After landing that blow, Shen Ru felt refreshed from head to toe. He straightened up, savoring the bloody sweetness unique to the early morning.
Seeing several customers about to enter, the young man signaled the NPCs with his eyes to tie up the black goldfish and drag it into the storeroom next door.
The six people with replaced faces worked extraordinarily fast. Unlike the players, they showed no surprise at Shen Ru beating a customer, simply toiling away without complaint as though following the system's programming.
The young man nodded in satisfaction. Before entering the storeroom, he made a point of reminding everyone, "Remember! Our service motto is: the customer is God."
The players: "..."
Listen to yourself. Does that sound remotely reasonable?
Naturally, Shen Ru paid no attention to the players' complicated looks. His world had never drawn its boundaries according to good and evil, but according to his mood.
The moment the storeroom door closed, the dim light illuminated the young man's smoothly contoured profile. His dark red eyes seemed steeped in blood, forever gleaming with an alluring light, both righteous and wicked, fiery and unrestrained.
Shen Ru's blow had not killed the goldfish. It had merely passed out, unable to withstand the sudden, violent attack.
Shen Ru crouched down, wrapped a dry handkerchief around his fair palm, and slapped the goldfish's newly replaced face hard twice.
"If you're awake, stop playing dead."
The light in the storeroom suddenly began to crackle and buzz, instantly lending the quiet, cramped space an eerie atmosphere.
As though experiencing humiliation for the first time, the creature thrashed desperately on the floor, reduced to a dying fish on a chopping board.
In its fury, its newly replaced human-face mask struggled to retain its original shape and began rejecting the flesh beneath it. Mustard-yellow mud dribbled down its cheeks. Its face kept bulging, releasing a foul, rank stench as it swelled wildly.
Sharp, anguished cries echoed through the dim space. "Where's my face? Have you seen my face?"
The sight did not frighten the young man. Instead, it made him realize something.
What these customers truly loved, what they wanted at any cost, was neither human lives nor recognition, but eternal youth and beauty.
Whether they were humans or NPCs in a dungeon, having desires meant they had weaknesses.
Shen Ru showed no disgust or displeasure whatsoever. Judging by his expression, he had even forgotten that he had just clubbed the creature.
"I have plenty of faces here. As long as you behave, I'll give you a new one every day. How does that sound?"
His beguiling voice flowed like a soft, gentle melody, gradually soothing the monster's restless frenzy.
Hearing this, the creature paused for a moment before asking tentatively, "Really?"
Shen Ru looked up. A sly glimmer flashed through his eyes, then gave way to a sincere gaze. "Of course. I always keep my word."
The black goldfish completely wavered and hurriedly asked what it needed to do.
"It's actually very simple. Do you know how to be a shill?"
In the livestream chat:
[?????]
[Recycling trash????]
[I naively thought my wife dragged that damned goldfish into the storeroom to kill it and silence it. Guess I was too shortsighted.]
[My beautiful wife really knows how to squeeze every last bit of value out of everyone...]
The job was actually quite simple. The black goldfish only needed to act like an ordinary customer and give other customers a timely nudge when they hesitated, successfully helping close the sale.
In Shen Ru's previous world, this job was called sales, but none of that mattered. What mattered was that by facilitating transactions and earning positive reviews, the goldfish could get a new mask every day.
Only after the creature nodded in agreement did Shen Ru cut the ropes binding it.
"One more question."
He had originally intended to verify this himself when the customer paid at checkout. He had not expected his very first customer to try to skip out on the bill, so he could only ask directly.
"What do you use as currency?"
The black goldfish seemed not to have expected such an utterly basic common-sense question. It raised a hand and pointed at its own head.
Shen Ru's heart sank at the gesture. He could not help raising his eyebrows as he asked, "Nothing else?"
The creature was puzzled, but it did not dare ask any questions. It simply shook its head.
The young man slowly closed his eyes and began to think.
The system had explicitly stated that their task was to earn positive reviews, but it had never said how much money the players needed to earn to qualify. So this was where the trap had been all along.
Customers who came to the shop in this dungeon to sell things used human heads as currency, yet their nighttime transactions with the supplier required yuan.
Without any process for converting human heads into yuan, the shop would soon run out of money to trade with the supplier, followed by a shortage of stock.
Shen Ru waved at the goldfish on the floor, telling it to hurry outside and get to work.
"Remember to leave the positive review you owe us."
The black goldfish had long since had enough of this trouble spot. It hastily nodded and bowed, promising to do so as soon as it got outside.
The players, who knew nothing of what had happened, only saw a dark, rounded thing shoot out the instant the storeroom opened. It dutifully left the shop a positive review, then kept guiding customers to place orders and make purchases.
Wei Lingling slowly approached the two men and asked in bewilderment, "Am I hallucinating? I actually saw a black goldfish working as a shill."
Qi Liang rubbed his eyes hard and said, struggling to put it into words, "I don't think it's just you. I saw it too..."
They could not begin to guess what method the expert had used.
Whatever it was, it was seriously impressive!
Perhaps thanks to the help of a local resident, business was especially good. Before long, a line had formed at the register.
Rows of customers with replaced faces stood in line, looking polished and glamorous, then pulled dripping human heads out of who knew where. Scarlet blood dripped from the severed necks onto the floor, and in an instant, even the air filled with a suffocating stench of blood.
Fortunately, Shen Ru had prepared himself beforehand, so the scene did not particularly surprise him.
The others, however, did not fare nearly as well.
Wei Lingling actually ran straight to the restroom to dry-heave, while the other two players froze in terror.
Shen Ru swept a cold gaze over the three of them, his index finger tapping repeatedly against the tabletop with an impatient rhythm.
Useless trash.
Not even as useful as a few NPCs.
The young man quickly instructed the others to open the doors and windows for ventilation and mop up the floor promptly, worried that the sticky blood might cause someone to slip or suffer another accident.
Since purchases were paid for in human heads, he planned to charge at a ratio of 1:5. After all, this was the dungeon's hard currency, and keeping a little extra could hardly hurt.
The shop's masks soon sold out, and the human heads in the storeroom piled up into a mountain. Blood clung to their faces, and prolonged confinement had caused the facial skin to rot severely, leaving many of their faces twisted.
Several plump white maggots wriggled across the faces. Shen Ru felt that a single light stamp of his foot would send the maggots lodged between the layers of facial skin pattering down.
Before you continue