Chapter 148-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 148 Kill the VIP (III)
"The church door is locked," Xu Meng said.
Zhu Ning snapped back to the present. It was dark now, so a closed church was perfectly normal—most churches opened in the morning for prayers.
But a sign stood by the entrance, displaying the opening hours: 10:00 PM to 3:00 AM.
This was a church, not a nightclub. What were they doing in the dead of night? Singing hymns?
A faint glow clearly leaked through the church walls, proving someone was inside. Zhu Ning stepped forward and tried the door. Locked, as expected. Still unwilling to give up, she tried the Universal Key—the item was completely grayed out, with zero response.
Doors in the Consciousness Cloud didn't count as doors?
Liu Niannian: "There's a clock up there."
A black crow perched atop the ancient clock, which read 6:00 PM. Four hours until opening.
Liu Niannian compared it with her mechanical watch to calibrate the time flow in this world.
Xu Meng: "Let's check elsewhere and come back when it's time."
They had no choice but to leave the church. They returned to the main road. Zhu Ning glanced back—in the darkness, the lamp-lit church looked like an eye staring at them.
Cars lined the coastal road. Now that night had fallen, people were starting their engines and heading home one by one.
Most were in groups or with families. Their expressions were utterly relaxed and content. Some even sang as they walked.
There's a saying that you can tell from someone's face whether they've suffered. Sometimes, walking down the streets of District 103, Zhu Ning saw nothing but dejected office workers and hurried pedestrians. Their survival pressure was so immense they could mutate into Contaminants at any moment.
But the people here were different. A deep, bone-level ease radiated from them, as though they'd never tasted life's hardships—a million miles from becoming Contaminants.
As Zhu Ning passed a car, she took a closer look. On the underside of the chassis, densely packed barnacles clung to the metal.
Same as the ones on the church.
How on earth did these barnacles grow here?
A man in a Hawaiian shirt stood by the roadside. He was the type to whistle at any passing single woman. As Zhu Ning and her group walked by, he leaned against his car door. "Hey ladies, where are you headed? I can give you a ride."
Liu Niannian said the NPCs here all believed they were real people. Some mechanism must have been triggered—he'd come over to flirt.
Liu Niannian: "No thanks, we're just walking around and enjoying the scenery."
The man: "Think I'm a bad guy?"
Zhu Ning and Xu Meng had no interest in talking to him. Only Liu Niannian engaged. She put on a hesitant look. "It's our first time out. We're not really comfortable getting into a stranger's car."
"Totally understandable. Looking out for yourselves when you're away from home is a good habit." The man actually started chatting with Liu Niannian. "So what have you been doing on Floating Sand Island?"
Zhu Ning and Xu Meng exchanged a glance. So this place was called Floating Sand Island.
Zhu Ning gave Liu Niannian a look. Liu Niannian caught on immediately and began fishing for information. "We didn't really plan anything or do any research. We've just been wandering around, hanging out on the beach."
The man had finally found a domain where he could show off, and he wasn't about to let it go. He launched into an enthusiastic monologue: "You've gotta check out the Octagon Bridge—the night view there is gorgeous. Have you eaten yet? Our coconut water here is absolutely top-notch..."
Liu Niannian seemed to suddenly remember something. "We walked past a church on the way here."
"A church?" The man: "What church?"
Liu Niannian: "That one over there."
She pointed. The steeple was still visible in the distance.
"Oh, you mean Sacred Heart Cathedral?" The man recognized it once he saw the steeple. These out-of-towners always loved visiting spooky places. He figured Liu Niannian wanted to snap some photos for social media. "Us locals don't really go there. Bad luck."
Liu Niannian asked: "Why?"
The man didn't answer right away. He lowered his brow. By now, everyone who was leaving had left. The foot traffic around them had thinned considerably.
The man said: "That place has been around forever. During the war, it was used as a morgue. I only know because my grandparents told me. Corpses laid out in neat rows inside—packed tight, one after another. And in the middle of the night, a body would suddenly sit up and start screaming frantically, 'My brain! Where's my brain!'"
"After that, the doors stayed shut. Unless you knock, no one goes in. But something's always going on in there—the lights are always on. Sometimes when I walk by, I hear screaming from inside."
"Screaming?" Liu Niannian asked.
"Yeah, screaming," the man's voice dropped even lower. "'Help me,' stuff like that. And someone singing."
The man was a vivid storyteller, somehow pulling you into the experience without realizing it.
He kept his eyes on Liu Niannian's expression the whole time. Of the three, Zhu Ning and Xu Meng were stone-faced. Only Liu Niannian had been listening attentively.
"And then?" Liu Niannian asked.
"No 'and then.' We just don't let the kids go near it. People say folks go missing around there."
He stopped mid-story and grinned. "Scared you?"
Liu Niannian played the sweet, timid girl. "A little."
The man saw her expression and figured he had a shot. "Don't worry, just stay away and you'll be fine. I'll protect you."
Liu Niannian actually managed to suppress her disgust and say: "Thanks, bro."
The man was pleased with Liu Niannian, and without quite knowing why, shared a few extra details: "Don't mention it. Name's Wang Shengli—just call me Brother Wang. No need to be formal."
He was about to reach over and touch Liu Niannian's shoulder when he caught Zhu Ning raising an eyebrow at him from behind. His hand silently retreated. Instinct told him this one was not someone to mess with.
Wang Shengli knew with Zhu Ning around, he had no chance tonight. He reluctantly handed Liu Niannian a business card. "If you run into trouble, give me a call."
Liu Niannian took the card. It was slightly yellowed. This world didn't even have Sub-Brains—it didn't even have smartphones. Wang Shengli was using a flip phone.
Wang Shengli reminded Liu Niannian once more: "But I wasn't messing with you—nobody goes near that church except lunatics. The further away you stay, the better."
Liu Niannian nodded and said she understood.
Wang Shengli told her to call him, flashed an especially greasy smile, and was about to get in his car when Zhu Ning suddenly spoke up: "Brother Wang, there seems to be something under your car."
"Something?" Drivers dreaded the idea of something crawling into their car unnoticed—a hazard on the road. "What is it?"
Zhu Ning: "Looks like barnacles?"
Wang Shengli looked annoyed. "Those things again. Clean them off and they come right back."
From his tone, barnacles on cars were apparently commonplace here.
Wang Shengli bent down to check the underside. The movement required him to lower his head. He was wearing a jacket, its collar normally covering his neck. But as he leaned over, his neck was exposed.
Liu Niannian was closest to him. She watched as two blood-red slits opened on either side of his neck.
Liu Niannian froze, thinking she'd seen wrong. Those were... gills?
The bloody slits on his neck were actually "breathing"—opening and closing rhythmically. The gill-like structures inside were clearly visible.
Liu Niannian had never set foot in a kitchen, let alone gutted a fish. She'd rarely stared at the interior of fish gills for this long. The longer she looked, the dizzier she felt.
Wang Shengli had seemed completely normal—identical to any sleazy guy hitting on women. And yet he had gills?
Wang Shengli couldn't see Liu Niannian's expression. He kicked at a barnacle on his car's rear bumper. It didn't budge. He'd probably need a scraper to pry it off.
When Wang Shengli turned back, he noticed Liu Niannian's dazed expression. "You okay?"
As he turned, the gills closed, hidden once again beneath his collar.
Liu Niannian recovered: "I'm fine. Just thinking about the church."
Wang Shengli assumed she was still spooked and threw in a few more oily lines. As he was getting into the car, something else occurred to him. "Oh right—have you bought Diving Suits and Oxygen Tanks yet?"
The question came out of nowhere. Liu Niannian assumed he was recommending a diving trip. "We haven't planned any diving yet."
Wang Shengli glanced up at the sky. Dark clouds had gathered along the horizon. "Buy them soon. You out-of-towners aren't like us. Rain's coming."
With that, Wang Shengli got in his car and drove off. So many barnacles hung from the rear that his trunk sagged noticeably, making the drive unsteady.
The road was mostly empty. Nearby, the coconut-water vendor was packing up to go home.
After Wang Shengli left, Zhu Ning said: "You're really good at that."
Liu Niannian had a knack for extracting information. She had a quality that made people instinctively want to get close to her, to talk to her.
"I've been fooling my brother for years," Liu Niannian said, feeling like something in her brain had short-circuited. "Did I just see... gills?"
Was she hallucinating?
Zhu Ning: "We saw them too. Is that normal?"
Zhu Ning and Xu Meng had been in enough Contamination Zones that bizarre sights were par for the course. They couldn't quite gauge the threshold here.
Liu Niannian looked like her entire worldview had cracked. "Absolutely not normal."
She gathered her thoughts. "Consciousness Cloud clients build dream worlds. Even if some things are over the top or wildly imaginative, they're meant to look pleasing—not disgusting, at the very least."
Most clients uploaded their consciousness to escape reality. As the real world lost more and more land and Contaminants multiplied, the wealthy gave up resisting and chose the Cloud instead.
The Consciousness Cloud's slogan was: Humanity's last ideal homeland.
This Cloud was supposed to be comfortable and relaxing—not this bizarre.
Liu Niannian: "I've seen the Cloud of a serial killer before. I expected his Cloud to be full of murder—corpses everywhere. But inside, it was all cute plushies. He'd built himself a fairy-tale princess room."
When confronting their inner self in the Consciousness Cloud, a real-world killer who spent a fortune building a private space wouldn't find more killing exciting—it would be boring.
He chose stuffed animals for comfort and healing.
If Bao Ruiming's mind contained serial-killer imagery or corpses, that would at least make sense. But instead there was a creepy church, townsfolk with gills on their necks, and barnacles growing under cars.
The aesthetic was far too grotesque.
This wasn't a human aesthetic at all. It was more like a Contaminant's aesthetic.
Liu Niannian: "In Bao Ruiming's mind, these people are the normal ones?"
That was the only reasonable guess. For Bao Ruiming, returning to his Consciousness Cloud was like coming home.
Zhu Ning considered it. This actually fit Bao Ruiming's twisted profile perfectly—he was obsessed with marine life, had engineered mechanical jellyfish and Transparent People. Deep down, he probably found all of this beautiful.
Or he was one of them.
The question was: why this island? Did these scenes mean something?
Zhu Ning looked up. The dark clouds overhead were growing heavier by the minute. "I'm wondering—if we don't want to attract the Inspection Squad's attention, we need to act normal. But in this world, what even counts as normal?"
The Consciousness Cloud's logic was similar to a Contamination Zone's, and it had that terrifying Eradication Protocol on top of it. So how were they supposed to blend in on Floating Sand Island?
After all, the locals weren't normal people either.
Using a game analogy, the Consciousness Cloud was like a game with no quest markers—you had to discover and figure out the rules entirely on your own.
How do you determine what's normal?
Xu Meng: "Buying diving gear is probably normal."
Wang Shengli's advice must have been meaningful. She recalled a small shop on the beach that sold diving equipment.
Zhu Ning felt Xu Meng was on the same page. She voiced her own theory: "Wang Shengli tipped us off. The tide is probably coming in soon."
Xu Meng added: "And it'll rise enough to submerge the church."
Barnacles couldn't survive prolonged sun exposure. They needed water to stay alive—and barnacles covered every surface of the church.
Wang Shengli's car had barnacles underneath. Wang Shengli himself had gills on his neck. These were natural adaptations evolved on Floating Sand Island.
Wang Shengli said outsiders might not be adapted, so he'd recommended they buy diving gear—in case they drowned.
"Wait—" Liu Niannian: "You're saying this place is going to flood?"
Zhu Ning: "Just a guess. I can't tell if what he said was true or not."
Wang Shengli could have been tricking them—that was entirely possible.
Hearing this, a chill crawled down Liu Niannian's spine. Townsfolk with gills was level-one weird. This was level-three weird.
Liu Niannian: "This doesn't conform to how the Consciousness Cloud is supposed to work."
Zhu Ning and Xu Meng didn't react much—to them, this place was just like a Contamination Zone. They'd seen weirder.
But Liu Niannian had grown up around this technology. She understood the Cloud's architecture intimately. Its rules were like gospel truth to her, and any deviation was amplified in her eyes.
Why would someone construct a world like this inside their own Consciousness Body?
It made no sense. If this was really the case, did Bao Ruiming himself have gills too?
Was he a Contaminant?
No—if he were, the system would detect the Contamination Level, the alarms would go haywire, and the company would shut him down directly from the server side.
No matter how special Bao Ruiming's status was, the Lu family would never make an exception. If he infected other clients, the entire business would be ruined.
Unless Contaminants had evolved to the point where they could... live inside a human Consciousness Cloud? Without even being detected?
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