Chapter 202-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 202 Eternal Pharma Foundation (VIII)
[Signal Lost]
Deep red characters flashed across the Sanitation Center's main screen. Everyone froze. Prometheus could lose connection?
"What's happening?" The technician frantically adjusted the signal. "Technical malfunction?"
The screen flickered constantly—like watching a livestream with bad reception. Faint images still seeped through from inside, but they could no longer send any messages in.
The overall operation commander was Huo Wenxi. None of the department heads had authority over Prometheus.
The support team had been watching casually before. Now the entire technical center was in chaos.
Xuan Qing frowned. "Has Prometheus escaped?"
A reasonable suspicion. He'd never lost connection before—this sudden failure easily conjured thoughts of AI rebellion.
The Federation had always kept Prometheus imprisoned somewhere, forbidding private contact. Had he found some opening?
If so, this could be a catastrophe on the same scale as the underground contaminant beneath District 103 awakening—and potentially affecting all surviving human bases.
Prometheus didn't answer. He couldn't self-verify on this question.
Lu Qiqin had been watching idly, but hearing this he finally couldn't sit still. His fingers clattered across the control console.
After a moment, his earpiece lit up. He'd received word from the Federation's central command. "First District confirms—he's secure. Containment hasn't budged."
Xuan Qing's frown didn't ease. Lu Qiqin said quietly: "No one can free him."
To ensure his security, Prometheus's exact imprisonment location was known to no one.
A technician interjected: "There's another possibility for signal loss—we've become like Outside-the-Wall."
Humanity's faith in Prometheus stemmed from his ability to guarantee all signals within the walls. But beyond them was another world entirely—contamination density exceeded every human instrument's ceiling. His failure rate out there was quite high.
This hypothesis was plausible.
"If that's the case..." someone said, "then where Zhu Ning's team entered is equivalent to Outside-the-Wall?"
No—possibly more dangerous than some areas beyond the wall.
Before entering, Zhuang Lin had sent in detection equipment. Every single device failed to return.
Zhu Ning's five-person squad had only been inside fifteen minutes. Both sides were already cut off.
Only intermittent images came through—and with the delay, what they saw might already be outdated.
Meaning Zhu Ning's team could already be dead. They just wouldn't know.
The five-person squad had become Schrödinger's cat—existing in a completely indeterminate state.
After this observation, no one spoke. If contamination had reached this level, it meant District 103's high walls had already become entirely useless. Before this, they'd only heard Huo Wenxi's address and seen some written evidence.
But this was the first time they truly grasped the severity. The disaster had escalated.
The Sanitation Center was already in disarray. Now opinions flew from every direction. Some argued for sending Demon Hunter reinforcements into the hotel.
Others wanted to initiate an A-Level protocol on the hotel directly—prevent contamination from spreading.
Some used this moment to face reality: no matter how inspiring Huo Wenxi's public report had been, District 103's doom was a foregone conclusion. They wanted to seize the chance to leave—abandon this sinking ship entirely.
With Huo Wenxi detained, no one stepped forward to stabilize the situation.
Xuan Qing maintained her frown. She'd been looking for an opportunity to make her move, but the current situation left her unable to make any effective decision.
Zhu Ning's team hadn't transmitted any useful information. She was still deliberating.
Suddenly—
The lights inside the main hall flickered violently. Everyone fell silent simultaneously, looking up at the fluorescent fixtures.
All those light sources overhead flickering in unison—as if some ghost child were toying with them, repeatedly pressing the switch.
People's silhouettes strobed in and out. Familiar faces appeared in sudden light, then drowned in darkness.
Faces that were ordinarily familiar now looked profoundly alien.
The lights kept flickering—like some form of mental contamination.
On the surveillance screen, Zhu Ning's footage was frozen mid-frame. For a moment, the temperature in the Sanitation Center's main hall seemed to drop several degrees.
On screen, Zhu Ning had just entered the conference room. The previously empty seats were now full.
Those people—captured by Zhu Ning's camera—sat packed together, their backs to the viewers.
Their silhouettes distorted, vanished, appeared, vanished, appeared...
With each pulse of the flickering lights, everyone felt it—cold and damp, like an icy serpent slithering past.
And those contaminants seemed to be seeping through the screen into the Sanitation Center's main hall.
...
The blue ring on Zhu Ning's temple was blinking.
Xu Meng and Dr. Fu's were the same. All three Human-Machine Interface Devices had failed.
Dr. Fu looked the worst. Xu Meng was slightly better. Zhu Ning had never liked Prometheus much, so she felt relatively indifferent.
But losing signal meant losing communication—and losing any possibility of backup.
What would the Sanitation Center's response be?
They wouldn't do what they did during the Mechanical Oceanarium—slap a containment dome over them and leave them to die, would they?
Dr. Fu's face was ashen. He spread his hands: "It's over."
Truly over. He'd come to find the truth behind the Divine Descent—even prepared to sacrifice himself. But now, even if they found something, they couldn't transmit the information out.
Zhu Ning: "Pull yourself together."
Dr. Fu surrendered way too fast. Zhu Ning said: "Did anyone notice when it failed?"
Dr. Fu shook his head. He'd never imagined encountering something like this—his attention had been entirely on the outside world. He'd never thought to check his own temple.
Xu Meng considered. "When you entered the conference room, we could still see your video feed."
Zhu Ning asked: "What did my footage look like from your end?"
Xu Meng immediately transferred her recording. "Watched you in the empty conference room suddenly unable to stand—like something was holding you down."
Fortunately the helmets' basic functions still worked. Zhu Ning received Xu Meng's video. She processed digital materials faster—one second to review everything.
Xu Meng's video matched her description. Zhu Ning looked extremely bizarre in it.
Dr. Fu also sent his video. "I saw a person."
Zhu Ning froze. Inside her helmet, Dr. Fu's video played—paused on a specific frame.
There really was a person on screen. Stretched wide by the video compression. Right in front of Zhu Ning. Suddenly turning its head.
Click—Zhu Ning immediately closed the video, cutting off any contamination risk.
She felt this place was more chaotic than she'd imagined. "The contamination probably started the moment I entered the conference room."
What Zhu Ning saw, what Xu Meng's camera captured, and what Dr. Fu saw—all three experienced slightly different things.
It was likely the contamination zone conducting individualized mental contamination. All hallucination manifestations. Xu Meng had the lowest contamination level; Dr. Fu the highest.
Zhu Ning: "Be careful from here on. The things you're seeing might come out."
Dr. Fu looked confused. "I don't understand."
Zhu Ning: "Blinking. Camera shutters. They're all like a kind of door."
"If my earlier guess is right—when we blink, it's like a camera taking a photo. The instant the shutter opens, it's pulling contamination through. And these things can transform and spread—like a virus." Zhu Ning felt things were getting complicated.
Because they were hallucinations, any form was possible.
Humans couldn't control their blink rate. Camera footage could be distorted.
From here on, nothing could be trusted.
Xu Meng: "No wonder Prometheus lost connection."
This place was practically a natural counter to Demon Hunters. Humanity had spent years developing a scientific system for combating contaminants.
Identifying patterns, recording video, transmitting through helmet interfaces—using technology to compensate for humans' innate disadvantages in contamination zones.
Now all of that was negated. Advantages became vulnerabilities. Over-reliance only increased risk.
Zhu Ning: "Turn off all automatic camera functions."
Zhu Ning disabled hers first. Xu Meng followed immediately. Dr. Fu hesitated.
People like him—raised in safe zones—naturally trusted technology. Turning off cameras inside a contamination zone felt like losing an eye. Returning to a primitive state. Deeply unsettling.
But he turned it off. If Zhu Ning was right, this was how they'd stay alive.
With cameras off, the screen became a simple pane of glass. The person inside the suit now observed the contaminated world through nothing but that glass.
Dr. Fu asked: "What about the Human-Machine Interface Devices?"
The blue rings on their temples still blinked. The devices' mycelium had pierced into their temples—removal required first taking off the helmet, then manually detaching.
But that was a paradox. Removing the helmet meant contamination.
Zhu Ning: "Leave them. If we hit a spot with signal, they might reconnect us."
Xu Meng nodded. "We need to find Chu Ling and Cao Wei now."
In a place this dangerous, they might already be in grave peril.
Zhu Ning had thought the same. Humanity's greatest fear was the unknown—and this place pushed the unknown to its absolute maximum.
What they saw could be real or hallucination—possibly all experimental subjects' delusions.
Signal had disconnected without warning. Nothing captured by cameras could be trusted.
Two teammates had vanished. A swarm of Cockroach-Humans waited outside the door.
And they seemed to be getting further from the truth about the Divine Descent.
Zhu Ning asked: "Can your ability take us underground?"
Xu Meng shook her head. "Can't. Too far."
They were on the ninth floor. Xu Meng's ability couldn't sustain that distance—and she'd never tested prolonged movement through Cockroach-Human territory.
Dr. Fu knew nothing about combat tactics. He could only feel the tension, unable to offer any useful suggestion.
Using her God's Eye View, Zhu Ning checked the corridor again. The Cockroach-Humans had grown denser. Several faces pressed right against their door, trying to squeeze through the gap.
This door wouldn't hold much longer.
A direct confrontation would be hopeless. If these Cockroach-Humans could glide, Zhu Ning would be buried in a roach pile the instant she stepped out.
Elevator—out. Emergency stairwell—blocked. Service corridor was the only option.
But the service corridor was also filling with Cockroach-Humans now.
Fire?
Low feasibility. In a real fight, she'd have to burn through the entire building.
Force their way through? Zhu Ning and Xu Meng might manage. Dr. Fu would die on the way.
Xu Meng: "What about the window?"
The window?
Xu Meng was already at the window feeling around. The master bedroom's floor-to-ceiling glass couldn't open, but the living room had two openable windows.
She'd already pushed one open. Outside—no wind, no sound. Dead silence.
No nightscape beyond the window. Only gray fog drifting, threaded with the twitching gray-black lines of the contamination zone.
Zhu Ning reached out, touching the gray mist. She'd expected mere vapor—but her hand met something solid.
A glob of gray-black liquid remained on her palm. She rubbed it between her fingers—the consistency of diluted petroleum. Or perhaps some insect's secretion.
What was this?
Zhu Ning used her God's Eye View to peer into the fog. Nothing.
From the door came scratching sounds—Cockroach-Humans clawing. Were they really going out the window?
Zhu Ning looked down. They were only on the ninth floor, but below seemed bottomless—as if entering that space meant being buried alive.
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