Chapter 2

“Wow…” Liu Na collapsed on the ground, crying inconsolably.

Tan Qiaoqiao: Even though I know she’s crying over a scumbag, I still feel somewhat guilty.

“Although Chang Heng was a scumbag, he’s dead,” the male colleagues consoled sincerely. “Even though you’ve been wronged, you’re still alive!”

“Wow…” Liu Na cried even louder.

Tan Qiaoqiao: Great job comforting her. Remind me not to comfort her next time.

“In our youth, who hasn’t encountered a few scumbags?” Tan Qiaoqiao said solemnly.

Actually, she hadn’t.

Yun Xin probably hadn’t either.

But it’s okay. If you can comfort someone, that’s enough.

Now that Chang Heng has been found, Liu Na couldn’t stop crying. No one mentioned going back to the office anymore; everyone was happily watching the scene.

Chen Xuan shook his head as he watched. “I said we shouldn’t meddle blindly. Look at those people, thinking they’re heroes, rushing to help, but they ended up achieving nothing. They didn’t save anyone and got themselves in trouble. We all got stuck in the syrup and couldn’t get out.”

“When it comes to saving people, we should act within our capabilities. Being reckless only causes trouble for the police comrades,” he concluded.

“The rescue team is already busy enough. Having to allocate resources and manpower to save you first, isn’t that delaying other important tasks?”

“You can’t say that.” A colleague nearby couldn’t stand it and retorted, “If it wasn’t syrup that leaked but hot water, they would have successfully rescued the people. If you don’t want to help, fine, but don’t speak ill of those who are brave enough to risk their lives to save others. Even if they fail, they’re still heroes!”

“What do you mean, speaking ill? I call it rational thinking,” Chen Xuan argued stubbornly.

Tan Qiaoqiao turned to Yun Xin and said, “Did you hear that? Rational thinking. Don’t help others casually in the future.”

Chen Xuan opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but then he thought better of it. After a moment of hesitation, he turned his head to look at the scenery, pretending not to have heard anything.

At that moment, someone pointed and hesitantly asked, “Am I seeing things, or is that little candy figurine… our boss?”

Everyone: “??!!”

After taking a closer look, rubbing their eyes, blinking a few more times, and looking again…

“Oh no!! It’s really the boss!”

Several big guys wailed in despair, their voices drowning out Liu Na.

Liu Na was dumbfounded, forgetting to cry, staring blankly at them.

“I still have a mortgage to pay off, and a wife and children to support! I haven’t seen the boss for half a day, and he’s gone?!”

“I’ve had five jobs since graduating, and this one pays the most, has the least work, and the best office atmosphere. Now the boss is gone, the company is gone, and I have to go job hunting again, sob…”

“The office building can be rebuilt, office supplies can be bought again. But the boss… what do we do about that?”

“Are you sure it’s the boss? Did you see clearly?” Yun Xin hadn’t even had a good look at what the little candy figure looked like, but her colleagues were already wailing.

“Yeah, what if we’re crying over the wrong person? How embarrassing would that be?” Tan Qiaoqiao chimed in. “The boss wasn’t in the office this morning, said he went to the bank for something, and was supposed to be back before the afternoon meeting. It’s only been a few hours, he might not have returned yet.”

With that, she took out her phone and called the boss.

As the phone rang, the ringtone coincided with the sound coming from the direction of the little candy figure, indicating that the boss’s phone was probably in his pocket, now part of the statue.

Tan Qiaoqiao put down her phone, feeling conflicted. “It’s really him.”

“Now what do we do?”

Everyone looked at each other, clueless.

Originally, if it had just been a sudden accident, rescuing the injured, shoveling away the solidified honey afterward, tidying up the scene, and restoring life to its previous state would have been straightforward.

But now that the boss had turned into a little candy figure, things were different.

“What about the company? Who will take over afterwards? Is this considered employees resigning voluntarily, or the company laying off employees? Can we get compensation?” Chen Xuan raised several questions in a row.

No one could answer.

Everyone was very confused.

Some people stared blankly at the sky, their eyes devoid of expression. “Does this count as buying safety? Losing a job, but gaining back a life, seems like a net gain.”

At first, surviving the ordeal had filled them with ecstatic relief amidst their racing hearts.

Then, when they thought the company’s losses were manageable and it didn’t concern them, they adopted a bystander mentality.

But now, with the situation taking a sudden turn, losing their comfortable jobs, they felt a twinge of pain in their hearts.

This day’s ups and downs were exceptionally dramatic. Tan Qiaoqiao suddenly thought of an emoticon she saw online: “One moment, I’ve seen it all. The next moment, I haven’t seen anything like this before.”

She thought to herself, a syrup leak accident, I haven’t even heard of something like this, let alone seen it.

Looking at the mess of semi-solidified syrup everywhere, Tan Qiaoqiao wondered, “Without any reason, how could syrup leak? Such a big accident, causing so many casualties, isn’t anyone taking responsibility?”

“The police are busy rescuing people, maybe they don’t have time to investigate yet,” guessed Yun Xin. “Once they’re done with the rescue, they’ll investigate the cause of the accident.”

She was curious, was it a natural disaster or man-made? If it was some kind of game messing things up, how did they do it?

“Normal people, who builds a sugar factory in a residential area?” Chen Xuan suddenly thought of this question. “These kinds of factories are usually built in the countryside, where there’s no one around, right?”

“And storing boiling syrup, there must be strict safety standards,” added someone nearby. “It must have been cutting corners and violating safety standards that caused such a major accident.”

“I say, people like that should be executed!”

“Scum! They’ve killed so many people, what compensation can they give? Even if they give their lives, it wouldn’t be enough. How many lives does one person have? Enough to compensate so many people?”

“Because of sudden accidents like this, can the victims’ families still receive compensation? They’re the ones who died, but their families are still alive. With compensation, at least their families can live better.”

As the conversation drifted, Chen Xuan took the lead in analyzing how much money the victims’ families could roughly get and how they should claim compensation, leaving others stunned.

Looking at the chaos, Yun Xin sighed inwardly: the game was over, but the aftermath had just begun.

On the third day after the accident, the rescue operations concluded, and the statistics were released. The syrup tsunami had caused the deaths of over sixty people and injured more than ninety others. Additionally, there was damage to vehicles, destruction of houses, loss of public facilities… the financial losses incurred were immeasurable.

The subsequent cleanup efforts took a full five days. This was thanks to the cleaning teams working overtime and other departments assigning extra personnel to assist.

It was said that even after the streets were cleaned, people could still smell the sweet scent lingering in the air.

Recalling that sickly sweet aroma, Yun Xin, who had a sweet tooth, felt a sense of revulsion for the first time.

Turning on her computer and browsing the official website, she quickly found an explanation for the cause of the accident.

The incident was both a natural disaster and man-made. Just as speculated, the boss, Wang, in order to save money, had cut corners during the installation of the syrup tank, not strictly following safety standards.

To further cut costs, he secretly installed the syrup tank in the residential area.

What’s even more outrageous was that the capacity standards were also violated. The syrup, which should have been installed separately in two tanks, was forcibly squeezed into one tank. This resulted in severe damage to the storage tank, making it prone to rupture.

At noon on the day of the accident, the temperature suddenly rose. A large amount of carbon dioxide was produced inside the tank, which damaged the storage tank, causing all the syrup to pour out. At its most severe, it formed a wave over ten meters high, leading to the tragedy.

Finally, the accident was deemed as an accident. The relevant authorities harshly criticized Wang for cutting corners, disregarding safety standards, and disregarding public safety. Wang was ordered to compensate all victims for their economic losses, and in addition, he was held accountable for legal responsibilities.

“Accident,” Yun Xin muttered these two words. If she hadn’t seen the transparent panel, if she hadn’t known about the existence of the evolution game, perhaps she could accept the investigation results, bury the syrup accident in her memory, and slowly forget it over time.

However, now, she repeatedly read the explanation for the cause of the accident, and her gaze stopped at the words “suddenly rising temperature at noon on the day of the accident.”

“The syrup tank itself had safety hazards. Combined with the sudden rise in temperature, it became an excellent escape copy. No matter how the investigation is conducted afterwards, it will be classified as an ‘accident’,” Yun Xin pondered, “Was the sudden rise in temperature caused by the evolution game? Or perhaps, when the syrup spilled out of the tank, the location of the accident was recognized as a ‘copy’ by the evolution game?”

With too little time to investigate and too few clues, there were too many things she couldn’t understand. What’s even more annoying is that even with an A rank, it only means knowing about the existence of the evolution game.

Whether she asked, “How to end the evolution game?” or “How many players are currently participating?”

It didn’t respond.

After pondering for a moment, Yun Xin closed the official website and searched for relevant news in the search bar. As soon as the results opened, she made a new discovery.

It was a short video, with poor quality and shaky footage.

The video began to play. The surging syrup tsunami engulfed the village in an instant and rapidly spread outwards.

The camera moved to the edge, where a man’s ankle was wrapped in syrup. His expression was ferocious, struggling desperately but unable to break free from the syrup.

At this moment, the voice of the cameraman came from the video.

“That syrup is scalding hot, it can peel off a layer of skin!”

“Some people were scalded to death, and some turned into syrup sculptures.”

“There are also people stuck to the ground, unable to move, just like mice stuck on a chopping board.”

In the video, the man whose ankle was stuck looked up in horror at the surging syrup tide not far away. Unfortunately, before the audience could see the outcome, the video abruptly ended. It’s also unknown what difficulties the cameraman encountered during the filming that led to the interruption.

Although the video ended, that terrified face left a deep impression on Yunxin.

For a moment, she seemed to see a microcosm of ordinary humans. Faced with the sudden disaster, they were completely unprepared and trembling with fear.

Closing the video, shutting down the computer, Yunxin was preparing to rearrange her thoughts, to rethink. In a flash of inspiration, a terrifying conjecture emerged in her mind.

“Scenario 111679 – ‘Honey Tragedy’, if scenarios are numbered starting from 1, then one scenario equals one accident…”

“To learn about the existence of the Evolution Game, players must achieve an ‘A’ grade or higher in one or more scenarios. If I had unknowingly participated in the Evolution Game before achieving an ‘A’ grade…”

“If ‘I’ in the hypothetical scenario could be replaced by anyone in the world…”

“Then, is it possible that at some point in the past, everyone was already involved in the Evolution Game without their knowledge?”

The difference is that some people perform excellently, and after a scenario ends, they receive an A-grade evaluation, thus learning the truth about the world.

Most people perform mediocrely, occasionally lamenting the frequent accidents and the difficulties of the world, but never knowing that they are in the Evolution Game.