Chapter 72-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 72 The Black Dental Clinic-3
Zhu Ning's protective suit this time was different from before. It was still pure black, but with some fine metal lines, very close to a Demon Hunter's work uniform. Both sensitivity and hardness had improved, making it less prone to damage. Had Prometheus upgraded her equipment?
She rode her motorcycle to the slums. The intelligent vehicle navigation system was connected to her auxiliary brain. Starting from the Noble Queen shop, it would only take seventeen minutes to reach the destination.
This place was only four kilometers from the Hive. Clearly living nearby, Zhu Ning seemed to have never explored District 103's slums. The world of the slums should form its own ecosystem.
This residential complex was called "The Ant Nest." The overall building was ten times larger than the Hive, but there were hardly any people inside. Only a few scattered lights were on in the complex.
The flames from the distant incinerator couldn't reach here at all. The Ant Nest was like a forgotten land of death, emanating a gloomy, decaying aura.
The complex gate was ajar. The security booth was empty, with a thick layer of dust inside. This complex should be considered abandoned.
Zhu Ning stopped her vehicle. She had just sent Liu Niannian a message, asking her to arrive at the Ant Nest's dental clinic in an hour. Liu Niannian hadn't replied.
Zhu Ning thought this was normal. They hadn't been in contact for a long time. The young lady's daily life should be much busier than she imagined.
If Liu Niannian couldn't come today, Zhu Ning would have to assemble a team on the Grave Post forum, just like how Lynx would call in a professional cleaner team for backup every time she entered a Contamination Zone.
The speed of Zhu Ning's team expansion couldn't keep up with the speed of courting death in Contamination Zones. Lin Xiaofeng was too young and obviously couldn't go on missions yet. There were almost no usable people in her team.
After entering a Contamination Zone, she would lose contact with the outside world. Previously, Zhu Ning would estimate an approximate time. This time she had her own AI butler.
The motorcycle was parked outside. She set several commands and gave the vehicle system maximum freedom. The luxury car had AI and could analyze pros and cons based on the current situation.
After preparing everything, Zhu Ning walked into the Ant Nest.
[Contamination concentration detected at 85]
After walking about a hundred meters, the helmet automatically announced the contamination concentration.
Zhu Ning frowned. There were no gray lines before her eyes. She hadn't entered the Contamination Zone yet, but the contamination concentration here had reached the standard of a D-level Contamination Zone?
Zhu Ning had already completed the Demon Hunter courses and had actually gone on missions with Demon Hunters. She could not only read the data herself but also understand what each helmet announcement meant.
There must be a core contamination source to form a Contamination Zone. If it's just contamination, at most it can only be called a contaminated area.
So this complex had been completely contaminated, with a contamination source inside. Just stepping through the complex gate, there was already an 85% contamination concentration.
But what surprised Zhu Ning was that the Ant Nest hadn't been sealed off. It didn't even have the prestige of the Hao Zai Lai hotpot restaurant—not even a warning sign.
Humans could freely enter and exit here. There were even people living inside. Had no one managed them all these years?
One of the employee rules stated that if you see a contaminated area outside, you should report it to the technical department in a timely manner.
Zhu Ning thought for a moment and opened the technical department's internal website. She entered this address. The Ant Nest had already been registered, but its priority kept being pushed back.
[Number 1,700. Estimated waiting time: three years.]
Zhu Ning: "..."
Because it wasn't in a commercial district and those living inside were all Defectives, there was no priority. They could only wait in line slowly. The display showed this place had been registered for five years.
The queue was endless. Any more urgent matter could cut in line.
From a profit-first perspective, Zhu Ning could understand the Federal Sanitation Center's approach. There was no benefit to purifying this place. Defectives were going to die anyway. Even if this Contamination Zone continued to expand, only the Hive and other slums would be contaminated.
But she felt quite uncomfortable, probably because she herself was a Defective.
The building complex inside the Ant Nest was more complicated. The Hive actually only had three buildings. Each building was very large—thirty-six floors, with sixty-nine households per floor. Zhu Ning used to always wonder how to escape if there was a fire.
But the Ant Nest's setup was strange. Each building was thin and long. The tallest building had fifty floors, but only one household per floor. Between buildings, long aerial corridors were built, like bridges connecting all the building clusters.
From a distance, these buildings looked like a vertical chessboard. The aerial corridors were the lines, and those rooms were like the intersection points of the lines.
Each resident living inside was like a chess piece placed on a point. Ultimately, they formed a 3D three-dimensional chessboard.
Theoretically, as long as you entered any room, you could crawl from one end to the other. Under the premise that all internal passages were open, they were all interconnected. This building was too strange.
Zhu Ning had never seen this kind of design. When it was built, it seemed like no consideration was given to whether humans living inside would be comfortable. Each small room looked like a small prison cell. If you got lost after entering, you probably wouldn't be able to get out for the rest of your life.
This dental clinic was located in a residential building. Zhu Ning had seen similar ones before. When she was at the training base, she met a team member whose family ran this kind of dental clinic in a small city.
The income was said to be very considerable because there's a saying: to see if someone has money, just look at their teeth.
Teeth are mostly equated with money. Many dentists choose to open their own clinic independently. Some open in residential buildings, some on the first floor of office buildings. In the wasteland era, this kind of dental clinic must be very old.
The Grave Post showed the dental clinic's address as Building 35, Floor 35. Converted to coordinates, that would be (35, 35).
The closest to Zhu Ning was Building 23, but she hadn't figured out the arrangement order of these buildings. It was a bit dizzying.
Zhu Ning wasn't directionally challenged. In fact, her memory was very good. She had no problem in this regard. But after entering, she felt a bit dizzy. After walking for ten minutes, she still hadn't found it.
Too strange. From the moment she walked in, it was very strange. This place was like a mystical maze. Was it to prevent outsiders from entering, or also to prevent people inside from leaving?
29, 30, 31...
Zhu Ning walked while roughly sketching a map in her mind. The building numbers were gradually increasing. The direction she was walking must be correct.
33, 34, 36...
Wait, Zhu Ning stopped. Where was Building 35?
She tried walking backward. She walked backward. If you get lost in a forest, people can't find their direction because every tree looks the same to you.
At this time, don't turn around or change direction randomly. You must determine where your "front" is.
Zhu Ning hadn't turned around since entering. She only recognized the path ahead and walked forward. So even if she felt she had passed it, she didn't turn back but maintained the same posture and walked backward.
There were only a few lights still on in the complex. There was a faint light at the building entrance. She walked backward about ten meters and saw Building 34.
What was going on? Building 35 didn't exist?
There were only 34 and 36. Where did the building in between go?
Zhu Ning tried this repeatedly twice more. The third time, she was certain—Building 35 didn't exist.
There were two possibilities. First, this building had disappeared or was hidden.
Second, either 34 or 36 was actually Building 35, just not labeled. Like how some buildings don't have a 13th floor—the 14th floor is actually the 13th floor.
The problem before her was finding the entrance to the Contamination Zone. After a Contamination Zone opens, sometimes it's hard to find the way in. Back when she and Li Nianchuan encountered the fishmen, Li Nianchuan said finding the passage to a Contamination Zone wasn't actually easy. They were trapped inside.
The higher the contamination concentration in an area, the harder it is to find the way in. In previous times, the fishman was a mistaken entry, the hotpot restaurant was Song Zhizhang's guidance, Experimental Subject 777 was already in the residential area and she used the universal key to open it. When Zhu Ning arrived at the aquarium, someone had already opened the Contamination Zone passage. She didn't participate in that part at all.
This time she needed to find it herself. Zhu Ning pondered for a moment and chose to enter Building 34, because all floors were connected. Regardless of which possibility it was, you needed to walk in yourself to find it.
Creaaak—
She pushed open the old door. The interior structure was a standard square. The space was narrow and a bit cramped. One household per floor, a square elevator shaft, a square emergency stairwell.
The first household she encountered after entering was 34-1-01. She didn't know if anyone was inside. What was eerie was that the elevator in this building was operational. She pressed the button, and the elevator doors opened to both sides.
Inside revealed a space—a 2x2x2 cubic elevator car. Not a centimeter more.
When objects are excessively precise, it actually makes humans feel fear, because in nature you can't find two identical leaves. Everything is irregular.
Humans invented various rulers, established various rules, and had various items produced in accordance with rules.
The elevator was perfectly standard, without even a centimeter of subtle error. Facing such a regular elevator car, one didn't want to walk in at all. It was simply like a game data block built by an alien civilization.
The sense of alienation and objectification reached its extreme, as if even the passengers entering the elevator were part of the object.
Ding—
The elevator doors closed.
Zhu Ning didn't take the elevator. She chose to take the stairs. She absolutely didn't want to trap herself in that cramped elevator.
The aerial corridors between buildings only started appearing from the second floor. Zhu Ning reached the second floor very smoothly. Actually, she didn't know if it counted as smooth. The stairwell wall was marked with the Roman numeral II.
From the moment she entered this area, she understood—the marked numbers weren't necessarily real, and your feelings weren't necessarily real either.
The closer to the Contamination Zone, the stronger this feeling would become. Now the contamination concentration displayed on the helmet had reached 96.
The second floor's structure had a bit more than the first floor. The household on the second floor was 34-2-01. There was also an elevator and an emergency stairwell.
But after coming out of the stairwell, two doors appeared on the left and right.
Both doors opened to long, pitch-black corridors extending in two directions. There were no voice-activated lights in the corridors. The two narrow corridors were like the throat of a monster, with no visible end.
Zhu Ning thought for a moment and didn't linger on the second floor. She decided to continue forward.
If this strange Ant Nest really had a chessboard structure, she couldn't find Building 35, but she could find Floor 35. As long as she was on Floor 35, she would definitely find the dental clinic.
It was like finding a coordinate—you always had to find either the x-coordinate or the y-coordinate.
Climbing 35 floors on foot wasn't painful for her. It took about fifteen minutes.
33, 34, 35...
This time it was Floor 35. It seemed only Building 35 had disappeared, but Floor 35 hadn't disappeared.
Floor 35 also had two large doors on the left and right. Two doors, two corridors, two possibilities. She might walk to Building 33 or Building 35.
She needed to make a choice. If she went wrong here, correcting it should be very troublesome. She would go farther and farther astray. She might get lost in the Ant Nest.
The two corridors looked identical to the naked eye. The contamination concentration displayed by the helmet was identical. From the outside, no difference could be found.
Listening to sounds, there was a slight difference. Carefully listening, there was wind sound on the left, but none on the right.
She found the difference between the two sides, but it wasn't enough to support her making a judgment. Who knew whether the one with wind was the Contamination Zone or the one without wind was.
Zhu Ning's hand covered the wall. Her metal manipulation could "diagnose" metal, instantly connecting with the metal's structure. The Ant Nest also used contaminated metal similar to the Hive.
Here she could use this talent. The problem was that the metal structures on both sides also looked identical. Her talent was useless.
Three minutes passed. Nothing happened. This floor should be uninhabited because she couldn't hear any sounds.
Since there was no movement here, Zhu Ning could only create some movement herself.
Zhu Ning pulled out her gun and fired a shot toward the left side with the wind sound.
Bang!
The bullet passed through the dark corridor, but the sound of hitting something didn't come for a long time. Was this corridor that long?
Wait, Zhu Ning was about to move when she suddenly felt something was wrong.
That wrongness wasn't very obvious, extremely subtle, but if it were you, you would also react immediately.
Something touched the tip of her boot.
People are sometimes strange. Clearly wearing shoes, but when something from the outside touches you, or you accidentally step on something, you can sense the abnormality.
Especially since the work uniform's neural conduction function amplified this sense of strangeness, Zhu Ning lowered her head. Something was touching her repeatedly.
It was blood. A pool of blood surged from the depths. Viscous blood slowly flowed.
Because night vision was on, under the green filter, the blood turned green. She seemed to see tiny tentacles reaching out from the pool of blood, struggling while crawling up her feet.
Psychic Contamination.
She hadn't even entered the Contamination Zone yet, and Psychic Contamination had already begun.
Zhu Ning took a deep breath. She tried to move her foot away. A clear bloody footprint remained on the ground. This side should be the Contamination Zone.
Zhu Ning walked into the corridor. This corridor must be close to the dental clinic. She had an illusion that she seemed to have walked into someone's oral cavity.
She had just fired a bullet and shot through someone's mouth. Now this person's oral cavity was bleeding.
Zhu Ning had just taken one step when suddenly she heard a ding-dong sound.
Something dropped on the ground, then bounced twice in the empty corridor. It sounded very much like a marble falling from upstairs.
Immediately after, pitter-patter—
More and more things poured down, like a hailstorm. The falling objects hit people like pebbles. Even the helmet was struck with loud banging sounds.
Zhu Ning's vision became a bit blurry for a moment. Because she was wrapped in the protective suit, the things hitting her body didn't hurt. They quickly slid off her shoulders, fell to the ground, and bounced away. But the sense of strangeness was heavy. Every cell in her body was clamoring to escape.
She reached out her hand and caught a handful of things. Those were... teeth?
In her palm lay a handful of yellowed teeth. Some of these teeth were already incomplete, with only half a root. Some surfaces were covered with black-yellow stains, looking like bad teeth.
It was raining teeth here, and Zhu Ning was standing under this rain.
Author's Note:
Young lady, want to stand in the rain? The non-mainstream kind? Before I knew it, I've already written 300,000 words. Thank you all for liking it!
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