Chapter 198-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 198 Eternal Pharma Foundation (IV)
What Zhu Ning held was a registration form. The Eternal Pharma Foundation could grant Defectives' wishes—that was how Huang Yaruo had contacted the Foundation before.
The file belonged to someone named Liu Liu. Female, fifteen years old. Fifth-Class Citizen. Remaining lifespan: 9 months.
Zhu Ning's registration form only contained the most basic information. The girl had almost certainly been killed.
Xu Meng skimmed it quickly. "You think if I go in, I'll get another person's file?"
If everyone who entered found a file, it was essentially drawing a card—each person getting their own identity.
Zhu Ning: "Want to try?"
Zhu Ning had already been inside—she'd walked through the minefield once. As long as Xu Meng followed the rules, she'd generally be fine.
Xu Meng was a veteran Demon Hunter with extensive experience. She pushed open the door and entered under Zhu Ning's watchful gaze.
After coming out, Zhu Ning couldn't stop blinking—her eyes still felt raw and stinging. While Xu Meng was inside, Zhu Ning kept her attention on Dr. Fu.
Dr. Fu seemed slightly dazed. Zhu Ning asked: "Were you mentally contaminated?"
Dr. Fu swallowed. "I injected a mental stabilizer."
Afraid Zhu Ning wouldn't believe him, he patted his right arm. The injector was embedded inside his protective suit—simple to administer.
Zhu Ning could see Dr. Fu's internal camera feed. His pupils were somewhat unfocused, but otherwise he seemed fine.
Only three minutes passed before Xu Meng emerged, also holding a document folder.
When Xu Meng came out, the door attendants presented another Door Card.
Zhu Ning's room number was 909. Xu Meng's was 910. Same floor, right next to each other.
Xu Meng's file belonged to someone named Pan Qing. Age 26. Fifth-Class Citizen. Remaining lifespan: 6 months.
Zhu Ning recalled that when she'd visited the Eternal Pharma Foundation, they'd been recruiting Defectives with less than a year to live for experiments.
Dr. Fu looked at the rules on the door. "Should I go in?"
Zhu Ning said: "Don't. I'm afraid you'd die in there."
What was effortless for Xu Meng might not be for Dr. Fu.
Dr. Fu was too vulnerable. He could die early very easily.
Dr. Fu asked: "Will I still fit the rules this way?"
The contamination zone had its own rules. If the files represented identity passes, Dr. Fu had no identity.
Zhu Ning: "It's not mandatory that everyone enters. Just stick with me."
Compared to Dr. Fu being alone, Zhu Ning figured he'd survive longer by not entering.
Dr. Fu said nothing more. He needed to make sure he wasn't a liability.
Zhu Ning compared her file with Xu Meng's. "If we hadn't left that day, we'd probably have stayed the night here."
Zhu Ning and Xu Meng had come so close to the truth about Eternal Pharma—only to be forcibly interrupted.
Xu Meng offered no comment on that. She said: "I couldn't figure out the logic inside."
Contamination zones were generally exaggerated distortions of reality. That conference room was truly bizarre.
Zhu Ning: "Felt a lot like a church."
She didn't elaborate, but Xu Meng understood. They'd once entered a church inside Bao Ruiming's Consciousness Cloud—similarly eerie, with rows of seated figures.
Except here the people were incomplete. The whole scene resembled some cult ritual.
And they were one person short—one seat unfilled.
Zhu Ning asked: "Why are all the doors here open?"
Every room along the corridor had a crack left open—passages left for who-knew-what.
Too few clues to form any theory. Xu Meng said: "Let's go upstairs."
The attendants had given them Door Cards. The next clue should be on the upper floors.
Zhu Ning led the way, gun in hand, shielding Dr. Fu behind her. Xu Meng covered the rear.
Zhu Ning and Xu Meng had excellent coordination. When Zhu Ning took point, Xu Meng handled the rear—Li Nianchuan used to be sandwiched between them. Now it was Dr. Fu.
They were on the second floor. Reaching the ninth meant either the elevator or the emergency stairwell.
Zhu Ning pressed the up button. The elevator actually worked. Numbers flickered above, descending floor by floor.
But it was an old elevator—the descent produced creaking, groaning sounds, as if something lived in the shaft.
The elevator crawled down one floor at a time. Waiting felt interminable. The closer it got, the stronger the wrongness.
Finally it stopped. The metal doors slid open—sticking briefly, jerking.
Inside was empty. Red checkered carpet on the floor. Not a soul.
The doors opened, but Zhu Ning didn't move. She simply braced one hand against the door frame, preventing it from closing. The elevator beeped insistently.
Dr. Fu asked: "We're not going in?"
It looked normal enough. Empty. Why wasn't Zhu Ning moving?
Zhu Ning pressed her brow. She stepped one foot into the elevator—Xu Meng and Dr. Fu behind her watched as she stood half-in, half-out, caught in the threshold.
The moment Zhu Ning's foot entered, the entire cab dropped two inches. Then she heard a sound—whoosh.
A deeply unsettling noise—like someone jumping from above, except their feet were tied with rope. During the plunge, the rope caught them with a sickening jolt.
Zhu Ning held her breath. She hadn't blinked since entering the elevator. Now she slowly allowed herself one blink.
When her eyes opened, she saw what shouldn't be seen.
Above the elevator—no ceiling. The shaft stretched upward into blackness. Cold wind howled through.
The cables were festooned with people.
Countless faces and limbs wound around the elevator cables like vines, tangling and intertwining, forming a new organism.
Right before Zhu Ning's eyes, something dangled—a human head.
Another blink-triggered horror. Zhu Ning guessed that one more blink and these things would lunge at her.
She moved with lightning speed. Not daring to blink, eyes forced wide open, she stepped back out of the elevator. "Go!"
The instant she spoke, Xu Meng understood. She shoved Dr. Fu's shoulder, pulling him away from the shaft.
After Zhu Ning retreated, the elevator doors slammed shut with a clang. If they'd gotten in, they'd be devoured by now.
The elevator was out. The emergency stairwell was blocked too—another wall.
The wall was crudely constructed. They'd seen one like it on the way up, which Zhu Ning had destroyed by brute force.
She still couldn't determine the purpose of walls in the stairwells. Were they keeping outsiders from entering, or insiders from leaving?
"Blocked again?" Dr. Fu asked.
Zhu Ning was still debating whether to force another "door" open when Xu Meng spoke from beside her: "There's a third path."
Zhu Ning turned to look. Xu Meng continued: "Old hotels like this have service corridors alongside emergency stairs and elevators—designed so staff don't cross paths with guests."
Zhu Ning realized Xu Meng had been to the Foundation venue before and would have scouted the terrain.
No wonder Zhu Ning had lost her so easily when tailing her—Xu Meng had escaped through the service corridor that day.
The service corridor was just to the right of the emergency stairwell, behind a hidden door. To an outsider it might look like wall decoration.
Xu Meng pressed a spot on the wall. Sure enough, a door swung open.
Behind it was another staircase—completely unobstructed, leading straight up.
Zhu Ning scanned it. Clean. She tried blinking—no grotesque creatures appeared.
She recognized this pattern: all other routes blocked, leaving only one path. The contamination zone was guiding you.
Usually guiding you to your death.
Zhu Ning: "Seems safe for now."
She climbed carefully. They reached the ninth floor without incident—the very lack of anything happening felt abnormal.
The ninth floor was the same. Most doors stood ajar—thin cracks left open—still unclear what creatures they accommodated.
Only 909 and 910 were tightly shut. Not a sliver of gap.
Xu Meng stood before the other door. They needed to search both rooms.
Zhu Ning told the dazed Dr. Fu: "You're with me."
Beep—the Door Card actually worked. After entering, Zhu Ning did something perfectly logical: like a normal guest, she inserted the card into the power slot. The room lit up instantly.
A luxury suite—two bedrooms and an oversized living room. The total floor area exceeded Zhu Ning's own apartment.
For a Defective, this level of accommodation was extravagant.
Just inside the entrance was a floor-length mirror reflecting two figures: Zhu Ning in her black protective suit, Dr. Fu in metallic Demon Hunter armor behind her.
Zhu Ning kept Dr. Fu close—he was too susceptible to contamination. Better to keep him where she could watch.
Zhu Ning: "Look for clues?"
She surveyed the space. Nothing visually abnormal.
Dr. Fu nodded nervously. Zhu Ning said: "Call me if anything happens."
Dr. Fu, on his first-ever contamination zone entry, hesitated briefly before heading into the largest bedroom to search.
Zhu Ning lingered at the entryway. She looked back—all other doors in the corridor had that same narrow crack.
She didn't know if she should leave a crack too, or if shutting the door completely was safer.
In the end, she left a gap. If something came through, it would give her more clues.
It certainly didn't feel secure—as if something could slip in at any moment.
Zhu Ning searched around the entryway and found a form.
Paper documents in contamination zones tended to carry information. It was a housekeeping schedule. The specific dates were covered by a layer of grime—deliberately obscured.
No exact dates, but there were counts. This room appeared to have a long-term guest—possibly the person in Zhu Ning's file.
Housekeeping came daily. This month they'd come twelve times already.
After each cleaning, the form was checked off with the housekeeper's signature.
Below were two more forms—one for meal delivery, one for laundry.
These Defectives were likely long-term residents. They lived here while someone delivered meals on schedule, collected their clothes, and cleaned their rooms.
Fifth-Class Citizens rarely got opportunities to stay in luxury hotels like this—let alone have their every need attended to.
Zhu Ning set down the form and moved from the entryway to the living room. A notebook sat on the coffee table.
She was hoping for a diary—diaries typically yielded more information.
But this was no less valuable: a medication log. Sure enough—Eternal Pharma was drugging them.
Zhu Ning sat on the sofa and opened the log. Her stomach still ached dully—more noticeable when sitting. She ignored the discomfort and began reading.
Page 1
Dosage: Drug A, one tablet, 80mg.
Reaction: Dizziness, nausea, full-body itching.
Page 2
Dosage: Drug A, one tablet, 80mg.
Reaction: Hallucinations.
Hallucination details: Woke up in the middle of the night to use the toilet. Saw a person sitting on the toilet. Pitch-black. I blinked and it disappeared. Probably a hallucination.
Zhu Ning thought: if Eternal Pharma was promising to extend Defectives' lifespans, these side effects were fairly mild.
For the poor, side effects were easier to endure than poverty.
Page 3
Dosage: Drug A, two tablets, 80mg.
Reaction: Hallucinations worsened.
Hallucination details: Heard a toilet flushing in the middle of the night. I got up to look—didn't see the person on the toilet. The bathroom was empty. Thought I'd misheard—auditory hallucination—so I instinctively turned off the light. As I did, I was scared—what if that thing appeared in that instant?
But I didn't see anything. Thought I was scaring myself. Went back to the bedroom. My blanket was lumpy. Someone was lying in my bed!
I immediately called hotel staff. They said to contact them about any abnormality. After I made the call and looked up—the person was gone.
Security came and searched everywhere. Nobody found. Surveillance showed no one entering or leaving. So I know—another hallucination. But god, it felt so real.
Page 4
Dosage: Drug B, one tablet, 80mg.
Reaction: Hallucinations gone. Thank goodness.
This entry was brief, yet it sent chills down Zhu Ning's spine—even the handwriting radiated relief.
Zhu Ning frowned. What kind of fight-fire-with-fire scheme was this? First induce hallucinations to drive someone insane, then cure them?
And the patient would feel healed—even grateful?
Were those really hallucinations? What if those things were real?
The thought hit Zhu Ning like ice water. If she flipped the assumption—those weren't hallucinations but actual contaminants—then taking the drug and no longer "hallucinating" meant... no longer being able to see the contaminants?
What happened to humans who couldn't see contaminants?
Would they... coexist with contaminants without ever knowing?
Zhu Ning had only read the first few pages. She was flipping to the next when a muffled crash suddenly came from inside the room—followed by Dr. Fu's scream.
Author's Note
80mg is the dosage per tablet, which is why two tablets are still listed as 80mg each.
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