One Kick, Total Blackout

Reverse rounding?
This was the first time he’d seen a seller be so blatant, but that didn’t matter anymore.

“Yes!”
He Yinwen’s nerves jolted. Without haggling, the word escaped her lips. Probably her survival instinct kicking in.

With a *click*, the pink flip-flop pressed down, and the entire open-plan office was plunged into darkness.

He Yinwen instinctively looked at her computer screen.
The layers of dialog boxes, like the unblinking eyes of the dead, flickered in their death throes the moment the power died. Countless “momo” avatars disappeared into the crumbling pixels.

Even with the power off, residual colors still danced on her retinas, struggling to contaminate the player’s will.

Soon, the screen went completely black.
The data vanished. The dense sound of clattering keyboards stopped. The office area was briefly silent.

He Yinwen breathed a sigh of relief, a weight lifted from her shoulders.
She realized her mental stability had been severely compromised. If that security guard hadn’t appeared, she might not have made it through today…

She broke out in a cold sweat for herself, then instinctively looked again at the pink flip-flops, like a pair of guiding markers.
Even with the power off, the pink was still so bright.

Su Lai turned on his high-powered flashlight and walked over to her, extending a hand.
“Service first, payment later.”
“There’s no signal here. Can’t scan. I’ll have to trouble you for cash.”

He Yinwen immediately pulled 300 yuan from her bag. Although a bit dazed, the urgency reminded her of forced sales tactics at tourist sites, but her gut told her this was the best money she’d ever spent.

The maddening customer complaints and inquiries were gone.

Indeed, only a power and internet outage could truly liberate a beast of burden—a scene she’d fantasized about countless times during overtime in the real world.

But before Su Lai could even pocket the 300, the person in charge of the 7th floor hurried over.

“What’s going on? Who gave you permission to cut the power?” The person in charge interrogated the customer service agents who were starting to slack off in the dark.

After a brief silence, everyone pointed in unison at Su Lai, collecting money by the power strip.

“That new security guard.” One customer service agent spoke up.

The person in charge turned to Su Lai. Before he could even open his mouth, Su Lai beat him to it.
“Earlier, I charged 300 per kick. Since you’re the person in charge, I’ll give you a discount too. How about 500 per kick?”

Caught off guard by the security guard’s counter-offensive, the person in charge stared at Su Lai in bewilderment, the words of questioning stuck in his throat.

“What do you mean? Who gave you the right to cut the power?” The rabbit-headed person in charge demanded sharply through thick glasses.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m just doing my duty as a security guard.”
Su Lai shone the flashlight in the person in charge’s face. He moved unhurriedly, then kicked the power strip.

A still-wriggling brown cockroach appeared before everyone’s eyes.

“Security Guard Patrol Rule Number One: During your patrol, you must ensure the safety of the building. No living creatures other than employees are permitted in the office area. Eliminate all sources of life that could contaminate the work environment.”
“This rule takes precedence over all others.”

Su Lai opened the newly obtained patrol rules and read them out loud, enunciating each word carefully, as if afraid the employees and the dead-eyed person in charge might not hear clearly.

An hour earlier, just after Su Lai had parked his e-bike and put down the pig kidneys, before he could even take a short nap, the walkie-talkie crackled again.

The intermittent static carried the voice of the building person in charge, who had been repeatedly thwarted. Though reluctant, he gritted his teeth and assigned new patrol tasks.

After all, in this Fortuitous Retribution Building, Su Lai was currently the only living security guard. If he didn’t assign tasks, no one would do the work, and his own KPIs would suffer.

Upon receiving the new patrol rules, Su Lai was overjoyed.
The urban village specialty he had asked Wang Chunying to bring—local cockroaches—could finally serve a greater purpose.

The wording of Patrol Rule Number One was subtle: No living creatures other than employees are permitted in the office area.
By literal definition, the building couldn’t possibly consider cockroaches as employees, could it?

So cockroaches were absolutely prohibited on the office floors.

This lifeless office building desperately needed a visit from creatures as resilient as cockroaches to break the suffocating sense of order and oppression.

Su Lai shone his flashlight, showing the half-dead cockroach to everyone.
“Oh, sorry. I accidentally stepped on the power strip while trying to kill this cockroach, and it cut the power to the floor.”
“This one’s pretty tenacious. That kick didn’t quite finish it off.”

He aimed his high-powered flashlight at the cockroach, deliberately illuminating its crushed, half-body and its remaining claws waving menacingly on the carpet.

As expected, the moment this symbol of tenacious life appeared, the suffocating silence was shattered.

Shrieks erupted in the office. Chaos broke out. It became lively.

The person in charge’s face contorted. He hadn’t experienced anything like this. Perhaps he had been completely tamed by rules and order. He was terrified of the cockroach.

He recoiled in even greater panic than the ordinary employees, his trembling finger pointing at the cockroach on the carpet.
“Kill it! Kill it quickly!”

Su Lai was satisfied.

“Don’t panic. Calm down.”
Contrary to his words, Su Lai brought the high-powered flashlight closer, illuminating the cockroach’s claws even more clearly.

Almost all the employees took another step back. The space around Su Lai became empty, even the air seemed to lighten.
Their overreaction confirmed Su Lai’s suspicion——

The employee NPCs’ fear of the cockroach wasn’t about the cockroach itself, but that the element of a cockroach shouldn’t appear in Fortuitous Retribution Building.

This place was always orderly, running day after day according to established procedures. Its error tolerance was extremely low. A cockroach appearing was like a bug in this world. It would disrupt their perception, attacking their mental stability as contaminant NPCs.

Only He Yinwen stood motionless by her workstation, watching this absurd scene. She found this fellow security guard increasingly interesting, and the workplace stench around her seemed to fade a bit.

“Tell you what, since we’re colleagues, I’ll give you another discount.” Su Lai pretended to be reluctantly accepting a bad deal.
“Not 500. Just 1000. 1000 per kick. Guaranteed kill, guaranteed disposal of the corpse. What do you say?”
“Can’t go any lower.”

7th Floor person in charge: “Isn’t this your job? Why are you charging?”

Su Lai: “Doing my job and charging you aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“New Employee Handbook, Article 13: Nothing is free. If something appears to be free, please do not believe it and distance yourself as soon as possible.” He repeated the rule verbatim.
“Don’t want to pay? Fine, I’ll leave. You deal with the cockroach?”

The person in charge had never encountered such an employee with such a fallacious attitude. He gritted his teeth.
“Fine, fine, fine! Just kill the damn thing!”

Su Lai held out his hand.
“1000. Cash.”

The person in charge’s voice trembled. He seemed genuinely afraid of this “outside” creature.
“Didn’t you say service first, payment later?”

Su Lai: “That was for her. The rules are different for you.”

Person in charge: “… Why?”

Su Lai: “Because I said so.”
“One word: kill it or not?”

“Kill it.” The words escaped his mouth before reason could intervene. The person in charge, sweating, had no choice but to hand over the cash. He could figure out how to expense it later.
“Just get rid of it! Don’t let it contaminate the office area!”

“Coming right up.” Su Lai pocketed the cash, satisfied. He placed a piece of paper over the cockroach, then stepped on it.

He cherished his flip-flops and didn’t want the cockroach’s guts to dirty them.

The moment Su Lai’s foot came down, almost all the NPCs held their breath. The office area was so quiet you could hear the cockroach’s body scraping against the floor.
Squeaking. Nauseating.

The person in charge even shuddered. He watched in horror as the security guard disposed of the cockroach corpse, then sprayed a thick layer of alcohol on the carpet. Only then did he completely breathe a sigh of relief.

The uncontrollable variable, the cockroach, was finally gone from the office area.
But why had there been a cockroach? Where did it come from?

He was responsible for the 7th floor. Any mistake here would be his fault. He had to write a daily report soon. He couldn’t have any problems on the 7th floor.

Anyway, the problem was solved. That was all that mattered. The reason was unimportant. As a leader, he only cared about results, not process.

Su Lai: “Buy one, get one free. I’ll give you another kick.”
With that, he stepped on the power strip again, restoring power to the 7th floor.

All the computers restarted, but the previously popped-up customer messages were gone.
For 300 yuan, He Yinwen had escaped the endless customer complaints. She checked the time. Five minutes to 6 PM. Plenty of time to get to the 2nd floor cafeteria.

The rules clearly stated: as a customer service agent, you must respond to any new message immediately, provided the equipment is functioning normally.

But this sudden power outage was an equipment malfunction. As long as she didn’t open the customer service backend, she wouldn’t receive customer complaints.
No reception meant none existed. Whatever.

He Yinwen exhaled deeply. She had finally resolved the contradiction between the rules and made it to the cafeteria on time.

Thanks to the cockroach drama, the originally exhausted and numb customer service agents now had a few more traces of shock on their faces. Though the NPCs looked frightened, they seemed a bit more vivid than before. At least they had a hint of humanity, not just beasts of burden wearing machine masks.

After cleaning up the cockroach crime scene, Su Lai merged into the silent stream of beasts of burden heading for the elevator.

****

Second Floor of Fortuitous Retribution Building, Cafeteria.

It was the evening rush. A large number of employees wearing ID badges flooded in.

A dozen serving windows were lined up. The display cases were filled with various small dishes, noodles, wontons, soups in clay pots, even light meals and Western pastries.
At first glance, the variety seemed vast, but no food smells emanated from the cafeteria.

The fluorescent lights on the cafeteria ceiling were underpowered, casting a pale, dull glow that made the employees waiting in line look even more weary. Thick shadows spread from their dark eye circles to their cheeks. Rather than employees, they looked like corpses waiting to be cremated.

The dishes in the cases had no steam either, appearing like pre-prepared meals that hadn’t been properly reheated.

Neither the people nor the food could stimulate the appetite.
There were no colors or smells of food. Only the stench of workplace permeated the cafeteria.

From a distance, Bai Ke, wearing an employee badge and looking like a proper beast of burden, waved at Su Lai.
After just one afternoon, the vitality on Bai Ke’s face was gone. Now, standing silently among the NPCs, he blended in seamlessly. His features had become blurry, marked only by dead, weary exhaustion.

Coming out of the crowd, Bai Ke instinctively looked at Su Lai’s pink flip-flops. Only then did a glimmer of color flash in his dim eyes.

“Cousin, next time you enter an instance, bring me a pair of flip-flops too. The same style.” Bai Ke smiled tiredly.
“If I can still walk out of Fortuitous Retribution Building alive, that is.”

Su Lai looked at Bai Ke’s dark eye circles and forehead.
“No problem. If you die, I can burn you a pair.”

Bai Ke’s lips stiffened.
“Cousins like us… no need to be so polite.”

A bit of banter with his flip-flop-wearing cousin, and Bai Ke felt himself “alive” again. The deathly air around him dissipated a little.

As a new employee in the Admin department, his afternoon hadn’t been easy.

The Admin department rules clearly stated: 「In principle, each admin staff member may only clean a meeting room once per day. If an employee must enter the same meeting room a second time, the objects in the room will no longer appear as they did before. Please try to adjust your perception and find a way to leave the meeting room.」

The Admin Director had not been kind to him, a newbie. He had assigned Bai Ke to clean meeting rooms five times, twice in the same room.

“You’re new. New people need to constantly challenge themselves, do the work others don’t want to do.”
“You’re new here. Doing this cleaning work is only right. Why else would the company pay you?”
“Only this way can you develop your work abilities and grow quickly.”

The Admin Director used high-sounding rhetoric to sell Bai Ke a pipe dream.

Bai Ke had been in the workplace for years and normally wouldn’t fall for this. But Article 1 of the Admin rules stated: 「No employee may disobey a superior’s directive or voice a objection.」

The two rules conflicted. As a new employee, he had no choice but to obey.

Bai Ke considered himself unlucky. To survive the meeting rooms, he spent a large number of survival coins to buy items that restore mental stability and memory, to avoid mental breakdown from repeated cleaning.

He had spent a huge amount of survival coins right from the start. If he continued this instance this way, he would never make it to the so-called payday…

“Cousin, any discoveries this afternoon?” Bai Ke seized the waiting time in line to ask his security guard cousin.

In this building, security guards, unlike the beasts of burden sitting in cubicles, were a special position with more mobility.

From the beginning, the instance hadn’t assigned this position to players.
Only a boss like Lai-ge could forcibly unlock this new gameplay, in Bai Ke’s mind.

Su Lai nodded.
“A lot.”

No need to hide anything from his old cousin, Bai Ke.

Bai Ke’s eyes lit up.
“Tell me?”

Su Lai: “First, the employees here seem alive, but mentally, they’re pretty close to death.”

Bai Ke smiled bitterly.
“Normal. Going to work is like going to the grave. Who can be lively after work?”

Su Lai nodded in agreement. Standing in the cafeteria line now, he felt like he was at the Terracotta Army scenic spot.
These NPCs weren’t just “dead.” They seemed to have been in the ground for years. Their corpses were dusty and dejected. They weren’t as lively as the gossipy neighbors in the urban village.

Bai Ke: “Auntie was wise. Being a security guard is good. Safe and relaxing.”
Which parent would want their child to be a beast of burden in a cubicle?

Su Lai continued.
“Second, the building has ghosts.”

Bai Ke was momentarily stunned.
“What do you mean by ghosts…?”

Seeing the shrine in the lobby upon first entering Fortuitous Retribution Building had already made Bai Ke uneasy. Most players didn’t like contaminant instances with supernatural elements.

Supernatural elements were a major test for a player’s mental stability.

Su Lai: “Literal ghosts.”
“But these ghosts are quite interesting. At least more interesting than these living employees.”

Bai Ke noticed Su Lai’s wording: “these ghosts.”
His heart did a little hiss. It seemed his cousin had encountered more than one ghost…

He took back his earlier comment about being a security guard being safe and relaxing.

“The pay is just enough to keep a beast of burden barely alive, hanging by a thread. And you want them to be interesting? That’s too much to ask.” Bai Ke shook his head, sighing.
“Emotional value or survival value. You can only pick one.”

Su Lai patted his shoulder sympathetically. His gaze shifted from Bai Ke’s wig to the cafeteria serving windows.

He narrowed his eyes, his expression more serious than before.
“There’s a third discovery—”