Chapter 727: Quality Inspection

Zhao Xiuying, the stall owner, had already inserted her coin. Her room contained a special piece of equipment in the form of a metal mesh basket, not unlike the wire fry baskets found in some fast-food kitchens, though narrower and with finer holes.

She loaded as many tablets as she could into the basket, gripped the handle with her right hand, and guided the batch toward the processing device in front of her.

The device resembled a coal-burning furnace, with a narrow opening. When it swung open, a wave of heat and flame rushed outward.

Zhao Xiuying had to hold the metal basket inside it for another 30 seconds.

This stage would determine the yield rate, meaning if the time was insufficient, some tablets in the batch could end up non-functional. At its worst, with an extremely short processing time, the yield rate could drop low enough to render an entire batch worthless.

The firelight turned Zhao Xiuying's face red. She kept lifting her free hand to wipe her brow, but her right hand held the basket steadily throughout.

Letting go would mean the basket falling into the flame and the tablets inside being incinerated.

The specific conditions in Room 4 Processing depended on what had happened in Room 3 Temperature Control. Since He Qing had chosen Extreme Cold, this room was operating under Extreme Heat. Had he chosen the opposite, this room would have been cold.

Regardless of which, Zhao Xiuying's experience in Room 4 was noticeably less severe than He Qing's had been in Room 3.

She was exposed to the heat or cold only from the front, whereas He Qing had been enclosed inside an environment with no escape in any direction.

Zhao Xiuying worked through the conveyor belt and successfully processed all the tablets. The time remaining after she finished was somewhat generous, most likely because some tablets had been lost in the earlier stages.

The tablets then moved on to Room 5, where Wen Wan was waiting.

Unlike the previous rooms, Room 5 gave Wen Wan no time to work slowly.

After inserting her coin and activating the room, a 20-second countdown appeared overhead.

During those 20 seconds, the tablets were loaded with a rushing, clattering sound into small white canisters, which were then arranged across multiple conveyor belts in a set pattern.

When the countdown reached zero, the canisters began moving along their respective belts toward the Destruction Point at the far end of the room.

The Destruction Point was a dark, rectangular opening. Any medication that entered it would be permanently destroyed.

Wen Wan's task was to grab the canisters from the belts before they reached the Destruction Point.

She had readied herself from the first moment and lunged toward the canisters as soon as they appeared, reaching for two different ones simultaneously.

The moment her hands made contact, her whole body jolted and her hands were knocked back.

The notice board outside Room 5 had already stated that touching the medication in this room would result in an electric shock, and that the number of units successfully retrieved would determine the final sale price.

Both Huang Shengjie and Ye Lin felt a tense, anxious knot forming as they watched.

In just that brief pause, the canisters had already travelled a significant distance along the belts, bringing them much closer to the Destruction Point.

Fortunately, Wen Wan reacted quickly. She lunged forward again, grabbed one canister with each hand, and turned to throw them into the collection basket beside her.

The initial unfamiliarity with the shocks had slowed her rhythm, but she found her footing and became faster and more efficient as she went.

Even though each contact with a canister still made her flinch with the shock, she managed to successfully retrieve the great majority of them.

When the last canister landed in the basket, Wen Wan finally slumped to the floor in exhaustion, gulping down breath after breath.

She hadn't had time to count exactly how many she had saved, but the number destroyed couldn't have been more than a handful, roughly five or so. The recovered canisters numbered at least thirty to forty.

After resting for a few seconds, she got back to her feet and transferred the canisters from the basket onto the final section of conveyor belt.

A broadcast announcement rang out across the game floor.

[This round of production has yielded 36 canisters of medication, each containing 50 tablets.]

[Repackaging will be carried out in community standard units of 5 tablets per bottle.]

[Default sale price: 600 minutes of visa time per bottle.]

[These medications will first be submitted to the 8 Audience Representatives for a Quality Inspection.]

[After the inspection is complete, audience members may freely choose whether to purchase the medication produced on-site.]

[If you choose to purchase: purchased medication may be brought back to your community, or resold to other communities through the community vending machine. However, you will no longer participate in the medication profit distribution.]

[If you choose not to purchase: you may participate in the medication profit distribution at the game's conclusion. Of the total profit generated from all medication sales, 50% will be split evenly among surviving offender players, and the remaining 50% will be split evenly among audience players who did not purchase medication.]

In the audience waiting room, Huang Shengjie's eyes went wide as he did the mental arithmetic quickly.

"600 per bottle? That feels expensive.

"That's considerably more than what medications go for in the community.

"Even communities where players have developed painkiller dependencies probably wouldn't pay that much in here just to take a loss.

"And on top of that, players who don't buy anything get a share of the profits, which is going to significantly reduce the desire to buy.

"Unless these turn out to be Type M medication."

Ye Lin gave a nod, "Yes. If these are Type O or Type F, they probably won't sell in large numbers.

"Maybe only a handful of players would buy: those who have no more restocking allowance back in their own community and need to top up through this channel.

"Type M is a different situation entirely."

Huang Shengjie ran the numbers quickly, "If these really are Type M, they'll almost certainly sell out.

"360 bottles in total, which comes to roughly 200,000 minutes of visa time.

"Across 10 batches, if everything sells, that's 2 million in visa time.

"The offender players split half of that, so each surviving offender would get around 200,000.

"But if these end up being Type O or Type F and only a tenth sells, each offender would only get 20,000, which is below the average return.

"Of course, some of the offender players might not survive to the end."

Ye Lin gave a nod, "Let's see how the Audience Representatives' inspection goes first."

A picture-in-picture display appeared on the large screen showing the Audience Representatives.

Huang Shengjie immediately spotted Lu Qi among the eight, positioned first in the lineup.

The order didn't appear to follow community number and seemed to be entirely random, since Community 1 had players present as well.

Lu Qi was in a small dedicated audience waiting room. When the inspection began, a machine resembling a lottery ball tumbler mixed all the medication bottles together and shuffled them, then displayed a prompt.

[Please randomly select one bottle of medication for inspection. You may keep this bottle.]