Chapter 126

Lin Tu rubbed her eyes and checked the time. It was five in the morning, still an hour before clock-in.

Last night had been peaceful, but someone had jumped to their death this morning.

Lin Tu poured mineral water onto a disposable face towel, gave her face a quick wipe, then stowed away the "I Love My Home" wind chime and left the office.

The Art Department staff had apparently scattered, leaving only a few players hesitating about whether to follow.

"Someone's jumped off the roof," one player said, "and these locals are acting like they've come to life. They're all talking about who it was, then heading out in groups to go see."

Lin Tu glanced at her phone. The players in the After-sales and Creative Departments were reporting the same thing in the group chat, debating whether to check it out.

But soon they wouldn't have to worry about it.

Lin Tu heard a phone ringing at a workstation—not just hers, but every phone on every desk, all ringing at once.

Lin Tu picked up one of the desk phones.

"Little Lin? Busy?"

The voice on the other end called her name with precision.

Lin Tu: "..." It's five in the morning, and you're asking if I'm busy? Are you out of your mind!

She smiled into the phone. "Not busy. What's up?"

"Good!" The voice on the other end sounded frantic. "One of our colleagues has died! He jumped to his death! Please come down to the first-floor lobby immediately. We're holding the funeral in ten minutes!"

Someone had jumped moments ago, and they were already holding the funeral before the body was even cold?

Funerals were a bit inauspicious, and Lin Tu didn't really want to go. She tried to find an excuse. "There are so many people on the first floor—surely you don't need me to squeeze in there. I'll donate, though. Any amount."

"Our family member is dead! Donations aren't enough! You have to come. Every family member must attend the funeral. Do you think he'll get a second chance at one?"

The voice grew shriller with each word. Lin Tu knew she couldn't refuse, so she replied, "I'll be right down."

She looked up at the other colleagues, all of whom wore grim expressions as they set down their desk phones, clearly having failed their own attempts to decline. They had no choice but to attend.

The voice had given them ten minutes. Taking the elevator definitely wouldn't make it in time, so Lin Tu arranged to meet the players on the second floor, and they could head down to the first together.

Because of Peng Yuanzhi's existence, Lin Tu suspected similar imposters might be among the other players, so she deliberately separated from the Art Department players and regrouped with Yi Ying and the others.

On her phone, the players in the daytime hours asked about Luo Yongzhi's situation on the side.

Nothing like a colleague committing suicide had happened during the night hours—it was completely calm. It seemed this was only targeting the daytime players.

"It really is Little Hu!?" Nearby, some employees were discussing the cause of death.

Yi Ying sidled over and easily joined the conversation.

"Who's Little Hu?"

"You don't know Little Hu?" The person clicked their tongue in surprise. "You don't know her? A while back, the friend of one of our superiors went through some major family crisis and needed to raise funds. Everyone in the company donated at least a few thousand or ten thousand. But Little Hu? She said she wouldn't donate a single cent!"

"Unbelievable! No wonder the boss singled her out!" Another person chimed in.

Yi Ying, going by the company rules, asked in confusion, "Aren't we all family here? Can you really refuse to donate?"

The two employees stared at her in shock. "You're crazy too! Just because they call you family, you actually believe it? Who'd actually want to donate to that guy!"

"Exactly! He claims he's in debt, but he's sitting on a few hundred square meters of luxury apartments—who knows how many! Isn't it just a money grab? Squeezing the likes of us to fund his own lifestyle!"

"If it weren't for fear of getting on the boss's bad side, who would donate! And those bootlickers are practically competing—one donates a few thousand, another donates tens of thousands, making the rest of us who give a few hundred get publicly criticized."

"But nobody dares to go as far as Little Hu—not a single cent."

"I heard she received a termination notice from HR just a couple of days ago! Probably jumped because she didn't want to lose her job."

"Really? I never heard about a termination notice," another unfamiliar employee cut in. "What I heard was she'd taken out a loan on a house that was never finished. She couldn't even find a place to live, but she still had to pay the mortgage every month. The pressure got to her, so she jumped."

"You're all behind the times. She was pregnant! The company was going to transfer her to a different position and cut her salary in half. She probably couldn't handle it and jumped."

"My god! This is such a shady company. How is nobody doing anything about it!"

"Hey, let's not talk about it."

By the time they were done eavesdropping on the gossip, everyone's expressions had turned grim. Especially Lin Tu—she wasn't just grim-faced. Her brows were knit so tightly they almost formed a single line.

"Two minutes left," Guan Suixing said, checking the time.

They finally made it down the stairs, slipping into a corner of the first-floor lobby near the emergency exit.

Along the way, they'd caught more bits of gossip, and all of it shared one common thread: the employees were certain that Little Hu's jump had something to do with the company.

Oddly enough, these employees no longer seemed affected by the hallucinations, the hunger, or the employee handbook. They had their own opinions, could think, could even push back against company rules—just like normal people.

Lin Tu wasn't sure if her eyes were playing tricks on her, but she thought she spotted Lu Meiliang and Lu Shishu in the crowd. But the first floor was packed with far too many people; when she tried to find them again, they were gone.

As the funeral dirge began to play, a foul stench wafted in from the doorway.

Lin Tu lightly hopped onto the nearby water dispenser. Standing on it, she watched as a coffin was carried in by a group of people working together.

The moment the coffin appeared, all murmuring among the employees ceased instantly, and tears began streaming uncontrollably down everyone's face. Grief flooded the entire first-floor lobby.

In the center of the hall, the crowd cleared a circle, and in the very middle was a ring of funeral wreaths.

At the front stood a slightly plump middle-aged man in a suit, his face a mask of misery.

He held a script: "Today, our friend, our family member, Hu Lulu, has left us forever!"

"Her death was a complete accident. The cleaning lady forgot to lock the window properly while washing them, and Hu Lulu's family member wanted some fresh air. When she opened the window, she pushed too hard and fell from the eighteenth floor!"

"Waaaaah!" Immediately, the whole venue erupted into anguished wailing.

"Doesn't this feel a little... off?" The crying was far too synchronized. Guan Suixing poked Lin Tu's ankle with her left hand and nudged Kou Lin with her right elbow.

The players huddled beneath the water dispenser were using Kou Lin's skill [Camera Intrusion] to watch the funeral footage in the highest definition on their phones.

"Very off," Yi Ying replied.

"Maybe they genuinely care about their coworker? Unlike some people..." Kou Lin also found it unsettling, but she couldn't resist taking a jab at Guan Suixing.

Guan Suixing rolled her eyes. "Worry about yourself."

The funeral continued.

After describing Little Hu's cause of death, the supposed assistant to the chairman had the employees carry the coffin to the center of the wreaths.

Once the coffin was set down, just as everyone moved forward to pay their last respects and bid Hu Lulu farewell, the coffin lid suddenly opened on its own from the inside.

Then, a person whose face was completely flattened into a pancake, unrecognizable, sat up from inside the coffin.

"The viewing is over. Time for cremation." She raised a match, flicking it casually toward the entrance.

The next moment, a raging fire erupted at the main entrance of the first-floor lobby, spreading rapidly toward everything else.

At the same time, as if the flames had thrown open the gates of hell, skeletons—mere frames of bone—stepped out from the fire.

Their jaws clacked incessantly as they began attacking every employee in the lobby indiscriminately.

Lin Tu saw an employee grabbed by one of the skeletons, staring in terror at its face while screaming "Sister Zhang!"—and then the skeleton drove a claw straight into his chest, ripped out his still-beating heart, and stuffed it into its mouth.

"So fragrant... so fragrant..." In the chaos, Lin Tu vaguely heard someone muttering.

The heart was chewed to pulp and swallowed, but instead of landing in the skeleton's stomach, it fell straight through and splattered onto the floor, becoming a smear of muck underfoot.

Meanwhile, another employee who had been gossiping moments earlier had their eyes eaten; yet another had an arm torn off.

The chairman's assistant in the center stared in horror at the skeletons closing in from all sides, scrambling desperately for the stairs—only to be caught by a claw.

In a frenzy of tearing, his head was ripped off. The skeleton cradled it, pried open the skull, and savored the "delicacy" within.

"Go! Move!" Lin Tu leaped off the water dispenser, leading the players as they sprinted toward the upper floors.

The main entrance of the lobby was sealed off. Lin Tu had noticed earlier when she came down to pick up the takeout that the outside was nothing but fog with no way out, so none of the players even tried to run for it.

Luckily, they'd had the foresight to stand near the emergency exit, and they reached the door in no time.

"Shit! Which idiot locked the door!" Guan Suixing roared.

Lin Tu exchanged a glance with Luo Yongzhi, both bracing to slam into it together, when Kou Lin stepped forward. "My turn!"

She quickly pulled a thin strip of metal from her phone, gave it a few deft pinches in her hand, and it formed a key. Kou Lin inserted it into the lock and smoothly opened the emergency exit.

"Go!" They took the stairs three at a time, racing upward.

Lin Tu glanced back. Many people were streaming after them, while others stood at the elevators furiously pressing the call button.

The elevator was fast, sure, but there were far too many people crowded at the doors. A group would pile in, immediately triggering the overload alarm, and the elevator would refuse to move. Yet at this critical moment, no one was willing to get off voluntarily.

The skeletons at the entrance were multiplying by the second. For those inside the elevator, squeezing back out was next to impossible.

One person was shoved out of the elevator. Just as the doors began to close, a skeleton wedged its way in—and the car erupted in screams.

No need to imagine the rest. They all knew what was happening inside. Lin Tu turned her head and kept running for her life.