Chapter 17: The Cannibalistic Hot Pot Restaurant (Part Six)

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Zhu Ning was crouching, while someone stood behind her with a gun aimed at the back of her head.

“You’re from the Cleaning Center?” It was a young girl’s voice. She had recognized the uniform Zhu Ning was wearing.

A living person. This might be the target of her mission.

The girl seemed fairly clever. She had used the natural conditions inside the room to cast a projection behind the cultivation tank, then hidden herself in the darkness.

Anyone who entered with even the slightest mental contamination would be able to go mad on their own inside the room.

Zhu Ning said, “Yes.”

“Did you come to rescue me?”

“Possibly.”

She wasn’t certain who this person was, nor whether she was the survivor she had been sent to rescue.

The girl with the gun remained silent for a while. The bells continued echoing through the corridor, and she didn’t have much time left. She couldn’t afford to take any more risks.

“How can you prove you’re not a Contaminant?” she asked a crucial question.

“By—”

The girl held her breath and listened intently. She heard Zhu Ning utter two words, then suddenly felt a sharp pain in her wrist. Zhu Ning twisted her arm behind her back, efficiently disarmed her, and kicked her away.

“Ah!”

The girl screamed. It felt as though a boulder had smashed into her abdomen. Her entire body slammed into the shelving behind her with a bang, and the medicine bottles above clattered down over her.

Zhu Ning frowned at the girl’s cry and immediately reached a verdict:

A rookie.

Before the girl could react, Zhu Ning’s gun was already aimed between her eyebrows.

Click—

Zhu Ning chambered a round. The motion of handling a gun was practically etched into her bones; she could fire without the slightest hesitation.

“Misunderstanding! I’m alive!” the girl shouted at once.

Her opponent was a young woman dressed in full protective gear. The suit was pure white, decorated with custom-printed patterns of adorable cats.

If Zhu Ning’s outfit made her look like a robber in motorcycle gear, then the girl before her looked like a little white cat, like a mascot from an amusement park.

Zhu Ning knew about suits like this. Some wealthy people were afraid of contamination and kept one at home as a precaution. Designed by famous couturiers, these protective suits guarded against contamination while also maintaining an attractive appearance. This one had to cost at least ten million new dollars.

In short, the girl was very rich.

“Who are you?” Zhu Ning asked, keeping her gun trained on her.

“Liu Niannian.” The girl raised her hands and spoke at lightning speed, afraid Zhu Ning might shoot her. “I don’t mean any harm. I’m a good person.”

Liu Niannian? Zhu Ning had never heard of her.

She didn’t lower the gun. Anyone who appeared in a contaminated zone was very likely to be a Contaminant. Liu Niannian had suspected Zhu Ning just moments ago; now Zhu Ning was suspicious of her as well.

“How long have you been here?” Zhu Ning asked.

“I don’t know. It feels like several days.”

Zhu Ning changed the question. “When did you come in?”

“October 3, Year 80 of the New Calendar, at 11:45.”

The pieces fit together, Zhu Ning thought.

The mission was valid for six hours. According to the latest data, six hours was the limit for an ordinary person inside a contaminated zone. After six hours, brain death was inevitable.

After Liu Niannian entered the contaminated zone, she must have triggered some mechanism, causing a gray “grave post” to appear on the Cleaning Center’s forum. It seemed that Liu Niannian was the person the system wanted her to save. At least she had identified the correct target.

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Liu Niannian’s mental resistance should be fairly high. She had been inside for an hour, yet she still looked clearheaded—at least more capable than Li Nianchuan.

But why had the system sent Zhu Ning to rescue her?

Zhu Ning put away her gun. It was an air gun, not something ordinary people could easily buy. Liu Niannian’s family was probably wealthy and powerful.

The daughter of a financial dynasty, Zhu Ning decided inwardly.

She tossed the gun back to Liu Niannian. “I came in an hour after you.”

“One hour?” Liu Niannian’s expression changed drastically. “I’ve been here for an hour? This is bad. This is really bad. My brain isn’t working properly.”

“If I say anything later, don’t believe me. I might try to hurt you.”

This person knew a great deal about Contaminants, Zhu Ning thought. She knew that every inch of skin had to be covered before entering a contaminated zone, and she knew that prolonged exposure could lead to mental contamination.

“Stay calm,” Zhu Ning reminded her.

The more unstable a person’s emotions, the more easily they were contaminated.

Liu Niannian took a deep breath. She truly didn’t have much time left. She checked her protective suit and was relieved to find no gaps. If contamination spores had taken root inside her, she might as well smash her head against the wall and be done with it.

“You’re a Cleaner?” Liu Niannian asked. “Why would the Cleaning Center send someone who sweeps garbage to rescue people?”

Zhu Ning fell silent.

In this day and age, even rescuers had to endure professional discrimination?

Liu Niannian seemed to realize that she had been rude. “Did you get separated from your team? Where’s your demon hunter? When is he coming to rescue us?”

Zhu Ning remained silent.

Whoever wanted to rescue this girl could go ahead and do it. How had she managed to hit every one of Zhu Ning’s sore spots in just three sentences?

“What are you doing in the contaminated zone?” Zhu Ning asked.

“Uh…” Liu Niannian hesitated, apparently considering whether Zhu Ning could be trusted. “I’m looking for my aunt.”

“Your aunt?” Zhu Ning asked. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen. I’m in graduate school. How old are you?”

Zhu Ning paused. “The same as you.”

They were the same age.

In this wasteland world, everything was forced to mature early. A chicken could go from hatching to the dinner table in just six hours, while the time allotted for human education had been compressed again and again. People graduated from university at eighteen. If Zhu Ning’s family had been wealthy, she would probably be in graduate school too.

“What’s your name?” Liu Niannian asked.

“Zhu Ning.” Zhu Ning had no time for idle chatter. “Your aunt went missing, so you came here looking for her?”

There was still a warning sign hanging at the street entrance. How reckless did someone have to be to enter a contaminated zone in search of a missing person? And Liu Niannian clearly looked like the daughter of a financial dynasty. Her aunt should have been some sort of wealthy socialite. How could someone like that possibly come to eat at a hot-pot restaurant?

It would make more sense if her family had bought the entire restaurant.

Liu Niannian hesitated, apparently arranging her words. “When I say ‘aunt,’ I mean a gardener who worked at one of my homes.”

One of my homes.

Zhu Ning caught the key phrase.

Just how many homes did this rich girl have?

“When I was little, no one played with me, so I used to go looking for her. Before my aunt disappeared, she became very strange. She muttered to herself every day, and the adults in my family wouldn’t let me have anything to do with her. Only after I grew up did I learn that she might have been mentally contaminated decades ago.”

“I read through her diary and discovered that she used to love coming to this hot-pot restaurant. My aunt had a burn scar on her arm. It covered the entire arm, climbed up her shoulder and neck, and extended to the lower half of her face.”

Liu Niannian gestured across her own body, indicating the extent of the burns. The area was large enough to come close to disfigurement.

“My aunt said she got burned while eating hot pot. She never had plastic surgery because she believed the scar was a gift. And whenever she talked about the restaurant, she never sounded resentful. She actually seemed to miss it terribly, saying that the food was delicious and it was a shame the place had closed. So I wanted to come and see just how good it really was.”

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There it was. The final piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

Zhu Ning had read the diaries written by the employees and listened to the recordings. Now she had completed the puzzle with the diners’ piece. The diners back then had certainly been contaminated after eating the meat. But where had those contaminated diners gone?

She seemed to have found a clue.

After being mentally contaminated, they appeared perfectly normal. They could continue working as gardeners, but they would do abnormal things. They blended into ordinary people’s lives, leaving others with the vague sense that something was wrong without being able to say exactly what.

Liu Niannian really did have a powerful curiosity. Her family gardener had said that this hot-pot restaurant served delicious food, and she had wanted to come see it for herself. Perhaps she didn’t want to reveal her family’s wealth and had concealed some information. What she had told Zhu Ning was probably only half true.

Zhu Ning guessed that searching for her aunt was secondary. The real reason she had come was to seek adventure. She was exactly the sort of wealthy heir who had been spoiled by a life of comfort and went looking for danger out of boredom.

“Did you find her?” Zhu Ning asked.

“No. I looked through all the diners, but my aunt wasn’t among them.”

“How did you get inside?”

“I applied for a job,” Liu Niannian said. “Yang Tao asked what I did, and I told him I was there to wash dishes. Then I saw a sign on this room saying, ‘Do not enter unless invited.’ I assumed something secret was hidden inside, so I came in.”

“Was this the first door you opened?”

“Yes. I only opened this one. I hadn’t even gone back out when I saw Yang Tao killing someone, so I didn’t dare leave.”

Zhu Ning didn’t know whether to call Liu Niannian lucky. This room was where the owner stored medicine, and Yang Tao probably hadn’t visited often even when he was alive.

“After I came in, I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. But every so often, they rang a bell and held a meeting. Each time, the bell kept ringing for quite a while, and everyone in the restaurant would go down into the basement. I found a hole in this room. I don’t know who dug it. They would kneel and pray to the owner, then cut pieces of flesh from him and take them to the kitchen to be processed before using them in the hot pot.”

“At first, watching it made me sick. Later, I stopped feeling disgusted. I only wanted to escape. The best time to get away was when they went down into the basement.”

“I watched them several times, and it was always the same. I was planning to sneak out during the next meeting, but then I heard your voice.”

Zhu Ning had made far too much noise. The sound of her gunshot had startled Liu Niannian. At that moment, Liu Niannian had realized that a living person had entered the contaminated zone.

She had assumed the Cleaning Center had sent Zhu Ning as a rescue team, but she also suspected that Zhu Ning might be a Contaminant and didn’t dare reveal herself rashly.

Liu Niannian had explained her situation, so Zhu Ning briefly told her what she knew as well. Liu Niannian didn’t need to read the diary or listen to the recordings herself, but what Zhu Ning described was still terrifying. It sounded like an entire collection of horror stories.

“So the thing lying on the hospital bed downstairs is the contamination source?” Liu Niannian asked.

Zhu Ning opened her mouth, about to answer.

Bzz—

The ringing suddenly stopped. The flesh-cutting ritual in the basement had ended. The formation dispersed, and the participants returned to the hot-pot restaurant in an orderly fashion. Rustling sounds came from the corridor as the diners and employees came back upstairs.

Zhu Ning heard the pig-headed man dragging his axe along the floor again. Yang Tao was still trying every possible way to enter the girls’ dormitory. He was even more violent than before, smashing the door into splinters. It would not be long before he searched this room.

That wasn’t all. The other diners had not returned to the main hall to eat hot pot. They were patrolling the corridors.

They had found an outsider.

They were looking for the outsider.

Liu Niannian’s face turned deathly pale. She asked in a small voice, “What do we do now?”

Zhu Ning sighed. If she were escaping alone, she could use the rotten fish head’s acceleration function. With Liu Niannian beside her, movement would be difficult.

“I’m going to kill the contamination source.”

“How?” Liu Niannian asked, clearly troubled.

The pig-headed man was blocking the way outside, and everyone in the restaurant was part of the same group. The diners and the other employees were equally dangerous. There was no way the two of them could cross the corridor and reach the basement without suffering harm.

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