Chapter 14: Neighbor of the Sales King

Song Nanxing brought the puppet back to his workstation.

Because its limb joints were old and stiff, the puppet moved slowly and awkwardly. Song Nanxing didn’t rush it and deliberately slowed his pace to match. Along the way, other employees spotted him walking with the puppet, and their gazes toward him were laced with awe.

Seeing this, Song Nanxing curled his lips slightly. The effect he wanted had already taken hold.

He let the little puppet sit in his office chair and began clearing half his desk for it—something this dangerous needed to be displayed prominently to maximize its intimidation factor.

Beside him, Ji Jiajia had just called a truce after bickering with a coworker. The moment she turned around and saw the puppet sitting next to her, her two rows of teeth chattered in fright—and she bit her own tongue.

She winced, hissing in pain, and shrieked in a sharp voice at Song Nanxing, “Why did you bring that thing in here?!”

Song Nanxing, entirely satisfied with the fear the puppet evoked, feigned innocence. “You were right earlier—it really was looking for me. Just wouldn’t leave me alone. I can’t beat it, so what choice do I have? I’ve got to let it stick around.”

His eyes swept across Ji Jiajia’s face, which had now pulled back so far it looked like she wanted to switch desks entirely.

“Unless,” he added, “you can think of a way to drive it off for me?”

The puppet, which had been sitting upright and obedient in the office chair, instantly grew agitated.

No way! It didn’t want to go!

It bared its sharp teeth, the black hollows on its face locking coldly onto Ji Jiajia. Then it flashed a threatening grin.

Even though Ji Jiajia was now nothing more than a talking head, she still felt pain in a wrist that no longer existed. She screamed in panic and shouted at her coworker, “What’s this got to do with me?! I’m not sitting next to some monster! Switch places with me! Now!”

The coworker was annoyed by her bossy tone, but he’d also personally witnessed this unimpressive-looking puppet chew Ji Jiajia down to just a head. So he didn’t argue—he quickly grabbed his things off the desk and scurried off to the far-left cubicle.

The puppet, seeing Ji Jiajia flee in terror, turned to look at Song Nanxing eagerly.

Song Nanxing patted it on the head and said approvingly, “Not bad.”

The puppet froze completely. It cautiously savored the faint warmth of the touch atop its head, and even its dark, empty eyes seemed to glimmer slightly.

“So happy.”

“Want more.”

“Like me, like me, like me…”

Song Nanxing quickly withdrew his hand, but inside the neural ring, the puppet’s gloating chant continued to loop for a long time.

Song Nanxing remained completely unaware. Noticing that Ji Jiajia’s old workstation was now empty, he thought for a moment and decided to tidy up the adjacent cubicle. “You can sit here from now on. It’s a bit more spacious—no need to crowd in with me.”

The puppet glanced at the spot he pointed to. In truth, it preferred the original spot Song Nanxing had set up for it—that one was closer to him.

But it had always been obedient, so it slowly crawled over and sat down at the newly cleared desk.

The cubicles had dividers about a foot high. The puppet could rest its head on the divider and look at Song Nanxing directly.

As soon as it discovered this, it immediately turned its body to face that direction, its pair of black hollow eyes staring intensely at him.

Song Nanxing, sensing its burning gaze, turned his head slightly to glance at it—but he couldn’t make out anything from those pitch-black, empty eyes, so he just let it be.

It was just looking. It wouldn’t cost him a piece of meat.

He failed to notice the faint shimmer flickering inside the puppet’s hollow eyes.

“So weak. Need to raise him.”

“Eat him, eat him, eat him, eat him.”

“If we eat him, he’ll be gone. Not allowed to eat!”

“….”

Voices argued noisily within the neural ring, none able to convince the others—until a stronger presence suddenly intervened.

The chaos came to an abrupt halt.

The puppet slowly moved its stiff limbs and jumped down from the desk, awkwardly stretching its stiff joints.

Seeing it suddenly leap down, Song Nanxing gave it a puzzled look. “What’s up?”

The puppet stood up straight. Its aged arm extended toward him, palm facing upward, making an inviting gesture.

Song Nanxing hesitated for a moment, then placed his hand in its palm.

The puppet’s rough fingers closed around his, guiding his hand to its own forehead. Just as Song Nanxing was about to ask what it was doing, a distant voice echoed in his mind:

“Hunt.”

The voice was faint, neither male nor female, like a bell tolling from the depths of antiquity, its reverberations spreading outward in waves.

Song Nanxing understood—the puppet was going hunting for food.

But does a puppet even need to eat? The question flickered through his mind, then faded away like a ripple.

He only wanted to borrow the puppet’s intimidation for some temporary convenience. He had no intention of deepening their bond.

So he simply nodded and said, “Got it. Be careful out there.”

The puppet gave him a glance, then walked out of Song Nanxing’s sight, heading down the corridor to the end before turning into Area B.

Only after confirming that the puppet was gone did Cheng Jianning come over, looking shaken. He nudged Song Nanxing with his elbow and whispered, “You’re really planning to keep that weird puppet around?”

Song Nanxing thought to himself that everyone here seemed weirder than the puppet, but on the surface, he put on a helpless, reluctant expression. “You saw what happened to Ji Jiajia—I’d rather not end up like that.”

Cheng Jianning hissed through his teeth, unable to come up with a better solution. He could only pat Song Nanxing on the shoulder sympathetically. “Bro, how are you even unluckier than me.”

Song Nanxing gave a wry smile and waved it off, looking weathered by life. “Let’s not talk about that—it only makes me want to cry. Why don’t you tell me more about our actual job? The employee handbook says we’re supposed to treat the guests like gods, but I haven’t seen any guests around here.”

“It’s probably the rainy season. Business has been slow lately,” Cheng Jianning mumbled. Seeing how eager Song Nanxing looked, ready to throw himself into work, he added in a low voice, “Don’t be in such a rush. Dealing with guests isn’t as great as you think. When I received my first guest, I couldn’t sleep for days.”

Song Nanxing had steered the conversation this way deliberately to dig for more information. He put on a confused face at just the right moment. “But we’re in sales, aren’t we? Doesn’t everything depend on performance? How can we have any performance without customers? No commission means I’ll be drinking cold wind for dinner.”

He carefully watched Cheng Jianning’s expression while casually casting out the bait: “I overheard someone mention earlier that Sales Champion Wu makes a six-figure commission every month…”

He feigned awe and admiration. “Before I joined Dreamwell, I didn’t even make six figures in a year.”

The moment Cheng Jianning heard the name “Sales Champion Wu,” his expression shifted slightly, as if recalling some unpleasant memory.

He paused for a while. Seeing the longing on Song Nanxing’s face, he couldn’t help but offer a word of caution. “Don’t be fooled by his high salary—he’s paying for it with his life.”

As if mentioning a taboo, Cheng Jianning’s voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible. “Most of the guests we receive… there’s something off about them. The more time you spend with them, the more they mess with your mind. Wu hasn’t shown up for work in a long time now. People say it’s because something happened with his family, but honestly, I think something happened to him.”

Song Nanxing leaned in, curious. “What do you mean by ‘something off’ about the guests?”

“You’ll understand once you meet one yourself,” Cheng Jianning replied, his expression stiff with discomfort. He clearly didn’t want to go into detail.

Song Nanxing knew he wasn’t close enough with Cheng Jianning to start probing into secrets, so he let the matter drop and shifted the topic back to Sales King Wu.
“Speaking of, what’s Sales King Wu’s real name? With results that good, doesn’t he get a private office or something? If he weren’t absent, I’d have gone over just to pay my respects.”

“He’s called Wu Huai,” Cheng Jianning replied. “Our sales department is at the bottom of the food chain in this company—what private office?”

He casually pointed. “There, his seat’s the first one in that row.”

So Sales King Wu really was Wu Huai.

The guess he’d been holding for days was confirmed, but Song Nanxing didn’t feel satisfied.
Instead, it was like grabbing onto a loose thread only to realize that it led into a much bigger, messier knot.

He memorized the location Cheng Jianning pointed to, chatted a bit more, then found an excuse to wander over to Wu Huai’s workstation.

That row was completely empty. No one was sitting there, except for one employee at a desk a row behind. The person was bent over, doing something under the desk.

That actually made things easier for Song Nanxing. Looking like he was just idly strolling around, he made his way to Wu Huai’s seat. His eyes swept around casually—no one seemed to be paying attention—so he sat down and started opening drawers one by one.

The desk was extremely clean and tidy. The three drawers were also neat and empty. No useful clues.

Feeling a bit disappointed, Song Nanxing turned on the computer to see if it held anything useful.

He reached for the power button—but instead of touching plastic, his fingers unexpectedly sank into a soft, wet, and sticky crevice.

It pulsed, contracting and expanding slightly, and inside it was icy cold.

Song Nanxing looked down—to see a swollen, deathly pale face smiling up at him.

“You looking for something? I can help you look,” it said.

As it spoke, the gills on both sides of its cheeks flared open and shut, revealing raw red flesh inside and dripping strange fluids.

Without changing expression, Song Nanxing retracted his hand and wiped it off, then calmly apologized:
“Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

When the face saw it had failed to scare him, the grin faltered. Its long neck writhed and slowly pulled back from the computer tower, slithering closer to Song Nanxing. It spoke in a chilling tone:
“Sales King Wu has a nasty temper. If he finds out you’re snooping through his stuff, you’ll be in big trouble.”

“Oh?” Song Nanxing responded without batting an eye. He started bluffing. “I’m actually neighbors with Sales King Wu. He was the one who recommended me for this job. Said he left all his work notes in his desk and told me to come find them.”

His eyes followed the abnormally long neck that looked like stretched-out noodles back to its body—sure enough, it was the person bent over under the other workstation.

But now, he knew exactly what the guy was doing under there.

Song Nanxing’s face darkened in an instant. His voice turned just as eerie as the creature’s:

“But I’ve been looking for ages and still couldn’t find the notes he mentioned… Don’t tell me you took them?”

He deliberately lowered his voice and narrowed his eyes, sweeping them greedily up and down the creature’s elongated neck with thinly veiled malice.

“Sales King Wu has a nasty temper. If he finds out you’ve been rummaging through his stuff…”

He licked his lips and gave a slow, deliberate smirk.

“Be careful, or he might just chop you up and turn you into spicy duck neck.”