Chapter 52

52 The Value of Life

???

Can these gold coins buy my life?!

Hearing the gentle question resonate in their hearts, tens of thousands of citizens in the shopping plaza collectively shuddered, their consciousness instantly slipping into a daze.

When they regained their senses, these tens of thousands of citizens discovered in utter terror that they were standing rigidly upright, facing the large money chest at the center of the plaza, arranged in a uniform fan shape.

And atop the money chest, nearly as tall as itself, lounged a giant toad two stories high, its two enormous protruding golden compound eyes bulging as it regarded each person with keen interest.

“…”

So… have I stumbled into another anomaly again?

Touching the scorching-hot badge on his chest, Li Ang frowned, first checked the status of the ram and the broom—both still usable—and let out a faint sigh of relief before immediately attempting to move his feet.

No, I can’t move…

Looking down at his feet, Li Ang was startled to find a giant frog hand with suction cups growing from the plaza floor, firmly adhering to his calves.

On the back of this strange frog hand grew numerous deep bluish-green bumps, resembling copper wheels embedded in the skin—about twenty-three or twenty-four in total.

After confirming he couldn’t break free for now, Li Ang observed those around him and found they were in similar predicaments: each pinned to the ground by a frog hand, struggling and screaming in panic.

Unlike himself, the bumps on the frog hands gripping them weren’t all deep bluish-green; many were cold, silvery-white, and occasionally he spotted fleeting golden bumps.

Gold, silver, copper… it feels like some rule tied to money.

After frowning in thought for a few seconds, Li Ang—still hanging two children’s outfits and a knitted sweater from his broom—guessed what the bumps represented.

The items piled up by Charles Department Store were indeed far cheaper than market price, and when he passed the plaza, he’d been lured by the unusually tempting prices.

Hoping to snag a small bargain and save some money for his family, he wandered the clothing section and bought small items for his younger siblings; the total difference between these purchases and the average market price amounted to roughly twenty-some copper wheels—matching the number of bluish-green bumps on the frog hand.

So, if you harbor greed, you’re caught by a frog hand whose bumps equal the intensity of that greed?

He tried dropping his shopping bags, but remained firmly pinned; Li Ang crouched down and touched the frog hand—but encountered no physical substance, nor any prompt from [Materialist Soul].

These eerie frog hands aren’t real—they’re rules manifested after triggering the entity’s ability. Only by defeating the core can one escape control, but he’s six or seven hundred meters away from the toad—how can he possibly harm its core?

…

“Why won’t anyone agree to me?”

As Li Ang hesitated whether to try the director’s red hair, the giant golden toad on the money chest blinked, sighing softly with disappointment at the panicked crowd:

“Humans, you so love money, even deeply worship its magic—yet when I follow your inner desires and bring money before you, you refuse even to glance at it. Why?”

“Because… because the cost is too high!”

Seeing the giant toad wasn’t particularly “violent,” seemingly communicative, a man surrounded by scattered shopping bags gathered courage to answer:

“Money is good, but it can’t compare to life.

Life is priceless.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Turning toward the man, the golden toad’s lips curled slightly as it smiled gently:

“From my understanding of your species, life should be measurable in money—and it’s remarkably cheap.”

Seeing the monstrous creature look his way, the man instinctively tried to flee—but his legs were firmly gripped by the frog hands sprouting from the ground, leaving him unable to move, only screaming in terror.

“You’re too noisy.”

Extending a webbed foot coated in transparent mucus, the golden toad lightly tapped the golden mountain before it, lifting a heap of dazzling gold wheels; its “palm” clenched slightly, and the mucus-clinging gold wheels vanished instantly, crossing over thirty meters to pile at the man’s feet.

“Sell me your voice—then you’ll learn to be quiet.”

With the golden toad’s gentle voice, the man’s screams and pleas cut off as if strangled; even as his eyes bulged in terror and he frantically clawed at his throat, he couldn’t produce even the most basic “huh-huh” sound.

After directly “buying” the man’s voice, the golden toad nodded in satisfaction at the suddenly silent plaza, then turned to the nearest pair—a trembling husband and wife—and asked softly:

“What about you? Will you sell me your lives?”

“N-no!”

The husband was too terrified to speak; his wife, fighting back the urge to scream, clung to his arm and shook her head desperately:

“Our lives… both our lives are only one! If… if we sell them to you, we’ll be gone!”

“Is that so?”

Tilting her head slightly in regret, the golden toad asked with puzzlement:

“You say you won’t sell your lives to me—but you’ve been selling your lives all along.”

“We… we haven’t! We’ve never sold our lives!”

“You have.”

With the tip of its webbed foot, the golden toad lightly picked up two gold wheels, blinked its fly-like compound eyes, and spoke without room for refusal:

“These two shiny little things require you to work seven days in a cotton mill, operating machines to process tens of thousands of pounds of raw cotton; your husband must wear non-breathable rubber boots and soak for five full days in dye vats filled with chemicals and reagents.

So I fairly judge: your seven days of life equal his five days of life; his five days equal these two gold wheels. Over the past four years, you’ve been making this exchange—and you clearly will continue doing so.

Then why not choose an easier path? Why not willingly sell this portion of your life to me, instead of cheaply trading it away for decades, trapped in hot, noisy factories, enduring meaningless, repetitive labor?”

Having concluded the valuation of life, the golden toad began scooping up gold wheels before it, placing the costly golden currency one by one at the couple’s feet.

As the pile of gold wheels beneath their feet grew, strands of their hair gradually turned white, their facial muscles rapidly loosened, and the creases around their brows and eyes deepened—they had already aged into middle age, and continued aging further.

More terrifyingly, though the golden toad spoke to the couple, gold wheels weren’t appearing only beneath them; nearly simultaneously, vast quantities of gold wheels surged forth beneath the feet of over fifty thousand people across the entire plaza.

And with the clinking of metallic coins, every person who received “payment” began uncontrollably aging.