Chapter 212
Chapter 212
He hoisted his girlfriend over his shoulder and ran off into the distance.
He had no idea how long he ran or how far he went.
Utterly exhausted, the secretary collapsed at the foot of a ruined building.
Time passed quietly. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying on a rickety bed.
“Honey!”
The secretary turned his head. His girlfriend’s face was covered in tears.
Mixed with the dirt, they had left her face a streaky mess.
“How long was I asleep?”
“A whole day!”
The secretary nodded and forced himself upright.
“Sweetheart, we might not be able to go back. Are you scared?”
“No. As long as I can stay by your side, I’m not scared!”
A flash of anger crossed the secretary’s eyes-anger at himself.
“Wait here. I’ll go find us something to eat.”
“Honey, it’s a war zone out there…”
“I’ll be fine. I brought the gun with me.”
The secretary glanced out through the shattered window and clicked off the pistol’s safety.
He silently crept toward a nearby tent.
“No idea how much longer the higher-ups plan to keep fighting.”
“What’s the point of worrying about it? No one’s coming all the way out here anyway.”
“I’m so damn sick of this hellhole!”
The secretary lay prone on the ground, listening to the voices nearby.
A full hour passed before the voices gradually died away and were replaced by snores.
The secretary took a deep breath and slipped inside the tent.
His small knife cut two lives short, leaving the men in the tent forever trapped in their dreams.
The secretary took another deep breath, then began gathering everything he could use.
Canned meat, ready-to-eat meals, compressed biscuits…
After stuffing everything into a large pack, he dragged a can of gasoline out of the tent.
A merciless blaze erased every trace of what had happened.
With the heavy backpack on his shoulders, the secretary waddled like a penguin as he struggled back to the ruined building.
“Honey!”
Seeing the worry in his girlfriend’s eyes, the secretary affectionately ruffled her hair.
“I’m fine. Come see what there is to eat.”
The scene ended there, and darkness instantly swallowed the secretary’s vision.
Soothing music drifted into his ears as a flood of memories surged through his mind.
After a full half hour, light finally returned to his vision.
The secretary took off the glasses and let out a long breath.
“Talk about waking from a long dream!”
But after that brief remark, his gaze immediately locked onto Heizi.
“President Qiu, what happened to you?”
It was no wonder the secretary was so shocked. Both of Heizi’s eyes were black and blue, and his hair hung around his face in wild disarray.
Worst of all, his clothes had been reduced to strips of cloth.
As for why he was in such a sorry state, that story began ten minutes earlier.
Heizi’s Thirteen-Layer Dreamscape had been brutal. Every single layer had randomly thrown him in with all manner of ghosts and monsters.
To make matters worse, whenever those creatures took human form, they all had Zhang Bei’s face.
Driven out of his mind by rage, Heizi lost all reason.
But after being ambushed, was Zhang Bei really going to take that lying down?
After a solid five minutes of getting thrashed, Heizi finally accepted reality.
Following that excruciating ordeal, Heizi hoisted a train over his shoulder that very night and headed straight for the Amazon Jungle.
The secretary carefully tallied everything up and realized he’d been screwed so badly he didn’t even have his underwear left.
First, setting President Qiu up had only been fun for a brief moment, and he’d even personally served as a guinea pig once.
Second, after going to the Amusement Park twice, he’d somehow become the director of a Suxiao Jiuxin Wan factory.
Finally, now that President Qiu had run away, every last task had landed on his shoulders yet again.
He’d lost out-lost out big-time!
Unable to swallow the humiliation, Heizi called in every favor he had and managed to get his hands on a phone number.
No one knew what had happened that night.
All anyone knew was that Heizi’s smile was incredibly “gentle”!
As the biggest winner of all, Zhang Bei was already in bed, fast asleep.
Time passed quietly, and morning soon arrived.
A body transport van pulled up outside the Amusement Park.
After the hospital and the criminal investigation unit, yet another workplace notorious for causing psychological issues had fallen.
The crematorium!
In the latest round of voting, with Xu Kuan and Director Gu leading the charge, the crematorium crushed the sanitation workers with ninety-nine percent of the vote, earning itself a taxpayer-funded team-building trip every month.
Those who had cast their votes merely smiled.
“We’re only concerned about their physical and mental well-being. We’re definitely not trying to set them up!”
More than a dozen people slowly climbed out of the van.
Ji Wei strode at the head of the group.
She hadn’t visited that many times, but ever since finding love here, there were always a few days each month when she came by for a date.
She just hadn’t expected the crematorium to have a team-building trip one day.
Much less for the destination to be somewhere this novel!
Walking behind Ji Wei was another veteran employee of the crematorium: Meng Dehua.
He held one of the crematorium’s most important jobs-cremator operator!
It might look like all he did was tend a furnace, but he earned many times more than the boiler attendants who did similar work.
His monthly base pay was over seven thousand, and he received sixteen months’ pay a year, plus red envelopes from bereaved families.
All told, he made well over a hundred thousand a year.
But it wasn’t an easy line of work. There were only so many furnaces, while the dead were far from few.
When things got busy, he sometimes had to work until midnight.
Just imagine it: in the silent, deserted dead of night, one person stood alone beside the cremation furnace.
And while the flames roared, the corpse inside would occasionally sit up.
Meng Dehua, however, was a truly fearless man.
In his fifteen years on the job, he had encountered all manner of incidents, both large and small.
As he liked to put it, “For pay this good, forget merely cremating a corpse-even if it ran away, I’d catch it and bring it back for you.”
Meng Dehua firmly believed that, as someone born under the red flag, no ghost, monster, or evil spirit could possibly be a match for him.
The gates opened, and the large group marched into the Amusement Park.
Meng Dehua stubbed out his cigarette and tossed it into a nearby trash can.
“Waiting for your boyfriend?”
Ji Wei nodded. “He said he’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“All right. I’ll take a look around the Maze.”
“Okay!”
Meng Dehua followed the stream of visitors into the Maze.
Pushing up his glasses, he studied the numbered corridors before him.
Ji Wei had told him that the higher a corridor’s number, the more dangerous it was.
This is my first time here. I’d better play it safe!
After a moment’s consideration, he marched straight into corridor No. 99.
Zhang Bei was sitting in the Monitoring Room, putting the finishing touches on a new scenario for Werewolf.
The moment he looked up, he happened to spot this fearless man entering corridor No. 99.
Sensing that a good show was about to begin, Zhang Bei adjusted his chair and picked up his popcorn.
Meng Dehua never slowed his pace. Although the lighting was dim, he could still just make out the path ahead.
He had gone less than five meters when a sound resembling a baby’s wail rang out beside him.
Huh?
I thought children weren’t allowed in here.
He turned around and saw a little boy in a red bellyband staring at him, his entire body bloated and swollen.
Was Meng Dehua afraid?
Not in the slightest.
He looked the child up and down.
Looks like he drowned. Tsk, this one’s going to be a real pain to cremate!