Seeing the recruiter get killed, the nearby job seekers stared blankly at Bai Liu. When Bai Liu swept a glance over them, they instantly retreated in terror, forming a wide, empty circle around him. They buried their heads in their knees, shivering as they pretended they hadn’t seen a thing.
Someone pleaded in fear, “We won’t say anything! When the patrol comes, we won’t say a word! Please don’t kill us!”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Bai Liu said, crouching down on one knee. Smiling, he looked the job seeker in the eye and extended his hand. Resting in his palm was the bloodstained property deed. “Do you want to live in the house I just snatched?”
The job seeker froze, then stammered a refusal, “A-Are you trying to rent it to me? In Sunshine City, it’s illegal to be a landlord or a tenant. I can’t live there…”
“No,” Bai Liu’s smile deepened. “I’m letting you live there for free. Are you afraid of living in a haunted house?”
The man was completely dumbfounded. Shaking his head in a daze, he whispered, repeating Bai Liu’s words: “You’re going to let me… live in a District A house for free?”
Bai Liu replied affirmatively, “Yes.”
The surrounding job seekers widened their eyes, whispering among themselves:
“Is it illegal to live in a house someone gives you for free?”
“…If there’s no rental agreement, it doesn’t seem to be illegal.”
“My god, a house in District A! I’ve dreamed of living there my whole life…”
“Am I dreaming? A murderer robbed someone’s house just to let us live in it?”
Suddenly, the job seekers who had backed far away in fear of the blood-soaked Bai Liu quietly gathered around again. Pairs of bloodshot eyes stared at him with eager caution. Someone couldn’t help but remind him:
“There are so many of us here, and you only have one haunted house. Shouldn’t you pick who gets to live there?”
At those words, these people, tormented by years of job hunting, subconsciously puffed out their chests so Bai Liu could clearly read the resumes pinned to them. Some even began whispering their advantages:
“A haunted house needs someone with heavy Yang energy to suppress the ghosts, right? I have an excellent astrological birth chart.”
“My birth chart is even better!”
Seeing that they were about to start fiercely competing all over again, Tang Erda, watching from the sidelines, felt both helpless and conflicted. “Stop for a moment.”
“There’s no need to fight over the house,” Bai Liu smiled as he stood up and looked at everyone. “We’ll have five apartment buildings in the future. Everyone will get a free place to live.”
The crowd fell silent before erupting into a flurry of discussion:
“Five buildings?!”
Soon, someone voiced a concern: “Are you going to keep killing people to snatch their houses? The patrol squads here are vicious. Last time at the talent market, I saw them enforcing the law—they beat a backpacker to death right there just because he had stayed for over ten hours and couldn’t pay the fine for long-term occupation of public land.”
Tang Erda’s brows quickly furrowed. “That’s illegal. Won’t the patrol members be sanctioned?”
The man looked bewildered. “Why would they be punished? They’re hired by the real estate developers. The rules here protect them.”
Tang Erda’s frown deepened. “Can’t your laws punish criminal patrol squads?”
“Originally, they could,” the man tried to recall. “But last year, the opposition rate exceeded fifty percent, so the law was abolished. They said the patrol squads have the right to directly deal with anyone they deem a threat to Sunshine City’s public security, as this is the only way to protect all the residents.”
“Why would they vote to abolish it?” Tang Erda pressed further. “This severely violates your rights. How did it get over a fifty percent opposition vote?”
The man grew even more confused. Just as he opened his mouth, Bai Liu answered unhurriedly from the side, “Because they don’t have the right to vote.”
“It’s obvious that here, you must own a house to be considered a formal resident. They don’t, which is why they are the ‘lower-class citizens’ that guy mentioned earlier. Lower-class citizens can’t possibly enjoy any rights here.”
Bai Liu looked at Tang Erda with a half-smile. “Captain Tang, not all laws are made for the benefit of the majority.”
“In some places, laws are made for the collective that possesses the most interests—like here.”
“I chose to break the rules right from the start not because I wanted to kill, but because I knew that following their rules would make it impossible to achieve the main quest the game gave us. These rules were created solely to protect their own interests and to exploit others.”
“You don’t need to worry too much about me doing this in reality, Captain Tang. The laws in reality do a much better job protecting the legal rights of an ordinary laid-off worker like me. I have no reason to break them.”
Tang Erda quietly breathed a sigh of relief. This instance had too high a degree of realism. Bai Liu killing someone right off the bat had involuntarily put him on edge, making him wary that this man might bring this kind of behavior into the real world.
Bai Liu patted Tang Erda’s shoulder and smiled. “Relax, Captain Tang. It’s just a game.”
“You can’t live in this haunted house just yet; we need to handle a few things first,” Bai Liu turned back to the job seekers. “After sorting it out, I’ll come back here to find you. Do you know how to process a property deed transfer here?”
Someone glanced at the dead recruiter on the ground and said hesitantly, “For this kind of sudden death, doing a property transfer through official channels won’t really work. The house will be repossessed by the real estate company. You have to exploit a loophole.”
“Right,” someone nearby nodded in agreement. “Go to the [Suicide Property Auction Center]. You can transfer it there. Before the patrol comes to register his death, use his ID card to apply for an ‘accidental death gift transfer certificate,’ and that should do it.”
“The Suicide Property Auction Center?” Bai Liu raised an eyebrow. “What kind of place is that?”
The man looked surprised. “You don’t know? It’s the place where haunted houses are auctioned off after the homeowners commit suicide.”
“The suicide rate here in Sunshine City is exceptionally high. A lot of mortgage slaves jump off buildings after they can’t pay their loans. Because a large portion of the loan owed to the developers is still unpaid, the house gets repossessed and auctioned off to cover the mortgage.”
“Yeah, those haunted houses are very cheap. But no matter how cheap they are, I still can’t afford one…”
“They say those haunted houses are genuinely haunted. The people who buy them and move in will eventually meet with accidents and die too. But a lot of people still go buy them because they’re cheap…”
The Suicide Property Auction Center.
Two people with sun-protection cloths covering their heads were sneaking around, hiding in the crowded area. Their heads were huddled together as they whispered:
“Do you think Bai Liu and his team will spot us like this?”
“Probably not. This instance map, Sunshine City, is huge. It has a population of tens of millions. How unlucky would we have to be to bump into them…”
“If you’re really worried, I can cast a fog-type skill to cover us first?”
“No! We could do that against other teams, but their team is very strong. Plus, they have two popular players who got the death-exemption medals. Your fog skill’s cooldown is over a day, and mine is seventeen hours. Let’s save them for critical moments.”
As they spoke, one of them couldn’t help but heave a gloomy sigh. “Yuan Guang, just how unlucky are we? We play a match and end up in this kind of instance…”
Holding onto his sun cloth, Yuan Guang carefully scanned their surroundings with lingering fear. “To be honest, looking at the people in this instance, I don’t think we’re that unlucky anymore.”
Speaking of this, Shi Qian involuntarily shuddered alongside Yuan Guang, and they said in unison: “The housing prices here are terrifying.”
“In reality, my monthly salary is seven or eight thousand, and housing prices are ten or twenty thousand a square meter. At least I have some hope of buying a house. But here…”
Yuan Guang shook his head, his face looking sickly green. “Aside from robbery, I can’t think of any other way to buy a house.”
Shi Qian nodded heavily in full agreement. She lifted the burlap sack hanging from her arm. “We just robbed eighteen recruiters. They were so rich! The combined balance on their ID cards is sixty million. I think buying a dozen or so small-sized haunted houses shouldn’t be a problem.”
Yuan Guang sighed in relief, his eyes lighting up slightly. “At this rate, we might be able to buy five haunted buildings in seven days!”
“If Bai Liu and the others are using this method too, we’ll just use our skills to block their transaction speed when the time comes. Then we can win!”
Shi Qian also laughed. “That should work.”
The two exhaled as they thought of this. Shi Qian looked up at the auction stage and couldn’t help but lament, “An average housing price of 320,000 per square meter, an average salary of 4,500, plus land usage fees… this is fucking absurd! How are people supposed to live?!”
A person nearby heard Shi Qian’s lament and chimed in, “Isn’t that why we can only come here to live in haunted houses?”
“Haunted houses…” Shi Qian and Yuan Guang exchanged a look. They knew this was a supernatural instance. If it was said there were ghosts in a haunted house, there most likely really were. “Don’t people die living in them? Yet so many people still bid to live there?”
“Do you think people don’t die living outside instead of in haunted houses?” the man said, tucking his hands into his sleeves with an accustomed tone. “The patrol squads beat people to death every day. A ghost scaring me to death might not even be as swift as a patrol squad beating me to death.”
As a veteran mortgage slave herself, Shi Qian couldn’t help but ask, “How did your housing prices get speculated up to this level? This is too ridiculous.”
“Speculated?” The man cast a confused look at Shi Qian. “What does it mean to speculate on housing prices?”
Shi Qian was taken aback. “It means… a bunch of people buying a massive amount of something, hoarding it without selling, and driving the price higher and higher so others can’t afford it. Like speculating on the stock market…”
The man suddenly understood. “So that’s what ‘speculate’ means.”
Then he shook his head. “The housing prices here aren’t driven up by speculation. The prices for most of the real estate properties here are set by the Five Great Developers.”
Now it was Shi Qian’s turn to be dumbfounded. “Set?! What do you mean?”
The man threw his hands up. “It means whatever they say the price is today, that’s what it is.”
Yuan Guang was also stunned. “Whatever they say it is, it is?!”
The man nodded. “Yeah. All the land in Sunshine City belongs to them. We can only buy houses from them. So doesn’t that mean it’s whatever price they say it is?”
Meanwhile, on the other side.
Having gathered the same information, Mu Sicheng raised his voice: “Whatever price they say it is, it is?! They say 320,000 a square meter, and you just buy it?”
The haunted house buyer answering Mu Sicheng was frightened by his intense reaction. He shrank his head, gave a quick nod, and rapidly scurried away.
“Fuck!” Mu Sicheng jumped in frustration. “I wasn’t done asking! Why are you running!”
Tang Erda pressed down on Mu Sicheng’s shoulder. “Calm down.”
Mu Sicheng clenched his fists, gnashing his teeth in hatred. “These dogshit companies! And these people! They set it at 320,000 a square meter and they just buy it! Are they stupid?!”
Mu Ke said calmly, “They have to buy.”
“320,000 a square meter, and they have to buy?!” Mu Sicheng whipped his head around. “Based on what?!”
Bai Liu said unhurriedly, “Based on the fact that all the land is in their hands.”
“To give an example: imagine all the rice in the world is supplied by one person. If you want to buy rice, you can only buy it from them.”
Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng. “If he wants to sell it for one dollar a pound today, you have to buy it. If he sells it for five hundred dollars a pound tomorrow, you still have to buy it. Because if you don’t buy rice to eat, you’ll starve to death. It’s exactly the same as in Sunshine City: without a house, you can’t find a job, can’t access healthcare, can’t go to school, and might even be beaten to death.”
“Just like rice, housing is an absolute necessity for you. When a necessity is monopolized, they can price it however they want. They set the price at a point where you can barely survive, but which squeezes your capacity to work to its absolute limit. Whether that price is 320,000, 420,000, or 500,000 a square meter, to you—”
“—If you want to live, you must pay this price for your own survival.”
