Chapter 172: The Rose Factory

Bai Liu looks at the hand, he dives into the darkness of the bed and tries to reach the snow-white sculpted hand, but the moment he is about to touch it, a rose-like vine bursts out from under the bed, making the same pattering and crawling sound Bai Liu has just heard.

The vine wrapped around the hand before Bai Liu's eyes, seemingly dragging the hand into the ground, Bai Liu stretched his body forward and threw his whip to open the vine, but the vine had already contracted and wrapped itself around the hand.

The cold, broken right hand curled up in Bai Liu's palm, as if to shake him back, then turned into scattered rose petals in Bai Liu's hand, and the vines slowly dived into the ground and disappeared.

The scattered petals of the severed hand burst into a phosphorescent light blue flame and dissipated into ashes and smoke before Bai Liu's eyes.

There was nothing under the dimly lit bed, a hazy reflection of everything in Bai Liu's empty, dark reflection of Rose's eyes, a hallucination that I don't know if it ever happened.

Bai Liu had not touched a real object, and the broken hand he thought he had clasped was just a shadow.

Bai Liu felt nothing but a coldness that seemed to linger on his closed fingers.

Liu Jiayi was still awakened by Bai Liu's movement. She rubbed her eyes sleepily and sat up, dazedly reaching for the goggles she had placed on the side of her pillow and putting them on.

Liu Jiayi was instantly sobered, and her voice changed a little: "What are you doing Bai Liu!"

Bai Liu slowly retreats from under the bed, and after propping himself up on the edge and shaking his head to meet Liu Jiayi's, Liu Jiayi is stunned.

...... Bai Liu looked in a rare kind of ecstasy, as if something had compelled him to take his soul away in a floating trance, and the rose in his eyes swayed and bloomed with a fourth petal, the black crack under his right eye deepened, the piece of flesh beneath his right eye peeled away, with a shaky "fading A "fading" quality.

"...... Bai Liu ." Liu Jiayi's voice was inexplicably dry, "You pull up your panel and show me what the current spirit level is?"

Bai Liu was quiet for a moment before he seemed to realise what Liu Jiayi was saying to him. He obediently lowered his head and fished out the coin on his chest, half-smiling as he pulled up the system panel and leaned over to show it to Liu Jiayi, a very inviting, burned rose scent scattered over his shoulder.

The fragrance put Liu Jiayi in a trance for a moment before she quickly opened the panel to purchase two breathing masks and put them on Bai Liu and herself before her mind started to wander.

But it was still a little late.

[System Alert: Player Liu Jiayi has smelled a high concentration of primal rose incense, and as the player is now intolerant to that concentration of rose incense, he enters a (stunned) debuff effect, his spirit level drops to 63, and he is about to see a hallucination].

[System Warning: Player Bai Liu has smelled a high concentration of the original rose fragrance, as the player is now intolerant to this concentration of rose fragrance, he has entered a (stunned) debuff effect and his spirit level has dropped to 46!

Liu Jiayi's eyes were spinning and she fell back onto the cot, covering her mask and breathing hard, while Bai Liu fell backwards onto the floor, his faint breath painting a mist of water on his mask.

A strong, regal, torturous aroma, so strong that one could not move but let it torment them, ran through their brains, making them gag and Liu Jiayi coughed violently several times. And Bai Liu's eyes were twisted and spun.

He was plunged into a sort of rosy, underwater, suffocating darkness - as if an unseen broken right hand had calmly strangled his throat.

Bai Liu's eyelids droop slowly.

"Get up! Get up now!" A vicious, impatient voice accompanied by a "slap, slap, slap" sounded, "How fucking late it is and you're still sleeping! Do you know how much a night in this tent costs before and after the May Rose Festival!"

"If we weren't short of people, we wouldn't let you lowlifes in as flower pickers!"

With the scolding, Bai Liu was half asleep when he felt his arms being grabbed and pulled straight up from the ground, his mind was dizzy and swollen, and he felt like he had worked all night for a week, been dragged to a social gathering by his colleagues and then poured ten bottles of vodka before being dragged up after only an hour's sleep to continue working late.

--Bai Liu could die suddenly on the spot and fall into a long sleep with just one breath.

Bai Liu shook one side of his numb, tingling head, propped himself up against the back of a chair by his hand to steady his uncoordinated body, and took several deep breaths before he could overlap the swaying, spinning scene before him.

It was the same old, shabby little tent, but much brighter - after all, it was already light outside.

Bai Liu looked over at Liu Jiayi, who had crawled out of bed, and after lifting Liu Jiayi out of the bed, the processor turned to them and yelled, "Where are the roses! Where are the roses you were told to pick all night? You're getting high without doing anything! Two useless bitches!"

With that, the factory worker brought up his foot in a burst of anger and kicked Liu Jiayi in the back, who was still walking staggeringly.

The kick missed, and Bai Liu fell to his knees, pale as a sheet, and it landed firmly on Bai Liu's knee, who looked calm and collected, not at all like he had been unsteady in battle ten seconds before.

Bai Liu gives a respectful nod to the processor and points to the bulging sacks behind him, and the roses covered by blankets.

"All the roses we picked last night are here." Bai Liu raised his eyes, "83.7kg in total."

The processor changed his expression several times before finally retracing his steps and walking behind Bai Liu to check the roses. After making sure that Bai Liu's weight was correct, the processor turned his head with a look of fear and resentment in his eyes and stared at Bai Liu for a moment before saying, "You've barely You've done your job."

"Don't be complacent! Even if all of you newcomers complete your tasks, it's still early days before you want to be promoted to processors and eliminate us hard-working veterans!"

He had already reached the tent when, without warning, he turned around and gave Bai Liu another vicious kick, curling his mouth with malice.

"Double your task tonight, you have to pick 80kg of roses each, if you can't do that, then wait to be laid off and exiled!"

The kick landed on Bai Liu's shoulder. Bai Liu, who was still under the stun debuff, was "weak" and had little resistance, so he was kicked backwards with such force that he fell backwards a distance and hit the chair he had just used as an armrest.

With a grimace, the processing agent walked away with the roses Bai Liu had picked, tossing them two small glass bottles of pale pink perfume, which Liu Jiayi was quick enough to catch before they hit the ground.

[System Alert: Congratulations to Player Bai Liu for completing the (Picking 40kg) Rose side quest and receiving the reward (Low Level Rose Dried Leaf Gas Perfume) in one bottle].

[System Alert: Player Bai Liu has triggered a new quest, please pick 80kg of roses tonight, upon success you will receive a reward (two bottles of low level dried rose leaf gas perfume) and main quest progress (processor's promotion qualification)]

Liu Jiayi twists and turns towards Bai Liu, who is sitting on the floor, and pulls out perfume and sprays it right in Bai Liu's face.

[System Alert: Player Bai Liu's (Stun) debuff is lifted, spirit level has increased to 81].

The cracked opening on Bai Liu's face heals visibly, returning to a shallow depression, but the rose in her eye seems to be nourished in some way, shaking its branches and spreading its petals outwards, a change that at first glance is not good enough to make Liu Jiayi stop spraying her hand with perfume.

She hesitated for a moment before gritting her teeth and spraying herself in the face a few times as well to release her [Stunned] status.

Liu Jiayi leaned back in his chair half-deflated and danced his hand from side to side in front of Bai Liu's face to catch his eye, his tone wan: "Hey, are you awake yet? You met something under the bed last night that nearly killed us both."

The smell of cheap perfume made Bai Liu choke and cough uncomfortably as he came to his senses, tilting his heavy head back in his chair and looking up at Liu Jiayi, his eyes still a little sleepy, as Bai Liu gave an articulate account of what he had seen and what had happened last night.

"Something got into our tent, or while [Magic Space] was in effect?" Liu Jiayi's brow tightened the more he listened, "That's unlikely."

Bai Liu gives her an enquiring look.

Liu Jiayi turned over and looked down squarely at Bai Liu as he continued to explain, "I know what you mean, in a new level 3 game there could indeed be monsters that can break through the boundaries of [Magic Space], but think about it Bai Liu, if it really was this kind of monster last night, we were sort of attacked, right? Do you have a trigger monster book?"

"And if this monster that's strong enough to break through [Magic Space] easily did get into our tent--" Liu Jiayi clasped his hands to his chest and raised his eyebrows in a good-natured way, " -- why didn't it kill both of us players? --why didn't it kill both of our players, so that it could drill into your tent, under my bed, in the middle of the night just to shake your hand and show you the roses it turned into?"

"There is some truth in what you say." Bai Liu spoke nonchalantly, "But what if its intention wasn't to attack and hurt, so it didn't appear as its entity last night, and that's why I wasn't attacked to trigger the monster book, and all I saw was a figment of what it was trying to present to me?"

Liu Jiayi subconsciously tried to retort: "There are no monsters whose ultimate intention towards the player is not to attack and damage, there is no such ......"

Bai Liu looks at her quietly.

Liu Jiayi words abruptly stopped as she remembered something, then her expression turned gloomy: "...... The godly wandering npc of the "Love Welfare Home" ...... What is your relationship with him? "

It was true that she had never seen a monster before that wasn't designed to harm the player, but the last copy of the god-ranked NPC had saved Bai Liu by offering to give blood when he could have been killed.

This is the first and only time Liu Jiayi has seen a monster save a player in all the times she has played the game.

"...... anything to do with it?" Bai Liu's eyes lurched and began to drift subtly around the top of the tent.

He tries to find a precise and straightforward definition of his relationship with Xie Ta, but it's kind of indescribably weird and difficult for Bai Liu.

If Bai Liu could have told Liu Jiayi with a clear conscience that Xie Ta and he were innocent friends before he entered the game, he would have been able to say so.

...... But now that the word "friend" was on his lips, Bai Liu inexplicably thought of Tavel's unadulterated, slightly confused eyes and the cold, reverent kisses that had fallen on his lips and forehead time and time again.

And the greasy opening line of Bai Liu to Xie Ta after their reunion in 'Siren' - [What do I want ...... maybe you can give me a kiss?

Bai Liu: "......"

Liu Jiayi asked this question, expecting to get something like [This monster is a player who was alienated after the soul I acquired], but Bai Liu's strange reaction caused a bunch of question marks to pop up on her head.

Bai Liu's tone was cool: "We were friends before and then when we reunited, I wasn't quite in my right mind (low mental value) so I did something to him that crossed the line and we had something that shouldn't happen between friends (meaning a smooch)."

"But then after I got sober personally, I still wanted to be friends with him again, although I don't know how he feels about it, in my case we're still friends - that's probably how he and I are at the moment."

Bai Liu sums up what happened between him and Xie Ta in a nutshell.

Liu Jiayi said slowly: "Huh?"

What kind of scum talk is this? Have you ever done this to an NPC before, Bai Liu!