Chapter 198: The Rose Factory

Bai Liu, with his face unchanged, confuses the curious factory worker: "I have special processing skills."

The factory workers looked at her with suspicion, as the processing of dried leaf roses is a manual task in which children are not at an advantage, let alone at such a high rate of output.

Bai Liu gave a feigned anxious glance at the two King's Guild members below.

Now the factory worker understood - it was the two men below who should have helped the young girl by sharing their roses with her.

Although it is forbidden to rob each other openly, it is possible to smuggle in secret, with one party 'voluntarily' giving the fruits of their labour to the other, and in every sense the review of the promotion of processors to factory workers is not entirely fair.

These unspoken rules are well known to the factory workers who have risen through the ranks of the processors and are not prepared to take too much responsibility for them.

It was not clear what this little girl had done, or what relatives the other two processors were to give her the dried leaf roses of her own accord, but as things stood, the regular factory workers, who already had stable positions and would not be laid off easily, were not prepared to make things difficult for these processors who were trying to move up the ladder.

After all, the competition between them is not as fierce.

"Processor number 71063 surrendered 302.7kg of semi-finished dried leaf roses."

The factory worker next to him took down Bai Liu's numbers, waved him off and let him go, turning a blind eye to the situation.

Most of the other processors had values of less than 250kg for dried leaf roses, with very few exceeding 280kg.

Bai Liu, Liu Ji and Tang Erda are the only three processors to have provided a dried leaf rose weighing over 300kg.

The weighing was soon complete and while the factory workers looked down to check the figures, Liu Ji took Bai Liu and stood out in silence, away from the processors who were staring at them hatefully.

The processors around Tang Erda were all looking at Tang Erda, who was more than a head taller than they were, with hatred, but they didn't dare to go up to the new processor, who had a murderous aura and a bad taste in his mouth, and instead took two steps back to glare at Tang Erda.

These three newcomers actually took the opportunity to be promoted to factory worker straight away!

The factory workers looked up after checking the data, "Will the following three numbered processors please come with us?"

"The three processors numbered 71063 ...... will be led into the next workshop by each of our three factory workers later on to learn about the daily work of a factory worker, but please note that this does not qualify you to become a factory worker."

The factory worker at the head of the group said in a serious tone, "This is just to give you a chance, you still have a long way to go before you are full factory workers."

With that he turned to Bai Liu and waved his hand, "You come with me."

Bai Liu walked up, Liu Ji gave him a worried look and walked off with a factory worker.

Tang Erda left with another factory worker, giving Liu Jiayi's back a deep stare before leaving.

He sensed in this [Liu Jiayi] today a very familiar and unpleasant feeling in him.

Bai Liu was led by the factory worker through the deep, vaulted, narrow corridor, which was flanked by the bunk rooms they had slept in last night, the doors of which were closed, which prevented a single ray of light from penetrating the corridor.

Strangely enough, this corridor with only two people walking in it was constantly filled with eerie, many hurried footsteps, doors creaking on either side and gaps in the doorway as if something was staring at their feet.

The face of the factory worker walking in front of him turned a little white, and he seemed to have heard the voice as well, and couldn't help but quicken his pace.

Bai Liu doesn't panic, knowing that if he closes his right eye he can now see a very different real world.

But there was no need to do so now. Although he already had the "key" to travel freely through the Inner World, he had entered the Inner World in order to obtain more information, and right now, there was obviously more important information that he needed to obtain.

Bai Liu looked at the factory worker who was in a hurry and politely asked, "Excuse me, if I want to become a full factory worker, what should I do?"

The factory worker, who seemed to be frightened by the voices, snapped back to attention at Bai Liu's comment and eased his face as he replied, "We offer some of our more accomplished processors the chance to be promoted to factory worker, but it's not an opportunity that everyone can take - only those with some natural traits to be selected as a factory worker."

Bai Liu tilted his head: "Like what qualities?"

"The traits of a perfumer." The factory worker replied softly, "The reason the factory workers selected at the Rose Factory are regular employees who can be laid off without having to do so is because we are all reservists for perfumers; perfumers are a profession with a very short life span, and if we don't select our reserves in advance, there could easily be a break in the workforce so that the factory would have no way to continue operating."

"That's why the factory worker is also known as an apprentice perfumer." The factory worker continued, with a complex look on his face, "Before becoming a full-fledged perfumer we were responsible for basic operations such as distillation and extraction, purification and concentration, and only after becoming a perfumer could we actually produce the perfume Rose Dried Leaf Gas for the factory in the true sense of the word."

"Most perfumers can only produce low-level perfumes in their lifetime, the intermediate perfume blending process has become so complex that it is produced in small quantities, and a drop is hard to buy outside for a thousand dollars. "

The factory worker turned to Bai Liu: "Only to be auctioned at the annual May Rose Festival to the highest bidder."

"So how do you screen someone for the qualities of a perfumer?" Bai Liu asks. Bai Liu asked, mulling over the real-world requirements for the profession of perfumer, "Is it olfactory sensitivity?"

With that said he had already started to switch panels in his hands.

[System Alert: Does player Bai Liu use player Mu Sicheng's soul note to cut into his opponent's system panel?

[OK.]

Mu Sicheng, this guy, Bai Liu, if memory serves, has a great sense of smell.

But even with an excellent sense of smell, Bai Liu can't tell too many specific types of fragrances when asked to smell them, but this level of the game should simply filter for certain qualities - otherwise no ordinary player but a professional perfumer would be able to pass.

Then the game has lost its playability.

Although there is no basis for this, Bai Liu feels that the game designer behind the system would not like this kind of unplayable game.

"We don't screen processors based on a simple sensory trait like smell." The factory worker shook his head as he said, "We screen based on a very important flavouring instrument."

Instruments?

Bai Liu is the first person to hear of an instrument that can detect the qualities of a perfumer.

Most of the perfumery instruments he remembered were for stirring and mixing, such as pipettes, paddles and test papers, many of which were rather quaint and simple, with little technical content and few of which were of a modern nature.

In a game world that is technologically backward in every way to the naked eye, such an apparatus still exists?

However, when Bai Liu pressed him further, the factory worker would not answer any more questions about the instrument.

Whenever Bai Liu tries to beat around the bush to talk about something related to this instrument, a look of great fear and awe appears on the face of this factory worker.

He finally said evasively, "No, that's not any instrument you can imagine, that's an instrument from a dead person, but it's really a living instrument, it even has a heartbeat!"

"It's this living-dead-like apparatus that's picking out the people who can use it."

After these words, the factory worker never spoke again.

In silence, his face pale, he led Bai Liu to a plain white room, the size of an operating theatre, used for cleaning.

Bai Liu was told to change into clean, sterilised protective clothing and to clean his hands before entering the next room for screening.

Bai Liu was led through a purple sterilisation room and then through several sterilisation rooms filled with an unknown and unpleasant gas. The factory worker explained that this was to sterilise them as they entered the core perfumery and that the heavy protective suit Bai Liu had changed into earlier would provide a simple protection.

All these rooms were disinfecting those of them who were still alive in a crude and direct way by disinfecting objects, not caring whether they would die because they could not withstand the intensity of the disinfection, showing that the builders of the Rose Factory felt that the instrument that could test the perfumer's qualities was much more important than the lives of those of them.

After passing through three or four rooms, Bai Liu was finally led to a tightly sealed, metal-filled room with four sides.

By this time, Bai Liu's eyes changed for the first time since entering this dangerous factory, and he looked up and swept the doors of this room from top to bottom.

--folded completely airtight, impossibly tall door, identical in construction to the one at the Bureau of Dangerous Heresy, number [0001], even down to the small, forcibly welded window above it in the middle of the door.

The factory worker knocked twice on that small window and knocked back twice inside.

The factory worker bowed his head respectfully and whispered to the man in the door, "I've brought the newcomer to be screened by [it]."

There was a moment of silence inside, then the door, heavy and full of welded scars, opened slowly inwards.

Bai Liu's pupils contracted slightly the moment he took in the scene inside.