Bai Liu pushed open the dilapidated security office door and walked into the cemetery.
The cemetery looked like an ordinary one, with rows of marble tombstones. In front of them was a base about 1 by 2 meters wide, with the date of birth, date of death, and cause of death of the deceased inscribed on it.
Mu Ke's gaze swept across these bases, his eyes narrowing as if he were collecting the information on them for a comprehensive analysis. He looked up at Bai Liu: "Over eighty percent of the people here died before the age of 60, and the average lifespan is only about 52. The causes of death are generally various organ diseases, which feel like work-related injuries caused by the harsh environment."
"That's not all." Liu Jiayi stopped in front of a tombstone. "The later the birth date, the earlier the death date."
She said calmly, "Their average lifespan is still shrinking, and the number of people dying from sudden death is also increasing."
Mu Ke followed Liu Jiayi's gaze and saw a 32-year-old woman who had died suddenly in front of her computer chair. "From the data on the tombstones here, the average age of death for women in Sunshine City has recently dropped to around 30, and for men to around 35."
"Just past the optimal age for reproduction." Mu Ke looked at Bai Liu.
Bai Liu walked forward with a calm expression: "They die suddenly as soon as they can no longer reproduce. The real estate developers in Sunshine City are clearly regulating the average lifespan of everyone here, adjusting it to an age where they can work efficiently for their entire lives and where productivity begins to decline after reproduction."
"This allows for the maximum exploitation of everyone's value."
Mu Shicheng looked around, bowing his head to rummage through the grass and bushes, then looked up at Bai Liu with a frown: "These are all normal tombstones. I don't see the entrance to the underground eighteen-story public cemetery building, and I don't see any floor numbers."
Tang Erda looked down at the real estate document in his hand: "It's unit 0812."
Bai Liu stopped walking and lifted his eyes toward a tombstone: "The eighth row, the twelfth one. It should be this one."
Tang Erda looked at the place where Bai Liu had stopped, his eyes pausing.
There was only one tombstone there, and the surroundings were bare, with no other structures. If Bai Liu said this was the public cemetery building, there could only be one possibility.
"Pry open the base," Bai Liu instructed calmly. "The entrance is inside the tomb."
Mu Shicheng asked in astonishment: "Inside the tomb? Does that mean our current level is already the first floor of the public cemetery building?"
"But if the first floor is the entrance, and we have to pry it open to get in…" Mu Shicheng looked at the young man on the tombstone who had died at 26. "Then where are these people's tombs?"
Tang Erda also frowned: "These people died too early. They don't look like rich people who could afford a tomb on the first floor."
Bai Liu stared indifferently at the photo of the young man on the tombstone: "This is not the first floor."
"According to a normal building structure, the tombs here should be called the basement or the garage—the cheapest locations in the entire building."
"So, the people buried here should be the low-class citizens of Sunshine City who can't even afford the eighteen-story public cemetery building."
The thick stone base was lifted by Tang Erda and Mu Shicheng working together. When they flipped the base over to see what was inside, Mu Shicheng couldn't help but gasp first, and even Mu Ke and Tang Erda's expressions changed.
Underneath the lifted base was a narrow, dark staircase that could only accommodate one person at a time. However, this was not the shocking part. What was shocking was that there was a transparent plastic coffin beneath the lifted base, and a living person was curled up inside it.
This young man, who looked no older than a teenager, was hugging his shoulders and curled up inside a coffin only one-third the size of his body, in a position resembling a fetus. He clutched himself tightly, breathing faintly. The mist from his breath formed a circle of fog on the side of the coffin. His expression was tense and painful, as though he might suffocate to death at any moment.
Tang Erda decisively opened the coffin lid, pulled the young man out, and patted his face: "Wake up!"
The young man choked and coughed twice, waking up in a daze. Seeing the people in front of him, he rubbed his eyes and asked, "Are you new residents of the 0812 public cemetery building? I'm sorry, I just fell asleep. I'll get up now and let you go in."
Mu Shicheng took a moment to react, then looked at the young man, who was naturally getting up to let them pass. "You were just… sleeping here?"
The young man didn't seem to think there was anything strange about it and nodded: "Yeah, this is my home. I sleep here at night."
Mu Ke looked at the transparent coffin of less than 1.5 square meters—the "home" the young man spoke of—with an indescribable expression.
"If you are a resident of the bottom floor of this public cemetery building," Liu Jiayi stared at him and asked, "then who is the person carved on the tombstone outside who died at 26?"
The boy scratched his head: "That's me. But I haven't died yet."
Mu Shicheng looked up at the photo on the tombstone, compared it carefully with the young man's face, and finally nodded affirmatively: "That's right. Although the photo is a bit blurry, it should be the same person."
Bai Liu calmly watched the young man and asked softly, "You look like you're only in your teens. Why did you set up a tombstone for yourself at 26?"
"I'm 17," the young man explained. "When I started working at 16, I took out a loan to buy a cemetery plot here in Zone E. The agency developer said they could give me a tombstone for free. I thought, I don't want to have children, and I don't have any other wishes, so I'll probably just live until 26 and then die. So, I told the agency developer to write the death age on the tombstone as 26."
"That's how this tombstone came about." The young man didn't think he was saying anything strange at all and even smiled at Bai Liu and the others.
Tang Erda's emotions were indescribably complicated: "You're only 17. Where are your parents?"
"They're both dead," the young man said naturally. "They worked at the construction site of the building project and usually died early. Shortly after they died, the house we bought with a loan was repossessed after twenty years. Although the house is gone, there's still part of the mortgage that hasn't been paid off. I still have to repay the loan for another ten years, so I can't save any money, which is why I can only buy a cemetery plot."
Mu Ke's eyes shifted downward, and he saw the young man's blood-stained hands—a pair of hands typical of someone who drags ropes and does heavy physical labor at construction sites. He paused and asked, "Then where are you working now?"
"The new building project in Zone C. It just opened and is recruiting people. I was lucky enough to get in. The pay is pretty good. I've earned quite a bit of money recently."
After the young man finished speaking in a good mood, he consciously climbed into the coffin and curled up into a ball. He looked up, smiled, and waved at Bai Liu and the others in a friendly manner: "I have to work tomorrow, so you guys should hurry in and rest. It's not very safe around here if it gets too late."
His attitude was as normal as if he were not in a cemetery, but in an ordinary apartment, greeting a new neighbor who had just moved in next door.
"I have to rest too." The young man yawned, lay down in the coffin, pressed a button on the side, and the base rose and closed like an automatic elevator door.
A group of people walked through the pitch-black corridor in silence, and the smell of rot in the air grew stronger.
"That kid is only 17 and hasn't even reached adulthood yet," Tang Erda spoke abruptly, his voice a little hoarse. "What kind of place is this, where a seventeen-year-old child already accepts everything and sleeps in his own twenty-six-year-old grave?"
Bai Liu's tone was calm: "There shouldn't be any concept of adulthood here. The standard they use to distinguish people is whether they have working ability, so it seems the baseline age is 16."
Tang Erda fell silent again.
The five people continued downward. When they reached the first floor, a weak, ghostly blue corridor light came on. Through this light, they could see that there were five households on the first floor of the narrow and low public cemetery building. The design of each door was not the kind that opened outward, but the kind of narrow push-in door, with rusted iron chains hanging from the door bolts.
Each household was arranged from top to bottom with three sliding compartments. Combined with the narrow layout, the intense deep-blue light, the smell of rot, and the densely packed sliding doors, this place looked like a—
Mu Ke said softly: "Compared to a cemetery building, this looks more like a crematorium."
As everyone stopped to observe the environment, their footsteps ceased, and the corridor light went out again.
In the darkness came several clacking sounds—the muffled noise of sliding doors being pushed open from the inside. Metal chains swayed and collided back and forth, and the sounds of fabric rubbing, flesh sticking, and tearing could be heard. The smell of rot in the air suddenly became much more sour and heavy.
Without changing his expression, Bai Liu took out a long whip from behind him and slapped it onto the ground with a crisp crack.
The voice-activated corridor lights came on again at the sound.
Under the dim and flickering ghost-blue light, all the sliding doors of the households had been pushed outward. On each sliding shelf sat a person leaning forward with a hunched back, wearing ragged, greasy clothes, with dirty, tangled hair, heads drooping, and arms resting on their stiff legs, motionless.
Flies buzzed around them, flying back and forth. A pus-yellow liquid, seemingly formed by the liquefied decay of fat, dripped from the edges of the sliding shelves, forming small puddles on the ground. The sour, foul odor drifted from there.
The metal chains hanging from the door bolts swayed, casting restless shadows on the ground.
Everyone took out their skill weapons and stood back-to-back with Bai Liu in a circle, remaining on guard.
Bai Liu looked around and commanded calmly: "This time, we won't explore the monsters' weaknesses. We will directly search for their public cemetery property deeds. Once we get them, we move to the next floor. If there are living people, take them with you. Do not harm the low-class citizen and mortgage-slave NPCs here unless there are special circumstances. Because they have no housing, they are highly likely to be wandering-type monsters. If you hurt them, they will follow the map. Do you understand?"
Everyone replied in unison: "Understood!"
The corridor lights flickered twice more before going dark. Strange breathing sounds came from the darkness, as if a group of people was forcibly simulating the process of breathing with their own decaying, hollowed-out lungs. A sharp whip crack echoed as it struck the ground, and the lights came on again.
With maggots in their eyes and rotting jaws, the corpses tilted their heads and rushed toward Bai Liu with ferocious expressions!
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Author's Note:
Regarding the average lifespan, this is referenced from "15 Lectures on the Process of Modernization in the World." The original text is: With the start of the Industrial Revolution… the workers' situation was the worst: Manchester was billowing with thick smoke, sewage was flowing everywhere… Textile factory female workers worked 12-16 hours a day, and the average lifespan was 17 years old.