Chapter 707 - Ants
Explore the latest events in "Player Reload" Chapter 786: East Sea Restaurant is located in the bustling area of the East Second Ring Road...
East Sea Restaurant is located in the bustling area of the East Second Ring Road of the slum, with an average bill of 9,275 slum currency (equivalent to four game coins).One reason itâs so expensive is the restaurantâs prime location. Players who have just completed a mission, drenched in blood and on the verge of a mental breakdown, can first visit the bathhouse on the left to heal their injuries with the 80°C Saralu pool water, take a bath, and steam in the sauna,
then exit and enter the East Sea Restaurant for a meal, and after eating, head to the Evil Science Alliance KTV on the right. There, they can hug goblin girls and cry while singing to vent the emotions accumulated during their script task,
and once they finish singing and feel refreshed, they can go to the Whale Song Internet Cafe across the street to upload the task guide videos from their action cameras to the forum and earn some copyright fees.
This all-in-one service has become quite mature. If a player dies during the script task, it doesnât matter either, as the "Peaceful Sleep" funeral home is right at the end of the East Sea Restaurantâs street,
and the other few teammates of the same squad can send the deceased to the funeral home. By the time they finish bathing, eating, and singing KTV, the deceased is already repaired and ready for burial.
If more services are needed, they can even order a Didi Crying at Graves, with all the necessary arrangements like suona music, white banners, and paper burning to ensure a dignified send-off.
As for another reason why the East Sea Restaurantâs bill is so expensive...
"Wow, ice!"
Holding chopsticks, Gray Rain looked shocked. In front of her on the table was a small iceberg, covered with translucent, paper-thin slices of raw fish.
"This is the âFiery Ice Fresh Sea Bream Mountainâ from our spring menu,"
said the waiter dressed in medieval costume courteously. "The fish slices come from the centennial Diao fish essence raised in the Heaven-Reaching River water, and the ice block comes from Kunlun Snow Mountain. From the fish exiting the water, slicing to delivery on the table, the interval is less than 10 minutes..."
Before he could finish speaking, Gray Rain jabbed her chopsticks into the iceberg, scooped out the solid ice block along with the raw fish slices on top, and crunched them in her mouth.
Uh... Gray Rain already had excellent teeth, and after obtaining the Gorging Feast Spoon, she wasnât intimidated by raw or cold food. Not to mention the mere thousand-year ice, she could even gnaw on nuclear fuel rods as if they were large bones.
The waiter, trying hard to maintain a neutral expression, left the room to continue serving dishes. Just as he opened the door, a handsome guy dressed in a Ming-style Flying Fish Suit and wearing black boots walked in.
He was tall and straight, with features as beautiful as jade, sword-like eyebrows, and starry eyes. At his handsome faceâs cheekbone, there was a slanted knife scar, adding a bit of rugged masculinity, making him look like a character modeled from a video game.
The only, or rather the biggest flaw was, he...
was bald.
The center of his head was shiny like it had been waxed, reflecting light under the lamp like a bulb.
Yet, on both sides and the back of his head, there were still a few strands of hair, firmly standing.
As the air conditioner blew, these wild strands of hair fluttered.
The overly mismatched hairstyle made Li Chengâs eyelids twitch violently, and even Gray Rain froze for a while, her hand holding the ice-block suspended in the air.
"You must be that Pifu who punched through London, nice to meet you."
The handsome Mediterranean guy seemed used to strangersâ shocked expressions and calmly extended his hand in greeting, revealing his ID.
Sunset Melting Gold?
That ID sounded familiar.
Li Cheng recalled, surprised, "Are you the one who uploaded the Bill Guardian software in the Whale Song Guild?"
"Indeed, itâs me."
The Mediterranean handsome guy, Sunset Melting Gold, raised his chin a little proudly.
The so-called Bill Guardian is actually a free, no-ad lightweight app. Its main feature is to help people intelligently check their medical insurance bills.
An ironic truth is that the supposedly powerful military companies portrayed in movies and TV shows, like Lockheed Martin producing F-35 fighters and Northrop Grumman making B-2 stealth bombers,
often mention the military-industrial complex, defense research institutes, think tanks, and grabbing congressional members, being well-connected all around.
But in fact, military-industrial complexes in the United States only rank in the fifth tier. Ahead are the Wall Street financial capital group, the Silicon Valley tech giant group, and the pharmaceutical-medical complex.
Pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AbbVie, and UnitedHealth Group selling medical insurance, all have market caps above 400 billion USD, easily overtaking poor Lockheed Martinâs 150 billion USD market cap. These are real super giants.
An important link in the pharmaceutical-medical complex is medical insurance.
In just the American Federation, the annual medical insurance expenditure is as high as 1.63 trillion USD, with the national total expenditure reaching a staggering 5.3 trillion USD, accounting for 18% of the GDP, effectively sucking blood from the United States.
The refusal rate of insurance claims for ordinary people by medical insurance companies is as high as 50%, basically this isnât covered, and that isnât covered either.
AI programs might deny claims directly;
or they use incredibly complex terms and professional jargon that you canât understand without inquiry, confusing claimants;
especially for chronic major diseases, dragging for half a year so the patient dies.
Delay, they just delay.
The Whale Song Guild, formed early in the advent of the killing field by programmers worldwide, claims to inherit the open, equal, collaborative, and shared spirit of the early World Wide Web development,
prides itself as the Robin Hood of the cyber world.
Sunset Melting Gold and his programmer buddies, in their spare time, wrote a lightweight app, uploading it for free on the site.
Users can scan their medical insurance bills, and the program will automatically search bills and contract terms, provide response strategies, and help users negotiate and strategize against unscrupulous insurance companies to get their rightful claim shares.
The Bill Guardian app was not listed in any app store, and it was soon banned by search websites,
But those ordinary people who were terribly harmed by insurance companies stubbornly relied on offline file sharing to spread the software. It made all the major insurance companies jump with rage.
When the killing field first descended, transnational pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, UnitedHealth, etc., joined forces to establish GS Biotechnology, a company of immense power, with business covering drug research and manufacturing, medical hardware, offline diagnosis and treatment, biochemical weapons, and military production.
Each year, merely selling syringes of beast medicine enhancers to Transcendents could circle the Earth once.
Li Cheng even bought their Genetic Stability Potion back then.
Fortunately, Whale Song belongs to a guild with a longstanding reputation, and Sunset Melting Gold is Lv31 and a mid-high-level small leader.
Otherwise, as soon as the software targeting insurance companies was released, GS Biotechnology would have found someone to buy his arms and legs.
Li Cheng started some casual small talk with Sunset Melting Gold, exchanging experiences and joys in fighting against giant financial groups.
The room door was pushed open again, and a swordsman wearing a colorful sweater and a longsword at his waist walked in. Upon seeing Li Cheng and Gray Rain, his expression turned sullen, "Why is it you two."
The swordsman, or Wanli Sealed Blade, took a seat.
After the last tremor task, he quickly figured things out,
The entire task involving three parties, the Ant Team, Wanli Sealed Blade team, and Otherworld players, were all manipulated by the Heavenly Enemy who died tens of thousands of years ago.
Including the Alpha Giant Snake that appeared out of nowhere, the Mist-covered Land of Beautiful Dreams, and the Suffocation Space derived from the Land of Beautiful Dreams, all these were for a single purpose, to ensure the continuation of the Heavenly Enemyâs race.
And the biggest benefit of the entire task... was most likely grabbed by this kid who was the last to talk with the Heavenly Enemy.
However, Wanli Sealed Blade has passed the age where every profit is chased down to the last penny. Surviving is good enough; who needs a bicycle?
"Sss..."
He scratched his shoulder, then his thigh. The color of the sweater he wore looked unsightly, and the knitting wasnât great. It also felt a bit itchy.
"Was this knitted by your wife?"
Sunset Melting Gold remarked with a subtle expression, "The color... looks quite nice."
Wanli Sealed Bladeâs wife is a catwoman; cats can differentiate the blue and green color spectrums but tend to see red as earth-yellow.
"Just wear it. Why is it just you guys here, whereâs Tombstone Man?"
"She hasnât arrived yet. Letâs eat first."
Li Cheng guiltily spun the dining table. Actually, the biggest gain from the last tremor task was recording the Alpha Snake Head during the Heat Death Corridor.
If it werenât for Wanli Sealed Blade and the others risking everything to injure the Alpha Python, it might not have been possible to complete the recording back then.
Li Cheng actively served Wanli Sealed Blade with some roast pigeon, "This is called grilling bird. Although thereâs no kombu miso soup, this Tamago Kaki Gohan is still a hometown dish."
"Tamago Kaki Gohan... isnât it just steamed water eggs? And where are your lines from, some local dish? Itâs quite uncommon."
Wanli Sealed Blade complained, "Grilled bird oh one sip,
five ants in the mouth,
taste desu ki."
Before he finished speaking, two more people walked in from outside.
One was a tan-skinned, wide-brimmed hat-wearing, blue-eyed girl, ID displayed as
And the other was a middle-aged man of average height and appearance, wearing a turtleneck sweater, glasses, scholarly demeanor, and ID displayed as
Theyâre both level 30 masters.
Li Cheng recalled some data heâd read on forums, Lulina is a member of the guild, known for her skills with summoned beasts, similar to the Red Driver.
And the gentle Zak, if he remembered correctly, wasnât part of any large guilds, but participated in some loosely organized Fighting System Transcendent groups, with very few strategy videos uploaded online.
"Sealed Blade senior."
"Mr. Wanli Sealed Blade."
Lulina and Zak first greeted Brother Blade before taking their seats.
"Hey,"
Gray Rain quietly tugged at Li Chengâs sleeve, whispering, "Why do I feel like they all show a lot of respect to Wanli Sealed Blade?"
"Wanli Sealed Blade is considered one of the few who survived from the earliest batch of Bounty Hunters when the killing field first descended,"
Li Cheng thought for a moment and said, "His seniority surpasses those active than him, and those more active donât have his seniority.
Heâs truly seen many big events and knows many secrets.
Like the first playerâs war against guilds;
The first election inside the Shabby Street Community Committee;
The truth about the extinction of dinosaurs."
"Iâm not that old."
Wanli Sealed Blade rolled his eyes, "But there were indeed players who experienced the Cretaceous asteroid apocalypse script back in the day. It was the Lv9 who brought back many dinosaurs from the Script World, then used them to build a Jurassic-themed park, earned his first bucket of gold, and established the guild."