Chapter 76-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World

Chapter 76 Black Dental Clinic-7

Xu Mei's neck was broken, connected only by a thin layer of skin. Sharp bone fragments jutted upward like an open mouth filled with fangs.

Zhu Ning's first instinct was to grab her gun. She had been secretly wary of Xu Mei all along, thinking her reflexes were fast enough, but she hadn't expected this Contamination Zone to be even more bizarre than she'd imagined.

Bang bang bang!

After three gunshots, any normal human would have been blown apart, and even the Contaminants she'd encountered before would have been injured.

But the bullets didn't penetrate her. Xu Mei's skin seemed to have formed a hard armor. Three bullets had been fired—two fell to the ground, and one was embedded near her heart. Such powerful impact had only broken through the surface layer of skin.

Bullets were useless against her. Xu Mei was like an abnormally hard tooth.

This was extremely abnormal. Zhu Ning immediately realized this—violence couldn't solve this Contamination Zone.

After being shot, Xu Mei dazedly lowered her head. Because her neck was broken, rather than lowering her head, it was more like her severed head hanging against her chest, taking a deep look at her own torso.

She seemed to be adapting to this perspective. Normal people wouldn't see their own chest from this angle. She was studying the bullet in her chest.

Zhu Ning seized the opportunity to push open the examination room door and run toward the corridor. The dentist next door emerged slowly from his room, hands covered in blood, holding an electric drill.

Zhu Ning glanced into the examination room as she passed. The patients strapped to the chairs were vomiting, spewing out handfuls of teeth like drunk people throwing up.

The clattering sound of teeth falling, the buzzing of the dentist's electric drill, the footsteps of Xu Mei behind her.

"Tooth Fairy, oh Tooth Fairy, if I offer you my teeth, will you grant me one wish?" This was the devout prayer of a little girl.

The Contamination Zone had revealed its true face and begun hunting her.

Zhu Ning didn't look back. She sprinted toward the door leading to the fifth floor—no keyhole, no key, no gap. Zhu Ning placed her hand on it.

[No valid lock detected. Unable to use item Universal Key]

Zhu Ning: "...Damn it!"

The Universal Key was still a key. No matter how universal, it had to recognize something as a door first. If this wasn't a door, then what was it?

The footsteps behind her grew closer. Those indescribable things were approaching. Zhu Ning didn't even look back and continued running downward.

Doctors and nurses on the third and second floors poked their heads out, their white coats covered in blood. Zhu Ning vaulted over the staircase railing.

The GeneBoost was useful. Zhu Ning was much faster than normal humans. She could put distance between herself and those things behind her, but this distance wasn't enough to save her life. She was still completely in the dark about this Contamination Zone and didn't even know where to run.

The only entrance to the dental clinic was the main door. Zhu Ning had entered through it, so her escape plan was to head for the main door.

She ran all the way to the break room. Xu Mei and the dentists were heading this way. Logically, she should have pulled open the door and left immediately, but at this critical moment, she stopped.

Zhu Ning saw the mirror. The huge Appearance Mirror had a spider-web crack in the upper right corner. The crack had grown larger, spreading from the upper right corner into an arm-length fissure. Blood was pouring out from inside the mirror.

This place... was beyond her comprehension.

The break room had changed too. When Zhu Ning first came in, there was only a row of white coats. Now there were several sets of casual clothes hanging—probably the doctors' personal clothing.

Zhu Ning realized something. She had missed a clue. The most valuable place should have been the break room.

All doctors would change out of their clothes here when entering the dental clinic, putting their personal belongings in lockers before going to work. Regular medical staff all had their own designated lockers.

The person who posted the dead post was a dentist. His personal belongings should be here too.

Zhu Ning quickly locked the break room door. There were no cabinets or heavy objects to barricade it, so she could only take down a coat hanger to wedge against the door. It didn't look very useful, but it was better than nothing.

Zhu Ning began quickly searching through the medical staff's personal belongings. She found a woman's coat with a key inside, marked (34, 12)—this was Xu Mei's house key.

Zhu Ning searched through several more coats. They all seemed to live in The Ant Nest. The keys looked identical, with room numbers engraved in the same font. Were these issued uniformly?

Nine keys in total. The closest one was Xu Mei's; the farthest was in Building 7.

Suddenly, Zhu Ning's hand froze mid-search. Coat pockets usually weren't very deep—a normal-sized pocket could hold two hands at most.

Zhu Ning's fingers touched something cold and soft, like human fingers. Had she touched a handful of fingers?

Zhu Ning froze. That hand moved instead, gripping Zhu Ning's hand in reverse. Something... was holding her.

The fingers tried to burrow into her palm, cold as ice, like a dead person's hand.

What Zhu Ning was holding was a men's leather jacket, already a bit worn, with varying degrees of wear on the cuffs and collar. Something was clearly moving inside the pocket. There was another hand in there.

[Sanity decreased by 1%]

Zhu Ning took a deep breath. She didn't panic but slowly withdrew her hand. She didn't pull out another hand—instead, she pulled out a black medicine box.

Was what just happened a hallucination? Or was something really shaking hands with her?

The medicine box had no writing on it. It was a square, flat box, very angular, looking much like a matchbox. Could this be that Black Dream thing?

The footsteps grew closer. She could feel someone stopping at the door. Xu Mei's sharp nails were scratching at the door. Zhu Ning had trapped herself in a cage—there wasn't even an escape route here.

She had just proven that firearms were ineffective against Xu Mei. Maybe the Pigman's Guillotine would be more useful, but the Pigman's Guillotine was C-rank. Could it handle a B-rank Contaminant?

She couldn't panic now. She looked up at the locker where she'd found the black jacket. There was a yellowed label on it, marking whose locker it was, with a name written on it.

Gao Zijian—this was the owner of the black leather jacket.

The contents of the locker were simple: a leather jacket and a book. The cover read "Tooth Fairy."

A fairy tale book? It wasn't unusual to have such books in a dental clinic. After all, many children needed to be calmed down and could read while waiting. But Zhu Ning thought of the little girl in the bathroom.

Bzzzz—

The dentists outside were already drilling. They were about to break through the door. Zhu Ning quickly flipped through the entire book. It had clearly been read frequently—the pages were worn and tattered.

The illustrations inside were childlike. Books for children were eighty percent pictures with hardly any dialogue.

In the book, a little girl wore a pink dress. One of her teeth was about to fall out, wobbling in her mouth. The comic exaggerated it, drawing several lines around the tooth to show how loose it was. The little girl was crying hysterically, tears flowing like a faucet.

Her mother took her to the dentist. The little girl lay in the chair clutching a stuffed rabbit while the dentist pulled out her tooth and waved the freshly extracted bad tooth in front of her. The little girl was scared to tears.

The dentist gave her a black candy, square-shaped and perfectly angular. After eating the candy, she stopped crying.

Her mother comforted her, saying losing teeth was a good thing, and told her to hide the tooth under her pillow. That way, the Tooth Fairy could grant her one wish—any wish at all.

The little girl lay on her pink princess bed, placed the tooth under her pillow, and devoutly made a wish to the Tooth Fairy. She wished she could come back to life. The Tooth Fairy granted her wish.

On the last page, a small hand reached out from a cartoon grave, and then the little girl appeared beside the tombstone with a happy smile.

"I'm alive again. Thank you, Tooth Fairy," the little girl said.

So the little girl was dead when she first appeared?

The images were all cartoonish, brightly colored, with a lively tone, but they sent chills down one's spine. It had the feel of adult gothic fairy tales—definitely not meant for normal children. Was this the wish of the little girl in the bathroom?

This leather jacket clearly belonged to a man. What was his relationship with that little girl?

Zhu Ning took the fairy tale book and medicine box, preparing to find a safer place to study them.

Outside, a pile of Contaminants was ready to kill her. The break room door had been pried open a crack, and seven or eight arms were reaching through. The gap was filled with hands.

This door could hold for five more seconds at most. Zhu Ning had nowhere to go.

"Doctor," Xu Mei's voice came through, "where are you, doctor?"

Bang! The next second, the door was forced open. Xu Mei was on all fours like a spider, her neck aimed at the break room.

Teeth had grown inside her neck, along with another tongue. The long tongue licked her own throat. Xu Mei was ready to hunt. Her limbs were excited, claws scratching the ground like a feline.

But she paused. The break room was empty. Not a single person inside.

Everything had been rummaged through. Everyone's personal belongings were scattered everywhere. The mirror was bleeding on its own.

Suddenly, Xu Mei noticed movement near the white coats hanging in the back, as if someone had shifted beside them.

Xu Mei slowly approached like a monster patrolling its territory. The cross-section of her broken neck looked utterly horrifying.

She had been heading for the white coats, but she passed by the mirror and saw her own reflection.

Xu Mei was quickly captivated by her own reflection. In the mirror, she wore a pink nurse's uniform, on all fours, head hanging down, eyes inverted, her open neck forming another mouth.

Now she had two mouths. She moved closer to the mirror. The hot breath from her exhalation formed a patch of white fog on the glass. This new mouth could actually breathe out warm air.

Xu Mei was utterly fascinated, gazing deeply at herself in the mirror, unable to look away, not noticing something slowly moving behind her.

Zhu Ning had used a System item, consuming 10 health points for five minutes of invisibility.

Lin Xiaofeng's ability that Song Zhizhang had figured out worked on her as well. Her clothing couldn't be seen, and neither could the fairy tale book and medicine box in her hands.

She could freely control whether anything touching her skin was invisible. Zhu Ning silently thanked Song Zhizhang for his summary, which allowed her to skip the trial-and-error phase and use the item directly.

Several doctors were still guarding the doorway, their electric drills buzzing, making her exit extremely slow.

Zhu Ning held her breath and inched forward, carefully avoiding debris. Wait—something felt wrong with her toes.

The blood flowing from the mirror had reached the floor. She had stepped in it. Careless.

She understood the invisible person's weakness all too well. If she moved her foot now, she would leave a clear bloody footprint on the ground, immediately revealing her position.

Two minutes.

The System panel showed two minutes left before invisibility wore off. Zhu Ning still had three dentists in front of her.

She could only steel herself and move, taking a gamble. While still invisible, even if they saw the bloody footprints, they couldn't immediately figure out where Zhu Ning was. Besides, Contaminants might not be that intelligent. Zhu Ning moved through the dentists in her transparent form. Their breathing was right beside her ears—like Xu Mei, their breathing rhythm was abnormal.

One dentist was too close to her. He wasn't tall—maybe not even 1.6 meters. Zhu Ning was only twenty centimeters away from him. His breathing was even clearer, like someone breathing softly right against your ear. The proximity gave her goosebumps.

Zhu Ning carefully sidled past him. Two bloody footprints were left on the floor. He probably didn't notice and showed no reaction. It seemed Contaminants really weren't that intelligent.

She passed the last dentist and successfully approached the break room door. Just one more meter.

Suddenly, Zhu Ning froze.

A pair of eyes hung down from the break room doorway. A little girl was clinging to the door frame, suspended upside down. Zhu Ning found herself staring directly into her eyes.

This little girl was terrifying no matter how many times she saw her. Zhu Ning imagined her clinging to the ceiling like a spider.

One minute countdown. The System panel was reminding her.

The little girl's eyes were empty. Couldn't she see her? The little girl's bangs hung down. The moment Zhu Ning saw her, she was so startled she stopped. She took a deep breath to regain control of her body, then ducked to avoid the girl's bangs.

Thirty seconds left. The invisibility ability was about to expire. Zhu Ning navigated through the obstacles and stepped out of the break room door.

Click—

The sound of opening the dental clinic's main door was crisp. Xu Mei suddenly turned her head. The dentists all turned their heads in unison. But by then, Zhu Ning had already opened the door.

Run! Zhu Ning started running the instant her invisibility wore off.

The dental clinic corridor looked the same as when she entered—abnormally dark, even more oppressive than before. The floor was covered with yellow teeth.

Walking on them was like walking on a gravel path. She ran to the end of the corridor before looking back. Xu Mei and the dentists hadn't followed.

They just stood at the dental clinic entrance, watching her with sinister expressions, as if seeing her off. They couldn't leave the dental clinic?

No—it was probably because their shift wasn't over yet. They were still in work mode.

Xu Mei really wanted to become a permanent employee. She had to perform well to get this full-time position.

Zhu Ning took a deep breath. She had finally left the eerie dental clinic. This place was the same as where she'd entered—the 35th floor of Building 34. She had entered the dental clinic from here.

But her Employee Wristband and Sub-Brain had no signal. The background still had twitching black lines—the Contamination Zone's background color was still there. This place was still part of the Contamination Zone.

She still couldn't contact the outside world. If she couldn't find the contamination source, she couldn't leave the Contamination Zone.

Her sanity had dropped by 34% total. So far, Zhu Ning hadn't experienced hallucinations, but she felt dizzy.

Her temples throbbed. Her emotions were clearly unstable, with a constant tightness in her chest, as if a heavy stone was pressing down on it.

She needed to resolve this quickly. She planned to study the black medicine box in the emergency stairwell. It seemed to contain liquid medicine—she could hear water sloshing when she shook it gently. Zhu Ning opened the stairwell door and paused.

When she came in, this emergency stairwell was empty. Now there were several scattered people inside. They appeared to be homeless, dirty all over, but instead of holding bottles, they held syringes.

The homeless man had his pants down, a needle still stuck in his thigh. Some had needles in their buttocks, others in their upper arms.

Drug addicts.

The man looked up hazily. He seemed to be in some kind of hallucination, his reactions very slow, wearing a dazed, foolish smile.

When he smiled, he revealed several teeth—black and yellow, some already corroded to half the size of normal teeth.

"Doctor," the man smiled even wider when he saw Zhu Ning, "Doctor!"

Zhu Ning was still wearing a white coat, so in his eyes, she was still a doctor. He grabbed Zhu Ning's foot like clutching at a lifeline. Zhu Ning suppressed her disgust and didn't pull away.

When the homeless man smiled, drool flowed freely, thick saliva hanging from his mouth, about to break off, like a spider's thread. "Doctor, my teeth hurt, give me some medicine, please. My teeth hurt."

Toothache. Zhu Ning frowned at these two words. She had heard them too many times.

"Doctor, my teeth hurt." This phrase kept repeating within this Contamination Zone.

Zhu Ning took out the black medicine box from her white coat pocket and asked calmly, "Is this what you want?"

The homeless man's eyes lit up when he saw it. He tried to lunge at Zhu Ning but tripped on his own pants. The medicine box had no writing on it, but the homeless man recognized it instantly—he must have used it many times.

The dental clinic was probably selling this stuff. Black Dream was likely a hallucinogen.

Drugs were sometimes medicine too. In Zhu Ning's era, some terminal cancer patients took them to ease their suffering.

The Wasteland world probably had them too. Given the wealth gap in the Wasteland world, the upper class didn't care much about the lives of those at the bottom, and drugs were highly profitable, so they were probably even more rampant.

Black Dream had one side effect—rotten teeth. Their teeth would gradually fall out.

Late at night, all Black Dream users would have toothaches. Patients with toothaches needed treatment. They couldn't afford expensive Medical Pods, so they chose to visit dental clinics hidden in the slums.

The dentist might have treated them seriously at first, but later he discovered he was only treating symptoms, not the cause.

Patients would continue to have rotten teeth. They would keep coming back to see him, in an endless cycle, until these patients died or could no longer afford treatment.

His profession became unfulfilling. He could never cure these people. He might have wondered—was there even any point in treating them?

Defectives were at the very bottom of society. After layers of exploitation, their last resort was the dentist. But the dentist didn't become their lifeline, nor did he provide end-of-life care. He discovered this business chain.

As long as Black Dream existed, he could make money. The dentist could stay one level up in the food chain. He could take one more bite. He turned around and started selling Black Dream.

The pitch-black door on the fifth floor that couldn't be opened was probably the medicine room. There had been clues all along—the Black Dream medicine box was two centimeters in length and width, exactly like the door on the fifth floor. The fifth-floor door was just an enlarged medicine box.

The dentist had become a drug dealer, selling Black Dream as a painkiller.

That little girl was most likely his patient. She was probably someone living at the bottom of the slums—no parents, no money. She had reached the age of losing baby teeth, and her teeth hurt.

She might have come for treatment initially just for a simple toothache, but the dentist prescribed her Black Dream. "Take this and your teeth won't hurt anymore."

Soon the little girl developed side effects. She still had no choice and came back to see the dentist. The dentist prescribed her more "painkillers."

The little girl's ending Zhu Ning saw—she died and became part of the Contamination Zone.

The dentist had been repeatedly reading the fairy tale "Tooth Fairy." Why? Guilt over the little girl?

No—why couldn't it be admiration? He looked at the fairy tale book like admiring his own handiwork, until he'd worn the book to tatters.

Every time he changed clothes for work and saw the fairy tale book, he would think of that little girl. When one's bottom line is repeatedly broken, it stops being a stain and becomes a medal of spiritual commendation.

Perhaps in the dentist's mind, he was liberating these patients. He was a kind and upright person—he had given them happiness.

The dentist had even... granted the little girl's wish. The little girl praying in the bathroom had truly been "resurrected."

Zhu Ning had never thought the contamination sources in the Contamination Zones she'd entered were particularly evil. The overworked Fish-Man was crushed by the last straw. Wang Ming from the hotpot restaurant was a victim of sustained mental contamination. Huang Yaruo was forced to become the mother of test subjects. The mermaid was a victim of performance. Lin Xiaofeng had been raised as an invisible person from early on.

They were all ordinary people, just trapped in their own resentments and unable to let go. But were there contamination sources who were simply born bad?

People who, even before becoming contamination sources, lacked the emotions humans should have—naturally emotionally detached. What would happen if such a person became a contamination source?

He wouldn't be afraid even knowing there were people inside his teeth. He would treat tooth-people as a matter of course, even treating them as patients.

He wouldn't panic upon discovering he was contaminated. To him, being a contamination source or being human made no difference.

He would be better suited to being a contamination source than normal people. He wouldn't close himself off. Instead, he would open up the Contamination Zone and draw more people in—like Xu Mei. He had provided Xu Mei with a job.

Zhu Ning felt she had taken the wrong path from the very beginning. Her thinking had been wrong.

Since entering the dental clinic, she had been constantly frightened. The other party seemed to enjoy watching Zhu Ning's sanity drop. He was anticipating the moment her sanity collapsed.

Someone like him would definitely be secretly observing her. He might have already appeared, but Zhu Ning hadn't noticed at all.

She had been distracted by trivial details. She noticed Xu Mei, noticed the tooth-people in the patients' mouths, noticed the little girl in the bathroom, noticed the mirror in the break room.

But she hadn't noticed the others—that... dentist.

Zhu Ning remembered the adjacent examination room. There had always been a male doctor there. She had even pushed the door open to look—the dentist's hands were covered in blood, wearing a mask, watching her coldly.

When Xu Mei chased her to the break room, Zhu Ning had passed by a short dentist. She had heard his breathing then. She had been too tense while moving through the Contaminants. Now that she was temporarily safe, she could recall more details. He had a name tag on his chest that read Gao Zijian. Was it him?

He had hidden among the many dentists, making him hard to notice at first.

Thinking back, Gao Zijian's breathing rate was different from the other Contaminants. Xu Mei and the other doctors had very low breathing rates. Taking Xu Mei as an example, her breathing rate was very strange—slower than normal people.

But that dentist's breathing rate was clearly faster—a normal person's speed. He might have noticed Zhu Ning's bloody footprints at the time, but he let her leave.

Zhu Ning looked back at the dental clinic—the place she had just spent health points to escape from. The monsters inside couldn't be dealt with using firearms. They were more terrifying than anything she had encountered before.

The black dental clinic was hidden deep in the corridor. No one was at the entrance anymore. The dentist was still waiting for her to return.

Zhu Ning could imagine him sitting there at ease, like a cat waiting for a mouse.

He knew Zhu Ning would definitely go back.

To kill the contamination source, Zhu Ning had to go back.

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