Free Web NovelChapter 17: Mayflies of the Mortal World
After leaving the hospital ward, Wen Wen didn’t actually go very far. She simply went up two floors, turned a corner, and entered an empty conference room.
Tong Hua was sprawled over the table, fast asleep and snoring loudly. She was clutching several case files in her arms, and it was obvious she had pulled who knows how many all-nighters. As for whether those sleepless nights were spent grinding ranked matches in a game or actually working... Well, that was open to debate.
Bang!
Without the slightest courtesy, Wen Wen slammed her fist on the table, jolting awake her lazy subordinate.
Alarmed, Tong Hua grabbed her phone. “What? What’s going on? Who popped their ult?”
The dark, powered-off screen showed no game at all. It only reflected the expressionless face behind her.
Wen Wen bent down, leaned close to Tong Hua’s ear, and reminded her gently, “Next time you stay up all night, I’m snapping your phone in half. Got it?”
“I wasn’t sleeping, I was awake. I’m awake now!” Tong Hua wiped her face and tried hard to look refreshed, which only made the dark circles under her eyes stand out even more. Like presenting a treasure, she raised the files in her hand. “I’ve checked everything.”
“Then let’s hear it.” Wen Wen flipped through the documents. “What was their background?”
Tong Hua merely brushed a hand over the files, already having everything memorized.
“The one leading them, the woman you asked about last night, was named Zhu Hong. She was thirty-one. On the surface she runs two chain restaurants and a KTV, but that’s just a front. Her real identity is tied to the Spring Fellowship Association... Well, in underworld terms, she’s the mistress of the second-in-command of the Spring City Gang. Supposedly she used to work as a hostess who drank with clients. Later she latched onto Chen Xingzhou, and after that she hooked up with her current boyfriend... though that guy’s tastes are seriously twisted.
“Anyway, that’s not important. In short, after Zhu Hong caught Bloodlust Syndrome, the first person she ate was that guy. After that, you can guess what happened. It spiraled completely out of control. She practically ate all her girl friends and close friends. In just two weeks, she reached Stage Five. With limb mutation and lifeform alteration, she completely transformed into a degenerated species.
“At that point she could basically be called a mutated ghoul. Among the infected in Cliff City right now, more than half were infected by her. Following that trail, An, Mr. Zhang, and I worked through the night and captured over twenty of them!”
Ignoring the obvious exaggeration in Tong Hua’s “we were just mowing them down left and right,” Wen Wen bluntly asked, “How were they handled?”
“According to your rules, Mrs. Wen. Anyone who’s eaten a person gets taken out. Those who haven’t reached Stage Three yet are sent to the sanatorium for compulsory treatment. The company’s paying for all the expenses. The detailed costs are here...”
Wen Wen didn’t even glance at the stack of invoices. She casually tossed them aside. “Anything else?”
“There’s also the old man who attacked the guy you mentioned. The one the boy with the funny quote—uh I mean, Ji Jue talked about. We finished investigating his situation too. Here.”
Tong Hua rummaged for a while before pulling out two sheets of paper and sliding them over.
The old man’s life weighed almost nothing.
He was known as Chen Lusheng, a seventy-one-year-old scrap collector. When he was young, he just drifted around with nothing to do, always picking fights and acting like a street punk. He didn’t even care when his wife ran off with someone else. It was only after his mother passed away that he finally turned his life around.
Unfortunately, it was too late. Aside from odd jobs and brute labor, no one wanted to hire him. Bricklaying, hauling construction materials, fixing sewers... He’d done just about every job you could find. When he got older, he saved a little money and opened a scrap station, collecting old refrigerators and TVs, reselling whatever he could. It was barely enough to get by.
That was the ordinary life of someone at the very bottom. The man was plain and unremarkable.
His life stayed that way until... he picked up a child from a garbage heap.
She had a hereditary illness. Her body was covered in sores, and several of her fingers had already been chewed off by rats. Everyone said she wouldn’t survive. Only the increasingly silent old man stayed with her without a word, enduring the entire winter by her side. They made it through, but not for very long. Those difficult yet happy days lasted only seven short years.
“She had congenital immune system failure,” Tong Hua explained quietly. “Kids born in the period after the Seafire Day sometimes end up like that. It’s a degenerative infection. If your family’s got money and influence, you can head to Central City for surgery. If not, you’re not gonna last long. Even if you blow every last cent you have, the best you can do is come to a place like Mercy Hospital for conservative treatment, just to barely hang on.”
Tong Hua sighed.
“When I went to check on him, the neighbors said he’d been sick and hadn’t come out for several days. He was probably already close to going berserk a few days ago. Before he went berserk, he borrowed money from every friend he had left, even mortgaged his property and got into debt with a loan-shark. He scraped together a huge sum and deposited all of it into his daughter’s hospital account.”
Wen Wen stayed silent for a long time before asking, “Does his daughter know?”
“She’s already dead.”
Tong Hua pulled out another document from the file, a death report.
“It happened two nights ago. She had massive internal bleeding. They couldn’t save her... She passed away even earlier than he did.”
Wen Wen said nothing more. Her lips moved, but the curse wasn’t uttered aloud. Even though she had long since grown used to death, death was not always fair. Some people could stir up storms while they were alive, and even their deaths could shake the world. But most people lived in obscurity, and when they died, they went out just as quietly. Whether they lived or died, it was never really up to them. Their pain, cries, despair, and tears all vanished into a silence no one ever noticed.
“That’s why I hate this shitty world.”
She closed her eyes.
They had slaughtered their way through the North Mount District gangs and uprooted Zhu Hong’s infection completely, which had only managed to contain the spread of Bloodlust Syndrome. The true source was still out there.
This time, the bastard from the Dragonrite Society had finally shown his hand. Wen Wen really had to thank Ji Jue for that. Otherwise, who knew how much longer that guy would have stayed hidden.
With Tong Hua here, who had inherited the Time Rewind Matrix, once someone had shown up even once, there was no way they could stay hidden forever. Sooner or later they would be found out. But with the current clues, it still wasn’t enough.
Then again... Weren’t there more clues already right in front of them?
Fifteen minutes later, the conference table was completely covered with medical records. Several accompanying doctors were answering Wen Wen’s questions, while Tong Hua’s fingers swept across the files and documents. Among the Twelve Supreme Virtues, the Aether Path excelled most at reading and observing the information and phenomena of the world.
With this chaotic pile of material placed before her, the speed at which Tong Hua processed everything was even more outrageous than the legendary quantum speed reading. Unfortunately, there was very little that was of actual use. Tong Hua slowly shook her head at Wen Wen.
Wen Wen frowned. “That’s all?”
“That’s everything. It’s all here.”
The deputy director wiped the sweat from his forehead. With a bitter smile, he said, “Aside from patients’ medication fees, most of Mercy Hospital’s income comes from church donations. We still haven’t been able to transition to a paperless system, and the number of cases we receive is limited. As for the abnormal lab indicators and patients who showed rabies-like tendencies within a short period of time, like you mentioned, these are all the records we have.”
“What about anything else?” Wen Wen pressed on. “Anything related at all. Bring it out. If it’s too heavy to move, we can go look through the archives ourselves.”
The deputy director fell silent and sighed, but ultimately said nothing. Instead, a young doctor standing behind him hesitated for a moment before speaking up.
“What you’re concerned about... should be a blood-transmitted disease, right?”
Wen Wen’s eyebrow lifted. “Why do you say that?”
Realizing he had spoken out of turn, the doctor fell silent. Some of his colleagues were glaring at him. He lowered his head and took a slight step back. A brace was fixed around his leg, making it clear he had difficulty walking.
But some things simply couldn’t be said. At the very least, not by someone from the hospital to the Security Bureau.
“Your hospital assists the Security Bureau with official matters. To be honest, the other messy things going on have nothing to do with me, and I don’t want to deal with them.” Wen Wen frowned. “Let’s hope things don’t end up looking ugly.”
“No, no, it’s not that we’re deliberately hiding anything. It’s just...” The deputy director sighed. “If you want to investigate blood-borne infectious diseases, there’s nothing wrong with starting from hospitals. It’s just that many times, there’s nothing we can actually do. Most patients who still have options, and who need blood, usually won’t come here to wait it out.” He gave a self-mocking smile. “Because we can’t afford to buy it.”
The blood bank in Cliff City was a for-profit institution. Its supply was always prioritized for private hospitals and high-end sanatoriums that could pay. A church-sponsored hospital like Mercy Hospital, barely surviving on donations, simply couldn’t afford the expensive annual contract fees. Their patients couldn’t afford blood sold by the gram, either. More often than not, even when surgery required it, they would choose to... bring their own.
After all, where there was demand, there would always be a market. If the official blood banks were too expensive to afford, then those who couldn’t survive without it would naturally turn to less reliable channels. For example...
“Illegal blood banks?!” Tong Hua froze, eyes wide in shock. “That kind of thing actually exists?”
Wen Wen said nothing. Her expression darkened.
At last, it clicked. freewebnøvel.com
This was also why Mercy Hospital was unwilling to bring this up themselves. Who knew how many patients with no other options were clinging to that final lifeline. Even if it wasn’t safe, even if there was a risk of infection, no matter how many problems there were, sometimes all you could do was sit there and wait to die if you didn't have that last straw to grab onto.
For a powerful family like the Tong family of Cliff City, they owned countless businesses and held shares in more than one hospital. Tong Hua was destined to have nothing to do with places like illegal blood banks for her entire life. The same could be said for Wen Wen.
Wen Wen was a Chosen One who even had a gold-tier membership service at Hope Hospital. Even if she were chopped into pieces, as long as her head was still intact when she was delivered there, those lunatics could stitch her back together and make her whole again. These gray areas of the medical world were simply too far removed from the Chosen Ones.
Yet the one hiding behind the scenes only needed to follow this invisible vein. Through just a few blood bags, they could release the Bloodlust Syndrome virus into Cliff City and plant it deep in the pain and despair of innocent people, letting it spread silently in the darkness.
They had finally found it. Another set of footprints was left along the path the enemy had taken.
Wen Wen grabbed the car keys from the table and pushed the door open. “Let’s go, Tong Hua.”
“Huh?” Tong Hua blinked in confusion. “Go where?”
“To find this guy! And then kill his whole damn family!”
Their voices, accompanied by the metallic jingle of keys, drifted down the hallway and faded into the distance.
