It took all of Mu Sichen’s willpower to not gnaw on the octopus head.
Judging from the octopus doll’s trembling movements, Mu Sichen felt that it had probably used up all its courage as well.
They did their best for each other.
With their joint efforts, the tentacle finally pressed against Mu Sichen’s head.
Mu Sichen’s sanity suddenly cleared.
The octopus doll didn’t let Mu Sichen keep his sanity forever with just one touch. An ordinary person like He Fei could slowly return to normal after staying away from the doll, but Mu Sichen was also a person with a pillar, so he was much more resistant to the power of the doll.
He couldn’t remain calm at all times unless he kept the octopus doll on his head.
Otherwise, such a short contact would only be able to keep Mu Sichen awake for less than a minute.
Utilizing this minute, Mu Sichen quickly laid down in the energy module and carefully pressed the “energy injection” button.
As the button was pressed, Mu Sichen felt a sense of pain as his soul was drawn away.
Luckily, this feeling was only momentary, and it seemed that the pain was over before he had time to realize it.
Mu Sichen sat up and looked down at his badge, and he saw that the strange black color dug from the dragonfly-eyed man had disappeared.
Up to this point, Mu Sichen had already figured out the secret of the so-called energy zone.
Each color on the badge each of them received before entering the processing plant represented one of their emotions. Normal people were contradictory and complex, with rich natural emotions and colors.
These emotions, like the despair required by the pillar in the sanatorium, were energy that belonged to the soul.
The difference was that the Sanatorium Pillar would infinitely amplify despair, allowing it to override all emotions, thus absorbing the entire soul by absorbing the despair.
The energy pods instead absorbed emotions that weren’t particularly important, turning them into energy.
The reason Mu Sichen guessed this was because of the assembly worker he met on the way.
That worker’s badge only had three colors left, obviously devoid of many colors. Through his numb expression, Mu Sichen suspected that what he had lost might be emotions.
Combined with what the guards’ had said, that the processing plant was divided into an energy zone, an assembly zone, and a farming zone, Mu Sichen boldly suspected that the so-called work in the processing plant was the process of constantly losing one’s soul.
Everyone who came to the processing factory was an emotionally sound, normal human being with a wealth of emotions.
They would be assigned to work in the energy area and gradually become numb as they were stripped of one emotion every day.
When their emotions were less than a threshold, they would be demoted from a senior employee to a mid-level employee and be transferred to work in the assembly area, which was what the worker Mu Sichen had seen was like.
How the person in the assembly area was demoted to the farming area was something Mu Sichen hadn’t figured out yet.
As for why it was presumed that the energy pods collected unimportant feelings first, it was because of two reasons.
The first one was that although the colors on the assembly worker’s badge were few, they were deep enough. Each one was extremely strong, light but not clear, which was why Mu Sichen suspected that what he had left were more profound emotions.
The second reason was that people were both strong and fragile creatures, so strong that they could live if they lost everything and so fragile that they would give up on life if they lost just one pillar type of emotion.
What the Energy Pod wanted was a constant input of emotion from its employees; it didn’t want to take away one important emotion that would cause the employee to k*ill himself after losing hope of living, which would result in the loss of even more emotions.
In order to absorb emotions in the most reasonable way, it was inevitable to do so in a gradual manner, starting with the least important ones.
Based on the above judgment, Mu Sichen dared to sit in the energy module and press the “energy injection” button.
He had robbed the follower of his emotions, and these five emotions were the most useless and least important to him, so the energy pod would prioritize the absorption of these emotions.
Mu Sichen then pressed the button four more times in a row, sending in all of the follower’s emotions.
“Employee Chun Xiaoyan has exceeded his mission target, completing five days of tasks in one day and providing a large amount of energy to the assembly area. For the next five days, you can enjoy all the food and public facilities in the energy zone, and you can freely communicate with other employees except for not being able to meet employees who have not completed their work.” A mechanical voice prompt came from the energy pod.
Mu Sichen knew that he had passed the first hurdle.
After entering the energy zone, if you wanted to start an action within the processing plant, you had to inject an emotion first.
But once you injected your own emotion, you fell within the rules of the processing plant and were subconsciously contaminated.
Once contaminated…
Mu Sichen wanted to say, “Once contaminated, one couldn’t complete the task,” but he suddenly thought of Yao Wangping.
He didn’t like Yao Wangping.
Yao Wangping was probably too heavily influenced by Qin Zu’s power and was an absolutely rational, cold-blooded person who could sacrifice others at will for the sake of his purpose.
However, when he recalled that in the sanatorium, half of Yao Wangping’s body was contaminated, yet he was still able to fight the Feathered Eye Dependent, Mu Sichen couldn’t help but admire him again.
At that moment, it was unknown whether it was the power of Qin Zu’s totem that overcame the contamination of the feather-eyed dependent or whether Yao Wangping relied on his unwavering faith and hardened himself against the contamination of the feather-eyed dependent.
He made Mu Sichen realize that being contaminated didn’t absolutely mean inevitable defeat.
However, it was better to be as cautious as possible if he could avoid harm.
Mu Sichen relieved himself of the crisis and worried about Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo.
After all, these two were his followers and players from the same world as him. Since Mu Sichen knew the way to lift the crisis, he couldn’t leave them alone.
But he couldn’t access the employees who hadn’t finished their work yet, so what could he do?
Mu Sichen pondered for a while, and his line of sight fell on the octopus doll that he had temporarily tossed aside and was trying to climb into his backpack.
He recalled that Qin Zu could transmit some information to him through the power of the totem.
In theory, Qin Zu’s true self had never been in Tongzhi Town, let alone in the real world. But whether it was the totem from before or the octopus doll from now, he could talk to him by touching the center of his eyebrows.
Mu Sichen asked the octopus doll, “Are god-level monsters able to send messages to their followers through totems?”
The octopus doll blinked.
Mu Sichen took it as a yes.
Then how should he utilize the self-template? Mu Sichen frowned in deep thought.
Both Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo had weaker self-totems of Mu Sichen’s own power affixed to their bodies, and when Mu Sichen had seized the pillar in the sanatorium, the pillar had automatically strengthened the power of their totems, making their beliefs stronger.
And when the two decided to follow him to the processing plant to complete the mission, the hope that rose in the hearts of the two once again strengthened the power of the totem.
After this, as long as the two had strong beliefs and hope in their hearts, they could continuously provide energy to the totem, and their hope wouldn’t fade away, nor would their faith be extinguished.
And there was also a self-totem at the back of Mu Sichen’s waist.
He thought for a moment and pressed his hand to the totem at his back, imagining Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo’s totems.
Suddenly, he sensed two invisible passages—passages that connected the two by their totems, respectively.
Mu Sichen felt that he could send messages through these invisible channels.
So he secretly thought, “Pressing the ‘Energy Injection’ button will make you lose an emotion; don’t use your own emotion; find a way to rob the followers of theirs.”
This intention was transmitted down the channel into the totems of the two of them.
While the channel hadn’t disappeared, Mu Sichen added another sentence: “Let’s meet at the basketball court when it’s done.”
Just by saying such a sentence, Mu Sichen was exhausted and sweating profusely, unable to recover for a long time.
How could a believer be able to use his energy without a sound, yet he was this exhausted after a sentence?
Mu Sichen braced himself, dragged up the dragonfly-eyed man, who had lost some of his emotions and became somewhat numb, and stuffed him into the restroom.
The follower had a lazy look on his face and didn’t want to move, even if Mu Sichen dragged him.
He lost his malice, diligence, and appetite; malice was the source of his motivation to attack Mu Sichen, appetite was the reason he forced Mu Sichen to work, and diligence was the force of action he used to urge his employees to work.
Losing these three emotions, he became lazy and had no motivation to stop Mu Sichen when he saw him doing other things.
Even when Mu Sichen dragged him into the bathroom and tied him up, he was too lazy to resist.
The dragonfly-eyed follower’s faith in the Big Eye was still there; losing these emotions wouldn’t shake his faith, but it would turn him into a person who moved mechanically and didn’t do a single superfluous thing.
His appearance made Mu Sichen realize that in the food processing factory, one couldn’t lose any kind of emotion.
Even if the important feelings that supported the soul were still there, even if the ones taken away were very insignificant, he would become a crippled and numb person.
Closing the man’s eyes, Mu Sichen felt a sharp pain in his left arm.
Previously, he was hit by the man and suffered a left forearm fracture. At that time, the situation was critical, and there were too many things to solve.
Mu Sichen temporarily forgot about the fracture; it was only after letting out a sigh of relief did he feel the pain.
Fortunately, this room of more than a hundred square meters was well equipped, and the medication was surprisingly sufficient; there were both gauze and bandages.
Mu Sichen applied some antiseptic cream to the abrasions, found two splints, and fixed his left forearm with a bandage.
He knew a little bit about first aid, but only a little bit. His injury could only be simply bandaged to avoid secondary injuries.
The arm still hurt terribly. Mu Sichen rummaged around, found painkillers, and directly took a pill.
He didn’t know where these medicines came from or whether they had expired.
The pain in his arm remained, but the pain was no longer felt in other parts of his body. He was also much more comfortable, and his strength seemed to have returned.
Mu Sichen turned on the TV and chose “X Wolf” to play, and his heart sank after seeing the actors he was familiar with on the TV.
This was really a movie that he was familiar with.
With a heavy heart, Mu Sichen picked up the backpack on the floor, carried it with one hand, and slowly walked out of the room, heading to the basketball court.
There were still a few people playing on the basketball court, probably the senior employees who hadn’t been completely drained of their emotions.
Mu Sichen didn’t have the strength to pry information from them, so he sat on a chair in the rest area of the basketball court with his eyes closed.
He also wondered if Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo could think of a way to get out of the situation.
Mu Sichen decided to wait for them here for half an hour, and if they didn’t arrive within half an hour, he would start his next move.
After a fierce battle, Mu Sichen was tired and hungry and desperately needed to replenish his strength. He closed his eyes for only a moment before falling into a shallow sleep.
Luckily, he was very alert and could wake up to the slightest breeze around him.
Half asleep, Mu Sichen felt a person coming to him with something.
He woke up with a jolt, his right hand firmly gripping the person’s wrist.
As soon as he opened his eyes, a handsome face came into view, but it was an old acquaintance.
It was Shen Jiyue!
Mu Sichen intuitively wanted to greet Shen Jiyue, but remembering that he had used He Fei’s face and Shen Jiyue might not recognize him, he pursed his lips and didn’t speak.
“Scared you awake?” Shen Jiyue held a bottle of energy drink and said with a smile, “I saw that you seemed very tired, so I brought you a bottle.”
Mu Sichen let go of Shen Jiyue’s wrist and took the drink, but didn’t drink it.
Eating the bread distributed by the followers when he knew nothing before was considered ignorance.
Now that he knew that the energy used to process the food came from emotions and that the situation of the farming area was still unknown, Mu Sichen didn’t dare to just eat anything here.
He just took the drink, politely thanked him, but didn’t open it.
Shen Jiyue glanced at the splint on his left hand, and said apologetically, “Sorry, I didn’t notice.”
Shen Jiyue took back the drink, helped Mu Sichen unscrew it, and once again placed it beside him.
Mu Sichen noticed that his badge was colorful; apparently he hadn’t lost too much emotion.
But his chest card was a little strange.
Mu Sichen’s badge had a variety of colors that blended together, with no clear boundaries between colors such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, gradually transitioning to another color.
This was very normal. Human feelings were very complex, not extreme left and right or extreme love and hate, but countless feelings intertwined; there was no obvious excess. All emotions were interdependent, and every event could evoke several complex emotions.
But Shen Jiyue’s chest card had a clear boundary of dozens of colors, with a diamond-shaped red next to a clear triangular blue. The entire chest card looked like countless colorful jigsaw puzzles pieced together.
Shen Jiyue seemed like a very extreme person.
When they got along, Mu Sichen didn’t notice how extreme he was.
Mu Sichen’s doubt flashed by; it was probably due to Qin Zu.
Qin Zu was absolutely rational, and his follower, Yao Wangping, was also very strict. Shen Jiyue was probably the same, with clear emotions.
As he thought of Qin Zu, his backpack quietly moved behind him.
A tentacle reached out and stuffed a bottle of canned cola into Mu Sichen’s hand.
This made Mu Sichen somewhat flattered.
The octopus doll had a strong possessive desire for the snacks; if Mu Sichen took the snacks, it could suppress itself from fighting and grabbing, but to ask it to take the initiative to give away the cola, that was a little difficult.
Mu Sichen thanked Shen Jiyue for his kindness but didn’t want to eat Tongzhi town’s food.
So he picked up the cola, used his fingers to single-handedly pick open the can pull ring, and smiled apologetically at Shen Jiyue, “I brought my own.”
“It’s my misunderstanding; we are all in the energy zone; how could we not have food?” Shen Jiyue’s attitude was natural as he touched his bottle with Mu Sichen’s can in a clinking gesture and then drank the bottle himself.
His attitude was very comforting.
Mu Sichen also drank the cola in one go; the sugar and water replenished his strength and made Mu Sichen quite refreshed.
At this time, two people ran into the basketball court. They looked around the court and ran towards Mu Sichen.
It was Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo.
Seeing the duo, Mu Sichen smiled reassuringly.
Mu Sichen didn’t see any spiritual pollution belonging to the big eye in the duo, so it seemed that they had passed the first hurdle as well.