the promotion? Where?" Lin Tu let out a cold laugh. "It's not that we can't afford these things. It's that we can't see any sincerity from your supermarket! If you don't bring out your finest, most premium goods, and give us your most powerful deals, then I can't think of a single reason why we'd shop here. It goes both ways. We—"

"Guest! Guest!" The salesclerk was already sweating buckets. "We have a promotion! There is one! There is!"

He scurried off to fetch the promotional flyer, while the other salesclerks kept their distance, none daring to speak with Lin Tu.

"Sister Lin, you're amazing," Yi Ying secretly gave her a thumbs-up. "That move of yours..."

"I learned it," Lin Tu said with a helpless smile. "When you've seen enough 'colorful black' demands, you pick it up naturally. This trick only works on errand-runners anyway. It wouldn't work on anyone else."

The salesclerk was, after all, just a wage worker doing someone else's bidding. He couldn't make the final call, and he was terrified of having a big pot dumped on his head, so he was extremely wary of every attempt Lin Tu made to pin blame on him. Lin Tu had truly forgotten her roots. She used to be the wage worker, afraid of unreasonable customers who'd dump baseless blame on her head. Now she was the one doing the dumping.

Sorry about that, Lin Tu silently apologized to the salesclerk. They say workers shouldn't make things hard for other workers—but then again, this salesclerk wasn't even a person anymore.

After a moment, the salesclerk finally returned with the promotional flyer. His expression was bleak, as if he'd suffered some crushing blow.

Lin Tu took the flyer and looked it over with the other players—

"Two cases of water and two cases of bread: one little finger (special price: limited to once per customer)."

"Promotional gimmick: To help you enjoy the water and bread, after purchase, you will feel increasingly hungry and thirsty for the rest of your shopping trip. You must eat at least four cases of bread and drink four cases of water to avoid starving or dying of thirst during your shopping."

"Two cases of water and two cases of bread: one heart (original price)."

"Damn it!" Yi Ying erupted in fury. "So that's the trap! If we spend one little finger on that package, we'd have to spend a heart to buy it again just to make it out of this supermarket alive. Nice. Real nice!"

The others continued reading, and almost every item listed afterward had some kind of catch in it.

For instance, in the clothing section, if you bought a top, you had to buy the matching bottom. Otherwise, your body would be so set on wearing a complete matching outfit that your upper and lower halves would walk off in opposite directions. Yes, literally—the upper half and lower half each going their own way.

Or take the bedding section: buying a pillow meant you had to buy the entire set of blankets and sheets, and every bedding set came bundled with a doll. These dolls were said to be masterpieces by a great artisan, each one retailing for an entire head.

...

If these weren't designed to kill people, the players wouldn't believe it.

"A scam! This is a total scam!" Guan Suixing said furiously.

"But hold on..." Lin Tu flipped to the back, landing on products they hadn't been shown before. "These things actually seem like a pretty good deal!"

The other players leaned in.

"Car radiator blueprint: one person (special price: limited to once per store);"

"Car air filter blueprint: one person (special price: limited to once per store);"

"..."

"Solar panel and battery blueprint: five people (special price: limited to once per store);"

"What the hell is this?!" Luo Yongzhi couldn't help muttering. "It costs a whole person to buy? That's basically telling us to sell ourselves to buy it!"

At first glance, the players felt a chill run down their spines—wasn't this supermarket just encouraging players to kill each other? And that last item especially, costing a full five people, made it hard not to suspect the supermarket was targeting them specifically, since the players numbered exactly six. If one of them killed everyone else, they'd be able to afford it.

"You can't look at it that way," Lin Tu said cheerfully. "We have plenty of people. This is basically free stuff."

Huh? That was true, too! A car radiator let a vehicle drive in extreme heat; an air filter prevented sand from being sucked into the intake and wrecking the engine; and the most expensive solar panel and battery set didn't even need explaining—it was essential for upgrading a campervan, even a full RV!

These were all necessities for driving through the desert. To get them normally, you'd have to grind through the game, open supply boxes, and pray to the RNG gods. But now the supermarket was practically "giving" them away for free!

"Buy it all!" Lin Tu opened her Single-Use Backpack, and a suffocating stench poured out. But at this moment, not a single person furrowed their brow. They all stared at those twelve corpses like they were priceless treasures.

"I'll hand one out to each of you first. If you need more, come find me. Though I don't have extras to spare—I'm trading for the solar panel and battery blueprint, plus that item that increases how many fruits plants produce."

The other players had no objections and started discussing among themselves what to buy. As for how to repay Lin Tu—the blueprints were each worth roughly a green-tier item, though under these circumstances their value far exceeded that. In the end, at Lin Tu's insistence, the players only needed to give her one green-tier item each.

Half an hour later, the players left loaded down with goods and returned to the road.

Lin Tu traded for the two items she'd mentioned plus a repair tool blueprint. The other players each picked up a radiator, an air filter, extra-durable oversized tires, front-and-side protective bars, and an underbody skid plate.

Back in the car, Lin Tu crafted a repair tool. A small handbag appeared in her hand.

She pressed the handbag directly against the car, and the paint that the monster's sand-blast had corroded earlier gradually restored itself to its original condition. After a moment, the handbag dropped to the ground, now somewhat worn, looking like it would tear apart with a single tug. Based on the information from the blueprint, Lin Tu knew it had one more use left in it.

"Anyone else's car damaged?"

Liu Sheng raised his hand. "I got scratched by a monster crossing the fifth stretch of road. It was still a tricycle back then—I don't know if it'll affect the SUV now that it's been upgraded."

Lin Tu handed him the repair tool. Liu Sheng took it and, like Lin Tu, pressed the handbag against his car. After a moment, the handbag vanished entirely.

To check whether the vehicle was still damaged, Lin Tu moved the Butler onto Liu Sheng's car. In front of the players, the Butler was especially proper: "There appears to be minor damage at the rear of the vehicle, reducing speed by 5 kilometers per hour. The vehicle has now been fully repaired. Speed is no longer affected."

"This item is incredible!" Dong Huadan immediately spotted the opportunity. "Originally, repairs could only be done with a [Repair Card] at an auto motel. Now, with this single-use repair tool, the Repair Card is completely replaceable! And it's not just this game—we often need cars in other disaster worlds, and they get damaged too. If this tool works there as well..."

Lin Tu immediately crafted another repair tool and handed it to Dong Huadan for appraisal. "Too bad. It's not an item. It's probably a game mechanic from [Fight a Path Through Blood]."

Even so, Lin Tu wasn't discouraged.

The repair tool was useful, which meant it would sell well. And selling well meant she could trade it for white- or green-tier items. Those were real items, after all!

"Let's get back on the road," Lin Tu said.

"But don't you guys feel like... the sun's gotten a bit harsher?" Guan Suixing, who had been lounging with her legs crossed and observing the surroundings, suddenly spoke up.

Lin Tu looked up at the sky and found her eyes overwhelmed by a sea of white, barely able to open. She lowered her gaze slightly and looked out across the boundless desert—everything was blindingly white, the very air seeming to shimmer and warp.

"The temperature really has gone up," Dong Huadan said, pulling out an outdoor thermometer. After checking, she said, "Fifty-two degrees Celsius. That's eight degrees higher than yesterday."

Lin Tu rummaged through her backpack for a moment and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. She took off her wire-rimmed glasses, put on the sunglasses, and finally felt a bit more comfortable.

"How do you have everything?" Guan Suixing said, exasperated.

She'd figured it out over the past few days—Lin Tu wasn't here to endure the disaster. She was here to enjoy herself.

Occasionally eating some fruit, sipping an iced drink, or slurping an ice pop was one thing. But the real kicker was that every time Guan Suixing turned around, she saw Lin Tu eating or drinking something, and whatever work needed doing was all handled by that vacant-looking robot. That alone was bad enough—Guan Suixing knew some special items could provide a refrigerator—but Lin Tu had more than just iced drinks and ice pops. She had all sorts of things.

Sun umbrellas, mini fans... and the worst was, one time Guan Suixing turned around and caught Lin Tu watching a TV drama on her iPad, giggling away. Unbelievable! Guan Suixing was already a screw-up, but even without her sister scolding her, she'd never dare live like that!

"Careful about snow blindness," Lin Tu said, pulling out five more pairs of sunglasses and handing them to the players. "Return them to me when we're done." She had a big stockpile, but it wasn't infinite.

"Thanks." Guan Suixing paused, then silently took them and put them on. Fine, she was being petty. It wasn't that she thought that kind of life was bad—it was just that she couldn't have it herself. "The next two-star supply box is yours."

The other players made similar promises, since a pair of sunglasses was worth about a white-tier item and they felt embarrassed to borrow them for free.

"It's fine," Lin Tu said, waving a hand. "I'm just lending them to you, not giving them away. A one-star supply box as rent is enough."

If a player came down with snow blindness, it wouldn't be easy for Lin Tu to deal with—she'd have to halt the whole team for half a day or a full day. Lending them the sunglasses was actually beneficial to her as well. Charging a full two-star supply box would be too much. If they really wanted to show gratitude, a one-star box was plenty. After all, as she said, it was a loan, not a gift.

"Thanks!" the players said. One-star supply boxes came around more than twenty times per stretch of road—practically as common as roadside grass. Lin Tu was truly charging them a symbolic fee.

The players rested for a moment, then set off again.

They drove in fits and starts for about half an hour. Just as they reached the middle of the twenty-ninth stretch of road, Dong Huadan suddenly honked her horn again as a signal, bringing all the players to a halt.

"Something's wrong!" she shouted.

"What?" Liu Sheng rolled down his window and was about to stick his head out to ask when he discovered that outside the car—which had no air conditioning—it felt like a steam oven, nearly cooking him into a bright red shrimp. Half an hour ago, it hadn't been like this.

"The temperature's risen again!" Dong Huadan held up her thermometer, then sent a photo of it to the player group chat.

It read sixty degrees Celsius!

"Could it just be because it's midday?" Luo Yongzhi scratched his head. Seeing how red Liu Sheng had turned in an instant, he didn't dare stick his head out the window, so he typed in the group chat instead.

It was now two in the afternoon, the hottest time of day.

"No!" Dong Huadan said patiently. "When I saw fifty-two degrees and said it was eight degrees higher than yesterday, I was comparing to yesterday's high. At this time yesterday, it was forty-four degrees. And today, it leapt all the way to sixty."

"A disaster coming?" The players were on high alert.

For a moment, everyone fell silent. They looked at the road surface that seemed to ripple in the sunlight. They couldn't just stay here forever.

"Move forward slowly," Lin Tu said. "Stop immediately if anything happens. Yi Ying, announce it in the regional channel."

"Got it," Yi Ying said.

Lin Tu and the others needed to sell goods and exchange information with other players, which meant they inevitably had to come into contact with them. That contact was usually handled by Yi Ying, who was naturally socially adept—because Lin Tu certainly couldn't do it. She'd only hide in the shadows and block people.

The team slowed down and crept forward. Fortunately, the temperature rise in the desert finally came to a halt.

"Is it over?" Yi Ying said, a sliver of hope in her voice.

At the same time, others who had received the message on the regional channel saw that the rising thermometer had finally stopped. They let out relieved sighs, but there was also a lingering resentment of having survived a disaster. A full sixty degrees! Damn this Endless Wasteland! Who could survive in heat like this?!

"I've got my AC cranked to max!" someone said with exasperation.

"I'm still on a tricycle and I'm about to die of heat here! I'm so jealous! I hate myself for not working harder!"

"I'm so dizzy! Help me! Am I hallucinating? I feel like it's about to rain."

"Huh? You see it too? So it's not a hallucination? Looks like it's really going to rain!?"

Yi Ying, who happened to spot that message, instinctively looked up and saw dark clouds forming at the horizon. The other players turned their heads in that direction too, clearly noticing something unusual.

The dark clouds drifted swiftly toward the road, soon covering a vast stretch of the sky.

"Stop!" Lin Tu said immediately.

"Dry rain!" Dong Huadan said with a note of fear in her experienced voice.

The six SUVs quickly came to a halt on the road, sitting in the middle of the lane, not too far apart, quietly waiting for the rain to fall.

"It's raining! It's raining!" the regional channel cheered as raindrops began to fall.

To call it falling wasn't quite right, because it never actually reached the ground.

Scattered raindrops descended from the sky, but when you reached out your hand, you felt not a single drop of moisture. The heat evaporated the rain midair, leaving nothing behind. It was like a strange illusion, a scene straight out of a dream.

"Get ready for another temperature spike," Dong Huadan said. "Dry rain means the desert's abnormal heat is here to stay—and it means evaporation wind is on the way." No sooner had she spoken than her already gloomy expression darkened further. "And if we're really unlucky..."

The players followed her gaze. A stream of air rushed against the rain, kicking up sand from the ground. Then more and more currents rolled back and forth, churning up even more sand. At the distant edge of the desert, before their very eyes, a pale yellow sandstorm began to take shape, rising until it nearly touched the sky.

"Damn!" Luo Yongzhi shouted. "Sandstorm!"