Chapter 81-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 81 Black Dental Clinic (Twelve)
District 103, Sanitation Center Technology Department.
They were the entire Sanitation Center's rear support—measuring contamination levels in various Contamination Zones, evaluating mission grades, including priority ratings. One piece of data today was clearly very abnormal.
The mission was named E8097, located in The Ant Nest, ranked 1,700th, originally scheduled to wait three years.
Now this mission's priority ranking was continuously climbing. 1689, 1600, 1500...
The technician hadn't paid attention at first. When the danger level kept rising and the priority reached 1500, he finally couldn't sit still.
"Did I see that wrong?" The technician rubbed his eyes and called his colleague over. "Is this glitching?"
He couldn't be blamed—the increase was too exaggerated. An unprecedented rate, shooting up at a hundred per second. During their conversation, the mission priority was jumping levels.
"Rank 1300, 1200, 900..."
Technician: "What's going on? Hasn't The Ant Nest always been fine?"
The technician looked up past registration records. The Ant Nest was a slum. That whole area had heavy metal contamination, but correspondingly had sparse population. This place had been registered for three years. The Sanitation Center had only placed data monitoring instruments there, letting the Technology Department monitor in real-time, then never bothered with it again.
After all, compared to other Contamination Zones, The Ant Nest really didn't seem very dangerous. The contamination concentration hadn't increased much in three years.
"Let me see." Another technician's hands flew across the keyboard. "Contamination concentration 170%. Counts as a B-rank Contamination Zone."
"The contamination concentration hasn't changed much compared to previous tests. Why is the mission priority jumping so fast?"
The technician thought there was another error. They were most afraid of errors now. He re-tested, and it was still the same data. The data wasn't wrong. B-rank Contamination Zone. Definitely not as dangerous as the Mechanical Aquarium last time. The Mechanical Aquarium's priority processing rank was 15th.
"The Contamination Zone activity isn't high either," the technician said puzzledly. "And the activity is decreasing. Does that mean someone killed the contamination source?"
"There's no official mission at The Ant Nest from the Center today."
That meant whoever eliminated the contamination source was probably external personnel—civilian Demon Hunters.
This whole set of data was very strange. B-rank Contamination Zone, far from the bustling city center, way out in the slums. The Contamination Zone's internal activity was very low. Logically, having just killed the contamination source, they should be doing cleanup work. Why was the danger level rising instead?
What trouble had they encountered after leveling the Contamination Zone? If they encountered trouble, did that mean the Contamination Spores were uncollected?
"Rank 500, 400, 100, 30... What's going on?" The technician had never encountered this situation in his career.
Even if Contamination Spores were uncollected, it wouldn't be this exaggerated, right? As long as the Sanitation Center dispatched a Cleaner team and arrived at the scene within twenty minutes, they could control the situation—unless it was a densely populated area.
The other one pondered for a moment. "It should be Prometheus. Big data algorithm."
Prometheus could collect more data and information than the technicians. It did have the authority to raise a mission's priority. Now The Ant Nest's priority had reached 19th.
The priority had entered the top 20. As technicians, they knew what this number meant. In other words, in the AI Prometheus's view, if The Ant Nest's problem wasn't resolved, the entire District 103 might fall.
"Quick!" the technician said. "Contact Director Lu."
They had to notify Lu Qiqin. This was clearly not a problem two junior employees could solve. If handled poorly, they'd both lose their jobs.
...
Bang bang bang!
Inside The Ant Nest, Pei Shu's fire ability hadn't completely blocked the Xenomorphs. Moreover, the Xenomorphs seemed to have some intelligence.
Although the Xenomorphs feared flames, they quickly discovered that the ring of fire around them didn't have much killing power. More and more black shadows were crawling out of the darkness, shaking their black antennae like cockroaches, making rustling sounds.
Rustle rustle—
The sound made one's teeth ache. Zhu Ning could clearly feel that the Xenomorphs' fear of flames was far less than their hunger to eat people.
Pei Shu had to use his flames at full power to burn the Xenomorphs to charcoal. And full-power suppression should be very draining on his ability. Zhu Ning hadn't seen Pei Shu use it many times.
Liu Niannian was more reliable than Zhu Ning had expected. Perhaps her family had given her very strict basic education while growing up. Liu Niannian had originally thought she was coming to collect garbage. When the difficulty suddenly escalated, she wasn't panicked at all.
She kept firing to suppress the Xenomorphs. Although shooting couldn't kill them, it could slow them down. Xenomorphs needed time to regenerate. Having someone shooting was better than not.
Pei Shu's main job was to cover Liu Niannian. In his mind, Liu Niannian's safety always came first. In this situation, Pei Shu actually reminded Zhu Ning, "Behind you!"
Pei Shu actually didn't need to remind her, because Zhu Ning's Danger Sense was about to go off. In the Danger Sense vision, a Xenomorph let out a strange cry and suddenly pounced from behind. Without a helmet, Zhu Ning didn't even have one layer of protection. The Xenomorph bit off half her head in one bite. Was its bite force that strong?
In reality, a pitch-black figure lunged toward Zhu Ning, but didn't successfully reach her. Crash—
A huge sound suddenly came from above. A metal plate came crashing down from the ceiling, slamming the black shadow flat with a bang.
Thick black liquid flowed out from the gaps in the metal plate like blood. Zhu Ning had improvised with local materials, using the contaminated metal ceiling of The Ant Nest. Having wrecked a place in The Hive before, this time wrecking things came especially easy.
Zhu Ning wiped under her nose. She was having another nosebleed. When encountering danger, Metal Manipulation was the most useful talent because it was free. The downside was it burned sanity. So far, the System hadn't notified her of losing sanity. She could still survive a bit longer on the edge of sanity loss.
Quite a few Xenomorphs were still hidden in the darkness. Kill one and there was still a group, pouncing toward them one after another.
Liu Niannian's teacher was right beside her. He sounded even more experienced than the Sanitation Center's Demon Hunters. From what he said, this Pei Shu had very likely worked outside the walls before working for Liu Niannian. Such a good teacher—why not ask questions?
Zhu Ning fought while asking, "How is this normally handled?"
Pei Shu covered Liu Niannian's retreat, still processing the talent Zhu Ning had just used. Perhaps from being a teacher for too long, when someone asked a question, he instinctively answered: "If it were outside the walls, they'd deploy the mobile squad. But no one wants to mess with these things. Usually, people just go around them."
That made sense. Their main work outside the walls was reconnaissance. When they saw something they couldn't beat, they ran immediately. They wouldn't easily waste their ammunition reserves.
Zhu Ning kept retreating. They had to evacuate from the dental clinic. She'd never felt this path was so long before.
Collecting Contamination Spores—the legendary garbage collection—had always been considered by Zhu Ning as the most laid-back job among dangerous work. She never imagined that one day collecting Contamination Spores would become a problem.
Blood-red Contamination Spores were floating. Zhu Ning activated the Temporary Shielding Device, which could temporarily prevent Contamination Spores from leaking out.
But the Temporary Shielding Device had obvious limitations. For example, like Huang Yaruo's house before, it was a regular space, so the effect was better after activation.
This Contamination Zone covered a very wide range. Besides the dental clinic, parts of the neighborhood also belonged to the Contamination Zone. Zhu Ning had only protected the dental clinic. There were still Contamination Spores floating outside.
Prometheus wouldn't be this unreliable. If Contamination Spores leaked out, the first to be infected might be The Hive, the neighborhood in front of The Ant Nest.
Once one neighborhood fell, it would be a large-scale infection. This was very troublesome. Prometheus was probably already contacting people.
Zhu Ning felt that not having that stupid human-machine interface was also troublesome. For example, right now she had no way to directly contact Prometheus.
Zhu Ning and the others had to retreat. The corridor leading to Gao Zijian's home had Xenomorphs. Zhu Ning could only exit through the other side of the fifth floor. Just then, her secondary brain rang.
It was Song Zhizhang. Zhu Ning was shooting at the time. Her first words upon answering were: "You'd better tell me some good news."
Song Zhizhang paused on his end. He heard the gunfire from Zhu Ning's side. From the sound alone, he knew Zhu Ning's current situation wasn't safe.
Song Zhizhang's voice was usually lazy. This time it was unusually serious. "Zhu Ning."
"The Sanitation Center's people will arrive in ten minutes. The ones coming are the Abnormal Incident Investigation Team."
Abnormal Incident Investigation Team? What department was that? Did this count as an abnormal incident?
Before Zhu Ning could speak, Song Zhizhang continued: "You have absolute autonomy. You can certainly choose to stay, but you can also choose to leave. Whatever you want to do, I suggest you don't meet face-to-face with the Abnormal Incident Investigation Team. They're troublesome."
Zhu Ning: "..."
It sounded very troublesome.
Zhu Ning had no intention of getting under the Sanitation Center's nose. Xuan Qing was already suspicious of her. If she was seen here in this kind of place again, Zhu Ning would probably be investigated again. This time she definitely wouldn't get away easily.
Zhu Ning gritted her teeth and looked at the Contamination Spores in the area with some regret. This was her first time not collecting her own Contamination Spores after so many missions.
Purity Points had always come from two sources—one was the mission reward, the other was from collecting Contamination Spores.
Zhu Ning was like eating a meal but only eating half, another half hard to give up, income cut in half, meat that was in her mouth could fly away.
And the cost of using her items was getting higher and higher. Losing half her income was very painful.
Not happy about it.
But looking at the current situation, handing it over to the authorities was the best choice. They could arrive in ten minutes—much faster than Zhu Ning had expected. Once they entered, they could control the situation as quickly as possible without affecting other slums.
Zhu Ning hung up Song Zhizhang's call. A wall of fire had just risen in front of her. The Xenomorphs should instinctively fear flames. They kept trying to advance. The flames could interfere with their movements.
Although she didn't know what weaknesses these things had, fire seemed more useful than bullets so far.
Zhu Ning's direct violent flattening also worked. In other words, the sharper the weapon, the less effective it was against these things. Either flames, or like Zhu Ning—flatten them without giving them a chance to regenerate.
Zhu Ning tilted her head and said to Pei Shu, "Need me to help?"
Pei Shu: "..."
Why did Zhu Ning say she was helping him, but he didn't feel like she had good intentions at all?
Zhu Ning: "The Sanitation Center will arrive in ten minutes. If you run into them head-on, that'll be troublesome for you too, right?"
Pei Shu frowned. Zhu Ning was right. Their identities were sensitive. Their dealings with the authorities were all under the table. Some things were better kept off the record if possible.
And they didn't know which department was coming. If this really blew up, it would be very bad for them. Pei Shu had confidence in bringing Liu Niannian out, but not confidence in doing it within ten minutes.
Zhu Ning really did have a mysterious organization behind her. How did she know about the Sanitation Center's movements so quickly?
Who exactly was supporting her from behind? From the tone of her phone call, she had at least some status in this organization.
Possibly one of the top bosses. Someone like that—if you could cooperate, definitely don't antagonize them.
Zhu Ning: "What a coincidence. I don't want to greet them either."
Zhu Ning really did put them in the same boat with one sentence. No matter what wariness Pei Shu had toward Zhu Ning before, he had to admit now that cooperation was the best way out.
Pei Shu: "What do you want to do?"
Zhu Ning: "I'm metal-type, you're fire-type. Don't you think in this kind of situation, the two of us would make a great combo?"
Before Pei Shu could speak, Liu Niannian beside him said, "You want to create an enclosed fire space?"
Zhu Ning: "You're smarter than your teacher."
Pei Shu: "..."
Thanks for that.
Author's Note
What Pei Shu imagines Ning-baby to be: A big boss from some mysterious organization.
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