Chapter 127

This time, both Luo Yongzhi and Liu Sheng heard it.

The soft-looking blob recoiled again, hiding itself among the rest of the trash.

"Clear the garbage, and watch out for that thing," Lin Tu said.

The two nodded in unison, and the three of them quickly got to work with their fire tongs.

Before long, the layer of rubbish at the bathroom entrance was cleared away. The deeper they went, the more urgent, rapid, and louder the screaming became. Gradually, the players realized what that pink mass with black spots was—flesh.

Recalling the pink maggots they had seen writhing in the takeout boxes earlier, the players felt a surge of dread. Both shades of pink were the same—a single, sickening pink.

Lin Tu thought of the countless shades of lipstick in the real world. She was now convinced that if this particular pink were released as a lipstick, it would absolutely become the most viral and unique shade on the market. Because no pink had ever managed to be simultaneously so tender, carrying a cold kind of pallor, infused with the blood-red of raw vitality, and visually plump and bouncy.

Part of the flesh was already exposed now, emitting an abnormally foul stench.

"Aaaaaah!" The screaming from inside grew even more panicked.

"Keep going." Lin Tu skirted around the flesh and continued clearing the trash.

About ten-plus minutes passed, and just as everyone's ears were about to be tortured into madness by the screaming, they finally reached the sink.

The amount of garbage here finally lessened, replaced by flesh that occupied nearly the entire restroom.

With each scream, the flesh pulsed and rippled, like a mountain of meat.

Lin Tu scanned the room and soon spotted a face above their heads.

The face was nearly as large as a bathroom tile, yet its features were tiny. It stared intently down at them, its mouth emitting a constant stream of screams.

"Holy shit..." Luo Yongzhi looked up following Lin Tu's gaze and nearly dropped to his knees.

Near the wall was his hand, currently clutching an empty can, trying to tip its contents into his mouth.

"Lu Shishu?" Lin Tu couldn't quite believe such an elegant name belonged to this creature, and called out tentatively.

But the man showed no reaction.

Remembering that Luo Yongzhi and the others had also been corrupted by the darkness, treating the maggots in the takeout as delicious food...

Lin Tu took out the [Peace Token] she had obtained earlier from the [Peace Envoy], carefully stepped forward two paces, peeled the banana, opened the cola, and placed all the supplies in front of him.

"These are for you," Lin Tu said.

Lu Shishu had never been "optimized." He looked terrifying, but in a way, he might be the only truly normal living person in the company.

Lin Tu didn't really need this bag of supplies anyway. Giving them away served a dual purpose: first, to try and bring Lu Shishu back to his senses, and second, to boost her [Peace Envoy] ability. It was a win-win.

"Uh... uh..." Staring at the items before him, Lu Shishu abruptly stopped screaming. It was as if he realized something, and he looked at the can in his hand in confusion.

"Need to step it up." Lin Tu grabbed the cola and had Luo Yongzhi lift her up, bringing her close to that horrifyingly obese face before pouring the entire contents down his throat.

A moment later, as if the cola were a potent dose of medicine rolling through his body, Lu Shishu's face suddenly twisted into an expression of extreme agony.

He stared at the can in terror, hurled it away, then uncontrollably bowed his head and began to vomit violently.

The three players backed away simultaneously. At the same time, a fat maggot, as thick as an entire arm, wriggled out of his mouth.

Lin Tu: "..." She couldn't take it anymore.

She pulled out the crossbow she'd used in the last disaster and fired an arrow at the maggot. Probably blocked by the layer of fat, the arrow didn't pierce through its body. Lin Tu fired three or four more shots in quick succession, successfully ending the maggot's disgusting, writhing life just as Lu Shishu managed to vomit it out completely.

"You..." He'd barely started speaking before another wave of vomiting hit him.

Lin Tu continued shooting, her expression blank.

A few minutes later, the expressions of the two players behind her gradually shifted from terror and pallor to calm.

Finally, after putting an end to five or six maggots, Lu Shishu finally settled down.

"Can you kill me?" Those were his first words.

Though his voice was sharp and muffled from the flesh squeezing his vocal cords, Lin Tu was certain—she had succeeded.

"I want to ask you a few things."

"I really can't bear to recall what I've been through, but since you've brought me back to my senses, I'm willing to answer a few questions..." Lu Shishu spoke with a mix of pain and relief. "But you'd better be quick. Since you've cleared all this stuff out, I'll be discovered soon."

Discovered. Discovered by what?

Lin Tu was mulling this over when she suddenly heard a rustling sound from outside the restroom.

Liu Sheng darted out to check, and a second later came running back screaming: "Holy shit! The corpses are reanimating!"

"The trash!" Lin Tu quickly handed him the Single-Use Backpack. "Pile the garbage at the door to buy us some time."

She grabbed a handful of barbed wire and passed it to Luo Yongzhi. "You know how to use this! Stall them!"

"No problem!" Luo Yongzhi nodded solemnly.

Lin Tu turned to Lu Shishu, her mind racing, and asked her first question: "What exactly is the delicacy of this company?"

"Ugh..." The question made Lu Shishu involuntarily retch. "Human flesh that's even more horrifying than human flesh. They love eating people, and then they discovered that one kind of human flesh tastes even better than ordinary people's. That's the flesh of people who've endured agonizing torment but still believe the world is beautiful. That kind of flesh is addictive—it brings on blissful hallucinations."

"So that's the difference between the night and the day?"

"I don't know. I got in through the back door, so there's a lot I don't understand. But what I do know is that this is a shady company. People are always jumping off the building. It's been shut down by the government multiple times. If not for the insanely high pay, nobody would ever be tricked into coming here. A while back, someone set the place on fire, so it's always losing power. My impression of this place is almost entirely—pitch darkness, with only the glow of computer screens flickering."

"So when that disaster happened, I ran headlong toward the darkness without thinking. But for some reason, I couldn't escape anymore. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get out of this godforsaken place... Because I'd become addicted. I was so hungry, so hungry, so hungry..."

He seemed to recall something both utterly agonizing and utterly thrilling, and began screaming again.

"Sister Lin! The trash won't hold them!" Liu Sheng was practically weeping from outside the restroom. "They're eating the garbage! Oh my god! They're eating the garbage!"

This scene would likely become Liu Sheng's lifelong psychological trauma.

Lin Tu peeled a banana and shoved the flesh into Lu Shishu's mouth—

"What disaster?"

This might get at the core of why she had entered this world. What disaster had occurred?

"You don't know? That disaster..." Now that he was lucid again, Lu Shishu, seeing that Lin Tu didn't seem to be lying, continued. "It all started from the beginning. This company scoured everywhere for qualified people to hunt for human flesh."

"And then?"

"They found people whose lives were going badly, tortured and killed them. After they died, they left recorders behind to document the changes in their corpses. If the corpse rotted, it was bad meat. If only part of it rotted while another part remained perfectly intact, it was trim meat—those cuts were made into canned meat, sold outside as a premium condiment meant to be eaten like caviar or something. But if the corpse never decayed, if the person was still struggling to come back to life, that was the finest meat of all. They still smile, they still walk, they still move, they still think..."

"And when you eat their flesh, you get to taste the most delicious food in the world..."

As Lu Shishu spoke, he began to grow dazed again. Lin Tu tossed another banana into his mouth.

"Don't think about that stuff!" Remembering that bright, smiling face with the tender pink brain matter, she felt a twinge of hunger herself. "Tell me about the disaster."

"The disaster is..." Lu Shishu gave a bitter smile. "Those people can never die anymore. They multiply, more and more... When they invaded the company, everything changed. Things I didn't understand happened. I was terrified, so I ran toward what I thought was the safety of the darkness."

"But the darkness never ended. It was only through my uncle that I learned the company had split into night and day. At first, my uncle was still normal. He told me the day was dangerous and I must never go there. But then, after a while, he suddenly changed his tune and said the day was a wonderful place."

"He told me that if I participated in the company's activities, I'd automatically enter the day. But I didn't dare, because I'd already found his corpse."

"At first, I swore I wouldn't eat a single thing from this company. But... I was so hungry... I was hungry... I was so hungry... I ate my uncle's..."

"Eat a banana." Lin Tu tossed the last one into his mouth.

"Sister Lin! The barbed wire's about to give out too! There are too many of them!"

"Last question!" Lin Tu asked. "Those [disasters]—they're not in the day and not in the night. Do you know where they went?"

"My uncle said they were locked away... but the company keeps producing them, so sooner or later, the cage will burst and they'll be everywhere. They'll devour everyone. If you want to see them, my uncle told me, in the darkness of the day, they're like magma—they'll melt anyone who enters."

Having said that, Lu Shishu spoke again: "Now can you kill me? I'm begging you. I have no reason to live anyway. But if you don't kill me soon, I'll go mad..."

Lin Tu silently pulled a gun from her backpack and aimed it at him. She could hardly imagine what it would feel like to regain clarity after enduring all of that.

"My mother said I was supposed to grow up to be an educated person. I let her down. I really did study hard, but I just couldn't find a job... I had no choice but to come to this company..."

As he spoke, he suddenly let out a scream. A corpse had burst through the barbed wire's encirclement, sunk its teeth into his flesh, and begun eating with relish.

It was likely that he'd eaten so much of the company's delicacies that he'd been marinated to perfection—his flesh was just too fragrant.

Lin Tu thought about this as she aimed at his forehead and pulled the trigger.