Liu Jiayi also noticed that something was wrong. She looked up at Bai Liu, who was holding her hand, and frowned. Then she spoke in a low voice. "I turned on the mute switch of the small TV. The audience can't hear you talking to me. What is going on? I don't think this is right. There are too many coincidences. It feels like…"
"Someone designed this game for me and Tang Erda to enter, right?" Bai Liu spoke casually.
Bai Liu's eyes were still on the newspaper wall behind the glass. "Don't you think the last round of the game was also designed for you and me? The game that has been logged in once isn't supposed to happen again. It is such a coincidence that your welfare home was on the verge of losing all its investment, and the dean had to act on the children again. This finally brought the matter in front of me."
"It is such a coincidence that I met Liu Huai in Exploding Last Train and made him owe me a debt. Then, due to things in reality, he chased me into the Love Welfare Institute, and the game design separated you from him, placing me in the same camp as him."
Bai Liu looked at Lu Yizhan's pained black-and-white face in the newspaper, his tone calm.
"In addition, Mu Sicheng was included in the second game and happened to meet Liu Huai. Liu Huai is the link between you and me. At the same time, as your weakness, he was placed into the game with me. I will naturally use your weakness to restrain you for my benefit. Therefore, the contradiction between us will intensify. You will choose to kill me, and I will be forced to fight back and kill you."
"I generally rarely believe that there are so many deliberate coincidences in the world." Bai Liu retracted his gaze from the newspaper wall.
Liu Jiayi muttered, "It is almost like someone deliberately created so many coincidences, cutting open our weaknesses for you to exploit and then letting us fight…"
"However, I didn't kill you, and you didn't kill me. The game that the person behind the scenes played entered an impasse." Bai Liu said lightly. "So this time, my weakness was added to the game to further aggravate my conflict with the opponent."
"Your friend Lu Yizhan is also involved." Liu Jiayi quickly reacted. "You will definitely speed up the game clearance for this, but the game has only one player who can be the factory manager. Thus, you will have to compete more fiercely with Captain Tang."
"Yes." Bai Liu's attitude was still very calm. "However, the chips delegated by the other person are expected to make Tang Erda completely crazy. Out of the 17 police officers involved in the explosion, all of them are from the third team, while Su Yang led the team to the factory."
"It will be very hard for Tang Erda to maintain his sanity during this type of thing."
Bai Liu was silent for a second. He didn't tell Liu Jiayi, but the more complicated thing was that in another timeline, Tang Erda saw Bai Liu causing the explosion that brought down the world with his own eyes.
This fundamentally led to the fact that Tang Erda would definitely choose to kill Bai Liu when clearing the game. He was the main culprit of the explosion, and this would prevent the recurrence of all the tragic endings.
Everything was tightly woven into a situation purposely designed to trap Bai Liu and Tang Erda. The only way out of the situation was to kill Tang Erda, just as Tang Erda's only way out was to kill him.
This person behind the scenes manipulated everything. The death of Su Yang drove Tang Erda out of control and turned him into a monster hunter who had lost his bottom line. Now, this person was repeating the old tricks, using Lu Yizhan's death to induce Bai Liu to give up on the principles and bottom line that Lu Yizhan had personally built for him. The person was inducing Bai Liu again and again to make Bai Liu kill innocent people and turn into a crazy yet sober monster like Tang Erda.
This was forcing him to become Bai Liu (6).
The worker continued to walk inside. They passed through a very deep, oppressive corridor before arriving at an office. After entering, there was a classically styled office. The steward was sitting behind a walnut desk, drinking rose tea, and wearing glasses.
The steward didn't wear protective clothing. He was dressed in a more serious, well-made suit, showing that his status was one level higher than the worker who had brought Bai Liu and the others here.
The man raised his head and looked at Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi. There was a rose slowly blooming in the center of his eyes.
The roses in the steward's eyes were fresh and delicate, obviously more vigorous than the one about to wither in the eyes of the worker. These roses were full of vitality, perfectly complementing the faint scene of roses around his body. The aroma reached Bai Liu even through his protective clothing, like a fresh rose bud exuding a subtle fragrance.
"Are you new workers?" The steward put down his teacup and looked at Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi with a slightly arrogant expression. "You have come to the most famous rose factory in the world, preparing the world's top perfume. I hope you take your work seriously."
Then the steward took out two contracts from a drawer. He raised his chin and pushed them toward Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi.
"This is our labor contract. After signing and receiving your work card, you can begin working."
Bai Liu picked up the labor contract and flipped through it quickly before putting it down. Then he looked at the steward with an expression of uncertainty. "No fixed hours? Three meals a day and accommodation provided for free? Is the salary paid using the Dry Rose Leaf Gas? Aren't you going to pay me?"
"Do you have any opinions?" The steward looked at Bai Liu contemptuously. "Only the top companies in the world would dare to use the Dry Rose Leaf as a salary for employees. Ordinary people who can't buy the Dry Rose Leaf Gas work hard just to enter our factory and get the perfume as payment."
"If you go outside, you can trade the perfume for anything you want—food, a house, jewelry, gold, beautiful men or women, or even rare animals. Now the entire world is going crazy for the Dry Rose Leaf Gas."
The steward took a slow sip of the rose tea. The roses in his eyes became even more gorgeous, and the smile on his face was strange. "It is because, without the perfume, people will wither. Money is just a pile of waste paper—it is no longer the hard currency of the world."
"Roses are the currency."
Bai Liu was silent for a moment before bending down to sign the contract. Liu Jiayi also signed in silence. However, the worker who had led them over was reluctant to leave. He looked at the bottom of the rose teacup that the steward had just emptied.
The steward habitually set his teacup down, and a drop of tea fell onto the ground. The worker immediately knelt, bowing low like a dog, and frantically stuck out his cracked tongue from under the protective suit to lick the drop before it disappeared.
The moment the tea was licked, the worker's black, cracked tongue seemed to moisten. Its texture changed from dry and petal-like to normal, light pink.
The steward kicked the worker's head in disgust. "Be careful not to let the stench of your body pollute the rose scent in my office."
The worker nodded while bowing on the ground, his expression full of gratitude and joy for the gift. "Thank you for this drop of tea! This is the most fragrant rose tea I've ever had! It is brewed from the dried rose flowers after the gas has been extracted!"
The worker sniffed the ground he had just licked. "This smell is really… wonderful!"
It was as if he knew that he wouldn't get an extra reward for staying here. The worker reluctantly stood up and glanced at the teacup. Then he bowed and stepped back respectfully. "Then I will bring the newcomers out first. The two flower pickers here will go to work."
Then his expression changed, and he waved at Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi with great impatience. "Follow me!"
Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi lowered their heads and followed the worker all the way to the outside of the factory.
In the night, the flower fields were mysterious and beautiful. Blue fluorescent bugs landed on the budding flowers, and the breeze blew over the petals, making the roses undulate in the night like waves. There was a slight rustling sound, and the dark red soil reflected a color as if moistened by blood.
The worker looked at them. "This is where you will work. The flower fields that our factory uses to grow the roses for the perfume cover 16,000 mu (TL: one-fifteenth of a hectare). One or two workers will be in charge of one of the fields. You are responsible for picking the roses in this field."
"The dry leaf roses bloom late at night. This rose is very sensitive to daylight. You must pick as many roses as you can before they meet the first rays of sunrise and gather their petals. Only the roses at night will produce the most beautiful and pure fragrance, without any impurities. The dry leaf rose after dawn has no fragrance."
The worker led Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi to the flower field and pointed to some small, simple tents that were placed side by side. He said in a somewhat gloating manner, "Do you see these small tents? You are low-level flower pickers, so the factory won't provide you with a dormitory. You have to live in these tents at the edge of the flower field. Take a look—a tent without a person means that the flower picker has been fired and has become a vagrant. You can just go into the tent and stay there."
There were indeed many simple, dirty fabric tents stationed in the narrow areas between the flower fields. These tents were of different sizes, and it seemed like three people at most could live in one at the same time. The tents were made of canvas and were gray-blue. Originally, the material and color were very resistant, but now they were covered with splashes of blood and handprints.
It just wasn't known whether this was real blood or if the workers had wiped dirt from their bodies onto the tents after finishing their work.