Chapter 455: The Value of Life

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This gold... can it buy my life?!

Hearing the gentle inquiry ringing in their hearts, the tens of thousands of citizens in the shopping plaza couldn't help but tremble in unison, their consciousness instantly falling into a trance.

When they came to their senses, the tens of thousands of citizens discovered with extreme terror that they were standing upright, facing the large money box in the center of the shopping plaza, arranged in a neat, uniform fan shape.

And a giant toad, two stories tall, was lazily lying on top of the large money box, which was about the same height as it, bulging its two giant, protruding golden compound eyes, examining everyone with great interest.

"..."

So... did I run into an anomalous event again?

Touching the scorching hot badge on his chest, Li Ang, with his brows tightly locked, first confirmed the status of the sheep head and the broom. Finding that they could still be used, he couldn't help but breathe a slight sigh of relief, then immediately tried to move his feet.

No, I can't move...

After looking down at the situation of his feet, Li Ang was surprised to find that a giant frog hand with suction cups was growing out of the shopping plaza floor, firmly suctioned onto his lower leg.

On the back of this strange frog hand, there were a large number of deep cyan bumps, like warts, looking like copper wheels embedded into the skin, numbering about twenty-three or twenty-four.

Confirming that he couldn't break free for the time being, Li Ang observed the others around him and found that their situation was about the same; they were all firmly suctioned to the ground by frog hands, only able to struggle and scream in panic.

And unlike him, the bumps on the skin of the frog hands grabbing them didn't seem to be all deep cyan; there were quite a few that were cold, silver-white, and occasionally he could see some extremely eye-catching golden bumps.

Gold, silver, copper... it feels like some kind of rule involving money.

After frowning and pondering for a few seconds, Li Ang, who had two sets of children's clothes and a knitted sweater hanging on his broom, roughly guessed the meaning of these bumps.

The things piled up by Charle Department Store were indeed much lower than the market price, and while passing by the shopping plaza, he had also been attracted by the exceptionally tempting prices.

With the intention of taking advantage of a small bargain to save some money for his family, he had walked around the clothing section and bought some things for his younger brother and sister. The difference between these things and the original average market price added up to about twenty-something copper wheels, similar to the number of cyan bumps on the frog hand's skin.

So as long as one has "greed," will they be grabbed by a frog hand equal to the intensity of that greed?

Trying to drop the shopping bags in his hands, he found that he was still firmly held. Li Ang couldn't help but squat down and try to touch the frog hand, but he didn't touch any solid entity, nor did he get any prompt from the 【Materialist Soul】.

It seems these strange frog hands are not things that truly exist, but some kind of rule manifested after triggering the other party's ability. It is estimated that one can only get rid of the control by dealing with the main body. But he is now six or seven hundred meters away from that toad, what can he do to hurt its main body?

"Why is no one willing to agree to me?"

Just as Li Ang was hesitating whether to try the red-haired woman's hair, looking at the panicked crowd in the plaza, the giant golden toad on the money box blinked its eyes and sighed softly in disappointment:

"People, you are clearly so passionate about money, even deeply worshiping its magic, but when I follow the desires in your hearts and send money to you, you don't even want to look at it. Why is that?"

"Because... because the price is too high!"

Seeing that this big toad didn't seem particularly "ferocious" and seemed to be a communicable existence, a man with shopping bags dropped all around him gathered his courage and replied:

"Money is good, but it can't compare to life. Life is priceless."

"That's not true." Following the sound, the golden toad looked at the man, the corners of its mouth slightly curled, and it chuckled at him:

"Based on my understanding of your species, life should be measurable by money, and quite cheaply at that."

Seeing this giant monster look over, the man who had spoken instinctively wanted to run, but his legs were firmly held by the frog hand growing out of the ground, and he couldn't leave the spot at all, so he could only scream in terror.

"You are so noisy."

Stretching out its webbed feet stained with transparent mucus, it lightly tapped the mountain of gold in front of it, sticking to a large number of dazzling gold wheels. The golden toad's "palm" clenched slightly, and the gold wheels stuck to the webbed feet instantly disappeared, directly crossing a distance of more than thirty meters and piling up in front of the man's feet.

"Sell me your voice, so you can learn to be quieter."

Accompanied by the golden toad's gentle voice, as if he had been directly strangled, the man's screams and pleas for mercy stopped abruptly. Even though his eyes bulged in terror and he desperately dug at his throat with his hands, he still couldn't even spit out the most basic "he-he" sound.

After directly "buying" the man's voice, looking at the plaza that had instantly become silent, the golden toad nodded in satisfaction, then turned its head to look at the person closest to it, a young couple who were shivering, and asked softly:

"What about you? Are you willing to sell me your lives?"

"No... we don't want to!"

The husband of the young couple was already too scared to speak, while the terrified wife, while trying her best to restrain her desire to scream, held her husband's arm and desperately shook her head in refusal:

"My life... both of our lives are only one! If... if we sell them to you, we will be gone!"

"Is that so?"

After tilting its head in some regret, the golden toad said with a confused face:

"You say you don't want to sell your lives to me, but you have clearly been selling your own lives all along."

"We... we didn't! We have never sold our own lives!"

"You have."

Stretching out the fingertips of its webbed feet, it lightly stuck to two gold wheels, then the golden toad blinked its giant compound eyes, which were like a fly's, and said in a tone that allowed no refusal:

"These two shiny little things, you have to work in a cotton mill for seven days, controlling machines to process tens of thousands of catties of raw cotton to get them, while your husband needs to wear airtight long rubber boots and soak in a dyeing vat full of chemicals and reagents for five whole days.

So I judge quite fairly that your seven days of life are only equal to his five days of life, and his five days of life are equal to these two gold wheels. And in the past four years, you have always been making such exchanges, and the future will clearly continue to do so.

So, instead of selling these precious lives cheaply to others, staying in a stuffy and noisy factory for most of your lives, painfully repeating meaningless labor, why not choose an easier path and happily sell this part of your life to me?"

After giving the conclusion of measuring the value of life, in the terrified gaze of the young couple, the golden toad began to grab the gold wheels in front of it by the handful, and sent those expensive golden currencies to their feet one by one.

And as the gold wheels piled up at their feet became more and more, their hair gradually began to show streaks of white, their facial muscles relaxed rapidly, and the furrows at the corners of their eyes deepened continuously, as if they had already become middle-aged people, and were continuing to age.

What was even more terrifying was that although the golden toad's words were addressed to the young couple, there were far more than just the two of them who had gold wheels appearing at their feet. In the entire shopping plaza, gold wheels emerged at the feet of more than fifty thousand people almost simultaneously.

And with the ding-dong sound of metal coins colliding, everyone in the plaza who received the "payment" began to walk toward aging uncontrollably!

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 456 =====