Chapter 49-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World

Chapter 49 The Bizarre Aquarium-6

Ten minutes ago, Cleaning Center, 49th Floor Hall.

The large electronic screen was split into dozens of sections, connected to the helmet feeds of all mission personnel. Through these monitoring screens, the status of every team could be completely controlled. Every time Demon Hunters went on a mission, the transmission was like a live broadcast match. Some battles were very entertaining, more exciting than sports competitions, and some people would even place bets.

Generally speaking, time flows differently inside a contaminated zone. Prometheus transmits messages with a time lag. The specific lag depends on the level of the contaminated zone; the higher the pollution, the longer the delay.

In the hall, apart from employees with urgent tasks, many stopped to watch the big screen, truly acting as if they were watching a sporting event.

Xuan Qing from the Combat Department held the initiative. Standing beside her was Lu Qiqin, the Minister of the Technology Department.

Last time Zhu Ning went on a mission, the Technology Department had a serious oversight, resulting in issues like incorrect contaminated zone ratings. So this time, Lu Qiqin was personally supervising. He was certain that the Mechanical Aquarium was merely a B-level contaminated zone containing two sources of contamination.

There would absolutely be no problems this time.

Xuan Qing asked, "Xie Jiazu still isn't coming?"

Xie Jiazu was the Minister of the Cleanup Department, Zhu Ning's true direct superior. However, his style was very loose, and he was lackadaisical in his work.

Lu Qiqin: "Probably slacking off somewhere."

The Cleanup Department was the most leisurely department. Generally speaking, their department didn't have to face direct conflict. If Xie Jiazu could skive off, he would absolutely not work; his work ethic was highly problematic.

Xuan Qing didn't waste any more words. She crossed her arms and looked at the big screen. The camera accurately captured Zhu Ning's situation; she was being entangled by hair, with a mermaid right in front of her.

As the Cleaning Center's artificial intelligence, as long as Prometheus was present, communication would not be severed. Prometheus was the only communication tool that could bridge the contaminated zone and the outside world.

From the return video, it was clear that Zhu Ning's condition wasn't good. She looked a bit sluggish, as if she had already been bewitched by the mermaid.

Xuan Qing was the Minister of the Combat Department and had been an exceptionally excellent Demon Hunter before. She wasn't some "parachuted in" hire with connections; she had crawled and fought her way through countless contaminated zones to sit in her current position.

Xuan Qing understood the attributes of contaminated zones. Usually, mermaid contaminants were very difficult to deal with; their eyes acted similarly to some kind of intense mental pollution.

Sure enough, Zhu Ning on the screen looked like she wasn't going to make it. She had no power to fight back against the mermaid.

Beep beep beep—

A blue light lit up. Prometheus: [Requesting to enter command mode.]

The person in charge this time was Xuan Qing. Prometheus needed Xuan Qing's command to take over Zhu Ning's body.

Xuan Qing raised an eyebrow. The artificial intelligence's judgment was never wrong. Prometheus's algorithm likely calculated that taking over the body and retreating was the best choice right now.

Lu Qiqin: "Authorize it. I don't think she can make it."

Seeing no reaction from Xuan Qing, Lu Qiqin added, "Zhu Ning isn't a professional Demon Hunter. You're insisting on forcing her Demon Hunter talent. She entered D-level zones before; throwing her into a B-level one all of a sudden is too much to ask."

Zhu Ning's identity was a Cleaner; sweeping trash was enough. Finding the Source of Contamination and killing it was not part of her business scope. There was no need to demand the qualities of a Demon Hunter from a Cleaner.

Xuan Qing stood with her arms crossed, watching Zhu Ning on the screen, and said in a deep voice, "Request denied."

Lu Qiqin: "..."

He clicked his tongue. Xuan Qing was so stubborn.

Prometheus did not send another request. Xuan Qing watched the screen expressionlessly, her fingers tapping lightly against her arm. This was nowhere near the limit.

The ecology within a large-scale contaminated zone is complex. Once contamination spores spill out, they can easily form a new pollution source, known as a Secondary Source of Contamination. The pollution level of a Secondary Source is generally weaker than the main Source of Contamination. This shouldn't be too difficult for Zhu Ning.

But Prometheus was acting a bit uncharacteristic today. Too fast. Zhu Ning clearly hadn't been pushed to a desperate dead end yet. Was he that worried about Zhu Ning dying inside? Or was there something special about Zhu Ning?

Xuan Qing narrowed her eyes and looked at the blue ring in the bottom left corner of the large screen. That represented Prometheus in a working state. What did he want to do?

Prometheus looked submissive, but veteran Demon Hunters were very wary of him. The longer one was in contact with contaminants, the more unfathomable Prometheus seemed. The flashing blue light seemed mysterious at this moment.

Xuan Qing withdrew her gaze, focusing her attention on the mission. The eight people had been separated earlier, washed into three teams by the sea monster. Chu Ling was grouped with Li Nianchuan and Xu Meng.

On that side, gunshots had just rung out.

After Zhu Ning was dragged away, the next to be taken was Li Nianchuan. Li Nianchuan cried out in alarm, his head tilted, and he smashed heavily into the dirty water.

Xu Meng was quick-witted and grabbed Li Nianchuan's arm, but the mermaid's strength was not on the same magnitude as a human's. It actually dragged both Xu Meng and Li Nianchuan away together.

With their equipment, the two of them weighed nearly four hundred catties combined, yet the mermaid dragged them without any resistance. After entering the water, Xu Meng was dragged for dozens of meters, kicking up an exaggerated wave.

Only after falling into the water did they realize there was a whole other world below. This place was bizarre. If one was standing, the accumulated water seemed particularly shallow, but once entering the water, it felt like entering the deep sea—unfathomably deep, capable of drowning a person directly.

Li Nianchuan was dragged headfirst. Xu Meng was holding onto his arm, while his calf was being pulled by something unknown. Under the pull of two massive forces, he felt like he was going to be torn in half. It turned out that when people encounter extreme danger, they might not even resist.

Just being dragged away by a monster wouldn't be so bad, but when the water washed over him, he was almost scared out of his mind.

Bugs. The bottom of the water was full of bugs.

He didn't know if it was mental pollution or if he could see more clearly underwater, but countless bugs were surging over his helmet, wriggling their bodies on the helmet's faceplate. They had fallen directly into a pool of bugs. Li Nianchuan struggled subconsciously, wanting to control his body, but like a drowning person, the more he panicked, the harder it was to control his limbs.

Whoosh—

Suddenly, a bullet grazed his helmet and fell into the water. Chu Ling had fired.

Compared to Zhu Ning being dragged away without warning, Chu Ling had more experience than last time. Without any hesitation, she fired immediately. Her marksmanship was good; she hit the target even in the chaos.

She stood quietly in the accumulated water, like a seasoned hunter, calm and silent, without any nonsense. She stared heavily at the shadows in the water. A few seconds after the bullet entered the water, a red mist immediately rose up. Her second shot hit right by her feet; a water monster had just tried to drag her under.

To rescue teammates, one first needs to ensure their own safety. Chu Ling had her priorities straight. She fired again, bullets landing in the water with bang bang bang sounds. Her movements were unhurried and orderly, not letting go of any shadow.

The water was already dyed red with blood, yet surprisingly, no corpses floated to the surface.

Li Nianchuan's ankle loosened; the monster dragging him had let go. Immediately after, his arm was grasped by someone again. Unlike the mermaid just now, this hand was powerful but not brutal.

His vision went dark, and when he broke the surface, a face wearing a metal helmet suddenly appeared in front of him.

The next moment, he was lifted up like a little chick, water dripping from his body. Chu Ling was eighty percent mechanized; lifting a Li Nianchuan was not difficult.

Chu Ling: "Are you okay?"

Li Nianchuan said blankly, "I'm okay."

Hearing this, Chu Ling let go of him and confirmed that Xu Meng was also fine.

Li Nianchuan still had lingering fears. Zhu Ning had disappeared early on, and the other Demon Hunters were also gone.

Li Nianchuan then scrambled to pick up his gun. There were still things in the water. They could see shadows flashing past, like monsters ready to strike at any moment.

Li Nianchuan was a bit overly cautious. The visibility wasn't high. Under the green-tinted screen, he was suspicious of everything, feeling like there were monsters everywhere. His gun barrel shifted positions back and forth, pointing in one direction then another.

Chu Ling was still methodically dealing with the contaminants. Li Nianchuan stood obediently in the water. The leg that had been grabbed by the ghost hand earlier felt vaguely strange, as if something was still wrapped around it. Seaweed?

It was his right foot that had been grabbed. In the water, he rubbed his left foot against his right ankle, trying to scrape the seaweed off.

But as he rubbed, not only did his right foot show no signs of loosening, but it also became tighter and tighter.

There were temporarily no monsters ahead. Li Nianchuan decided to solve his own anomaly first. He reached down. He thought it would be easily resolved, but his whole body froze. He touched a clump of... hair?

Wait, hair?

That should be hair. Heavy hair, like a ball of waterweed. He couldn't even move his palm.

Li Nianchuan lowered his head in confusion, caught off guard by a pale face.

That face... was sinking heavily beneath him, buried in a mass of hair.

Although it was a beautiful face, at this moment, the prettier it was, the creepier it seemed.

Why did it target him again? Because he looked weaker? Li Nianchuan immediately pointed his gun downwards. After hanging out with Zhu Ning for so long, he had built up some courage. But just as he moved, hair surged out.

His feet were ruthlessly strangled. Unlike the strange force from last time, he could feel the hair was sharp, as if it wanted to slice him apart.

Li Nianchuan fired a shot down, and the hair suddenly tightened. He stumbled and was about to fall again. He wasn't the only one hit this time; Xu Meng next to him was in the same situation.

Li Nianchuan couldn't care about anything else and struggled with all his might, but no matter how he struggled, it was to no avail.

Chu Ling was a bit depressed. Sure enough, apart from that monster Zhu Ning, the quality of ordinary Cleaners was like Li Nianchuan—just fished out and immediately dragged back down.

Chu Ling felt a sense of defeat, like taking students swimming, swimming to the other side herself, turning around, and finding her students lost.

It was endless. If they didn't find the Source of Contamination, they would be repeatedly dragged away by monsters until their stamina was exhausted.

The water became chaotic. Something gradually floated to the surface. It was a pale human face, only half floating up, the lower half still buried in the water. The exposed eyes emitted a pale purple light, with a light mist seemingly floating within them. It really was a mermaid.

Following the first one surfacing, more and more popped up, fully four or five of them, as if they were specifically there to watch their miserable state, or perhaps initiate hunting mode.

Chu Ling shouted, "Don't look at their eyes! Turn on the lights!"

Li Nianchuan scrambled to turn on his flashlight. He switched it to strong light mode. Sure enough, the mermaids feared light and quickly swam away under the sweeping beam.

After seeing the mermaids, Chu Ling immediately adjusted her state. Holding a flashlight in one hand and firing with the other, she confirmed the strong light mode was effective. Mermaids fearing light was an exploitable weakness. Chu Ling's physical reaction was faster; she quickly formulated a battle plan to drive the mermaids to one spot and then eliminate them immediately.

Chu Ling was a professional Demon Hunter; she had to start searching for the Source of Contamination. A B-level contaminated zone wasn't hard, but the venue was too large, and finding effective clues took time. For now, all she could do was provide suppressing fire and protect her teammates first.

Chu Ling was only one person and couldn't look after two. On Li Nianchuan's side, he was nearly strangled to death by the hair; the more he struggled, the tighter the hair became.

Li Nianchuan's back went cold, and his breathing became increasingly rapid. The vital signs displayed on his helmet panel were continuously dropping. Chu Ling's voice in his ears became quieter and quieter, the captain seemingly getting further and further away from him.

He was going to be strangled.

Amidst the suffocation, Li Nianchuan even wanted to let Prometheus directly take over his body. In a state of extreme fear, people dare not face danger directly and are willing to hand over control of their bodies.

Didn't Prometheus have end-of-life care? Li Nianchuan's mind was full of death. He wanted to leave a sentence or two for his friends.

With trembling hands, he prepared to leave his last words inside the helmet. His fingers were shaking. Just as he pressed the button, before he had time to speak—

[Cleaner Zhu Ning has purified the Mermaid Pavilion.]

[Cleaner Zhu Ning has purified the Mermaid Pavilion.]

This sound seemed to echo. Prometheus opened the public channel to broadcast.

Li Nianchuan broke free from suffocation. The hair wrapped around his body loosened. Immediately after, countless strands of hair acted like withering flowers, losing their vitality in an instant.

At that moment, Li Nianchuan even wanted to cry. It was Zhu Ning. Zhu Ning said she would protect him, and she kept her word.

After the broadcast ended, changes began to appear all around. Corpses floated up in the water one by one. Their upper bodies were human, their lower bodies fish tails, entangled with large clumps of hair. There were also many dead human bodies in the water. The Mermaid Pavilion gradually collapsed, becoming completely different from the place they knew.

The glass wall in front of them was broken, as if someone had smashed it to smithereens. The glass was covered in streaks of blood.

The floating corpses were gradually rotting. Rotten flesh fell into the water; it wouldn't take long to form a pool of rot.

Contamination spores began to drift. Fifteen minutes after entering the oceanarium, they had resolved the first Source of Contamination.

Chu Ling paused. Zhu Ning really had something. Worthy of S-rank Sanity. With such good strength, working as a Cleaner was truly a pity.

Li Nianchuan looked up and saw countless contamination spores. He asked, "What do we do now? Contain the contamination spores?"

Chu Ling: "That's your job. I guess Zhu Ning should be nearby."

The Mermaid Pavilion was quite large. Zhu Ning should be not far away; perhaps opening a door would lead to her.

Zhu Ning solved the Source of Contamination, and Li Nianchuan successfully escaped the crisis here. The situation with the remaining four Demon Hunters should also be stable.

Prometheus reconnected the channels of the three teams.

"Zhu Ning? Can you hear me? Zhu Ning?" Tang Ke's voice came from inside the helmet.

"I can hear you," Zhu Ning replied.

She had just dealt with a Source of Contamination, and the Demon Hunters had also heard Prometheus's announcement.

Some people in the team were quite unhappy. It was Zhu Ning again. Last time, she purified the Fishman contaminated zone too. Although a B-level zone wasn't hard, why was she, a Cleaner, always doing a Demon Hunter's job?

Thinking of how Zhu Ning previously said she wanted to learn the Demon Hunter's way of working—they weren't sure then, but now they could be certain: that was sarcasm.

Zhu Ning's side was also a mess. She originally wanted to come in to fish(loafing) in troubled waters and incidentally learn the Demon Hunter working style; she hadn't thought about fighting for any credit at all.

She was dragged in by accident. Since she was dragged in, she couldn't just wait to die, right?

"How is it on your end?" Tang Ke asked. As the captain, he considered the bigger picture more.

Zhu Ning reported her situation and asked, "What do I do next?"

Zhu Ning was on a team mission, and Tang Ke was the captain this time; Zhu Ning had to follow the captain's arrangements. There was silence on Tang Ke's end. Originally, the eight-person team had been forcibly split into three groups: four Demon Hunters in one group, Chu Ling with the remaining two Cleaners, and only Zhu Ning was left alone.

Prometheus could provide everyone's location. Based on the data, the four Demon Hunters were closer to the Mechanical Jellyfish Pavilion. Regrouping all three teams would consume a lot of time.

Tang Ke: "Chu Ling will bring Li Nianchuan and Xu Meng to meet up with you. Contain the contamination spores."

Zhu Ning hummed in agreement. The three Cleaners came in to contain spores anyway; this was normal.

Tang Ke: "The four of us will head to the Mechanical Jellyfish Pavilion. You wait in place after you finish there. Maintain contact at all times. If you encounter trouble, you can tell me."

The Cleaners entered only to contain the contamination spores of one Source. Once Zhu Ning's group finished containing, it would be equivalent to their mission ending. The Jellyfish Pavilion could be left to the professional Demon Hunters.

Tang Ke said to maintain contact, but if she really met with disaster, by the time they rushed over, she would probably be dead already. So, translated, his remarks meant for Zhu Ning to protect herself.

Zhu Ning hung up Tang Ke's call, and then she received a call from Li Nianchuan. "Scared me to death!"

Li Nianchuan sounded shaken as soon as he connected. Zhu Ning imagined it; based on her understanding of Li Nianchuan, he was probably hugging Chu Ling's thigh tightly right now.

It seemed they encountered the same things as her. Chu Ling was indeed a Demon Hunter, able to fish out two Cleaners single-handedly.

"Are you okay?" Zhu Ning asked.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Li Nianchuan said. "Sister Chu saved me."

Zhu Ning: Young man, you acknowledge sisters very quickly.

"Where's the captain?" Zhu Ning asked again.

Xu Meng's voice came through: "I'm fine."

Xu Meng's personal quality was high, and she was a veteran employee; Zhu Ning actually wasn't very worried about her.

Xu Meng said, "We'll rush over immediately. Pay attention to safety, don't force yourself."

Zhu Ning paused. Among so many people, only Xu Meng's concern was particularly detailed. She remembered last time Xu Meng wiped her face, also telling her to learn to moyu (slack off) and not work so hard. Xu Meng really resembled her older sister.

Zhu Ning fell silent for two seconds, softening her voice: "Okay, I'll pay attention."

She hung up the communication. Going on a mission wasn't for chatting about family matters; solving the task early meant getting out early.

There were contamination spores in front of her that needed containing, but Zhu Ning didn't move. Instead, she carefully examined the Mermaid Pavilion.

This place had just been destroyed by her, a complete mess. The formation of a Source of Contamination required some "spiritual power," which meant that after the Jellyfish Pavilion erupted with mental pollution, the contamination spores drifted over and re-parasitized the mermaids.

Thinking back carefully, she hadn't been to many contaminated zones, but the types were very rich.

The Source of Contamination in the Hotpot Restaurant, Wang Ming, was a human. The Source in Experimental Subject 777 was a house. The Source in the Mermaid Pavilion was an artificial creature.

Human, pure object, and artificial creature—she had experienced them all. It was like a collection of greatest hits deliberately arranged by someone, allowing Zhu Ning to quickly brush up on questions and grow.

But why? What was the motive?

The biggest boss Zhu Ning suspected was right inside her brain. Prometheus could even speak to her via intracranial conduction. Unfortunately, Zhu Ning couldn't open her mouth to ask any questions.

Because the camera was watching her.

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