Chapter 19-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World

 Chapter 1 The Man-Eating Hotpot Restaurant-8

The Source of Contamination should not be a customer. If it were a customer, they wouldn't know the details of the meetings in the basement. After the Fishman incident, Zhu Ning realized that a Contamination Zone was similar to some kind of grievance or obsession. A customer's grievance would, at most, affect the dining hall. It was hard to imagine the basement scene being created by a customer.

The Source of Contamination was most likely an internal employee.

Zhu Ning had just killed the Pigman. The Contamination Zone didn't react when the Pigman was reduced to pulp, so the acting manager Yang Tao was excluded.

The owner had been the greatest suspect, but the life monitor now suggested the owner might have died very early on.

Only two internal employees remained as suspects: Xiao Hui and Wang Ming.

Both of them left their traces in this Contamination Zone, clearly suffering from different levels of Psychic Contamination.

After reorganizing the collected clues, Zhu Ning could generally piece together a story. The owner was a Defective. Desperate, he saw the experiment recruitment from Eternal Pharma. Eternal Pharma sent him a culture pod and treatment agents. Based on the information on the medicine bottles, the experiment direction was likely small-dose injections of Contamination Factors, slowly causing the human body to change, but the experiment failed.

The owner's body mutated. The abnormality in his appearance was hard to hide, so he had to move to the basement to avoid people. Only Yang Tao went down to the basement daily to take care of him. He and Yang Tao agreed that if something happened to him, Yang Tao should kill him immediately.

The internal logic of the Contamination Zone must generally hold up, at least to be self-consistent. A normal hotpot restaurant wouldn't have a guillotine appear out of thin air, and this thing looked like a mechanism.

The guillotine might have been prepared by the owner himself. The hotpot restaurant owner found a safety mechanism. If he truly became an uncontrollable Contaminant, he could immediately press the mechanism to commit suicide.

The owner thought that by hiding, he could avoid harming people. But he didn't know that once he became a Contaminant, he would continuously emit contamination, causing Psychic Contamination in others.

Judging from the diary date, Xiao Hui was the first to be contaminated. While counting money, she felt that her drawer was full of fingers. She suspected the meat served to customers by the owner was problematic. She saw Yang Tao as a pig's head. She was constantly in a daze, paranoid.

But Zhu Ning had seen the employee attendance record on the owner's nightstand. Xiao Hui left early. Wang Ming was the one who stayed until the end.

According to the payroll, Xiao Hui formally resigned. She might not have died in this restaurant at all; she might have just simply quit. The owner let her go after she resigned, but panic spread. The remaining people started to overthink.

Wang Ming was already suffering from Psychic Contamination. Xiao Hui's departure looked like a disappearance to him. He began to speculate: Did Xiao Hui's meat end up in the kitchen? Was it already being cooked in the hotpot? What kind of meat was in the hotpot restaurant anyway?

From the start, the Hao Zailai Hotpot Restaurant had only experienced a mass Psychic Contamination incident.

Wang Ming suspected he would be the next to die. He would be chopped into slices of meat and fed to the customers. So he began to observe the owner, wanting to strike first. He went into the owner's medicine room and learned that he was constantly injecting agents, conducting a physical modification experiment.

Wang Ming smashed a small hole in the medicine room floor and saw the owner's secret. The owner was a Defective.

Wang Ming planned a murder. He sneaked into the basement while the owner was asleep, stood by the owner's bed, and then... raised his knife.

Wang Ming's recording got it backwards. He said the owner was standing by his bed. In reality, Wang Ming was standing by the owner's bed with a knife.

The owner died, but he had already been contaminated before his death. So, after he died, he precipitated Contamination Spores. With just one spore, the Contaminant could regenerate. The blood-red Contamination Spores instinctively sought a host. Wang Ming, who didn't understand the characteristics of Contaminants, didn't take any protection before the murder. He was parasitized by Contamination Spores.

Wang Ming didn't immediately lose his mind after being parasitized by Contamination Spores. But he could clearly feel something inside his body. He didn't expect the nightmare to continue after killing the owner. Instead, it brought about a new one. He didn't know how to get the Contamination Spores out of his body.

The contamination symptoms began to show. When his eyes mutated, he wanted surgery to change his eyes. When his arm mutated, he wanted surgery to change his arms. This led to the notices outside the door offering a high reward for body parts.

Later, he thought that the difference between a Contaminant and a Mutant was that the latter could retain rationality. He thought he was smart and had found the solution, so he began to offer a high reward for Mutant genes.

But no one paid attention to such a ridiculous offer.

An ordinary person's will couldn't resist the erosion of the Contaminant. Later, the Contaminant inside Wang Ming's body began to take the upper hand. He was completely assimilated by the contamination. The Contaminant's instinct was to multiply. They tried every means to contaminate more people.

His consciousness collapsed. He became the new Source of Contamination for the hotpot restaurant, and the master of the hotpot restaurant.

He put the owner's corpse back on the sickbed, pretending he was still alive. Everyone in the hotpot restaurant was mentally unstable due to Psychic Contamination. They couldn't distinguish whether the owner was dead or alive, and besides, they didn't care about the owner's life.

The collective contamination was too severe. They were like carved-out game characters, constantly performing their daily routines.

This included Wang Ming. Wang Ming even worked harder than before.

Wang Ming cut the owner's flesh to contaminate more people. People under Psychic Contamination would find the owner's rotten flesh fragrant. It became the hotpot restaurant's golden signature dish. At the same time, the hotpot restaurant's tradition was continued: continuously recruiting new employees, until one day, the Contamination Zone could no longer control itself and attacked the customers who came to eat.

That day, tentacles drilled out of the hotpot, wrapped around a customer's chopsticks, and dragged the person into the hotpot. The severe accident caused the hotpot restaurant to close. The official explanation was that the owner was sick.

Thirty years ago, the screening of Contaminants in the corners of the Federation's various districts was incomplete. Given the limited human resources, they could only know there was a Source of Contamination on this street, put up a warning sign, classify the level, enter it into the database, and come back for cleanup later.

But the hotpot restaurant was very stable. In a place unknown to the world, they formed a perfect ecological closed loop internally.

They killed each other internally. Only a few occasional customers, nostalgic for the hotpot restaurant, came to eat. After that, they would become new counterparts. Therefore, the Federation only posted a warning sign and did not follow up.

Until Liu Niannian, this curious rich second generation, came. The balance was broken.

Swish—

As the guillotine fell, Zhu Ning rolled to one side. Liu Niannian was pushed by her and managed to hide in a corner, trying to minimize her body size so as not to cause trouble.

The guillotine swayed in mid-air.

The guillotine did not attack from all angles. It had its own attack path, and Liu Niannian's position was temporarily safe.

Liu Niannian didn't know if it was her illusion, but after Zhu Ning said Wang Ming, she felt the wall changing. It already looked like it was smeared with greasy flesh, but now there seemed to be a human shadow moving inside the flesh.

The greasy flesh was turbid, making the shadow difficult to distinguish. But Liu Niannian was sure she saw a human shape. Judging by the physique, it was a man, wearing a work jacket. He slightly bulged out like a bas-relief, with a black outline around the edges.

What was that? Was he Wang Ming? Was Zhu Ning's guess really correct?

Liu Niannian was sweating profusely. How could a person grow inside greasy flesh?

Zhu Ning saw it too. She didn't hesitate and immediately opened fire. As the bullets burst out, the shadow in the wall moved quickly. The bullets were absorbed, and the black human figure that was there had vanished.

The bullets had little effect. The guillotine fell again.

Zhu Ning could only dodge. The floor beneath her feet was sticky and gooey. Combined with the guillotine in the basement, her movements were less crisp and swift. Her space for action was also limited.

The spot Zhu Ning was standing on became increasingly greasy. Several tiny pores appeared on the ground. It was as if Zhu Ning was standing on a pig's face. The pores were large and secreting grease. Yellow oil kept seeping out of the pores.

The human shadow inside the wall flashed past. He moved faster. Zhu Ning had found the Source of Contamination, but Wang Ming quickly disappeared.

He was more cautious than she thought.

The Contamination Zone was consuming the outsiders. Zhu Ning and Liu Niannian couldn't afford to stall. The greasy flesh was filling the basement, making it increasingly crowded. They were like two flies caught in a trap. If they didn't leave soon, they would inevitably be absorbed by the greasy flesh and become part of the Contamination Zone.

Zhu Ning once described finding the Source of Contamination as a ghost-catching game to Li Nianchuan. Now, she knew who the ghost was.

"Wang Ming," Zhu Ning suddenly spoke, addressing the Source of Contamination directly. Her voice was calm. "Do you feel very guilty about killing the owner?"

Liu Niannian was desperately anxious. Why was Zhu Ning talking to the Contaminant? Did she think she was the Contaminant's psychologist?

"In the recording, you said you suspected you killed a customer. You were very afraid, very guilty," Zhu Ning said.

The recording was a trap left by Wang Ming to cause Psychic Contamination in anyone who entered the Contamination Zone later. The events he described might not be true, but his emotions were real.

Very guilty? How deeply was Wang Ming contaminated?

The wall of flesh that was collapsing inwards suddenly stopped. Why did it stop moving? Did the psychologist actially work? Is Zhu Ning a psychic Mutant? Liu Niannian was just happy, but then she heard a piercing noise.

It was like a hundred hands scraping a blackboard simultaneously. The noise was so loud it almost made her die on the spot.

"He was trying to kill me!" the owner on the bed yelled. "He was the one who tried to kill me first!"

The owner was so swollen that he was inhuman. The voice sounded like someone yelling with their mouth covered. A corpse was shouting at the killer who had murdered him.

"I was just fighting back! What's wrong with that!"

The scene was extremely bizarre. The hairs on the back of Liu Niannian's neck stood up. The owner was clearly dead, controlled by a strange force, using all his might to cry out against his murderer.

Not only that, but every piece of greasy flesh in the room, including the part that was enveloping Liu Niannian, was shouting simultaneously.

Liu Niannian was affected. She even wanted to repeat the shouts. Her throat bobbed. She was almost assimilated by the Contamination Zone.

The greasy flesh squeezed again, faster than before. Liu Niannian was trapped by the greasy flesh. More than half of her body was submerged in the flesh.

Her chest was squeezed. It proved that even the protective suit used by nobles was only marginally better than those of ordinary people. The protective suit inflated inside, buying Liu Niannian some time.

Liu Niannian looked at Zhu Ning. But Zhu Ning didn't even glance at her. She said calmly, "The owner didn't intend to kill you. Everything was your fantasy."

The owner never harbored killing intent.

Zhu Ning asked, "When you killed him, did he not struggle at all?"

At the time, Wang Ming stood in front of the owner with a knife, his expression fierce. He looked at the owner like a deadly enemy. But the owner looked at him peacefully, calm about his own death.

The owner was unperturbed when he died. He even wanted someone to end his life. Watching himself mutate into a monster every day was a torment for him. He was grateful that Wang Ming had done it.

The owner was not the Source of Contamination. The Source of Contamination must have an obsession. This world was based on sanity.

The one with the obsession was Wang Ming.

"Shut up!" The wall twisted and screamed. Fresh blood slowly flowed from the ceiling, like a bloody waterfall, emitting a strong, foul stench.

Liu Niannian couldn't take it anymore. She yelled at Zhu Ning, "He's crazy! Shoot him now!"

Zhu Ning had truly enraged the person. The Source of Contamination lost its mind. The entire hotpot restaurant was shaking.

But this was still not enough for Zhu Ning.

The Source of Contamination still hadn't shown itself. Wang Ming was suspicious and cowardly when he was alive. He hid deep within the greasy flesh, speaking through the owner's corpse, refusing to show his own face.

Zhu Ning vaguely saw something moving inside the wall. It seemed Wang Ming was on the verge of struggling free, just needing a little more stimulus.

Zhu Ning had bombs in her backpack. The simplest and quickest method now was to blow it up. But the basement was a confined space. Once it exploded, even if the System was telling the truth and she was immune to the blast, Liu Niannian would die on the spot.

The System mission was to rescue Liu Niannian.

She had to complete the mission using another method. Zhu Ning opened her Interface.

System: [Putrid Fish Head has been opened. 5 health will be consumed. Do you want to use Psychic Contamination on Wang Ming?]

Zhu Ning: "Use it."

Since Wang Ming was already deeply affected by Psychic Contamination, Zhu Ning didn't mind adding a little more.

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