CH 3

It took Xiao Lan a little while to find the office.

The door had been violently smashed open, and by the looks of the marks it appeared to be a long time ago, with dust falling from the bruises on the door. The interior of the office was also somewhat cluttered, with chairs overturned, desks thrown roughly to the floor and a large crater made by a computer that had been deliberately targeted in general.

It seems that an angry man rushed in and smashed like a lashing. Time in the supermarket just seemed to stop shortly after this moment.

After all, if the supermarket was still operating normally after the vandalism, it made no sense not to clean up the supervisor’s office.

The wall where the keys were hung was empty, and I wondered if they were mixed in with the mess.

The place was so cluttered that Xiao Lan searched carefully for a while without success.

[What are you looking for?

Xiao Lan replied as he searched, “A key or something related to Zhang Dong.”

Let me be of service to you

Xiao Lan : “You?”

[Please wait]

The black shadows inside the envelope spread out, spreading over a radius of about two metres of Xiao Lan, searching the office, and a few moments later several black dots marked the floor.

[There is no key in the room, and here are a few scraps of paper with information about Zhang Dong]

Xiao Lan was shocked at the speed of the search, it was like an on-the-go detector, if Luo’s range was a little wider, he could have won in a lie down.

Xiao Lan took a little time to put the scraps of paper together and discovered that it was a disciplinary notice.

Zhang Dong, a warehouse clerk, has violated the supermarket system by repeatedly sleeping during working hours, leaving his post, abusing customers and destroying goods, which has had a serious adverse impact on the supermarket’s image, and he is hereby dismissed from his job with deduction of relevant compensation costs.

We hope that all colleagues will take this as a warning and strictly abide by the supermarket system and adhere to good professional ethics and work style.

Notice is hereby given!

XX Supermarket

XX/XX/XXXX

Xiao Lan shook the taped-up notice in his hand and laughed lightly, “It seems that Zhang Dong is not only stingy as a ghost, but also as a human being.”

[He was also very stingy in choosing his gift and ended up with the least valuable looking envelope]

Xiao Lan : “…… is probably to match my unique vibe.”

[Your poverty is very impressive]

Xiao Lan looked at the elegant handwriting that appeared on the wall and a bruise jumped on his forehead, “…… take that as a compliment.”

Estimating that it was about time for the players to gather, Xiao Lan went out the door and headed for the cashier.

Xiao Lan arrives at the cashier’s desk where a number of players have gathered, all waiting apprehensively.

Lin Yan broke the silence by saying, “We don’t have much time, so let’s exchange the information we found earlier.”

At the same time he produced an employee attendance sheet with Zhang Dong’s name on it, which had a number of gaps, and it looked like the man was usually late and left early too.

Xiao Lan took out the disciplinary notice straight away and had no intention of hiding anything.

He is well aware that his opponent in this game is not a player. Although Lin Yan has other intentions, the exchange of information is necessary.

Xiao Lan said, “The disciplinary notice was found in the office of the warehouse supervisor, and Zhang Dong’s area of work would have been the warehouse.”

Lin Yan took it and looked at it and asked, “Did you find the key?”

Xiao Lan shook his head, “I’ve looked all over the supervisor’s office and there’s nothing.”

Lin Yan nodded, then turned to those around his and said, “Anyone else have a clue?”

The crowd shook their heads in silence.

“It looks like that’s all we have for the first round of choices.” Lin Yan mused, ” Zhang Dong is someone who is not in a high position, does not take his job seriously and is even punished for it.”

“Does the fact that he hates people who spend money frivolously mean that we have to find the cheapest thing?” The middle-aged woman asked.

Lin Yan : “Not necessarily, it could also be something he feels he needs to buy, for example in the eyes of a drug addict, drugs are their necessity and alcoholics will spend a lot of money on alcohol, these are not indiscriminate spending in their eyes.”

“So what should …… do?” Someone asked.

Lin Yan replied, “Tell you what, let’s start with everyday items that look low priced and also try to choose things that the boss might like.”

When he finished, he also gave a quiet wink to Xiao Lan and a long-haired female student, who gave him a gentle nod.

Xiao Lan frowned slightly, how many people did he get to go through the mines?

“Welcome! Welcome!!! My – End of the Line Supermarket!”

A hoarse voice rang out, drawing the player’s attention.

In front of the only checkout counter stood a man in a supermarket uniform at some point. The man, with a greenish-grey complexion and eyes as cloudy as a corpse’s, was gesticulating nervously in the direction of the players, moving with an odd incongruity, his stiff face an exaggerated grin.

With that, he took off his hat and bowed to the player, displaying the entire back of his broken head to the player.

At the sight of this scene, several players’ faces changed and they could not resist taking a step back and hiding themselves in the crowd.

Zhang Dong was even more excited by the reaction of the players and his tone was raised a bit: “You must have been looking forward to this for a long time, right? Now, let’s get on with the fun and games…”

“- just start with you.”

His green and grey fingers were extended, pointing at the balding middle-aged man who had blocked the guide earlier.

The middle-aged man, his face pale and sweating like a puddle, turned and ran up the lift, shouting, “I don’t choose! I don’t choose!!!”

Once again, the saleswoman appeared at the bottom of the lift in an unnoticed way, her smile unchanged: “Please select the same item to submit at the cashier.”

“I don’t-” the middle-aged man panicked and ran upwards, but the lift suddenly became reversed and he remained in the same place after half a day’s run.

He tried to speed up to get himself forward faster than the lift, but the lift sped up with his movements.

“Please select the same item to submit at the cashier.”

“Hoo …… hoo …… that man is a ghost! It’s a ghost! It’ll kill me I’m not going!” The middle-aged man gasped still running hard, but the distance didn’t get any farther.

“Please select the same item to submit at the cashier.”

After three prompts, seeing that he still had no desire to turn back, the female guide’s sweet smile widened and the corners of her mouth pulled all the way up to her ears, “Foul-”

At the sound of the words, the lift suddenly broke off down the middle.

The middle-aged man was caught off guard and swept straight into the lift: “Help! Help–”

The lift swallowed the man so fast that the middle-aged man reached his waist before he could struggle twice, his bones crunched and his bright red blood slid down the sides of the lift, accompanying his screams and pooling into a blood-coloured lake in front of the crowd.

The players looked at the scene with pale faces, the three schoolgirls covering their mouths to prevent themselves from screaming out. The adults did not look good either, and they were silent, none of them making a sound.

“Hahahahaha ……”

Zhang Dong’s hoarse, unpleasant laugh broke the silence among the players as he laughed back and forth, his cloudy eyes darting over their faces, watching their reactions playfully, as if enjoying the fear of his prey.

“Come, come, come all to me, let me check properly that you have not spent your money recklessly.”

“This time – you do it.” He says, pointing at Xiao Lan.

Xiao Lan walked out of the crowd to the horrified eyes of the crowd and headed to the merchandise area.

Searching through the piles of bizarre merchandise.

Finally he stands in front of a cart with black eggs and a few long-dead chickens hanging from a red string above. Their bodies were a little dried out from the ravages of time, their eyes hollow and their dry mouths open towards the ceiling.

Although there is no price tag and the eggs are bizarrely coloured.

But Xiao Lan can tell from the arrangement around the egg, and its location, that it is a special offer on a poster, one of those items that lose money to make a profit. After all, very few people go into a supermarket and just buy an egg, so not only does it make customers think that the supermarket is cheap, it also drives sales of other items.

Xiao Lan, who is often on the front line of special offers, knows all about it – that’s the wisdom of poverty.

He picked up the eggs and walked back to the checkout counter.

Zhang Dong stared at him, emotion unreadable in his cloudy eyes, “Choose this? I’ll give you another chance, seeing as you’re poor enough to make me happy.”

The faces of the players gathered around the table paled, their expressions rising in nervous whispers.

“Is it not working?”

“This black one just looks ominous ……”

“Haven’t you seen anything else? How auspicious can it be?”

Xiao Lan is unmoved: “That’s it.”

Zhang Dong picks up the black egg and pulls out a grim smile, but says nothing.

His silence made the mood in the room increasingly subdued. The succession of brutal deaths has put the players on edge and they look at Xiao Lan with a certain amount of sympathy, some of them already turning their heads away.

After a few moments, Zhang Dong let out a hoarse laugh.

“Don’t let me down after you pass …….”

The players are relieved, except Lin Yan, who glances meaningfully towards Xiao Lan.

[Congratulations]

Mr Luo wrote the words directly on Zhang Dong’s face and drew a love heart on it, as if no one could see him.

The image was slightly comical and Xiao Lan almost couldn’t hold it in.

If he laughed in front of the boss, Zhang Dong would probably give Xiao Lan a backhanded slap in the face. He reached into his trouser pocket and flicked the envelope before Mr Luo withdrew the writing.

The next person to be spotted was a middle-aged woman.

Her face was pale and she walked round and round the supermarket with her arms hunched around her chest, finally selecting a bag of milk.

The bag is an eerie dark red colour with several unidentifiable racial eyes painted on it, which has an ominous aura any way you look at it.

But the bags are randomly printed, of average quality and feel like the cheapest kind of milk in the supermarket. Don’t underestimate the eye of middle-aged women when it comes to identifying low-priced goods.

Zhang Dong took the milk and grimaced discontentedly, “Pass.”

The next crowds were largely dominated by household items, even if the packaging was bizarre, after all they were the most familiar and the easiest to guess the price.

Zhang Dong’s expression was getting grimmer and grimmer, how could these pesky lucky people bypass his barrier so easily, he would not allow it.

Until, finally, the long-haired schoolgirl who came forward chose a beautifully packaged bottle of wine, beautifully bottled and even had an elaborate wooden box with an extremely vivid carving of a monster that looked like it could jump out and devour someone the next moment.

She glanced cautiously in the direction of Lin Yan, who nodded at her, before the girl came forward with a pale face.

The moment he saw the bottle, Xiao Lan was struck by the fact that it didn’t seem to fall into the category of low-priced goods. I don’t know if Zhang Dong meant “I hate people who spend money recklessly” in a general sense, or just in his eyes.

In the former case, the girl is dead. Even if it’s the latter, under what circumstances would a stingy and poor middle-aged man find it reasonable to buy fine wine, Lin Yan is testing the selection criteria on this girl’s life!

“Hahahahahaha ……” hissing laughter rang out.

At the long-haired girl’s apprehensive gaze, Zhang Dong once again danced around, an excited and grim smile on his face: “A bad boy who spends money frivolously!!!”

He raised his hand with a forceful wave.

“Ah…”

It was as if the girl’s ankles had been grabbed by invisible hands and she was pulled straight to the ground, pulled forward all the way, no matter how hard she struggled to get free, her nails scraping harshly on the ground in vain, but completely unable to stop the forward speed.

“Boom…”

The girl’s entire body was shoved directly into the narrow gap beneath the cooler, and the crunching sound of bones breaking continued to ring out.

A few moments later, all was calm and the gap was still quietly there.

The players were staring at the rift and the whole room was silent. The cost of the wrong choice was too heavy for anyone to take it easy at the moment. The two remaining schoolgirls clung to each other and let out suppressed sobs.

Xiao Lan glanced lightly in Lin Yan’s direction and saw that there was no sadness on his face, a small, inconspicuous smile at the corner of his mouth as if he was thinking about something, his eyes obscure under the lenses.

At some point Zhang Dong and the shop assistant disappear, leaving only the countdown to the restart – 00:59:59.