Chapter 137

"Human meat?!" Lu Haima couldn't help but step back, his narrow eyes widening in fear.

The players behind Lin Tu crowded forward, eyeing this "player" of unknown identity with smiles and nods. "That's right, human meat."

"Well... I don't think human meat is that tasty anyway. If you guys like it, go ahead and eat," he said, backing away instinctively as he looked at the "players," whose smiles were all curved at the exact same angle. "How about... I pretend I was never here?"

"But you're already here, aren't you? No need to rush." Yi Ying cracked her whip, blocking his path, while Kou Lin stood by with a stun baton at the ready.

Lu Haima regretted everything. Just as he was about to flee, Lin Tu was already standing right in front of him.

Recalling the scene of this group slaughtering several employees just moments ago, Lu Haima obediently extended both hands and let Yi Ying tie him up.

A moment later, the now-bound Lu Haima finally reacted: "If you guys really like eating human meat, why don't you go over there and eat with them?"

Yi Ying rolled her eyes. "We prefer our meat fresh."

Lu Haima: "?"

"You tricked me!" he accused. "You're obviously normal players! How could you treat your own kind like this, tying me up!"

"Because we're not sure if you're really a player." After a moment, as Lin Tu stared at the silent Lu Haima, Yi Ying continued joking around, and Kou Lin sat by looking unconcerned, Guan Suixing realized the task of being the sensible speaker fell on her. "We ran into two people before who claimed to be players, but they were actually monsters disguised as players in this disaster world. Those monsters could even mess with our heads, making us involuntarily believe they were our companions."

"So, you think I'm a monster?" Lu Haima finally understood. He quickly waved his hands. "I'm really not!"

"Then why aren't you affected by the human meat?"

"Should I be affected by human meat?" Lu Haima thought for a moment, then it clicked. "My skill is called [The Man Who Died Stuffed in the End Times]. It lets me get food at set times every day. The food is random, and sometimes gives me special abilities, but it's all random. After I eat that stuff, I can't eat anything else, or else I'll die from being stuffed. I guess not being affected by human meat is part of the skill effect."

All the players exchanged glances. To win their trust, Lu Haima hurriedly added: "The special effect I got today is invisibility three times, ten seconds each."

As he spoke, his body gradually turned translucent. For a moment, all the others could see was a terrifying sight of ropes tied around clothes.

Ten seconds later, Lu Haima's body solidified again, and the players were half-convinced.

"We'll keep you tied up for now. We can take you along when the fire starts. As for letting you loose... we'll observe for another couple of days," Lin Tu said. "Of course, you're free to leave anytime."

"No, no, no, I'm not going. I accept your terms," Lu Haima hurriedly shook his head. "I just learned that monsters can pretend to be players, so I definitely can't leave now. No wonder my teammates were acting weird one by one, then disappearing one by one. I thought I was going to die here too!"

With that, he briefly told the players about his teammates. Three of them were active during the day—one who recklessly went to complete a task and "died on the spot" while clocking in, one who ate takeout and had now completely lost contact, and one who was Lu Haima himself. The other four were in the dark, with one of them suspiciously being a monster, while the other three were killed by that monster disguised as a player.

"So every team that comes in encounters a monster," the players exchanged glances.

Kou Lin quietly added: "Maybe one player from your team was squeezed out by the monster, now missing." She felt this was a good time to light up a cigarette.

Lu Haima also realized this possibility, and his face turned pale. However, he was barely affected by the hallucinations, and he was certain that in his memory, six people had entered the game together. After just clearing the hallucinations, Lin Tu and the others took out their phones and checked for him—indeed, there were six.

"Then don't worry about your teammates. Worry about ours," Yi Ying said as she tapped out a message to Luo Yongzhi. "There's a monster disguised as a player on your side. It's already got a triple kill. Be careful!"

Luo Yongzhi: "Got it. We received word that we can go up to the fifth floor at 9 PM."

Liu Sheng: "Damn! The monsters on the fourth floor are getting too many. We can't push through, so we're going downstairs to look for clues."

Luo Yongzhi: "Liu Sheng says the tone of the text messages feels too official, and he thinks he heard police sirens on the first floor. So we're heading to the first floor to look for related clues."

Yi Ying: "Stay safe, you two!"

Liu Sheng: "You too! Remember to run upstairs at 9 PM. We won't be in danger as long as we don't go up. You guys absolutely have to!"

Lin Tu: "We will."

With that, the conversation ended.

Knowing they could rest all day and only needed to flee the disaster at night, all the players breathed a sigh of relief.

Lu Haima was no exception. He asked earnestly: "So do we still have to clock in?"

The other players had considered this too, but Lin Tu had already given them the answer: "Probably not necessary to risk it. The employee handbook says a leader visits every Thursday to select outstanding employees. Those who are terrible will face dreadful, severe punishment. I think employees who haven't even received their basic salary would definitely be considered terrible employees."

Of course, there were other ways—like catching a couple of employees to take the fall. But then again, you should never bet on whether company rules make sense, because they always exceed the realm of normal human understanding.

So the best method was to clock in normally every day. After all, clocking in wasn't dangerous.

Lin Tu put away her phone and thought for a moment. "In that case, I'll head upstairs to finish my work first."

The other players nodded. "Contact us on the phone if anything comes up."

Back on the seventh floor.

By now, the Art Department employees had lost the vigor they'd had two days ago. Like the employees downstairs, they too had been starving for days.

But even though the Art Department was on a higher floor with more food and resource points, the employees still couldn't escape the fate of killing their own kind and eating their own kind.

Lin Tu pushed open the door to the stairwell. On one side was the Art Department, on the other the Packaging Department.

She didn't know what had happened last night—when she'd clocked in, nothing seemed off—but now there were massive bloodstains in the corridor, as if some serious murder had occurred.

Lin Tu stepped over the strange remnants in the blood and headed toward the Art Department.

The employees all sat in their seats, quietly waiting for the workday to begin.

When Lin Tu pushed the door open, they all looked up at roughly the same time, their eyes carrying an eerie gaze.

Having already seen the crazed state of the employees downstairs, Lin Tu recognized that look—it was called "you look delicious."

"Your department head is back! What are you looking at?!" Lin Tu snapped. She walked over to an employee and saw his face covered in blood, with a human arm sitting on his desk. She couldn't help but scold: "Work is about to start, and you're still eating! Still eating! Which is more important, work or food? Do you know how much hope I have for you?"

She flashed the badge on her chest, and the employee's eyes, which had been turning pitch black, cleared up again: "I'm sorry, Department Head. I'll get to work right away."

"That's more like it!"

Lin Tu then circled over to Peng Yuanzhi's side. The body of Lu Shishu had disappeared at some point. Lin Tu took the opportunity to scold him: "As the department head, I must warn you—don't think you can rest easy just because you're buddy-buddy with me. Doing your job well is the right path!"

Lin Tu had seen more than enough of this kind of low-level boss posturing, so her imitation was spot-on, hitting the right notes. After throwing a "minor tantrum" in the Art Department and confiscating the clubs and knives of several employees she'd "optimized" who harbored resentment toward her—especially Lu Meiliang's—Lin Tu used work as an excuse to call the few players in the Art Department into her office.

Lin Tu cleared her throat. "So, do you think human meat tastes good?"

They all nodded in unison, without a moment's hesitation.

Lin Tu: "..." Hopeless.

Just one night, and they'd already fallen ill beyond salvation.

But these were living people. Lin Tu could turn a blind eye to the lives of employees, but she couldn't do the same for the players. If there was anything she could do to help them...

Lin Tu recalled one phrase from the management perks: "You may make reasonable requests of certain people, especially during times of marriage, illness, or a death in the family..."

"I just got married recently," Lin Tu said, pulling a few packs of chocolate from her pocket and then taking out instant noodles and cola from her backpack. "As your department head, I want you all to eat only what I give you for the next two days—nothing else. Can you do that?"

At the sight of the food Lin Tu brought out, the instinctive disgust on the players' faces was almost impossible to hide.

But Lin Tu emphasized her position, and used the marriage excuse to make the request. The players couldn't refuse, so they had to take the food from her hands.

"Remember, you can only eat this for the next two days, okay?" Lin Tu stressed.

The players nodded and left the office.

She wondered if it would even work on them, but it was the best she could do.

Lin Tu returned to the bathroom and boiled a large pot of plain noodle soup for breakfast. After eating, she finally had time to visit the Anomaly Space.

She hadn't had time to go back to the Back Mountain to tend to the livestock and crops these past two days—she'd either been too busy or coming and going in a hurry. Now, she finally added some feed. The livestock were all healthy and well-fed, and the diligent farmer had finally started sowing seeds. Everything was looking up.

Lin Tu grabbed a fat chicken and brought it back, slaughtering it and simmering a pot of chicken soup for lunch.

After all that, it was almost six o'clock. In the meantime, Lin Tu had slipped in and out of the bathroom several times to exploit the bug. But at least this was "rest" time, and she was the department head of the entire Art Department. As long as no leaders showed up, there wasn't much the Art Department employees could do about her dissatisfaction.

She timed her return to the office just right. The moment she sat back down at her workstation, all the lights went out.

Lin Tu heard hoarse cries from outside the office. Since she hadn't reviewed the promotional images today, no corpses had come knocking yet. She waited quietly for the five minutes to pass, listening as the chaos outside gradually subsided. When the lights came back on, there was a can on the desk in front of her.

The can was as big as a basin. Lin Tu jumped in surprise and instinctively pushed her chair back a step.

A moment later, she realized this was one of the management perks—a company delicacy available at the first clock-in each day.

Lin Tu immediately opened her backpack and set out chips, bottled milk tea, cola, chocolate puffs... covering the entire desk. She also tore open a pack of konjac snacks and shoved them into her mouth.

Only after that series of actions was she willing to look at the can—she didn't dare underestimate the destructive power of company food.

The basin-sized can appeared to contain thigh meat.

If Lin Tu wasn't mistaken, the photo on the can was of a tall, fair-skinned boy playing soccer, cheerfully pulling down his shorts to reveal an entire peeled thigh to the diner.

Being a soccer player, the thigh meat was exceptionally firm, and you could even clearly see the glistening strands of muscle and the blood vessels clinging to them.

People outside the company really couldn't understand that kind of firmness... Lin Tu was just forming that thought when she immediately took a gulp of cola.

She stored the can in her backpack, then couldn't help but wonder where the thigh meat came from.

—The hallucination was one thing, but facts were facts. Given the company's current state, there was no way they could "find those miserable people outside the company and slaughter them," as Lu Shishu had said.

Lin Tu thought for a moment, then decided to do something reckless: open the can and see what was inside.

No sooner said than done. Lin Tu took the can back out.

This time, she made a trip to the bathroom and brought back more authoritative snacks—boneless chicken feet and a whole bottle of ice-cold wheat soda.

To be safe, she also set up the iPad with the Butler program downloaded, camera on, so that if she showed any signs of abnormality, the Butler could wake her at any moment.

With everything ready, Lin Tu placed the can flat on the ground and pulled the ring tab with a crisp sound.

A foul stench—or rather, an exotic aroma—assaulted her senses. Without hesitation, Lin Tu shoved a boneless chicken foot into her mouth, chewing away while yanking the tab fully open.

A thigh appeared before her. It didn't look like the crystal-clear muscle in the promotional photo. Instead, it was a thigh on the verge of rotting.

What was most disgusting was that the thigh still had remnants of the dead person's clothing stuck to it. The fabric was soaked through with blood, and the wrinkled material was covered in filth and gore. It took Lin Tu immense effort to recognize that it had once been a pair of suit pants.

The impact was a bit much. Lin Tu took a swig of wheat soda, stuffed two more chicken feet into her mouth, and only then pulled out the confiscated club to poke around beside the thigh.

Perhaps a few minutes passed, perhaps a few dozen. When Lin Tu came back to her senses, the Butler's anxious voice was sounding in her ear—

"Hey? Hey? Hey! Wake up!"

Only then did Lin Tu realize her entire face was nearly buried in the thigh.

"Focus..." Lin Tu stopped looking at what the leg looked like and just rummaged beside it.

She'd thought it would be a fruitless effort, but to her surprise, she actually found a pen.

Lin Tu pulled the pen out and immediately tossed the can into her backpack—out of sight, out of mind.

On the pen was written, in bold letters: "One Big Happy, Joyful, Beautiful Family—After-sales Department."

Expressionless, Lin Tu returned to her desk and picked up the pen at her workstation to compare—ha, sure enough, aside from the different department name, it was exactly the same company issue.

Whose pen was this? It couldn't be that someone from the After-sales Department had wandered onto the assembly line. Combined with the suit pants that didn't match the promotional image at all, Lin Tu came to a conclusion.

How could there be so many miserable people outside the company? The miserable ones all lived inside it!

The damn company was eating its own employees!

This time, as Lin Tu reviewed the work, she examined the details more carefully, and only then did she realize that almost every corpse was connected to "Happiness, Joy & Beauty Co." For instance, the young man who'd hanged himself—he was once a company employee, and on the desk beside him was a familiar-looking résumé. The rotting employee buried in the ground had once been a department head in the company, and her/his badge was still there in the dirt.

Even the photos that seemed suitable for promotional images had something off about them. For example, the girl who'd just had her tongue cut off—in the notice board in the distance, her photo was posted, stating she was a member of the company, and the cause of death was falling from a building. Some details needed to be magnified to find, but that didn't stop Lin Tu from piecing together the clues one by one.

So, the promotional images she reviewed were all photos of company employees.

No wonder this damn company had fallen into a nightmare. With so many people dead here, just the resentment alone would make it see ghosts in broad daylight.

After finishing her work, Lin Tu looked at the pile of snack wrappers accumulating beside her desk and sighed. She rubbed her belly, which was stuffed to the point of discomfort, and shut down the computer.

Just then, the phone on her desk rang.

"Dear family member, do you still remember me? This is the sales clerk at Mingming Chicken Restaurant. We were deeply saddened to hear of the fire at your company. To show our support, our boss has decided that we must not suspend our delivery service under any circumstances, and will uphold our commitment to delivering right to your door."

Lin Tu: "..." She was truly speechless.

"Thank you," was all she could say. Any more words would be cursing.

"Breakfast time is approaching. Our deliveryman, who is also our chef, will enthusiastically bring your breakfast right to you. However, your company is so large that the deliveryman might have trouble finding you. Please stay by the phone, as we may call again at any time."

"Mingming Chicken Restaurant is a conscientious establishment. If you don't receive your delivery, we will be very, very angry!"

"Understood."

Lin Tu hung up.

She heard some commotion outside and pushed open the office door to look. The employees had all set down their phones—so she wasn't the only one who'd gotten the Mingming Chicken call.

It was then that Lin Tu saw a man in a yellow vest, a full three or four meters tall, squeeze through the office door.

He had a stack of pouches hanging from his waist. Lin Tu squinted—weren't those the Mingming Chicken delivery pouches?

The deliveryman casually scooped up a confused employee, tore him into shreds in a few swift motions like he was shredding meat, and piled the bloody bits on the ground. Then, he crouched down and patiently unfolded each delivery bag one by one, bagging the shredded human flesh.

Lin Tu: "..."

Lin Tu looked at the players she'd just been trying to save. They were now completely entranced by the deliveryman's actions.

And not just those players—the entire Art Department was crouching at their workstations, waiting to be fed.

Lin Tu: She couldn't take it anymore.

She hurried back into her office, shut the door tight, and despite already being stuffed to the brim, she pulled out snacks from her backpack and ate them with grim determination.

Never in her life, from childhood to now, had snacks tasted so awful.

After finishing, her mind finally cleared a bit. Lin Tu pulled out her phone.

"Avoid the deliveryman!"

No sooner had she sent the message than the other players, as if they too had just survived a life-or-death battle, popped up in the group one by one—

Guan Suixing: "We heard the commotion and stepped outside the office to take a look. The moment we saw the Mingming Chicken deliveryman grab someone, we knew something was wrong. Too bad we didn't react fast enough."

Yi Ying: "We're fine, Lin. We just caught a glimpse by accident. We recovered by eating some snacks. Be careful on your end."

At least Yi Ying and the others could warn each other. Lin Tu was alone over there.

Lin Tu: "I'm fine. Just remember to take the delivery, but don't eat it."

"OK, no problem."

After waiting at her workstation for a while, Lin Tu finally heard a knock at the door.

After stuffing two chicken feet into her mouth, Lin Tu asked: "Who is it?"

A muffled voice came from behind the door: "It's me, the Mingming Chicken deliveryman. Greetings to the esteemed Art Department head. Because of your high position, we've arranged special treatment for you. I must deliver the food to you personally."

Lin Tu, the freaking department head who was also the unfortunate soul: "No need. I'm feeling a bit anti-social. Just leave it at the door."

"That won't do," the voice suddenly grew even more muffled, as if coming from high above, from the ceiling itself. "We also need to conduct a survey with you, to understand your preferences so we can deliver more precisely next time. For example, do you prefer thighs or forearms? Do you like gnawing on fingers or peeling face meat?"

Lin Tu: "I'm not picky."

"And also—"

"Hold on," Lin Tu interrupted. "I'm extremely, extremely satisfied with your delivery and your service. What else do I need to do to show my satisfaction? I really don't need a survey."

"Ugh..." The deliveryman hadn't expected such an answer. He thought for a moment. "Then report it to our boss."

The boss of Mingming Chicken was none other than the Design Department head.

"Sure, I will. But your boss is also very busy, so I'll mention it to him before the meeting."

"Then I'll trouble you." The sound came from above again, so close that Lin Tu felt like the deliveryman was clinging to the ceiling of her office. Finally, she felt a rumbling, and the sound faded away.

She let out a long breath, but she knew this was only a temporary reprieve from one small problem.

Lin Tu pulled open the door and saw the employees of her Art Department scrambling like wolves and tigers, digging through the delivery bags for food. But for hundreds of people, one person's worth of meat was hardly enough to go around.

They'd only barely gotten a bite to whet their appetites. They looked up again, bloodshot streaks in their mouths, their eyes turning greener as they stared at their colleagues.

Lin Tu silently closed the office door. This Art Department was no place to stay!