“Very good. As for the tools you need, I’ll send Bowen out to order them right away. They will definitely all arrive within three days.”

“The workrooms aren’t finished today, so everyone go back and rest for a day first.”

“Tomorrow, we will begin work properly!”

Zhang Min gathered up all the sheets of paper with their requests, glanced through them only briefly, and relaxed.

Just as she had thought.

Of the seven people, three had not really made any requests at all and had listed only some two thousand points of tools.

And of the remaining four, only Sun Quan and Su Mo had listed more.

Among them.

Su Mo had specifically asked for a miniature development platform, priced at around thirty-nine thousand eight hundred points.

Sun Quan had requested a short-compile computer if possible, priced at around fifteen thousand points.

For Zizai Liang Lane, which for the moment was still flush with money, these points were not even worth mentioning.

Zhang Min did not hesitate in the slightest and agreed to all of it.

“All right, meeting dismissed!”

She reminded them of the clock-in and clock-out times and of the procedures for reporting in tomorrow.

Then she had everyone stand up and introduce themselves one by one.

Smiling sweetly, Zhang Min stood up and declared the meeting over.

And in the hall, once she and Zhang Bowen had left, the harmonious atmosphere among the seven people left there disappeared, just as expected.

The young man who had been the first to come out of an interview, Jia Yang, the woman Pan Wendan, the lecherous uncle Qi Yi, and the old man in his fifties, Kang Xiaobing, had formed one camp.

They huddled together with a trace of hostility, whispering about who knew what.

The last one to come out of an interview, a middle-aged man named Yao Zhe, formed a camp of his own, with an ice-cold face, as if everyone else present owed him money.

In the whole hall, the seven people had split straight into three camps.

“And it hasn’t even started yet, and it’s already like this.”

“They say people’s hearts are hard to read in the end times, but I never expected that in the Tian Yuan Territory, eight years later, this same game would be played.”

Su Mo was quite speechless inside.

He was not worried that, with these people’s abilities, any of them could develop some useful tool ahead of him.

But he feared that these people, unable to produce anything themselves and unable to bear seeing others do well, would make small moves behind his back, and that would be troublesome.

“It seems that if I really do development, I’ll have to watch out for sabotage...”

“I have to be on guard!”

He kept that in mind.

Seeing these few still glaring with hostility, Su Mo stood up and decided to simply go home.

But he had barely stepped out of the hall when the over-familiar Sun Quan chased after him again.

“Brother Su, Brother Su, have you rented a place in town yet? The place I rented has one more empty room.”

“If you haven’t rented, you might as well move over and we can live together.”

Shut out by the others, with only Su Mo left as a colleague he could talk to, Sun Quan was extremely eager, afraid of being left isolated.

At the same time, he kept his posture very low.

They say one doesn’t strike a smiling face, and seeing Sun Quan’s obedient look, Su Mo found it hard to refuse outright. He could only turn his head helplessly:

“Sorry, when I came over today I had already rented a place. Thank you for your kindness.”

“Oh? Brother Su only came to Mulberry Field Town today?” Sun Quan was suddenly surprised. “To be honest, Brother Su, with your identity as a Liberty Market electrician, you had no need at all to wade into this muddy water.”

“Hm?”

Hearing talk of real business, Su Mo became interested.

Sun Quan glanced meaningfully at the workers around them, and Su Mo understood at once.

The two kept walking, lowering their voices as they went out.

“Brother Su, if you just arrived, it’s only natural you don’t know.”

“Every year at the Summer Harvest in Mulberry Field Town, everyone looks harmonious on the surface, but in fact they’re all going for each other’s throats behind the scenes, to the point they wish the other would drop dead by the next day.”

“Especially now, with only two big grain stores left in all of Mulberry Field Town. Whoever can bring down the other will swallow all the profit. This situation is simply... unprecedented!”

The moment they stepped out of the gate of Zizai Liang Lane, Sun Quan’s mouth began to run without restraint.

“Qiankun Grain Store definitely doesn’t want to see us develop this tool, so even with the protection on the surface, they will certainly make dirty moves in the dark. Even breaking the rules wouldn’t be out of the question.”

“So I suspect that Zizai Liang Lane’s hiring requirements now are only a smokescreen. We are the ones pushed out front to lull Qiankun Grain Store, and in secret, Zizai Liang Lane will most likely recruit some other people as well.”

“And those people are probably the real chips that will decide the contest.”

“Of course, it can’t be ruled out that this person has already mixed in with us, right among the seven of us.”

Sun Quan spoke as though it were all true, and after this reckoning, Su Mo unconsciously slowed his steps and began to think.

But who would have thought that, the next second, Sun Quan’s voice suddenly rang out:

“Brother Su, you wouldn’t be that person, would you?”

“Me?” Startled by the probe, Su Mo laughed.

“I don’t know how to develop this stuff at all. I just came in to coast along.”

“Hahaha, me too,” Sun Quan said with two laughs, clearly unconvinced.

“All right, there’s no point in us guessing at each other. If it really is as you say, then Qiankun Grain Store would certainly rather kill the wrong person than let one go.”

“I do have some means of protecting myself. What about you?” Su Mo steered around the subject and asked in return.

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