370,000 per square meter—the moment this transaction price was announced, some people in the sales office stood there frozen, while others rushed forward like madmen:
"I told you housing prices would rise again!"
"Buy! Buy now! If you don't buy, it'll rise to 400,000 per square meter next time, and then you really won't be able to afford it!"
"Salesperson! I want a 25-square-meter small unit here!"
"Same here! Are there still units on the 17th floor?"
"I'm so sorry, the 17th floor just sold out. Would you like to take a look at the 27th floor instead…?"
Xiao Dong covered her stomach and forced a smile, her face pale and cold sweat dripping down, as she led other customers to view the property. People were lining up, holding loan contracts, jostling each other, terrified that if they were one step slower, they wouldn't be able to buy a house. They were flushed, screaming at the top of their lungs:
"I want to take out two 'Sunshine Seedling' loans!"
"I want five!"
Some people stared blankly at all of this, whispering to themselves that they really couldn't afford it, that they didn't want to sacrifice their children, and then suddenly turned and ran out.
Less than two minutes later, these people plummeted from outside the building complex, torn apart, dying with their eyes wide open.
Others merely glanced at them before withdrawing their gazes, completely unfazed:
"Someone jumped again?"
"Normal. Every time they open a new property phase and raise prices, some young people with poor mental fortitude jump."
The patrol team orderly and skillfully collected the corpses, then handed them over to two members of the body collection squad standing nearby in white coats, saying:
"Check if these two have any outstanding loans. If they did, send them to the private hospital. Dismantle their organs, bones, and corneas to auction off and pay off the loans. The bodies are still fresh, so they might sell for a bit more."
The body collection team members nodded. The patrol team members looked at the corpses and sneered disdainfully. One of them even kicked one of the bodies and spat on it:
"Thought you didn't have to pay your debts just because you died? How naive!"
"Don't know how much these corpses will sell for. If this guy owed too much and the corpse auction doesn't cover it, then our big boss, Chairman C, will lose money."
"Truly heartless. The big boss kindly advanced the money for you to spend, and you want to die before paying it back? You're just a shameless deadbeat dog!"
The surrounding crowd surged noisily, deafening in volume. It seemed like a picture of harmony, but deep within it, Shi Qian and Yuan Guang looked at the patrol team, hearing the incessant sounds of house transactions, and felt their entire bodies go cold, as if they had arrived in the eighteenth level of hell.
Everywhere there were chaotic evil ghosts who neither treated others as human nor themselves as human, and everywhere there were living people suffering torture while remaining oblivious.
Yuan Guang and Shi Qian slowly turned their heads to look at Chairman C, who was sitting on the podium, his face ruddy as he toasted with red wine and celebrated the huge sales of the new property phase with the people beside him. Their hands shifted, revealing flashes of dangerous silver light.
[System Notice: Player Yuan Guang uses personal skill weapon (Utility Knife)]
[System Notice: Player Shi Qian uses personal skill weapon (Caliper Awl)]
—————————————————
Zone E Cemetery
Eight-twenty. The sky had completely darkened, and the cemetery opposite 444th Road was pitch-black and gloomy. Inside the old, two-winged, hollow-carved iron gate, many oval-shaped tombstones stood in the shadows, and one could vaguely see the portraits of the deceased on them.
Aside from the weeds in the cemetery, the only living things visible were one or two crows fluttering down to land on the tombstones, cawing hoarsely.
Beside the iron gate was a semi-open, dilapidated security room. The door hung crookedly on its hinges, and inside there was only a chair covered in dust; it was obvious that no one had been there for a long time.
Tang Erda's expression was complex: "That old man said the cemetery here in Zone E was once fought over as a supporting facility for the residential area back then, but now there isn't even anyone to maintain it."
"Because people in Sunshine City spend all their money buying houses, where would they have the energy to buy a grave?" Mu Shicheng was also quite emotional. "I feel like this cemetery was built just as a prop. Besides the rich, who would come to buy this thing?"
Bai Liu smiled: "That might not necessarily be true."
Liu Jiayi scanned the area and spoke coldly: "These cemetery plots probably aren't sold to the living; they're sold to the dead."
"Sold to the dead??" Mu Shicheng looked shocked and confused. "Why would people buy houses after they're dead?"
Mu Ke was not particularly surprised and nodded calmly: "According to Bai Liu's previous analysis, and what that old man told us, we can make a simple speculation: everything built by property developers in Sunshine City exists for profit—for money, or rather, for a currency that can be exchanged for human productivity."
"Land is the means of production they firmly control. Under this private monopoly, through the various operations and regulations of the property developers, it has become an item that can infinitely appreciate in value and be exchanged for productivity."
Mu Shicheng felt a little dizzy: "What?"
"At this point, human productivity is continuously devalued through the process of monetary equivalent substitution." Mu Ke looked at Mu Shicheng. "Simply put, they use their monopoly over the means of production to force others into internal competition, continuously devaluing your productivity in the process while transferring intensified contradictions downward, making you hate those competing against you, and instead feel grateful that they are willing to let a little money leak through their fingers for you to fight over."
"But by this point, fighting over money has no meaning. Currency is merely a transit channel they use to exchange for productivity. As long as they keep the means of production appreciating infinitely, your productivity will never fill the hole left by housing prices."
"Therefore, land is the most valuable thing. Since this group of property developers is willing to use land to build cemeteries, it can only mean one thing: after building cemeteries, through [cemetery] as a means of production, they can also exchange it for a large amount of productivity."
After Mu Ke finished speaking, he saw that Mu Shicheng still looked confused. He paused slightly and tactfully asked: "When you were in school, did you skip some of the basic compulsory courses?"
For example, ideological and moral cultivation, or Marxism and the like.
Mu Shicheng, who understood the subtext of Mu Ke's mockery, felt both embarrassed and angry. He immediately turned to Bai Liu, who was observing the cemetery entrance, and pointed at Mu Ke in complaint: "Bai Liu, Mu Ke isn't speaking human language!"
Getting good grades, having a good memory, and remembering everything from class is amazing, huh!
Mu Shicheng let out the furious cry of a failing student.
Bai Liu was half-squatting on the ground with his back to Mu Shicheng, his head lowered as if observing the dense footprints on the ground. Without turning around, he spoke in a flat tone:
"Compared to people, don't you think ghosts are better, cheaper labor resources?"
"If a person works six days a week, nine hours a day, their working hours are only 54 hours, and that's excluding the time spent eating and going to the bathroom. Rounded off, it's about 50 hours."
"But ghosts don't need to eat or sleep. They only need 3 to 5 square meters to house one person and can operate 24 hours a day without stopping. A ghost's working hours in a week can reach 168 hours."
Bai Liu slowly stood up: "That's equivalent to the working hours of 3.4 people working 996 for a week."
"From the perspective of productivity units, letting people work is far less cost-effective than letting ghosts work. If we speculate more extremely—"
Bai Liu turned his head and looked at Mu Shicheng with a calm expression: "—Sunshine City brings in a massive amount of migrants to stimulate population growth, but at the same time, it completely ignores the death rate. They crazily drive up housing prices and commodity prices, ignore collective incidents like famine, epidemics, or mass suicides, and don't care whether people can survive here at all. They even invisibly encourage suicide and euthanasia, using 'survival of the fittest' as an excuse to eliminate a large batch of bottom-level poor people. Is this, to a certain extent, meant to turn people into ghosts and convert one person into 3.4 units of productivity?"
"In other words, perhaps living people aren't important to the property developers at all; what's important are the dead—the ghosts, these invisible laborers underneath Sunshine City."
Mu Shicheng felt a bit creeped out: "So the people here still have to work even after turning into ghosts? They can't find peace even after death?"
"No." This kind of construct was a bit too terrifying. Mu Shicheng gestured with his hands, his face solemn as he tried to refute it. "This is too tragic. I'm dead, I've turned into a ghost—why would I still work for them?! These people, since they're ghosts, why don't they run?"
Bai Liu brushed the dust off his sleeves and walked to stand in front of Mu Shicheng, unhurriedly: "Have you seen A Chinese Ghost Story?"
Mu Shicheng didn't expect the topic to jump there so suddenly and was stunned for a moment, but he still answered honestly: "I've seen it."
Bai Liu gave a soft "hm" and asked rhetorically: "Then, in your opinion, as a ghost, in a situation where she has to work hard every week to trick two men for the Old Tree Demon to eat, and in the end is forced into illegal human-ghost trafficking and sold to the Black Mountain Old Demon, why doesn't she run?"
"Do you think she really likes working for the Old Tree Demon?" Bai Liu asked calmly.
Mu Shicheng: "..."
He had asked a truly stupid question. Of course, she didn't run because she was trapped for some reason and couldn't get away!
Mu Shicheng frowned and pressed further: "Does the reason these people are trapped have anything to do with the cemetery?"
Bai Liu nodded: "That's why I agree with Liu Jiayi's point. These graves were likely not built for the living to buy, but for the dead to buy."
"Buy?" Mu Shicheng was even more confused. "Do the developers here pay the ghosts?"
Bai Liu shot Mu Shicheng a sidelong glance: "If they don't pay you, would you work?"
Mu Shicheng: "...No."
"No, I just feel like something is strange." Mu Shicheng touched his chin and fell into deep thought. "Suppose I am a ghost. I'm trapped in Sunshine City and can't run, but even if someone pays me, I would never, under any circumstances, work."
Mu Shicheng looked at the cemetery with obvious distaste: "...Not to mention working hard just to buy this kind of eighteenth-level-hell-style cemetery."
"I don't need to eat or sleep, so I don't need a house or money. Even if the property developers use some method to trap me here, I've worked my whole life, and I've worked myself into a ghost. In this situation..." Mu Shicheng clenched his fists firmly. "It's impossible for me to work! Even in the next life, it's impossible to work!"
Bai Liu looked at Mu Shicheng with appreciation: "Nie Xiaoqian should have thought the same thing back then. Very brave."
Mu Xiaoqian: "..."
Mu Xiaoqian had been sarcastically mocked twice in a row. He furiously clenched his fists at Bai Liu, who was exploiting him like the Old Tree Demon: "Damn! I'm already dead! What more can they do to me?! They can't make me go out and seduce men for them to eat!"
"Of course not." Bai Liu looked toward the entrance of the cemetery, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "Under what circumstances would a person be willing to work crazily even after death, just to buy a cemetery plot and curl up in a two-square-meter grave?"
Liu Jiayi suddenly spoke up: "Could it be the same as the living? These dead people also have to pay a land-use fee. That's why they try to find ways to hide in apartments or cemetery plots?"
"But not paying this whatever-land-use fee wouldn't do anything to me, right?" Mu Shicheng folded his arms and shook one leg casually. "I'm already dead, after all!"
Bai Liu slowly turned his head and smiled: "That might not necessarily be true. For the living, not paying the land-use fee just means being beaten to death. But for ghosts, since they can no longer die, the types of torture they can suffer increase significantly."
"After all, no matter how they torture you, you can't die again, can you?"
Mu Ke, who was standing nearby, quietly added, "Nie Xiaoqian didn't want to work for the Old Tree Demon either, but the Old Tree Demon is a tree spirit. She can torture ghosts, and she can also insert her tree roots into the necks and bodies of the lesser monsters, wriggling the roots inside their bodies to suck their blood, torturing them until they are in unimaginable pain and forcing them to work for her—to go out, seduce men, and dig out their hearts."
"To make a ghost work for you, there's always a way." Mu Ke smiled gently at Mu Shicheng. "Don't you agree, God Mu?"
Mu Xiaoqian: "..."
Thanks. The sense of immersion is strong. He already feels like he's out there seducing men.