Chapter 177-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 177 Another Self (VIII)
"She's entered the Red House."
Outside the Garbage Dump, inside a derelict building filled with surveillance equipment, was a spot no one would notice.
The Red House sat within the Garbage Dump. Plenty of robots were nearby, and salvaged mechanical eyes could serve as cameras.
Only two people were monitoring—working in shifts. One was a man in a baseball cap whose face was hidden. The other was a woman in a black jacket with long, wavy hair. If you looked closely, you could spot a teardrop mole at the corner of her eye.
If Zhu Ning were here, she'd recognize her—the Big Wave boss who'd sold her the motorcycle.
The woman narrowed her eyes and looked at the screen. They'd been watching this place for a month. Today, they'd confirmed Zhu Ning had actually shown up. She'd been inside the Red House for half an hour now.
"She's not going to get hurt in there, is she?" the man in the baseball cap asked.
"It's been so long already," he continued, talking to himself when he got no answer. "Is it really that complicated in there?"
It was only a B-Level Contamination Zone. Given Zhu Ning's abilities, she should have been done in ten minutes.
The woman with long hair glanced at him. "Even weakened, the boss wouldn't be that weak."
The man clicked his tongue, visibly impatient, and settled in to keep watching.
The woman's gaze on the monitor grew heavier. On screen was nothing but the Red House, looking sinister in the darkness of night. With no one appearing for so long, the entire image seemed frozen.
......
Inside the Red House.
Ding—
[Intermediate talent Danger Precognition triggered. Two-minute advance danger alert sent. Please stay safe.]
The system alert sounded the moment Zhu Ning touched the headstone. In the precognition, Human Cocoons hatched into Spider-Humans and Zhu Ning was bitten to death before she could react.
Time was critical. She immediately drew a heavy firearm and fired three shots.
The first shot was aimed at her own "headstone"—right above where her name was carved. The gun packed enormous power; a single shot could blast a gaping hole through any wall.
But this wall was made of some unknown material. It left only a patch of dark shadow on her headstone.
Zhu Ning turned and fired to her left, where a Human Cocoon hung—the nearest one to her.
The bullet tore into the cocoon. Blood bloomed and dripped down into the abyss, but she might have missed a vital spot. Whatever was inside was still thrashing.
Squelch—
The Human Cocoon tore open from the inside. A human arm reached out. Since it was a Human Cocoon, a human arm emerging seemed perfectly normal.
Then came a second, a third, a fourth... eight arms in total pushed their way out from within.
Spiders had eight legs. These things had eight human arms.
The face wrapped within the white cocoon became increasingly visible—the very young face of a boy, wearing the innocent smile of a child.
The cocoon split completely open. Eight human arms became spider legs, topped by a human head.
Spider-Human.
It opened its mouth wide. A hissing drone issued from within. It looked at Zhu Ning. It wanted to correct the mistake from years ago—the Red House intended to bury Zhu Ning here.
Zhu Ning had already seen Spider-Humans in the danger precognition. She didn't even flinch. She swiftly reloaded and fired at the nearest Spider-Human. With her perfect memory, she recalled his headstone—his name was Xu Sinan.
Her memory was a liability at times like this. Normally, she didn't need to know a contaminant's name. They were just monsters to her—killing them meant nothing.
But knowing the name made the act of killing feel far more visceral. They had once lived together.
As Xiao Yuan had put it, they were her "brothers and sisters."
They had all been cast aside by society, waiting to die after learning their expiration dates.
Xiao Yuan had lost all will to fight after learning her death date. Everyone else in the Red House was the same—they knew there was no future. Being alive already felt like being dead.
Every single day felt like inching closer to death.
No one could stay calm knowing their own expiration date.
Zhu Ning was a Defective. She knew what it felt like to have a countdown on your life—like a guillotine blade hanging above your head forever, except the terrifying part was knowing the exact moment it would fall.
Zhu Ning herself only had one year left. They were all "near-expiry products."
But the Defectives of the Red House couldn't even enjoy their final days. Xiao Yuan had three years left to live, yet she'd been reduced to a contaminant, trapped forever in the past.
Monsters had borrowed their faces, wearing their likenesses while still "living."
The Spider-Humans moved fast. Xu Sinan lunged at Zhu Ning. His mouth gaped wide, revealing the writhing mouthparts inside, about to spray razor-sharp spider silk.
Zhu Ning had seen that silk before. It could absolutely sever her head.
Zhu Ning didn't dodge. She braced herself with her left hand, one foot pressed against the opposite wall for stability. The most important thing when shooting was to stay steady.
She raised the gun, barrel aimed at the Spider-Human hurtling toward her at high speed.
In this critical moment, she chose the most classical method—a gun.
Bang—!
The Spider-Human lunging at her went rigid in midair, dropping like a bird with broken wings. Zhu Ning had shot clean through its oral cavity.
Purplish-red blood erupted, spraying down like a shower head.
With Danger Precognition extended to two minutes, the ability worked like prophecy. Zhu Ning had already seen in the death preview that firearms were effective against Human Cocoons.
Every Human Cocoon in the walls was awakened and hatching. Spider-Humans crawled through every crevice—male and female, the oldest looking no more than fifteen, the youngest perhaps only four, still carrying a trace of baby fat.
They hung in dense clusters. As far as the eye could see, there were only hundreds of pairs of glowing red eyes.
Zhu Ning fired at blinding speed, using the Putrid Fish Head's acceleration. She shot while scaling the walls.
The only exit should be the entrance—just fifty meters away. Yet right now, fifty meters felt impossibly far.
Zhu Ning realized she'd been wrong earlier. She now knew who the Contamination Source was.
Boom—
She blasted a Spider-Human's head apart. Skull fragments and shredded flesh exploded, painting the interior of the walls with debris.
Spider-Humans fell one after another. She was wounded—she hadn't dodged in time. Spider silk from a Spider-Human had sheared off a corner of her helmet. The silk from inside the cocoons was slightly weaker than the external strands—not quite enough to take her head clean off.
The strategy was effective, but it demanded extreme physical endurance: hanging suspended while firing accurately and climbing upward simultaneously. Every muscle in her body had to be precisely engaged.
Ten meters.
Spider-Human blood splashed through the cracks in her helmet, cold and reeking, smearing across her cheek. It was the blood of her former brothers and sisters.
Three meters.
The opening above looked bright—like a beam of light in the darkness. Not from the flashlight. It looked like hope.
A Spider-Human grabbed Zhu Ning's ankle.
Zhu Ning's foot sank. The hand gripping the wall nearly slipped. She almost lost hold entirely, nearly dragged into the abyss.
Not just one—a second Spider-Human latched onto her right leg.
Zhu Ning felt searing pain in her wrist. The weight hanging below nearly tore her arm from its socket.
Pure instinct took over. She reached back and pulled out a knife, trying to drive it into the wall for a handhold.
But it was useless. The wall was too hard—the gunfire had already proven it couldn't be breached.
Yet another Spider-Human seized her ankle. They strung together beneath her like a chain. Zhu Ning was sinking as if caught in quicksand—countless hands reaching out, spider silk winding upward. No amount of struggling helped.
Zhu Ning fired downward. Other contaminants trying to leap at her would fall, but the ones already below her had bound themselves to her before dying.
Three Spider-Human corpses hung from Zhu Ning's legs, linked together by spider silk. They had become the heaviest burden.
Zhu Ning had trained with weighted sandbags before, but only now did she understand what maximum load truly felt like.
Transparent spider silk wound around her calves. She was like a bird that had stepped into a discarded fishing net in the wild—completely entangled.
The protective suit activated automatic defense mode, deploying flexible steel plates internally. The silk hadn't fully tightened yet, but the suit wouldn't hold much longer. If this continued, the silk might sever her legs entirely.
Zhu Ning gritted her teeth and was forced to activate Skin Hardening. The gashes cut by spider silk were covered with a layer of hardened skin—she only hardened the critical spots.
Once Skin Hardening activated, her health began to burn. She didn't want to waste time.
All her weight rested on her right hand. Even with genetic enhancement improving her physical capabilities, she was already pushing her absolute limit.
She was fighting the urge to blow up the Red House.
She had two explosives left. One blast and everything would be dust to dust, ashes to ashes—brute force demolition.
But she had never wanted to find the Contamination Source this badly.
Zhu Ning looked up toward the faint light above, every muscle in her body taut.
Corpses still dangled from her feet. Living Spider-Humans inside the walls kept throwing themselves at her.
Even in this situation, Zhu Ning hadn't abandoned the plan. She was still climbing upward.
She wasn't dead yet—who gave anyone the right to bury her in a grave?
As long as she had one breath left, she could keep going. This was no joke—her dream was to outlive the apocalypse.
Her life would last longer than this damn world.
Zhu Ning reached for the next handhold, nearly cracking her teeth from clenching so hard. She took a deep breath, feeling herself approach the breaking point.
Slap—
One hand caught the edge of the opening. Far better leverage than below. Both hands found the rim, like grasping driftwood in open water.
She hauled her upper body through, collapsing onto the wooden panel. In one smooth motion, she dropped a bomb into the shaft. Fire erupted instantly, engulfing every monster that had tried to follow her.
The Spider-Humans on her legs grew heavier. The silk was locked tight, embedded in her flesh, blocked only by the hardened skin.
One more moment and she would have lost that leg.
And she saw who was in Xiao Yuan's room—the true Contamination Source.
A little girl stood in the doorway. She wore striped pajama pants, her face covered in freckles, with ants—no, spiders—crawling all over her.
The Contamination Source had been there from the start.
Normal Contamination Zones hid themselves, doing everything possible to avoid detection. But Li Xin had done the opposite—she was the first to make contact with Zhu Ning.
Zhu Ning still remembered moving through the Red House. When she first entered, there wasn't a soul around. The place seemed dead.
After the Contamination Zone came to life, the first person who spoke to her was Li Xin.
Put another way, it was because Li Xin appeared that the Contamination Zone activated at all.
Li Xin was the one who told her Xiao Yuan's real name. The first sighting of "the other self" was also Li Xin's discovery. She appeared at every critical plot point.
Most importantly, she knew Zhu Ning possessed the Master Key.
Before seeing the headstones, Zhu Ning wasn't sure whether this Contamination Zone was psychic in nature—potentially possessing some mind-reading ability that converted memories into details, steadily contaminating her until Zhu Ning truly believed she'd lived here.
But after seeing the headstones, she was certain. If the Contamination Source were Mechanical Mother, she couldn't possibly know about the Key.
It had to be someone who truly knew Zhu Ning—someone she'd been close to. Close enough that Zhu Ning would share little secrets.
And Zhu Ning hadn't found Li Xin's headstone down below.
Since entering the Contamination Zone, Zhu Ning had been playing herself all along.
Zhu Ning had truly lived here, cared for by a mechanical person. Mechanical Mother's model was so outdated that no one outside still used it.
Mechanical Mother couldn't even afford to repair herself. She could only stitch her peeling skin back together with needle and thread.
She was buckling under the weight. Every day she wiped the display window until it gleamed, penny-pinching over every cent.
She desperately hoped someone would donate some money. She was barely hanging on.
She couldn't discipline her children, so she resorted to the simplest, crudest method—raising children the way one might keep cats or dogs.
Sometimes Zhu Ning feared her. Sometimes she felt sorry for her.
Zhu Ning lived with dozens of other Defectives. Every day she heard two bells—one for lights-out, one for wake-up.
When the wake-up bell rang, she'd join the other Defectives at the run-down bathroom to wash up. Her name was written on her toothbrush cup.
When the lights-out bell rang, Mechanical Mother forbade anyone from going outside. The Red House entered "curfew."
But Zhu Ning couldn't be contained. She was still causing trouble late into the night.
She'd only recently arrived in this world and found the Red House deeply strange. Children here kept having incidents, one after another.
They would behave abnormally for a while, disappear for a few days, then reappear.
The phenomenon kept spreading—like a silent epidemic—but no one sensed anything was wrong. They were completely oblivious to the lurking danger.
Zhu Ning was too young at the time. She didn't even know what a Hunter was, and the authorities rarely discussed contaminants.
She only sensed, with sharp instinct, that this world was terrifying. Unlike the overt dangers of the zombie world, it felt as if something dark was invading her life.
After arriving in the Wasteland, the first contamination event Zhu Ning encountered was the Red House. She had no concept of what she was dealing with—no idea she was already walking into danger.
She couldn't figure out what was happening. She just felt that if she stayed here, she'd eventually be killed. She had to find a way out.
Only Li Xin was willing to join in. She'd knock on Zhu Ning's wall—their secret signal.
"Is Zhu Ning there? Li Xin calling Zhu Ning. Please respond if you copy."
"When are we going to look for Xiao Yuan?"
Li Xin had been here before Zhu Ning arrived. She was sweet, her face full of freckles—an abandoned artificial human.
Zhu Ning hadn't suspected her at first. A little girl naturally put people at ease.
She'd even been caught by Li Xin once, opening Mechanical Mother's door. Zhu Ning had to confess that she could pick locks. She made up a lie—said she had a magic key.
Li Xin had looked over with great curiosity at the time.
Later, Zhu Ning followed the trail of Xiao Yuan's death in her investigation. She didn't find Xiao Yuan, because three days later, Xiao Yuan reappeared on her own.
She looked so healthy, so perfect. She'd even signed up for the swimming competition.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Only Zhu Ning sensed something was off. She grew increasingly desperate to leave.
Until she discovered the truth—like a single ant in a colony suddenly spotting the Ant-Mimicking Spider hiding in their midst.
In that instant, a jolt of awareness: the thing beside her wasn't one of them at all. It was a predator.
"You found me," Li Xin said.
The Li Xin of the past and the Li Xin of the present overlapped, like two photographic negatives combining to form one complete person.
Zhu Ning leaned against the wall, her legs in excruciating pain. Li Xin was smiling at her.
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