Working Records in a Weird World - 24

 

| WRIAWW | It's Fate Indeed | 24

Zong Le had no particular thoughts about the profession of a mortician , but he was genuinely curious about how to complete this side quest.

To that end, he took a closer look at the side quest. No matter how many times he scrutinized it, the main system had clearly spelled out the requirements in black and white.

【Side Quest: Achieve 100% satisfaction rate from the deceased】

The person is already dead. Could they possibly rise from their deathbed to share their thoughts on the funeral arrangements???

Filled with intense curiosity, Zong Le accepted this C-level task, ready to witness a medical miracle.

The system had just informed him that he was one task away from being promoted from a D-level survivor to a C-level survivor. A C-level task was also appropriate for his current level—it was not too conspicuous, just right.

【You have accepted the C-level quest ‘Guiyi Funeral Home Urgently Hiring Mortician Assistant’】

【Please arrive at Guiyi City Funeral Home around midnight tonight to complete temporary employment procedures】

“The timing of this employment is very much in line with the funeral home...”

Zong Le muttered to himself as he ruffled Lai Cai’s furry head.

With nothing else to do, he decided to head downstairs to supervise the only prisoner at Ankang Prison.

To his relief, the Butler had already started his voluntary labor. The guy was a professional butler, having graduated from a butler academy that catered to the wealthy. He worked with such efficiency that it felt like a waste of talent.

Zong Le considered assigning Butler to handle household chores for the neighbors or manage other tasks in the future. But for now, with the prison short-staffed, this arrangement would have to do. Perhaps he could catch a few bad weirds or NPCs at the funeral home tonight.

“Boss, that’s a great idea!”

The weirds naturally supported Zong Le’s plan with both hands and feet.

Advancing as a weird was incredibly difficult. The negative emotions an NPC carried when transforming into a weird determined the weird's initial level—the more negative emotions, the higher the level. After that, the only way to level up was through devouring.

Weirds were much tougher than NPCs. Occasionally losing a finger and eating it was no big deal; it would grow back the next day.

If the boss was lucky enough to capture a high-level weird, wouldn’t they be able to reap the benefits?

“Yeah, Guiyi City is so chaotic because there are too many bad weirds around.”

“We’re also hoping, uh, that you can create a harmonious and friendly hell—I mean, Guiyi City!”

The neighbors’ encouragement gave Zong Le a boost of confidence.

So, before 10 p.m., he was ready to change his shoes and head to his workplace.

“Woof woof!”

Zong Le turned to see Lai Cai sitting on the ground.

“You want to come with me?” He thought for a moment. “It’s not impossible, but I’m going to work. I probably won’t be able to take you inside the funeral home. You’ll have to wander around outside by yourself and wait until morning for me to come back.”

“Woof!”

Since Lai Cai insisted, Zong Le simply put a leash on him and took him along.

Because the sky in Guiyi City was perpetually dark, with a blood moon always hanging overhead, there wasn’t much difference between day and night. However, the nights were more yin-heavy, with fewer people wandering the streets and more weirds lurking about.

A week ago, Zong Le couldn't tell the difference between weird entities and NPCs. He even thought the weird domain was a hallucination caused by his own mental illness.

After becoming a survivor, he crammed a lot of relevant knowledge and has now smoothly passed the novice phase, becoming an experienced new survivor. Looking back now, it really feels like a dream.

At night, the public facilities in Guiyi City are closed, and the subway station is naturally pitch black.

Zong Le scanned a shared bike, placed Lai Cai in the front basket, and rode towards the funeral home with the navigation on.

After about half an hour, he rode through a winding mountain road and arrived at the easternmost part of Guiyi City.

Ankang Community is already considered the suburbs, but surprisingly, the Guiyi City Funeral Home is even more remote than Ankang Community.

"There aren't even many streetlights... fortunately my night vision is good."

Muttering to himself, he finally saw his destination through the layers of tree shadows.

A gray-white square building stood alone at the foot of a desolate mountain, with a blood-red light sign on top displaying the words "Guiyi City Funeral Home." The rusty iron gate was half-open, revealing a dimly lit corridor.

Zong Le parked the shared bike in the parking lot behind the funeral home, skillfully paid the three-yuan usage fee, and then tied Lai Cai's leash to the bike handle.

"Stay here and guard it for me, okay? I'll come pick you up at dawn."

After instructing Lai Cai, Zong Le walked around to the front of the funeral home.

Just as he was about to enter, he heard a series of urgent honks from behind. A black van marked "Specialized for Corpse Transport" drove down from the mountainside, came to an abrupt stop, and parked steadily at the entrance of the funeral home. 

The driver's door slammed open, and a doctor with the Taikang Yongle Hospital logo on his chest jumped out, frowning and cursing.

"What's going on? Did everyone in this damn funeral home disappear today? I can't even find someone to move the corpses..."

As soon as he finished speaking, the man in the white coat saw Zong Le standing there.

"Hey, you, come over and help move these!"

Zong Le, puzzled, walked over.

He helped open the back of the van and moved the tightly sealed iron boxes inside.

"One, two, three, four, a total of four."

Before he could finish speaking, the black van drove off, leaving a trail of exhaust.

Zong Le: "......?"

He watched the car disappear into the distance, utterly confused, and could only make a reasonable guess based on the words left on the iron boxes.

"Corpses that need to be processed from the hospital morgue to the funeral home? This should be the workload for tonight."

But now wasn't the time to dwell on these details; he hadn't even started his job yet.

"What's going on? Such a large commotion happened and no one came out to check. Are there no staff in the funeral home?"

Zong Le walked into the funeral home, puzzled.

As he stepped through the gate, a strong scent of incense and candles hit him, masking the strange smell of decay around him. The corridor was lit by pale lights, casting a cold glow on the floor tiles. 

Along the walls were a dozen yellow and white wreaths, clearly old and covered in dust, with only the condolence messages in the middle occasionally changed to adapt to different memorial occasions, saving the cost of buying new ones.

The huge hall was empty, with not a single person in sight.

"Is anyone here?"

Zong Le called out a few times, but only heard his own echoing back at him.

He wandered around the funeral home and finally found a piece of paper on the table near the entrance.

On the paper, there were crooked characters written in red ink.

[To the On-Duty Staff]

[At night, hospital staff will deliver the bodies. Your task is to prepare these bodies, apply makeup, and perform embalming. There is a deck of cards on the table. While waiting for the embalming process, you can play cards to pass the time. Usually, playing two rounds of cards will correspond to the corpse embalming finishing. The loser must share a piece of gossip only they know. Around 3 a.m., a supervisor might come for an inspection. During this time, you must put away the cards, remain calm and serious, and not let the supervisor notice. Once all tasks are completed, you may leave.]

Just as Zong Le finished reading, he noticed several beams of light descending beside him.

Seeing this, he immediately put down the paper, closed his eyes, and pretended to have just been teleported from the infinite space.

"We’ve finally been teleported."

"Ugh, landing here gave me a fright! This place is so gloomy, just as expected of a funeral home."

As the voices grew louder, Zong Le followed suit by stomping his feet and rubbing his shoulders. He had learned this from the forums—apparently, teleportation wasn’t entirely smooth, and there was a sense of weightlessness. The lower the level of the survivor, the more obvious of the discomfort.

He kept in mind his D-level persona, striving to blend in with the group of survivors.

The number of participants in this mission wasn’t large—only three had been teleported in. Two of them were unfamiliar faces, but the third... Zong Le discreetly glanced over and realized it was Bai Shao, the survivor he had unexpectedly encountered in the S-level mission last time.

He remained silent for a while, then slowly turned his head, hoping Bai Shao wouldn’t notice him.

But the funeral home was so small, what he feared came true

"What the hell..." As soon as he landed, Bai Shao nearly got a faceful of dust from the funeral scrolls fluttering upward.

He frowned, took a step back, and scanned the room, his eyes immediately landing on Zong Le, who was hiding at the back.

"Wow, a familiar face," Bai Shao said, momentarily stunned.

He hadn’t expected to run into the D-level survivor from the last mission, especially after Lord Joshua had just instructed him to keep an eye on them. He then added sarcastically, "We met last time, and now we’re meeting again."

"Indeed, it’s quite a coincidence," Zong Le replied, nodding helplessly.

The other two C-level survivors were about to ask how they knew each other, but when they saw the gleaming S-level badge above Bai Shao’s head, their eyes widened, and they fell silent.

"Am I seeing this right? An S-level big shot?"

Seeing this, Bai Shao irritably ran a hand through his hair. "Save the flattery. I’m not into that kind of thing."

Unlike other S-level survivors who judged others solely by their level, Bai Shao didn’t believe that being low-level was a sin. His main issue was that low-level survivors were often incompetent in both combat and missions, and being paired with them would only drag him down.

But since Lord Joshua had given the order, Bai Shao had no choice but to grit his teeth and participate in this low-level mission to "help the poor."

"I am a member of the Temple Army, a follower of 1st Patriarch Joshua. You must have all participated in the collective meeting of survivors held on the forum last time. This time, I am heeding the call of the Patriarch to voluntarily take on low-level missions, aiming to help the survivors of the Infinite Space adapt more quickly to the environment of the ultimate dungeon."

After this speech, the trembling C-level survivors were deeply moved.

"Oh my god! It turned out to be true! Thank you, Lord Joshua, and thank you for your selfless dedication."

"This is truly great. We were initially a bit worried when we saw this chimera mission..."

A chimera mission refers to a task that is issued with different difficulties and different mainlines.

For example, in this mission, Bai Shao received a B-level difficulty task titled "Guiyi City Funeral Home Urgently Hiring Embalmers," while the other three received C-level tasks titled "Guiyi City Funeral Home Urgently Hiring Embalmer Assistants." 

The addition of a single word changes the identity and naturally the difficulty.

Only Zong Le looked puzzled: "What collective meeting? How come I don't know about it."

Is there still someone who doesn’t follow the survivor forum these days?

Just as Bai Shao was about to mock him, he heard Zong Le nervously ask: "Does volunteering to help mean we don’t have to pay protection fees?"

Bai Shao: "......"

Bai Shao: "Yes, you don’t have to."

Now he was really puzzled. What exactly did the Patriarch want to ask this idiot D-level?

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