Chapter 131

The rich, crispy fat of the grilled pork belly burst between her teeth with a sizzle, like a basin of clear water dumped over someone lost in a drought-stricken desert, nearly knocking Kou Lin out with its fragrance.

"Ugh!" Kou Lin clutched the sofa and aimed for the trash can, nearly retching up her stomach. "Holy crap!"

She felt as if she'd died and come back. Everything that had happened recently played through her mind like a lantern show. Kou Lin looked up in despair and immediately spotted her friend standing by the table, looking utterly confused and oblivious. She gave a thumbs up. "Guan Suixing! You're great! You're the one! You really are something!"

"Me? You know me?" Guan Suixing pointed at herself with innocent bewilderment, which only made Kou Lin's chest hurt more.

"She was affected just like you were," Lin Tu said.

"Use this to cure it? Borrowing one," Kou Lin said in thanks, then grabbed a skewer of lamb and shoved it into Guan Suixing's mouth with some force.

The gamey smell of the mutton hit the back of her head, but as the cumin flavor bloomed and turned that gaminess into a savory spice, Guan Suixing felt herself gradually waking up. She looked at the face before her, gritting its teeth with fury; despite the angry stare fixed on her, she somehow didn't feel afraid at all—the more she looked, the funnier it seemed...

A moment later, Guan Suixing snapped back: "Kou Lin?! Why are you here?"

"Why am I here? Didn't you invite me? Before the disaster you said your group only had five people and needed more, and you said this calamity played to my skills, so I came with you!" Kou Lin's words dripped with blood and pierced like daggers. "Do you know what I ate? Do you know I almost died? All you do is ask why I'm here—are you even human?!"

"I invited you?" Guan Suixing was baffled.

"You're our teammate?" The other players could hardly believe it either.

"We need a stronger remedy," Lin Tu said as she handed each person a skewer of grilled meat. She also opened the stew pot and the hotpot, laying them out on the table, and fetched several sets of disposable bowls and chopsticks. "Let's eat and talk."

At this point, only food could rescue the players from the den of demons.

About ten minutes later, the now-full group was in the same confused state Lin Tu had been in—each holding a phone and counting names, faces full of bewilderment. Then, as Kou Lin pointed them out one by one, they finally spotted her name, along with the three sentences she'd left.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven..." Yi Ying couldn't believe it. "The group ticket caps out at seven people, so... Peng Yuanzhi isn't one of us?!"

Lin Tu quietly looked at Hei Mawu. The latter was also staring at his phone in surprise, and his expression betrayed nothing, leaving her unable to speak for a moment.

"That's right." Lin Tu nodded, briefly describing what she'd seen after eating her fill. The players felt a chill run down their spines.

"No wonder you were targeting him earlier, Sister Lin—he really was the problem!" The players looked enlightened and grateful. "Good thing you caught it, Sister Lin. And we get another free meal out of you."

"He almost fooled us!" Guan Suixing slammed her fist onto the table in fury.

"Thanks for the skewers, Sister Lin." Kou Lin, cleared of suspicion and saved to boot, quietly shuffled a few steps closer to Lin Tu, putting distance between herself and her unreliable friend.

"Speaking of which," Guan Suixing said, prompted by the thought of her unreliable friend, "what exactly did you eat before? Don't tell me you had takeout and corpses like that Peng Yuanzhi?"

The disdain in her tone genuinely stung Kou Lin. "Bullshit! Why would I eat that stuff? What I ate was... a human brain..." Even as she said it, her stomach churned again. How had she been so bewitched that she'd passed over braised pig brains and eaten something so horrifying?

"Ugh—" Kou Lin knelt by the trash can and threw up again.

"What did it feel like after you ate those things?" Lin Tu asked once Kou Lin had recovered a bit.

Kou Lin struggled to describe it: "A feeling of intense satisfaction, like I'd never eaten anything so delicious or felt so full. And I felt like I truly belonged to this company—an even deeper sense of loyalty to this stupid place."

Lin Tu nodded, recalling how in the previous world [Plague Kingdom], once infection reached 90% and a person became a heavily infected patient, they were transformed into one of the monsters and could no longer leave the disaster world to return to Doomsday Town. She suspected this world had a similar rule—if someone ate too much of the company's "delicacies," even ten rounds of barbecue might not save them. At that point, even if they survived past three months, they'd be trapped here forever.

Fortunately, Kou Lin had only eaten one brain and hadn't sunk too deep.

Lin Tu thought about the other players in the Art Department. What they'd eaten wasn't a brain—it was Lu Shishu's corpse. She knew exactly how "valuable" that corpse was. Maybe she could take a couple of skewers out to them later and see if they could still be saved.

The thought flickered past, and Lin Tu said, "From now on, let's communicate through the phone group. The company's internal software is too easy to infiltrate."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

As for how to communicate without triggering company penalties, the trick was simple: just don't sit at your desk. The company's downfall was thinking that forcing seven daily check-ins would cage their freedom, unaware that anyone who didn't want to be at their desk could always find an excuse to slack off.

"So what's the deal with this Peng Yuanzhi, anyway?"

The players began to ponder the question.

He could sway everyone's thoughts, making them believe he was a teammate. It was entirely possible that the Art Department players eating the takeout and rotting corpses was also his doing.

"Sister Lin, you share an office with him—what if he gets to you?" Liu Sheng was worried about that.

"I can guarantee I eat my fill every day," Lin Tu replied after a moment's thought. "So as long as I'm careful, it should be fine."

Liu Sheng relaxed, but the conversation circled back to the topic of "food," and the players exchanged glances.

Although Lin Tu's food had saved them twice, they didn't pin all their hopes on her. In a disaster, companions were just companions; everyone knew that only you could take responsibility for yourself. Besides, Lin Tu's stockpile was finite—there was no reason to demand she provide supplies for everyone.

So the matter of stocking up came back to what had been said from the start—the procurement department on floors twelve and thirteen.

"There really is edible stuff in there," said Kou Lin, who'd been there and spoke with authority. "But there's also a lot that isn't. You have to be careful to pick out what's safe. If you walk in unprepared, it's easy to get bewitched like I did."

The other players nodded, convinced. "We can use the conference room to move supplies at night and have Luo Yongzhi and Liu Sheng from logistics inspect them. That shouldn't be a problem."

Seeing this, Kou Lin continued, "You have to pay to take food out. I don't know what regular food costs, but... those things were ten thousand yuan each. If you can bribe the staff, I bet you could get more."

And then there was the matter of money... that was the problem.

"We're supposed to be here for work, so why do we have to spend money on everything?!" Yi Ying was fed up.

Just earlier, all the players had received calls from their department heads, each somehow finagling a hundred thousand yuan out of them. Bound by the rules, the players couldn't refuse and could only agree.

One point could be exchanged for ten thousand yuan, which meant one point for one serving of food. Not exactly expensive, but the players still felt cheated. Not only did they have to fork over money to this damn company, but they also had to buy food from it with their own cash. The whole thing felt like a rip-off.

"Take out a loan on credit!" Kou Lin suddenly realized her boss had been remarkably forward-thinking. She enthusiastically posted the loan link to the group. "Everyone can borrow up to five hundred thousand."

A five-hundred-thousand loan on credit!

At that, all the players had to look at Kou Lin with new respect. That actually worked?

The players agreed to take out loans as soon as they left the meeting room. Luo Yongzhi and Liu Sheng would transfer their money to Lin Tu to buy on their behalf. They'd gather on the tenth floor at exactly 4:30 and head up together to the procurement department to buy food. Five hundred thousand could buy fifty servings—one meal each—and at three meals a day, that was enough to sustain them for half a month.

Of course, that was just the baseline for survival. In the meantime, they'd scrounge up other food, plus their own stockpiles, enough to cover the first two months.

Before that, Lin Tu also meant to "lend" the players some food to keep them from being too mentally affected once they entered the storage room—so they wouldn't end up like Kou Lin, grabbing a human brain.

No sooner said than done. Luo Yongzhi distributed the food that had been inspected during the earlier meeting, and the players left the meeting room one by one.

Everything went according to plan. The players brought their money to the procurement department and bought basic staples—rice, flour, oil, salt—along with snacks and fruit.

With supplies in hand, though not yet inspected in the dark, the players felt their confidence swell. Before long, they clocked in at seven, endured another assault from Mingming Chicken's takeout, clocked in again at ten, and finally reached quitting time.

In the meantime, Lin Tu called the Art Department players into the bathroom and fed skewers to each of them one by one.

Thankfully, they hadn't eaten much of the takeout or the corpse. After a few groans and some violent vomiting, Lin Tu told them the rule about resisting the illusions with food and also mentioned borrowing money on credit to buy from the procurement department, along with how much of a rip-off that place was.

After the players thanked her, Lin Tu left the bathroom. Whatever happened to them afterward was no longer her concern—she'd done her part.

Later, Lin Tu noticed that when Mingming Chicken delivered takeout in the evening, the players resisted the temptation. And when Peng Yuanzhi tried to hand them corpses, they all refused.

Night soon fell. Lin Tu took down the ["I love my home" Wind Chime] from her cabin and hung it temporarily outside the office door, then made do with Lu Meiliang's bed for the night.

Nothing happened.

Early the next morning, Lin Tu was jolted awake by a scream—

Someone at the company had jumped to their death.