Chapter 102-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 102 The Forsaken Village (VI)
Suddenly, someone pressed a key on the electronic keyboard. That was the first note—then a pair of hands settled onto the keys, and a melody drifted out.
Zhu Ning had passed a house earlier with an old electronic keyboard inside. Now someone had started playing.
Both the Garrison Troops and the Cleaners fell silent, holding their breath in unison.
The only sound in the entire forsaken village was that keyboard. Whatever piece was being played was impossible to identify—it was a beginner practicing, clumsy and halting, without any coherent melody.
It was deeply wrong. These villagers hadn't existed moments ago, and now they'd suddenly appeared—while the sunset above remained frozen, staining the village backdrop like blood.
The houses glowed with dim light. It wasn't even dark yet, but under the combined effect of the sunset and the lamplight, the village was strangely bright—and yet it made people's skin crawl.
In the glow of the setting sun, every house had its lights on, and the villagers were all staring at you. Even if they weren't ghosts or Contaminants—even if they were perfectly ordinary living people—having this many eyes fixed on you all at once triggered an instinctive unease.
A human gaze has weight. Being watched feels terrible.
Zhu Ning studied the villagers. They all stood close to their windows, noses nearly pressed against the glass, their breath fogging the panes in small white clouds.
They could produce warm breath. Their blood was warm. Their breathing had temperature.
None of the villagers had moved yet, but there was a creeping sense that, given enough time, they would slowly seep out through the windows.
They were almost like… shadows flowing out of the walls.
The row of houses was very dark, as if scorched by smoke. Scorch marks ran along the walls, and something had begun to appear in the air.
Zhu Ning recognized it immediately—those gray-black threads, like the background texture of a Contamination Zone. The threads were twitching faintly now.
In the fading light of dusk, the twitching threads weren't very visible, looking almost like a swarm of insects in the air.
The Contamination Zone had fully formed.
Ding—
[Side Quest unlocked: The Forsaken Village. Objective: successfully purify this Contamination Zone and uncover the secret of the village's abandonment. Current purification progress: 0%. Keep up the good work.]
The System's voice was utterly mechanical—heartless, given the circumstances.
Since learning she was a test subject, this was the first time the System had issued her a mission. Had it detected the Contamination Zone?
Data began appearing inside Zhu Ning's helmet. Their clocks had all failed, but the basic contamination density sensor still worked. The reading inside her helmet showed 220%—by any measure, an A-Level Contamination Zone.
It wasn't just Zhu Ning—everyone's helmet displays were showing the contamination density. Out here beyond the wall, the helmet's internal system apparently hadn't identified it as a Contamination Zone and hadn't issued an area alert.
Jin Tao blinked. A bead of cold sweat ran down his forehead. "A Contamination Zone?"
He said it again, disbelieving. "We walked into a Contamination Zone?"
Cleaners always entered after the Demon Hunters had finished their work, but they'd been in Contamination Zones often enough to know: you couldn't get out until you found the Source of Contamination.
Jiang Ping could barely suppress his amusement. "So I told you—you're lost."
In that instant, Zhu Ning couldn't decide which was more terrifying: Jiang Ping, or the watching villagers all around them.
Jiang Ping's voice formed a sharp contrast with Jin Tao's panic. Jin Tao was already at the edge of losing control, and he couldn't take any more provocation. "I'll blow your head off!"
Jiang Ping faced the gun barrel without a flicker of anger. "Think about it—what do I gain from leading you here if I can't get out myself?"
Jin Tao had no evidence of Jiang Ping's motive. Jiang Ping said calmly: "If you all die here and I go back alone, how do I write the incident report? How do I explain your deaths?"
Jiang Ping reached up and tapped the side of his head—but since he was wearing a helmet, his hand only knocked against the strange blue dome. "Use your brain."
Whether Jiang Ping had low emotional intelligence or had simply been out here too long to function normally, his words were perfectly reasonable yet came out sounding like provocation. No wonder Jin Tao had it in for him. That tone of voice—it was almost antisocial.
"Ignore him. Don't shoot," Zhu Ning told Jin Tao.
Inside a Contamination Zone, you didn't make reckless moves before finding the Source of Contamination—doing so would only drive it deeper into hiding.
Jin Tao gritted his teeth and lowered his gun. Once he did, the other Cleaners stood down too. Jiang Ping shrugged. "So your brains do work."
"Jiang Ping!" One of the Garrison soldiers snapped at him—probably their squad leader. "Enough."
So the Garrison Troops weren't all of one mind. Only Jiang Ping was strange. Zhu Ning asked: "What's your protocol when you enter a Contamination Zone?"
The Garrison Troops patrolled regularly—they must have had procedures for encountering Contamination Zones.
Jiang Ping smiled. "Leave it to fate. They won't come to rescue us."
Zhu Ning went quiet.
Every word Fan Minghua had ever said was true. He'd told them to relax—the capable ones would survive, the incapable ones would die. Simple as that.
The environment beyond the wall was too complex. If a patrol soldier accidentally wandered into a Contamination Zone, no action would be taken on their behalf.
Though now Zhu Ning thought she understood Jiang Ping a little better. He might have been a normal person when he first started this job—but this kind of work environment made it hard for anyone to stay normal. Your commanding officers wouldn't even come to rescue you.
Whatever happened, you had to solve it yourself. Every rescue operation was too costly to be worth it.
Jiang Ping had a self-destructive streak. That was why he liked to provoke people, liked to stir up trouble, liked chaos.
He was like an uncontrollable live wire—the other two Garrison soldiers seemed completely unable to manage him. Someone like that in a team was a walking time bomb.
The Garrison squad leader was named Cui Kai. After reprimanding Jiang Ping, he turned to Jin Tao: "Leave it to us. We'll find the Source of Contamination. We said we'd lead you out, and we will."
Cui Kai's attitude put Zhu Ning slightly at ease. It seemed only Jiang Ping among the Garrison Troops was truly off.
If the Garrison frequently scouted beyond the wall, they'd have encountered Contamination Zones before and would know what they were doing.
Jiang Ping scoffed: "Don't bother—they don't trust us anyway."
Zhu Ning deliberately ignored him, refusing to take the bait. "Let's split up. More efficient that way."
Cui Kai had no objection. More hands were always better.
Zhu Ning told Jin Tao: "Your group stays here and rests. We'll handle finding the Source of Contamination. I'll get you out. Is that alright?"
Jin Tao frowned. "You can find the Source of Contamination?"
Zhu Ning wasn't sure she could, but right now she had to give them something to hold onto. "I've done it twice before."
Once in the sewer with the fish-men, once at the mechanical aquarium. There was footage on the Sanitation Center's internal network—proof enough.
Zhu Ning had a strong foundation. She'd been recruited by the Demon Hunters before. She was well-suited to tracking down the Source of Contamination.
Jiang Ping watched Zhu Ning with undisguised interest. He found her fascinating.
Jin Tao felt awkward about letting Zhu Ning's team take the risk. They were all the same rank—she had no obligation to protect them. And the forsaken village looked terrifying, with dozens of eyes still watching from all sides.
"Let me come with you," Jin Tao said.
"No need." Zhu Ning declined immediately. "You have something more important to do."
Jin Tao blinked. Zhu Ning's voice was completely certain. "You need to stay and watch over the group. Everyone's sanity is low right now. Find a way to keep them stable—use Sanity Healing Agents if you have to. You need to guide them. Keep them from losing it."
A group losing their minds was practically handing the Contaminants a free meal.
Jin Tao started to protest. Zhu Ning said calmly: "The Sanitation Center's tradition is to value talent. Not to waste a single person."
That was something she'd inherited from her colleagues—Dr. Pei, Fang Ying, and the coaches she'd met during training. They all believed that cultivating any talent was hard work. Even a Cleaner, looked down on by the Demon Hunters, was one less person when they died.
They had to respect talent. They had to respect life.
"Protect them," Zhu Ning said.
Jin Tao understood what she meant. He nodded. "You be careful too."
Cui Kai took Jiang Ping and the other Garrison soldier to search for the source of the keyboard playing. Before leaving, Cui Kai exchanged channel numbers with Zhu Ning—if necessary, the two teams would stay in contact. Assuming there was a signal.
After Cui Kai left, Zhu Ning still hadn't moved. If she didn't move, neither did Xu Meng or Li Nianchuan.
She looked up at the sunset. No need to dig out the helmet footage—she could compare it directly in her memory. The sunset still hadn't shifted. Identical to before.
They had been trapped in dusk this entire time.
Zhu Ning was learning how to coexist with the System. She had to learn to master it—otherwise she'd eventually become its puppet. Right now the relationship between her and the System was delicate. She couldn't yet separate it from her mind, and she still needed to use its abilities, but she had to be careful not to be consumed by it.
It was like making a deal with a devil. It was a higher-dimensional entity. She knew the deal would eventually demand a price—but for now, she had to use it.
The more she used it, the greater the future cost—unless she could one day fully master it.
Since that day, this was the first time she'd heard the System prompt her. It felt a little different from before. Previously she'd only thought of it as a tool that issued missions. Now she knew the System was symbiotic with her—a parasite living inside her would naturally want its host to survive.
Zhu Ning had thought carefully about how the System worked. It was a precision mechanical instrument grafted onto a Contaminant—one that was probably S-rank or above. After each mission, the System would extract traits from the Contamination Zone and distill them into items or so-called abilities for Zhu Ning to use.
The process was something like devouring an opponent's power and absorbing it.
And sometimes, the mission details the System issued contained hints. Now that she knew she was a test subject, this logic was easy to follow: the Contaminant living inside her head had the ability to foresee.
It could predict certain outcomes, thereby improving Zhu Ning's odds of survival.
Devouring and foreseeing. She still didn't know the origin of the Contaminant inside her, but it had to possess both abilities for the System to function.
The System's current hint: find the secret of the village's abandonment. Was that the key to getting out?
This was a Contamination Zone. Every Contamination Zone had a solution.
Zhu Ning began to think. In an abnormal place, you had to do normal things—things that followed the logic of the Contamination Zone.
What do you do when you're lost in a village?
You knock on a door and ask for directions.
The nearest house had an old woman standing at the window. She wore a white sweater gone yellow with age, very worn. But her appearance was neat—white sweater on top, black wool skirt below, silver hair pinned up at the back of her head.
Like the others, she stood close to the window, nose nearly touching the glass, her breath fogging it with each exhale.
The villagers' warm breath always made you feel they were still alive.
Knock knock—
Zhu Ning rapped on the window. "Hello."
The old woman didn't speak and didn't move—but her eyes shifted. Zhu Ning's hand on the window was like fish food dropped into a tank, and the old woman's eyes were the goldfish inside, instinctively following the food.
The goldfish saw the food and moved toward it on reflex.
The old woman had only moved her eyes—a tiny motion—yet it made Zhu Ning's scalp prickle.
"Hello, we're lost," Zhu Ning said, steeling herself. Inside a Contamination Zone, you had to choose an identity for yourself. This time, Zhu Ning chose: lost traveler from out of town.
Creak—
The old wooden door swung open. It was ancient and worn, with a damaged screen door behind it. Through the gap came a faint, warm amber glow.
Was this an invitation to come in?
Zhu Ning's hand rested on the doorframe. She wasn't alone this time—Xu Meng and Li Nianchuan were with her—but somehow they didn't make her feel any safer.
She was still frightened. Because the old woman hadn't moved at all. She remained standing by the window in exactly the same posture, her eyes tracking Zhu Ning's movements.
As if Zhu Ning were food. As if the eyes could break free of their physical limits, crawl out of their sockets, leaving wet trails behind them, the eyeballs multiplying and expanding across Zhu Ning's body until they devoured her entirely.
Zhu Ning had once heard the phrase: killing with a look. This old woman's eyes seemed genuinely capable of it.
Zhu Ning took a deep breath. "I'm coming in?"
Inside a Contamination Zone, choose your identity—then act in accordance with that identity's logic.
The old woman smiled. Her face was deeply lined, and when she smiled she showed yellowed teeth.
Zhu Ning pushed the door open and stepped carefully inside. Li Nianchuan and Xu Meng followed. Her movements were cautious, and her figure quickly disappeared from view. Once all three had entered, the old wooden door creaked shut behind them.
Jin Tao had been watching from outside, too worried about Zhu Ning to blink.
The house had its lights on, and the door was only half a meter from the window. From outside, you should have been able to see inside clearly—once Zhu Ning and the others walked in, he should have been able to keep watching them through the window.
But Jin Tao waited and waited, and never saw Zhu Ning's shadow inside the room. Hadn't they just gone in?
Where had they gone? How had they completely vanished?
Jin Tao's gaze followed where Zhu Ning had been. The old woman was still standing by the window. After Zhu Ning entered, her eyes shifted again—rotating to the very limit of what human eyes could do.
Crack—
The eyeballs rotated completely. The black pupils spun to the back. The twisted eyeballs tore the blood vessels connecting them to their sockets.
Jin Tao's body went rigid. All he could see were two bloody spheres. Streams of blood poured down from the old woman's eye sockets.
She still wore that bone-chilling smile at the corner of her mouth—and Zhu Ning, who had entered her house, had vanished as completely as if she'd evaporated.
Author's Note:
When I have time I'll make it up to you all with a 20,000-character bonus update!
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