Chapter 138

Lin Tu decided not to show her face in front of the employees for now. If she came across as a micromanaging supervisor, she'd become a target—and with several hundred employees swarming around begging for a share of her food, that would be bad news indeed.

As for the other players, Lin Tu noticed that because of her orders, not only had they missed out on the takeout, but their meals had also been snatched up and devoured along with the bags. She didn't bother checking on them after that.

At least their "illness" wouldn't worsen too severely over the next couple of days.

After making it through to noon, Lin Tu carried the thigh meat she'd gotten that morning to the meeting and, in passing, gifted it to Tang Yingyuan, the head of the Design Department.

With food in hand, Tang Yingyuan cheerfully thanked Lin Tu for supporting Mingming Chicken and decided to upgrade her to VIP family member status.

For the next two days in a row, Lin Tu enjoyed the honor of "first delivery, biggest portion"—a privilege that left her utterly flattered.

Lin Tu: I'm so, so grateful.

Two days later, the players finally made it from the fifth floor to the seventh.

By now, for the employees, twenty-one days had passed since the fire—twenty-one full days without a single proper meal.

The players spent a grueling night in Lin Tu's office. The next morning, Lin Tu retracted her [Anju] system, and they braced themselves for the next surge of fire.

On the emergency stairwell, besides Lin Tu, Yi Ying, Guan Suixing, and Kou Lin, there was also a bound Lu Haima, along with a few players from the Art Department whose minds were still somewhat unclear.

"Hey, hey, hey?" The company building was small, so once Lin Tu had tied the man up, Lu Haima realized one of the captives was his long-lost teammate, Zhang Xingxing.

Unfortunately, Zhang Xingxing had fully convinced himself he was a company employee by now. He glared at Lu Haima with disgust. "Stop yelling. I'm from the Art Department. I don't know you at all."

Lu Haima: "..."

"Be friendlier to your colleagues. Show some care, and speak properly." Lin Tu flashed her employee badge, then scolded.

Zhang Xingxing's eyes instantly cleared. "You're absolutely right, Director. I'll fix my attitude right away."

Lu Haima: "..." How was this even more infuriating?

"Time's almost up." Guan Suixing, who'd been crouched in the office waiting, stared at her phone. The moment the numbers ticked to five, she shouted.

By the time she ran back to the emergency stairwell, Lin Tu, Kou Lin, and Yi Ying had already grabbed two people each and were sprinting up the stairs. The small beds they'd used for rest had been packed into their backpacks earlier, so there was nothing left to carry.

Guan Suixing took the stairs two at a time and quickly caught up with the others.

Floor eight of the company was eerily quiet.

Especially with the miserable, desperate screams of the seventh-floor employees ringing out behind them.

Lin Tu was about to step out of the stairwell door to check things out when she heard a muffled *thud* beside her, followed by a cry of pain.

She turned to see Lu Haima sprawled on the ground, upper body twisted in agony as he writhed. "I just wanted to lean against this wall for a second! What did I do to deserve this? Even the stupid air wall is out to get me!"

The other players: "..."

Lin Tu watched him shift his body with surprise. If she wasn't mistaken, his upper body had already collapsed onto the steps leading up to the ninth floor.

"Huh?" The players behind her let out puzzled sounds as well.

Lin Tu extended a foot and tentatively stepped onto the stairs. Sure enough, the air wall had vanished.

"Your attention, employees! The fire has been brought under effective control! Floors one through seven, please proceed to the eighth floor, which has been opened as a temporary refuge. Rescue is on the way. Please remain calm, and work continues as usual! Employees on the eighth floor, please provide assistance to those below!"

"Your attention, employees! To ease the tension in the company and keep work running smoothly, the Food Festival event scheduled for today will proceed as planned! As our beloved Thursday, leadership will also be attending the festival to guide our work and select outstanding employees. Please stay tuned!"

"The Food Festival begins at the first time clock and ends at the last. Please be sure to complete your work during break times!"

The broadcast echoed overhead. Lin Tu turned to see the employees who'd escaped the seventh floor walking up with beaming smiles, as if they'd completely forgotten what they'd just been through. Behind them lay the bodies of former colleagues who hadn't made it.

"Great, it's the Food Festival!"

"I've been looking forward to this day for so long!"

"Yeah! I'm a little scared of the bosses, but it's so great to eat delicious food!"

"I don't know why, but I feel like I've been hungry for so, so long."

"Me too!"

The employees chatted away enthusiastically, seemingly oblivious to the blood and bits of flesh clinging to their bodies and mouths. As they passed Lin Tu and the others, they even greeted them—

"Don't go up to the ninth floor! You might offend the bosses. We all need to stay on the eighth."

"Director, come join us!"

It was as if time had rewound to a few days ago, when the fire first broke out and they'd been just as lively. Except now their "liveliness" felt different—somehow eerie and unsettling.

Seeing that the players remained silent, a few employees deliberately stopped to wait for them. Only after the players gave stiff nods did they push open the emergency stairwell door.

For the first time ever, the employees who'd come up from below weren't greeted with iron bars and knives, but with enthusiastic cheers—

"Welcome! Welcome!" The head of the Design Department led a crowd of employees, standing at the door.

"Director Tang!" "Director Tang, you've worked so hard!"

"Not at all! Not at all! Welcome, family, to our eighth floor."

They exchanged pleasantries. If it weren't for the bloodstains on everyone, Lin Tu might have thought this was a perfectly normal gathering.

"Oh? Isn't that our Art Department Director? You're a VIP family member of our Design Department headquarters!" Director Tang spotted Lin Tu lurking behind the crowd and enthusiastically shoved aside a few employees to reach her.

Lin Tu: So the VIP family title has been passed from Mingming Chicken over to the Design Department now?

She'd suffered plenty over the past two days because of that VIP family title from Mingming Chicken. Just hearing the words now nearly gave her PTSD.

The players behind Lin Tu stiffened all over when they saw what could only be described as a "BOSS" walking toward them.

"Haha, it's me. Only Director Tang has such sharp eyes." But having attended so many company meetings, Lin Tu was well accustomed to the Design Director's demeanor.

She stepped forward amid the players' shocked and bewildered stares, enthusiastically shaking Director Tang's hand while simultaneously lecturing the nearby employees who looked like they might be from the Art Department. "Learn from Director Tang's example. This is what true excellence looks like. Even picking up a fraction of Director Tang's qualities will serve you well for the next thirty or forty years!"

The employees beside her wore clear, earnest eyes and nodded in unison. Even the players behind Lu Haima nodded eagerly. "That's right!"

Lu Haima: "..." Zhang Xingxing, wake up!

Yi Ying, Guan Suixing, and Kou Lin felt their worldview shift. "..." We never knew you were like this, Lin Tu.

"Ah, today's the Food Festival! We should let our family relax—that's what we leaders need to think about. Xiao Lin, I know you never eat what the others eat, but today you absolutely must join in and eat with everyone, got it?"

Lin Tu's smile froze as Director Tang led her forward. "Everyone has unique tastes."

"How unique can they be? I hear you always hide in your office to eat alone. Today, you absolutely must eat in the main hall with everyone!"

As she spoke, she'd already pulled Lin Tu into the hall.

The layout of the eighth floor was quite different from the floors below. Below were large offices—two or one per floor, perfect for cramming in the rank-and-file.

The break room where the players had managed to find snacks was meant for clients, utterly unrelated to the employees.

The eighth floor was different. As the Design Department headquarters, it was closer to management, with fewer people. It had a small hall specifically for rest.

The moment Lin Tu stepped into the hall, something assaulted her eyes.

In the center of the hall sat a towering mound of meat.

To be more precise, it was a pile of ground meat—but ground meat is usually tender, pink, and springy. This pile, however, had a dull, dark hue, the kind of result you'd get from repeatedly thawing frozen meat, refreezing it, and thawing it again, over and over.

Standing at the far end of the hall entrance, Lin Tu could already smell the stench of rot reaching its depths.

She really, really didn't want to go in there!

At the top of the meat mountain hung a banner that read "Celebrating the Food Festival with Joy." A huge timer was stuck into the meat pile, and beside it, a roll-up banner displayed the rules of today's Food Festival—

"Battleground Showdown: Three people challenge the meat mountain at a time, with a one-minute limit. Whoever eats the fastest and most stays to defend their title. Each person gets one challenge chance and one defense chance. The last one standing is the Food Festival Champion and will receive the company's creative ingredients as a reward!"

Kou Lin was dumbfounded: That "creative ingredient" isn't the one she bought on credit, is it?

"I'm in!"

"Me too! Count me in!"

The employees raised their hands in a frenzy, some even jumping with excitement. They were so eager it looked less like they were about to eat fine food and more like they were diving into a pile of gold.

Of course, to them, this meat mountain was no different from a mountain of treasure, Lin Tu thought with a blank expression.

The scene was so absurd that Lin Tu and the other players found themselves instinctively stuffing snacks into their mouths.

"Xiao Lin, you absolutely have to go first!" Director Tang pushed Lin Tu past the eager employees.

"No, as a director, I should have the awareness to let my family enjoy the good things first!" Lin Tu declared with righteous conviction. She turned to face the crowd and was rewarded with countless grateful and admiring gazes.

That reasoning apparently left Director Tang with no way to refuse. She patted Lin Tu's shoulder with ulterior motives. "Then don't leave early, Xiao Lin. Even if your body lags behind, your heart must stay! You have to watch everyone compete and cheer them on, understand?"

She checked the time. "In half an hour, it starts. After you clock in, I want to see you here. And for the rest of the day, until the last time clock, I want to see you here too. Can you do that?"

As she spoke, she stared at Lin Tu, and as the silence stretched, her smile grew more and more terrifying and grotesque.

Lin Tu knew this was a request from a superior that she couldn't refuse—otherwise, she'd trigger a plot kill.

She had no choice but to nod and agree.

"Same goes for you all." Director Tang smiled at the remaining players, then strode off before they could respond.

Once Director Tang was gone, the players huddled in a corner—

Yi Ying: "Oh my god! Did Luo Yongzhi say what intel they got? How long until they can reach the eighth floor? I wish that fire would just burn this whole floor to ashes right now and turn that damn meat mountain into nothing."

There was no telling what was in that meat pile—dark, clumped masses, like filth pressed out of corpses.

Just thinking about it made Yi Ying nauseous. What was even more sickening was how her appetite had been growing because of the hallucinations.

She asked in the group chat, and Luo Yongzhi responded quickly: "They said the lower floors are too hard to clear out, so no rush to come up. They'll take their time cleaning."

Liu Sheng: "By the way, the hallucinations are starting here too. I just walked past a corpse and had the sudden urge to grab a bite? ..."

Guan Suixing: "Looks like we need to stock up on more food."

The players sighed and looked up from their phones—even Kou Lin. She had her skill to protect her, but skills weren't omnipotent; otherwise, she'd never have eaten that brain.

Yi Ying turned off her phone. "What I'm worried about now isn't what we'll eat later. It's what we're supposed to do right now."

The mental contamination all day was no joke.

"Do you remember..." Lin Tu seemed to recall something. "I told you there were a few offices on the eighth floor with lots of food in them?"

Back during the Blackout, Lin Tu had gone to the eighth-floor offices with Luo Yongzhi and the others and found nothing. But now she suspected that food existed in the daytime—i.e., right now.

"Let's go check it out."

No sooner said than done.

The players locked Lu Haima and the others—himself included—into the bathroom stalls to prevent them from being lured astray if they couldn't be rescued.

The rest of the players followed Lin Tu out of the hall and deeper into the corridor.

Offices lined both sides. Some large ones had their doors wide open, their occupants gone—presumably off to the hall.

At the very end, they found a few offices locked up tight.

Lin Tu walked to the familiar door. Her enhanced hearing quickly detected that someone was inside.

She knocked.

"Get lost!" came a furious shout from within.

"Stop bothering us!"

"We don't have any food! And we're not eating!"

"Whoever you are, we're not opening the door!"

At the same time, cursing erupted from this office and the ones next to it.

Despite being yelled at, Yi Ying's eyes lit up—these sounded like normal people! People who'd locked themselves away to avoid the hallucinations.

"We don't eat human flesh!" Yi Ying tried to communicate, having already made excuses for them.

"Bullshit!" someone yelled back. "You think we don't know? You're all liars! The office next door fell for your trick and opened the door—they all died! We'll never trust you!"

Yi Ying tried a few more times, but the results weren't encouraging.

"Looks like there's no way to get them to open up." Yi Ying shrugged and said to Lin Tu in a low, helpless voice.

"I have an item." Seeing this, Lin Tu took out two [Trust Candies] and slipped them through the gap in the door. "Offering you a piece of candy can't be considered harming you, right?"

Yi Ying coaxed them a little more. Finally, the people inside ate the Trust Candies and voluntarily opened the door.

Inside were a group of employees who looked utterly haggard.

On their desks and the shelves beside them were stacks upon stacks of canned goods, just as Lin Tu had seen last time. These cans didn't have cheerful smiles printed on them, nor rippling muscles. Just plain chicken, duck, goose, salmon, and chickpeas—so plain it made you want to cry.

Yi Ying grabbed Guan Suixing's arm, unable to believe her eyes. "Am I seeing things?"

"Better not be," Guan Suixing snorted. "Otherwise, we're doomed."

"Xingxing, you have no sense of humor," Yi Ying rolled her eyes and asked the employees, "Have you all been eating this stuff all these days?"

"Yes." The employee who'd eaten the Trust Candy spoke.

The others had been huddled far away with their cans clutched tight, but seeing that Lin Tu and the others weren't attacking them or pulling out anything strange, they grew curious and watched the newcomers.

"Where did all this come from?" Lin Tu asked.

"It was always ours..." the man said. "Our job is to research canned meats and instant foods from around the world for inspiration. These were collected from all over—nobody ever ate them, so they just piled up."

"We were about to throw it all out. Good thing we didn't." Someone chimed in.

Lin Tu nodded thoughtfully.

"And then they came trying to steal our food! We already gave them so much, but they wanted more—and they even wanted to eat people!" An employee accused.

The players silently thought: They not only wanted to eat people, they already had.

"We're here to borrow some cans," Lin Tu said to these seemingly sane employees. She couldn't bring herself to simply take their food. She promised, "We'll only borrow them for a day. Once the Food Festival is over, we'll go to the procurement department and return everything we borrowed."

Even as she made her solemn vow, she already expected it wouldn't be easy to "borrow" anything.

This was food, after all—the most precious resource in a sealed-off company starving for supplies.

Lin Tu was already preparing to use a few more [Trust Candies] when the employee thought for a moment and voluntarily went to the shelves to pick things out. "We're really not bad people. We told you, if you need it, we're willing to give—as long as you don't steal and don't hurt anyone."

The other employees nodded in agreement.

"How are you planning to eat them? We have all sorts of cans here. Different kinds have different preparations."

The players nearly burst into tears.

Lin Tu thought for a moment. What kind of meal could last a whole day? She had an answer quickly. "We'll have hotpot."

"Since you said you'll return them, I'll give you a bit extra..." The employee picked out a pile of cans and handed them to Lin Tu.

The players hugged armfuls of cans and left the office. Behind them, the door clicked shut again.

Then Lin Tu quickly held a meeting. She had Luo Yongzhi and the others take the cans into the Blackout to inspect and confirm they were safe, then held another meeting to bring the items back.

"Why don't you all just stay in the Blackout with us?" Luo Yongzhi suggested. "Oh, by the way, we just got word that leadership will be coming this afternoon to guide our work and hold the outstanding employee selection."

"No need," Lin Tu shook her head. "We only have one life. The very first opening kill taught us that it's best to follow the company's rules. Besides..." She gave Luo Yongzhi an amused look. "I have a feeling we'll see each other again today."

"What do you mean?" Luo Yongzhi scratched his head.

"Participating in company activities automatically puts you in the daytime," Kou Lin answered for Lin Tu.

Luo Yongzhi and Liu Sheng looked stunned. They knew exactly what the daytime players had been through—compared to the Blackout, they really didn't want to come to this nightmare of a daytime!

"You never know," Lin Tu smiled. "Maybe selecting the outstanding employee doesn't count as an activity. Anyway, stay in touch."

"No problem." Luo Yongzhi nodded quickly.

The group divided up the cans before ending the meeting.

The players released Lu Haima and the others. Lin Tu made a quick trip home to grab ingredients, then, after clocking in once, the players were forced to return to the hall with faces as grim as if they were marching to their doom.

How they wished the meat mountain would just vanish. Unfortunately, it didn't.

"Beep beep beep!" Seeing everyone assembled, Director Tang cheerfully blew a horn in front of the meat mountain. "Alright then, our Food Festival competition is about to officially begin!"

"Besides the competitors, everyone else can eat freely too! Treat today as if you're at home. Sit wherever you like, get comfortable, and ready..."

"Three... two... one!"

The players watched as the employees—who moments ago had looked like one big, happy family—turned savage in an instant. Three of them hurled themselves at the meat mountain. The others, having missed their chance, grabbed knives, forks, and sticks, swinging with all their might at their "family members" to fight for their own chance to eat.

A bloody, absurd, horrifying scene unfolded before the players. Yi Ying couldn't help but cry out for salvation: "Hotpot! Hotpot!"

"Speaking of which..." Guan Suixing paused. "Where are we supposed to get a pot and seasonings?"

The moment she asked, she saw Lin Tu set her entire backpack on the ground and start pulling things out—

A folding table, a whole charcoal stove, a crate of charcoal, a big iron pot, several slabs of hotpot base, scallions, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, sesame paste, chili peppers, sesame seeds...

It was already beyond what the players could imagine. Just when they thought it was over, she reached in again and pulled out ingredients—

More than a dozen boxes of beef, a big bag of shrimp, chicken feet, chicken wings, a large slab of uncut beef... a big bunch of lettuce, chives, eggplant... and a huge watermelon...

Meat, vegetables, and fruit—all present. The players watched numbly as food overflowed the table and had to be set on the floor. Just when they thought it absolutely had to be over, Lin Tu reached into the backpack one last time and pulled out an entire fresh chicken.

"Last time I killed chickens, I realized doing one at a time was a waste of effort, so I killed a few extra and brought them along."

The players had nothing left to say.