CH 163

Chapter 163 - Rumors (1)

Bei Nuan diligently added stones to her back basket.

There was a nearby middle-aged man, who was half-heartedly filling his back basket. He kept sneaking looks at her.

Bei Nuan overheard him saying to his companion, "This is my first time seeing such a lively F."

Bei Nuan turned her head to ask him. "Why? What's wrong with the other F's?"

Embarrassed, the middle-aged man sighed and answered, “They just wait to die. Getting an F tag, their imminent death is set in stone. They're naturally depressed and lie down, waiting to die."

Curious, Bei Nuan asked, "If they don't work, won't they starve to death?"

The middle-aged man answered, "If they really can't last, they'll do a bit of work. People will also give them food out of sympathy."

His companion chimed in, "The ones that don't wait to die, rob people and use that money to gamble or buy drugs."

The middle-aged man nodded. "Yeah, they're people about to die. They do whatever they want."

Bei Nuan understood. They were referring to those people in the F pit. They had completely given up on life and just did the bare minimum to not die. And there was that young man with the E tag she had met in the market. No wonder he was so strangely depressed. From his hair to his skin, he looked desaturated.

And now, Bei Nuan understood why. It had been mentioned in the novel that this island had always been occupied by bandits, and there was a tradition of growing poppies. Less poppies were being grown, but they still existed. People that used opium looked like the living dead. They weren't even as lively as the zombies that freely roamed outside.

"Why do you have to wait for death just because you get an E or a F tag?" Du Ruo didn't get it and asked for advice.

The middle-aged man looked at Du Ruo's dazzling A tag and quietly answered, "You're an A. Of course you don't understand the mindset of E's and F's that might die at any time."

Bei Nuan thought; Du Ruo really did understand. The virus in his body was only temporarily suppressed. It was like a bomb that could go off at any time. He could meet the grim reaper at any moment. Compared to the illusory danger of being marked as an E or a F, his situation was much more dangerous.

And yet, that didn't stop Du Ruo from living well. He spent his days happily and earnestly.

Little Three, who hadn't spoken in a long time, suddenly said in her mind, "Bei Nuan, coming to this island has opened a new map and triggered a new task. Do you want to look at it?"

Bei Nuan opened the taskbar to look. The new task was called the Holy Mother's Heart. Unlike before, there was a collection of keywords in the explanation.

Bei Nuan looked over the keywords: dedicating, sharing, forgiveness, etc. These were all words that embodied a holy mother's heart. There was a simple description after the devotion. Give someone something.

Little Three said, "Did you see them? This is a series of tasks triggered by a set of keywords. You can see from the instructions that they're not difficult to complete."

The tasks were all simple, trivial matters. They were normal things people would do in a day.

"Just be aware," Little Three said, "that how you choose to complete the first task can have a small impact on the requirements of subsequent tasks."

Huh? Bei Nuan felt like Little Three was digging another trap  for her.

"Don't worry. For example, if you give target A something for the first task, the follow-up task might require that you split food with target A."

Got it. The series of tasks were tied to the same target.

"So is this a mandatory task again?"

Bei Nuan had experience now. Little Three had only been giving her mandatory tasks lately. That was fine though. She was rewarded with a lot of Holy Mother value for completing those tasks.

"That's right. And if you fail, the penalty is that time will resume for three days on the upper layer of your pocket space."

Bei Nuan was speechless. As soon as time resumed, in a mere second, all of her neatly stacked blocks of cold and hot water would return to their original forms, and there would be a river in her pocket space. Within a day, all of her ice cream would melt. Too harsh!

"Alright, everything has been clearly explained. Let's get started!" Little Three's voice was full of energy as if he was the one that was going to do the tasks.

The first task was dedicating and required her to give someone something.

Little Three had said the target had to be the same for the subsequent tasks, so she had to choose the best target. Lu Xingchi was definitely a bad choice. He was going to leave soon to investigate the symbol on the van. Once he left, she couldn't complete the subsequent tasks.

As for the others, she wasn't familiar with Tang Tang, and it would be awkward to use him as her target person. That left Jiang Fei and Du Ruo as her remaining choices.

Jiang Fei was good at understanding others and at intuitively cooperating with her, but Du Ruo was guileless and much easier to manipulate. She chose Du Ruo without hesitation.