"Study?" Upon hearing this word, Feng Xue couldn't help but think of the browser in his work tag and the vast amounts of knowledge within the tags, and Old Li's answer confirmed his guess:
"In Infinite City, knowledge, information, and power are equivalent. By possessing knowledge, you can play your role more quickly and effectively, and playing your role can earn you new tags, which in turn gives you access to new knowledge, thus creating a beneficial cycle. Once the tags you hold reach a certain threshold, a qualitative transformation occurs. At that point, you can draw power from the tags. For example, the reason why the inside of this house is so spacious is due to the 'Invisible Rich' tag, which incorporates the 'Hermit' element."
"How interesting!" Feng Xue's eyes lit up with excitement. No one can remain indifferent to extraordinary powers, but immediately afterward, two questions popped into his mind—
"But if that's the case, doesn't it mean that you can tell what abilities someone has just by looking at their tags?"
"Oh?" Hearing this, Old Li uttered a meaningful sigh and then chuckled, "It seems you, kid, are quite the restless one!"
Feng Xue immediately became cautious, but Old Li waved his hand and continued:
"Don't be nervous. The desire to hide oneself exists in everyone."
As he spoke, he took out his work tag, fiddled with it for a while, and then gestured towards Feng Xue:
"Take a look now?"
"?" Feng Xue looked towards Old Li again, but this time, to his surprise, the information that came back from the tag had changed—
Tag: Street Wanderer
Not only had the tag been reduced to one, but the original career item had also disappeared, making Feng Xue squint his eyes:
"How did you do it?"
"It's simple. Just open your work tag, tap on your name consecutively five times, and it will enter a settings page. There, you can hide your existing tags and career. It's said that if one could advance to 'Kaidan,' they could freely hide without using a work tag."
"What developer options…" Following Old Li's instructions, Feng Xue went to the settings page, selecting to hide the 'Corpse Collector' career and tag, and then he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Based on Old Li's explanation, he could mostly confirm that the reason he managed to consolidate the Corpse Collector tag so quickly must be because Golden Finger completely destroyed the corpses. Compared to others who simply dumped the bodies in the wilderness, his method, which could be described as data shredding, was obviously more in line with the Corpse Collector job in Infinite City.
But the issue was that the avenues for ascending in this world were monopolized, meaning that those who already had advantages would surely suppress newcomers. Although the Corpse Collector, a marginal industry, held no interest for them, considering he had barely been in this world for less than a week, his rapid acquisition of the tag could hardly avoid drawing conjectures.
Seeing that Feng Xue had learned to hide his tags, Old Li poured himself another cup of tea, took a sip, and then said:
"All the necessary questions have been asked, so I won't keep you anymore. You should head back as soon as possible, after all, in this line of work, there are no off-hours."
Feng Xue still had many questions, but the other party's attitude made it clear he was no longer inclined to talk more, so Feng Xue didn't continue his stay. After getting up and thanking Old Li, he headed towards the door.
However, just as he was about to open the door, Old Li's voice once again sounded from behind him:
"By the way, after you join, there is an employee benefit that you can find in your account. It's roughly a fully furnished employee dormitory. Although it certainly can't compare to my place, it's definitely much better than your leaky, dangerous housing."
...
Returning to City West's "Skylight Apartments," Feng Xue took out his work tag and opened his account. The first thing that caught his eye was a curious number—
900.
"Fifty Tower Coins for handling one corpse? Or does it include the three corpses from last night?" Feng Xue thought for a moment, chose the withdrawal function, and immediately had nine 100-denomination coins in his hand.
Feng Xue was not worried about spending Tower Coins raising suspicion, since even those responsible for distributing bricks during last night's corpse collection had asked whether he wanted money or grain.
However, having just acquired 600 Tower Coins, Feng Xue was in no hurry to buy bricks, but rather stored the coins back in his work tag and then started looking for the employee benefit Old Li mentioned.
"To be given a set of rooms just for joining; I couldn't have even dreamed of this before crossing over!" Feng Xue chuckled at himself, pressed the employee dormitory button, and a map popped up, showing a landfill area with a dozen red dots slowly blinking.
"Does this mean I get to choose one from these?" As someone immensely fixated on property ownership, Feng Xue immediately perked up, began clicking on each red dot to see the specifics, and after finding that the basic information was similar, simply went out to conduct inspections one by one.
After walking around all afternoon and collecting a few corpses, he finally chose a new home's location—
This property was still located in City West, not too far from his original Skylight Apartments. From the outside, it also looked like a derelict building, only the roof was relatively intact, the floor space was about thirty square meters, and the windows, too dirty to clean and covered in cracks, gave the place a long-neglected feel.
But, like Old Li's luxurious villa container, this house also had more than met the eye.
While the floor space hadn't expanded, the one-bedroom, one-living-room layout was quite satisfying to Feng Xue. The windows, dirty and broken from the outside, appeared bright and clear from the inside. The lighting fixtures offered a springtime, sunlight-like softness, and though the furniture was filled with an industrial simplicity, it was quite comprehensive. If there was a drawback, it was the lack of kitchen and bathroom facilities—
This made Feng Xue unconsciously recall the tube buildings he had lived in when he was young in his previous life.
Of course, he wasn't yet at a stage to enjoy such luxuries.
"It's only been four or five days; why do I feel like it's been ages since I last slept in a bed?"
Throwing himself onto the soft double bed, Feng Xue let himself roll around twice, then buried himself in the fluffy duvet. Although his current body theoretically no longer required sleep, mental fatigue still needed rest for recovery.
As his eyes slowly closed, Feng Xue entered a deep sleep at an unbelievably fast rate, which was nearly a miracle for someone who, just days ago, couldn't fall asleep without browsing his phone till midnight.
However, this baby-like deep sleep did not last long. After just two hours, his phone—no, his work tag, began to vibrate frantically.
"What's going on? Did I set an alarm?" Feng Xue, still drowsy, picked up his work tag. As he touched the silver-white surface and felt the cold texture, he suddenly remembered he had already crossed into another world. He shuddered, and then a message flowed into his mind through the work tag—
"A corpse has appeared in Joy Alley, East City. Please head there immediately."