Chapter 74-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 74 The Black Dental Clinic-5
Buzzzz—
The drill rotated at high speed in Zhu Ning's hand, like a chainsaw. Wherever it went, those tooth people's heads would be cut down like wheat at autumn harvest. Blood would instantly spurt out, filling the entire oral cavity.
At that time, this person's mouth would be like a murder scene. Thirty tooth people would die one after another. New tooth people would drill out from their teeth.
Then repeat, repeat, and repeat again...
But Zhu Ning held the drill without moving.
[Sanity decreased by 5%]
The system's voice was sometimes a reminder. It was mechanical and emotionless, just coldly reporting data.
Zhu Ning had unknowingly been psychically contaminated. From the moment she walked into the Ant Nest, her sanity had been dropping much faster than imagined.
What would happen if she really killed these tooth people? The patient's teeth housed tooth people. The tooth people's teeth housed even smaller tooth people.
The question was, how could Zhu Ning guarantee she wasn't a tooth person? How could she guarantee she wasn't currently living inside another person's oral cavity?
How could she distinguish whether she was inside a tooth or inside a dental clinic? It was like infinite nesting dolls. You actually couldn't tell whether you were one of the links.
The doctor in the Grave Post finally said he had solved the problem. How did he solve it?
Zhu Ning looked at the drill in her hand. It spun very fast. It could penetrate solid teeth. Very hard, very fast, very lethal.
Was the drill the key to breaking the tooth nesting doll? Zhu Ning's inner state was no longer very stable. She seemed to be pulled by some mysterious force.
"Doctor, my teeth hurt so much."
This sentence was like a spell, urging her to solve this problem immediately.
If she drilled down with the drill, would this dental clinic be drilled open? Would she look up and see a drill descending from the sky?
The underlying logic of a Contamination Zone was to contaminate you, make you become my kind, or kill you. Everything served this underlying logic.
Zhu Ning closed her eyes. She could feel pressure from all sides. Xu Mei's encouraging gaze. The patient's pleading gaze.
"Doctor, my teeth hurt so much."
The patient was still urging her. The easiest thing for her to do was go with the flow. Going downhill was the simplest.
Buzzzz—
Zhu Ning turned off the drill. "Your teeth are very healthy."
This sentence was squeezed out from her throat. Each word was extremely difficult, as if some pressure was stopping her.
Xu Mei's smile froze for a moment. The patient was also stunned. The thirty tooth people in the patient's mouth all stopped together.
The first sentence was the hardest. Once she started resisting Psychic Contamination, the following words became less difficult. Sanity stopped decreasing.
Zhu Ning faced the thirty tooth people. They had their mouths wide open. Zhu Ning could see their teeth through the tooth people, but she still lied with her eyes open. "Very healthy teeth."
Xu Mei: "Doctor, he's not normal..."
Zhu Ning glanced at Xu Mei, thinking she was making a fuss. "Aren't these very normal teeth? Don't you have people living in your mouth?"
Zhu Yao was a cardiac surgeon. Zhu Ning grew up following an expert. She understood too well how an authoritative chief physician should speak. You must be calmer than the patient. Remain composed under any circumstances. Only then will patients trust you.
Zhu Ning stunned Xu Mei with her question. Her tone was overly certain, as if everyone in this world should have tooth people living in their teeth. Patients without tooth people were the abnormal ones.
Xu Mei stood aside, dazed in thought. Should there be tooth people in her mouth? Was she sick?
The tooth people in the patient's mouth didn't speak. They were silent for a moment, quietly staring at Zhu Ning.
Zhu Ning took off her gloves, as skillfully as a veteran doctor with ten years of practice. "Just go back and continue brushing your teeth well. Next patient."
Unfortunately, she didn't wait for the next patient. Contamination Zones had intelligence. They wouldn't use the same ineffective tactic against you.
The patient left. Restraint straps that had bound the person were scattered on the reclining chair. Xu Mei across from her kept staring at Zhu Ning. She wore a smile, but her eyes were somewhat venomous. She did nothing but stare at Zhu Ning.
Zhu Ning pretended not to see her expression. Based on her limited experience, if continuous Psychic Contamination was ineffective, next the Contamination Zone would try every means to kill you. Xu Mei was probably pondering how to make her move while looking at her.
There were only the two of them in the treatment room. Zhu Ning had weapons on her. She didn't think Xu Mei would be her match. But she wasn't quite clear what Xu Mei would do. After all, everything about this place was eerie.
Which one was the doctor who wrote the Grave Post? There were four treatment rooms here. He didn't reveal his identity at all. Was he the owner of Little White Rabbit Dental? Or just an assistant doctor working here?
What exactly happened at this dental clinic? How was he contaminated?
The system asked Zhu Ning to resolve the dentist's inner conflict. She didn't even know which dentist should be her target.
Unlike Zhu Ning's passive resistance, doctors in other treatment rooms were all working diligently. The soundproofing wasn't that good. Zhu Ning could hear intermittent drill sounds and screams from next door.
This Contamination Zone must be very ancient. The office computer was styled from Zhu Ning's era, completely out of place with current technological development. It didn't even look as high-tech as the one in her Hive home.
The computer required a login password. Zhu Ning tried several but all failed. This Contamination Zone's level was very high. It seemed to provide very few clues, trying its best to hide its weaknesses.
Zhu Ning opened the office desk drawer. It was crammed full of file folders. If she read through all these stacks of materials, she'd probably spend her whole life here.
Zhu Ning casually flipped through them. They were all medical records. She pulled out one medical record. The writing on it was completely incomprehensible to her. How did wasteland world doctors also write like garbled code?
But she could understand the date. The signature date was New Calendar Year 20, January 3.
Had she found another super-ancient Contamination Zone? It was actually a case from sixty years ago. However, this could only prove the dental clinic had been open for at least sixty years. It couldn't prove it was contaminated sixty years ago. The specific contamination time was hard to determine.
She looked at several more. This stack of cases was arranged in chronological order. The older ones were at the bottom, the newer ones on top. The topmost medical record was... recent?
New Calendar Year 80, Month X, Day X.
The medical record showed that this dental clinic—no, to be precise, this treatment room—the last patient it served was today. It was still operating today?
The Ant Nest hadn't been sealed. There was no federal cordon here either. Theoretically, as long as humans wanted to enter, they could come in directly.
Such an eerie dental clinic, and people would still come for treatment? So that patient just now wasn't actually a Contaminant, but a real human?
Zhu Ning sorted out her thoughts. Previously, the humans she encountered in Contamination Zones were very NPC-like. For example, the staff and customers at the hotpot restaurant. Some people should have died at the hotpot restaurant, then been infected and assimilated by the Source of Contamination.
But this dental clinic was strange. Because it wasn't sealed, this place could be freely entered and exited. People would constantly come in, and new people would be contaminated.
What would happen to ordinary people when contaminated? Most people wouldn't become Sources of Contamination, only Contaminants.
Ordinary people becoming Contaminants were also sufficiently ordinary. They didn't have such strong resentment. They just lived like walking corpses.
But in this ultra-high-pressure wasteland world, even without contamination, it was easy to be like walking corpses.
People in the slums couldn't afford medical care. When their teeth hurt, they thought of a mysterious dental clinic in the Ant Nest, then inexplicably walked in and inexplicably received treatment.
The Contamination Zone had completely integrated into the real world. People came in to become patients. Could people also come in to become doctors or medical staff?
Assuming the dental clinic could operate on its own, could people come to apply for jobs? Unemployed nurses couldn't find work, but this society required people to have a job.
She thought there seemed to be a dental clinic in the complex, so she came in with a try-it-and-see attitude, thus becoming a formal dental clinic nurse.
So they wouldn't be surprised to see Zhu Ning. They just treated her as a new doctor.
Haaah—
Zhu Ning shuddered. A faint breathing sound suddenly rang in her ear. She had been too absorbed in reading medical records and hadn't kept an eye on Xu Mei for a moment. She felt Xu Mei was breathing right by her ear.
Still that strange frequency, completely different from a normal person's frequency. On the computer screen, she saw Xu Mei's shadow. Her face was right next to Zhu Ning's face.
Xu Mei was still smiling. The arc hadn't deviated one bit. She had always maintained the same posture. Now her face was pressed against Zhu Ning's helmet, intimate as sisters.
"Doctor?" Xu Mei called her.
[Sanity decreased by 3%] The system was alerting her again.
Zhu Ning's body stiffened. She had already put one hand on her gun. She clearly had sufficient firepower, possessed multiple talents, and had danger premonition. If there was danger, she would definitely be able to react thirty seconds in advance.
But this time, she couldn't completely guarantee she was calm, because sanity was visibly decreasing.
She didn't really want to shoot. After entering a Contamination Zone, shooting was equivalent to declaring war. She knew too little about the dental clinic. She hadn't even found the Source of Contamination yet. Rashly provoking it would definitely result in Zhu Ning's death.
Moreover, as sanity continued to drop, Zhu Ning was starting to waver. When sanity dropped to 50%, she might be unable to control her mental state.
She didn't have much time left. She'd better get out of this cursed place early.
"What is it?" Zhu Ning asked as calmly as possible.
"Doctor has something growing on her neck," Xu Mei said with a smile.
Something growing? Zhu Ning instinctively touched her neck. Because Xu Mei was on her right side, she touched her left side. She felt a protrusion, a very hard foreign object. The texture was very strange. What was this thing?
Xu Mei: "Want to go take a look? This will scare patients. The restroom is at the end of the corridor."
There was no mirror in the treatment room. Zhu Ning stood up. "I'll go take a look. Call me if there's a patient."
At this moment, she still hadn't forgotten her identity. Zhu Ning had already stood up, but Xu Mei still maintained her bent-over posture, the same motion without moving. She faced the screen-off computer and said with a smile, "Okay."
Who exactly was Xu Mei talking to?
Zhu Ning was too lazy to look at her anymore. She walked out of the treatment room. The doors of the other three treatment rooms were all closed. Work sounds still came from inside. A male dentist was inquiring about a patient's condition.
At least now she didn't have to stay in the same space with Xu Mei. She could take the opportunity to observe the structure of this dental clinic. Maybe she could find other clues.
There really was a restroom at the end of the corridor. Zhu Ning planned to first see what exactly had grown on her.
The restroom was divided into male and female. Zhu Ning went to the women's restroom. There were only two stalls inside. She quickly checked—no one was inside.
Zhu Ning locked the restroom door. After confirming it was safe now, she looked at her neck in the mirror. Then she froze.
A... tooth was growing on her neck? To be precise, it had grown on her protective suit. A molar was growing on it, even with pink gums.
In that instant, her first reaction was to want to take off the protective suit and throw it away.
No wonder Prometheus upgraded her protective suit. This time her protective suit was very close to metal. If it were the relatively soft fabric from before, would this tooth have taken root in her skin?
It hadn't touched her skin, but it was still terrifying enough. How did a tooth grow on the protective suit?
If Zhu Ning continued staying here, she would definitely be assimilated by the Contamination Zone. She wouldn't end up covered in teeth, would she?
Zhu Ning tried to pull it out. Couldn't pull it out at all. Just like how humans couldn't pull out a tooth with bare hands. She needed professional tooth extraction tools. Should she go to the treatment room later to extract her own tooth?
She imagined that scene. Herself holding pliers to pull out a tooth growing on her neck. If the extraction didn't go smoothly, she'd need to first cut open the gums, break the tooth, then pull it out. After extraction, would this place bleed?
Would she feel pain? How should the gums be handled? Clearly she hadn't started extracting yet, but just imagining this scene, she already started feeling contaminated.
[Sanity decreased by 5%]
Her sanity was decreasing faster and faster. Since entering, it had already decreased by 26%.
Calm down, Zhu Ning. Calm down. Don't panic.
She looked at the mirror. Her reflection in the mirror still wore a black helmet. This was a B-level Contamination Zone. She came in alone.
The difficulty was very high. She must be mentally prepared for this. It was just a tooth. A bit disgusting, but currently there were no signs of breaking through the protective suit.
The protective suit was seamless. As long as she always ensured the protective suit remained sealed, she should be fine.
Lynx could enter S-level Contamination Zones alone. Zhu Ning could do it too. She remembered her data collection report. She could enter A-level Contamination Zones and recover stably afterward.
No need to make a fuss. This was very normal. She constantly gave herself psychological suggestions.
Whoooosh—
Suddenly, a toilet flushing sound came from behind Zhu Ning. Someone was in the restroom?
Zhu Ning stiffened. It felt very eerie. She had clearly checked before entering. No one was here. And she had locked the restroom door. Both stalls should be empty.
Zhu Ning glanced through the mirror. One stall door showed red, the other stall was green, meaning someone was using the toilet.
She had just flushed. When did that person come in? Why didn't Zhu Ning know?
Or had she been in the stall all along, but Zhu Ning hadn't seen her just now?
"Tooth Fairy..." Someone started talking. It was a little girl's voice. Judging from the voice, she might only be five or six years old.
There was a child here? Having children at a dental clinic was too common, but appearing here seemed very abnormal.
Zhu Ning looked through the mirror toward the bottom of the door. The restroom door wasn't fully enclosed. You could see the feet of the person inside from below.
She saw a pair of pink bow-tie shoes, paired with white socks with ruffled edges. The other party sat on an unsuitable toilet. Both feet were suspended in the air, currently swinging back and forth.
"Tooth Fairy, oh Tooth Fairy," the little girl's innocent voice was very devout. "I offer my tooth to you. Can you grant me one wish?"
Author's Note:
Modified the sanity description a bit.
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