The day before entering the mission, Nan Yue and her two companions stayed in the North District commercial area of City A.
The letter cities were massive, and City A alone had two major commercial centers in the north and south, but Nan Yue and her team had mostly spent their time in the North District lately.
The pace of life here felt slow, and by the afternoon, small shopkeepers would set out lounge chairs on the street to enjoy the cool air.
The commercial center was located not far from their lodging, a five-story circular building that looked like a large plate from a distance.
The floors inside the mall were as shiny as new, with no trash in sight, and plastic greenery was placed every few steps to provide a pleasant view.
The first three floors were dedicated to food, featuring a collection of specialty snacks from various digital cities, and a noodle shop on the third floor was a local specialty of City A.
The noodles were chewy and springy, and the broth was a rich beef soup topped with a generous portion of beef, house-made chili oil, and Sichuan peppercorns before being splashed with hot oil, creating an aroma that could travel over ten meters.
The noodles here cost 15 points per person with unlimited refills, and Nan Yue and the others had become regulars over the last ten days.
Nan Yue buried her head in her food until she was half full, and only then did her mood improve.
Gu Xiang Kai and Zhu Xi Ning had already noticed that for the first few days after a mission, Nan Yue was fine, but in the days leading up to the next one, she would wake up feeling very gloomy, though she said nothing was wrong when asked.
It looked as though she was simply not sleeping well.
Insomnia, anxiety, and depression were common for scavengers, which was why higher city states provided specialized psychological counseling to ensure they could enter missions in a healthy state and come out alive.
However, middle and lower city states did not offer this service, and most people could not afford it anyway, so they had to manage on their own.
Fortunately, Nan Yue was only a bit lethargic when she first woke up and would quickly recover, showing no signs of resistance when discussing the upcoming mission.
"This is just the difference between people," Zhu Xi Ning lamented.
Nan Yue felt warm and full, the rich aroma of the broth and the spice of the chili still lingering in her nose, and she squinted her eyes contentedly.
As she absentmindedly let her mind wander, she noticed a girl sitting a few tables away eating noodles.
Generally, few people could capture Nan Yue's attention, but this girl was clearly an exception.
The reason was simple: she was incredibly beautiful.
Nan Yue herself was beautiful, and Zhu Xi Ning was also a beauty, and scavengers who lived this long had usually seen many attractive people.
Some were powerful, while others relied on their looks to get through missions, but among everyone she had ever seen, none could compare to the girl across from her.
The black hair draped over the girl's shoulders had the lustrous sheen of pearls, her features were refined and elegant, her figure was perfect, and even her every movement was exceptionally graceful.
To put it simply, she didn't look like she belonged here.
The girl seemed curious, and even though the noodles in front of her were still steaming hot, she didn't eat, instead looking around in all directions.
"What a strange person."
However, Nan Yue knew very well not to underestimate anyone here; the girl looked as beautiful as a work of art, but she might not hesitate to kill.
A person passing by like a flash, Nan Yue didn't take it to heart as they had been busy adapting to the functions of the Neural Interface during this time.
The world channel was very lively, and besides trade posts, there were introductions to the specialties of each city state or posts calling people out.
Purification missions never repeated, so sharing mission content wasn't very meaningful, but the people encountered inside were worth gossiping about.
Nan Yue could see over a dozen posts a day calling people out, either from handsome men and beautiful women looking for friends, or from people venting their anger after encountering some morally corrupt, murderous psychopath.
"Are these kinds of posts even useful?"
Nan Yue expressed her doubt, as she had realized after a few missions that while such people weren't the majority, there were certainly many of them.
In the face of life and death, many people didn't have the extra energy to care about morality.
Of course, there were also psychologically unbalanced scavengers who simply found killing fun, but that wasn't something you could prevent just by looking at a post and being careful.
"Probably not, but they need a place to vent."
Zhu Xi Ning pointed at a post and read aloud, "I was assigned to a mission with Yang Qingqing today! The halo is shattered!"
Zhu Xi Ning loved gossip the most, and she only shared it after reading with great interest.
"Do you remember Yang Qingqing? That young man who was 99th on the Beauty Rankings. This female scavenger used to be his top fan, but she found out in the mission that he's a coward who pushes others to their deaths, and her fan filter is completely gone."
"She's busy arguing with his die-hard fans now, and the guy himself has even come out to respond."
Generally, celebrities wouldn't personally get involved in gossip because true powerhouses didn't care at all about outside opinions.
However, Yang Qingqing was famous for his face and thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of being pursued in the real world, so he had to step in to save his image.
"Actually, this thing is just a platform for communication. With so many posts and so many people, you might never meet them in your life. Even if you read a post about a murderer now, would you really remember if you actually met them?"
"Humans have an instinct to block out unpleasant information."
Nan Yue was thinking about that beauty ranking, which wasn't officially certified and was generally based on people discovering others, uploading photos, and then having the scavengers on the channel vote.
They usually only voted for the top 100, and anyone who didn't make it was just considered an ordinary person, unable to get on the list even if they had a few fans.
Under Zhu Xi Ning's recommendation, Nan Yue had scanned the list once, and indeed, they were all handsome men and beautiful women of every style, but these people had one characteristic: almost all of them were from the letter cities or higher.
It made sense, as people in the lower city states didn't have a Neural Interface and couldn't participate in the voting.
She couldn't help but think of the girl she had caught a glimpse of in the noodle shop again.
If it were her...
Nan Yue felt that she would have no problem ranking in the top 10.
When the day to enter the mission arrived, Zhu Xi Ning was a bit lethargic, forming a sharp contrast with Nan Yue, who looked completely excited.
Gu Xiang Kai didn't seem to mind either way, eating and drinking outside missions and punching people inside them, his internal system as steady as a rock.
"I hope we get a more normal mission this time. Eating children and stuff like that really pushes the limits of my psychological endurance."
Zhu Xi Ning clasped her hands in prayer. Although the missions all had strange backgrounds that allowed scavengers to see different worlds to some extent.
But they didn't want to see those kinds of worlds!
Nan Yue didn't care. She stretched her limbs and looked at the scavengers outside the North District Purification Center.
The scavengers here clearly had better mental stability, and the scenes of people on the verge of collapse seen in the previous city states were almost non-existent.
Many people were even able to maintain a facade of calm.
Nan Yue swiped her ID card, and as the captain, she directly transferred the three of them to the task room together.
"Team x89089, residence: City A, participating project: Scavenger Daily Work."
"Evaluation format: team evaluation, current team size: 3 people."
"Multiplayer evaluation mission, Code 55943: Blooming Media Company"
"Objective: Find the true meaning of work."
"Wishing you a successful evaluation, Eden is waiting for you."
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