Fang Ling spent the whole morning grinning from ear to ear no matter where he went.
After picking out his crystals, he immediately shipped off his big iron sword and the crystals to the modder.
Jin Xiao was, after all, an A-rank esper.
The iron sword had taken some damage last time, so Fang Ling just had the master fix that up at the same time.
Bai Long later found out that the modding-and-repair fee was a number she wouldn’t have dared to even imagine.
She watched Fang Ling go day after day without taking a single commission, before they’d met, he’d been a complete shut-in.
So where on earth did he get all this money to splash around?
Bai Long had scraped together a few credit points, but at heart she was still flat broke, and her curiosity got the better of her. She just came right out and asked him.
“Oh, that…”
Fang Ling said matter-of-factly, “There was this time I went out and some woman took a fancy to me, she wanted to date me. Her family seemed pretty loaded. Her dad offered me five million to leave his daughter alone. I agreed.”
Bai Long: ……
She never in a million years would have guessed that was the reason.
But then she took another look at Fang Ling’s intensely deceptive face, and, yeah, it really was the kind of face you could make a living off of.
So this was what it meant to have heaven hand you a free meal!
Bai Long was torn between grief and indignation.
She’d spent ages hoping to run into a sucker exactly like that, and instead Fang Ling was the one who’d run into it!
Bai Long decided to give Fang Ling the silent treatment for a while.
Fang Ling got nothing but the cold back of Bai Long’s head, and stood there utterly baffled.
Chi Shen had earlier scheduled a checkup day for Bai Long, and today happened to be it.
Having seen yesterday’s grim crush of bodies at the entrance of Sinai, she hadn’t planned on going.
But Fang Ling had gotten under her skin, so she pulled up the commission board, and the very top entry, flagged in red, had been posted by Sinai Hospital.
【C-Rank Commission: Sinai Hospital is recruiting a large number of espers to assist with in-hospital protection and management!】
The commission paid two hundred credit points a day.
To replenish the stamina she’d been burning through, Bai Long had been spending a fortune on food.
On the principle that money is money whether it’s big or small, Bai Long accepted the commission.
She and Fang Ling tidied themselves up and headed for Sinai.
The whole way there, they heard everyone around them talking about Sinai Hospital.
“Why did they suddenly stop taking patients? They must’ve handed all the slots to people they know! Just yesterday I saw some guy who knew a doctor get let in!”
“Are these doctors completely heartless?! There they are, safe and sound inside the hospital, the money’s all coming out of our pockets, and now they don’t even care whether we live or die!”
“I heard the food in their cafeteria is amazing, fish, meat, even fruit! Look at the lives we’re living, and look at the lives they’re living! I haven’t had a proper meal in days.”
“At lunch, when they sit down to eat, I’m going over there to protest! If I can’t eat, they don’t get to eat in peace either!”
……
Only a few days ago these same people had been singing the doctors’ praises, and now, in less than a single day, they’d flipped into a completely different crowd.
By the time the two of them reached Sinai, they found that in just one night the hospital’s protective wall had risen another three meters.
It was now well beyond what any ordinary person could ever climb.
There were fewer people at the hospital gates, but plenty still refused to leave, no matter what.
Songdu had managed, with great effort, to keep the zombie tide contained within a certain range.
Sinai happened to sit just outside that range, so the tide hadn’t yet reached the hospital.
Or perhaps it was because Songdu’s higher-ups were mindful of the countless doctors inside Sinai, they couldn’t afford for any of them to fall, so they kept the tide penned in where it wouldn’t threaten the doctors.
“No matter how much of a fuss you make, you’re not getting in. The hospital is completely full now, only people with a patient card are allowed inside!”
“It’s not that we won’t let you in. The hallways are packed with patients as it is, so even if you got in there’d be nowhere to put you! Nowhere, understand?!”
The armed guards had shouted themselves hoarse, repeating it again and again, but the worked-up crowd wouldn’t take in a word of it.
All they knew was that once you got into the hospital, you were saved.
Bai Long walked over to the side and showed the guard her esper certification and the live commission-acceptance page.
So did Fang Ling.
“Once you’re inside, someone will assign you a post.”
The guard moved to open the door.
These were extraordinary times, the most he could do was let them in through a small temporary side door.
Both Bai Long and Fang Ling indicated they understood.
Just as they were about to step inside, someone grabbed Bai Long’s clothes hard.
“Why do they get to go in?!”
Those hands clawed desperately at her clothes, furious eyes locked onto her.
The guard explained helplessly, “They’re espers! They’re going in to work!”
The guards couldn’t spell out too plainly what the espers did inside, essentially, when necessary, they cleared out zombies that had fully turned.
“You’re lying! They’ve got to be connected! Your hospital only lets in people with connections! You’re just leaving us ordinary folk to die!”
The man had clearly gone half-mad, gripping Bai Long’s clothes and refusing to let go for the life of him.
Watching for a moment when the guard wasn’t paying attention, he actually tried to shove past her through the door.
Hearing his shouts, plenty of people noticed the side door had opened, and they surged toward it like a wave.
“Stop pushing, damn you all! Can’t you see someone’s fallen?!”
The guard’s voice was completely swallowed up by the crowd.
Bai Long watched as an old man got shoved to the ground. The people behind acted as if they couldn’t see him at all, and a chaotic stream of feet came down on him one after another.
The guards weren’t allowed to harm ordinary civilians at will, so all they could do was try their best to keep order, but it clearly wasn’t working.
A great splash of water suddenly came down from the sky, landing on the shoving crowd.
The icy water, blown by the wind, sent a shudder rippling through them.
Caught off guard by the sudden drenching, the people actually stopped.
While they stood there stunned, Bai Long and Fang Ling had already slipped into the hospital.
The side door swung shut, giving the people outside no further chance to push in.
Seeing this, the guard immediately grabbed his weapon, sternly drove the crowd back, and helped the unconscious old man to his feet.
“That felt good, I’ve been wanting to dump a bucket of water over them for ages! Day after day they just yell and yell, and nothing you say gets through.”
Afterward, the guard would call that splash of water the single most satisfying thing to happen in this whole stretch of time.
“There’s really no reasoning with those people. We keep telling them the hospital admits patients by how serious and urgent their condition is, and there’s nothing actually wrong with them, they’re just at the gate kicking up a fuss to get in.”
“Don’t even start. We’ve still got work to do, there’s no end to it for days.”
……
After Bai Long and Fang Ling entered the hospital, the in-house staff in charge of management assigned them to different departments.
Whether or not it was because her glorious deeds outside had spread inside, Bai Long got assigned to the ward with the most patients.
She and Fang Ling were split up, he was sent to outpatient.
When Fang Ling walked off, his expression was like he was headed to a funeral.
There were too many patients, the elevators were no longer open to the public, and only medical staff could swipe a card to transport patients.
Bai Long was in great physical shape, especially since she’d been eating well lately, so climbing a dozen-odd flights in one go was no problem at all.
This was her third time at the hospital, but none of the previous visits had shaken her like this one.
All the way up, every floor was sealed off on all sides by hard steel railings.
The windows and many of the passages had been firmly welded shut, and each floor had only a single door left for passage.
But even that one door had been reinforced with sturdy iron bars, you had to scan your face and swipe a card to get in or out.
Bai Long and the others had already been entered into the facial-scan system.
She used the magnetic card she’d just been handed to open the iron door of the critical-care ward on the sixteenth floor. The floor was covered with people restrained to their beds by their hands and feet, or rather, people in the process of turning into zombies.
The shackles binding them rattled and clanged as they thrashed, and that grating, nerve-shredding sound filled the entire building.
Everywhere she looked, the air was thick with the lifeless stench of despair.
“You’re an esper, right? Quick, quick, take this bed to the operating room!”
A nurse, dizzy with overwork, spotted the newly arrived Bai Long and, without a thought for introductions or pleasantries, grabbed her and gave her a task.
Bai Long was led to a hospital bed.
On it lay a chubby little boy not quite ten years old, mouth open, shrieking in pain.
The right half of his face had gone gray, the dark gray-green skin that only a zombie has.
“The operating room is on the tenth floor.”
Having said her piece, the nurse turned and went off to tend to other patients.
Bai Long’s first impression of her was the wisps of hair plastered to her head by sweat, and the flushed half of a face suffocating under her protective hood.
Bai Long didn’t waste a moment, she pushed the bed toward the elevator.
The elevator had already arrived.
The little boy was on the heavy side, his eyes squished into slits by the flesh of his face.
But Bai Long was strong enough that pushing him along didn’t stick or stall in the slightest.
As she entered the elevator, she ran right into a patient being wheeled up after surgery.
It was a girl about the same age as the little boy, thin and small, lying on a hospital bed with half her body wrapped in thick bandages.
The beds crossed paths only for an instant, Bai Long pushed the boy into the elevator, and the girl was wheeled off to her ward.
All Bai Long had to do was deliver the boy to the operating room.
But she didn’t expect that the person coming out to take him would be Lin Xi.
Lin Xi didn’t notice her.
All her attention was on the little boy, without pausing for a second, she took the bed from Bai Long’s hands and pushed it straight into the operating room.
The operating room’s metal door slowly closed, sealing inside from out.
……
The surgery took a long time, and Bai Long couldn’t just keep waiting outside.
She went back and delivered several more beds of patients to different operating rooms.
The whole while, every single operating room stayed in active surgery.
One bed came out, and the next went right in behind it.
“Old Wang, you’ve already done four surgeries, keep this up and your body won’t hold out. Hurry up and go rest.”
“I can’t. There are too many patients. If I rest, they can’t wait.”
As he spoke, the doctor splashed cold water on his face, took a swig of glucose-and-sodium-chloride injection fluid, and went back into the operating room.
The operating-room lights stayed on. That day, all the way until Bai Long’s shift ended in the late morning, she never saw that little boy again.
She didn’t know whether he’d been moved to some other ward.
It wasn’t until noon that Bai Long and Fang Ling finally met up in the cafeteria.
When Bai Long saw Fang Ling, she felt like he’d nearly turned into a zombie himself.
The whole of him looked like the life had been sucked clean out of him.
The cafeteria was nearly empty.
A hall of several hundred square meters, and a single glance showed only the espers who’d come in as temporary workers, hardly any actual medical staff.
Having heard the people outside say the cafeteria had vegetables, meat, and fruit, Bai Long had assumed the food must be pretty fine.
But when she got her tray, all she saw was mostly coarse staples like potatoes and sweet potatoes, the point being just to fill your stomach.
If those withered cucumbers counted as fruit, then sure, you could call the food pretty fine.
Eating Fang Ling’s cooking every day, Bai Long had nearly forgotten she was actually living in the apocalypse.
It wasn’t until she saw the hospital’s thin, watery fare that the reality of the end times hit her all over again.
“Good thing I came prepared.”
Fang Ling, recovering some of his energy, pulled out his little bag.
He hauled out a big five-tier rectangular lunchbox.
The very same one he’d used to bring her meals back when she was hospitalized.
Lychee pork, salt-and-pepper pig’s trotters, boiled pork slices… four tiers of meat dishes paired with one tier of stir-fried seasonal greens.
The moment the lunchbox opened, Bai Long distinctly felt the eager stares coming from every direction.
She could even hear the big guy at the next table swallowing.
That guy thought he was hallucinating.
He’d actually thought the cafeteria food was fine, you could eat your fill, and it didn’t cost them anything.
But the moment he saw the completely different vibe over at Bai Long’s table, he suddenly couldn’t get the boiled potato on his chopsticks down.
It smelled so good!!
He tried several times to shove the potato into his mouth, and failed every time.
In the end he sidled over to their table, putting on his most amiable smile. “Friends, this food of yours, could you spare me a little? I’m willing to pay!”
He wasn’t the type to mooch a free meal, either.
Everyone present was an esper. Credit points could always be earned back once they were gone, but finding cooking this good in the apocalypse was no easy feat.
And besides, the ingredients themselves looked far from cheap.
At the word “pay,” Bai Long’s eyes lit up, but she still gritted her teeth and refused: “I didn’t make this. It’s his.”
The moment the big guy edged closer, Fang Ling’s whole body had started to stiffen.
Bai Long said directly to him, “Sorry, we’ve got things to do after we eat.”
The big guy had noticed Fang Ling’s not-quite-normal behavior too.
Very sensibly, he went back to his own seat, privately resolving that next time he picked teammates, he ought to find one who could cook.
Seeing the big guy strike out, the others stopped coming over to try their luck.
Bai Long and Fang Ling had just finished eating and were about to leave when a cafeteria auntie stopped them.
“You two, could I trouble you to take these over to the wards? The doctors and nurses are too busy to eat, and their bodies can’t take it.”
Bai Long took the lunchboxes from the auntie’s hands and noticed it wasn’t just them, several other espers had been stopped too and handed lunchboxes.
But when Bai Long carried the lunchboxes back to the ward and went to set them down in the doctors’ office, she saw several more boxes of food on the desk, each with just a few bites taken out.
They looked like leftovers from the day before, as if someone had hastily picked at them a couple of times and never sat down to a proper meal.
Bai Long set down the boxed meals and was about to get to work when she heard the sound of a conversation coming from the office around the corner.
“No need. We have no intention of cooperating.”
It was Chi Shen’s voice, sounding utterly exhausted.
Only then did Bai Long realize that this ward was the one Chi Shen was in charge of.
“Director Chi, don’t be so absolute about it. How do you know how long Sinai Pharmaceuticals can hold out? They might get overrun by zombies at any moment. Lining up partnerships with a few more companies early on isn’t a bad thing, and what’s more, our prices are lower. The public will lean toward choosing our medicine too, which means more money in your share, doesn’t it? It’s win-win, why not?”
“I said we’re not cooperating. You think I don’t know what kind of garbage the medicine you Kadi Pharmaceuticals churn out really is? Cutting corners, using the cheapest raw materials, what you produce doesn’t even meet the minimum standard for efficacy. I’ll say this one last time: we will not be handing you the technology for the suppressant.”
Chi Shen’s tone was hard, as if he’d been thoroughly fed up with the man.
“Director Chi, right now you’re only riding high because yours is the one and only hospital. A single dominant player never ends well. We’ll see about that!”
The man delivered his parting threat and shot Chi Shen a meaningful look.
He opened the door and saw Bai Long standing right outside.
He wore a suit, and the gloating he hadn’t bothered to hide still lingered on his face.
He looked exactly like a profit-grubbing little villain.
“Is this the armed squad? Yes, a suspicious individual has slipped into the inpatient department, looks like a pyramid-scheme type. Got it. Understood.”
The moment Bai Long finished speaking into her star-ring, she drove an elbow into the man’s jaw, twisted his arms back behind him, and pinned him flat to the ground.
“Ah! What are you doing?! You dare lay a hand on me?!”
The man thrashed for his life on the floor, but couldn’t escape Bai Long’s grip in the slightest.
Bai Long briskly and efficiently dislocated his jaw.
“Yes, he’s secured. Please come deal with the trash right away.”
Bai Long reported back to the armed squad over the star-ring.
Chi Shen had witnessed the scene at the doorway.
He’d been exhausted from the long string of surgeries, and the man had just spent ages badgering him, he hadn’t even had time to drink any water. But watching this, the fire in his chest abruptly went out.
The armed guards soon hurried over and took the man away.
As he was led off, the man yelled garbled, incoherent things, probably cursing, though it just sounded deranged.
“Thank you for that.”
Chi Shen glanced at the time and said hurriedly, “I’ve got another surgery, so I’ll be off. If you see him come in again, just throw him straight out.”
Hearing this, Bai Long felt a flicker of surprise.
She didn’t expect someone as serious-looking as Chi Shen to have a side like this.
Chi Shen rushed off to his surgery.
“Someone, the outpatient side is short on suppressant. Someone go take some over!”
A nurse pushed the door open and called out.
Right then Bai Long was the only one free, so she raised her hand to volunteer.
“How’s it looking? How much suppressant does our ward have left?”
a nurse asked anxiously.
“Almost not enough either. Outpatient’s already completely out. Districts Eight and Nine combined still aren’t enough…”
“With this many people, what are we going to do? Has the drug factory still not replied?”
“They’re rushing production too, but they’re short-handed. And of course this is the only factory whose quality checks have passed…”
“If things go on like this, something’s bound to go wrong…”
The two nurses didn’t talk for long, there were more and more patients to look after.
One nurse, anxious to check on a patient, ran out, her legs gave way, and she fell flat on the floor.
But she quickly scrambled up and ran toward the patient, gritting through the pain.
……
The outpatient department was very close to the compound’s main gate.
Before Bai Long even reached outpatient, she could hear the clamor and shouting outside.
“Just let us in! We won’t get admitted, surely you can at least prescribe us some suppressant?! Why won’t you even prescribe us the suppressant?!”
“It’s not that we won’t prescribe it, right now the medicine has to go to the seriously ill patients first! Your symptoms are all relatively mild, so there’s no need to panic!”
The guards couldn’t out-argue them, so they just grabbed a megaphone.
“You’re lying! It’s obvious you doctors are saving it for your own people first! Do you doctors even have any medical ethics?! Just watching us die like this, has a dog eaten your consciences?!”
“You say we’re mild and we’re mild?! If something really happens later, can you take responsibility?!”
The crush of people at the gate had only grown.
The number of guards had gone from the initial two to ten, each holding a riot shield to block the entrance.
A line of guards hurried past beside Bai Long.
“Here we go again. These past few days they come and make a scene at noon every single day.”
“Yesterday someone even threw a rock at people, one of the kids from the third squad got hit square in the face, blood everywhere. It was Dr. Lin who took the time to stitch him up.”
……
By the end of the day, Bai Long felt more worn out than she did killing zombies.
She’d even started hearing things, a constant ringing of that shouting and cursing in her ears.
“Because the hospital is severely short-staffed lately, and on top of that the public outside is rather worked up, we’ll have to trouble all of you to stay at the hospital for the time being.”
It wasn’t until evening that Bai Long and Fang Ling finally got their turn to switch off and rest a while.
The espers had been temporarily put up in the doctors’ dormitory building, two to a room, just barely enough.
“We’re staying here, so where do the doctors stay?”
“It’s fine, the doctors haven’t been back to their dorms in ages. They just make do at their desks in the hospital. Go ahead and stay.”
The staff member managing them said it with total certainty.
“This is brutal… even a man made of iron couldn’t take grinding like this…”
After a full day watching the workload those doctors carried, Fang Ling concluded it was way more intense than the all-nighters he used to pull gaming.
Bai Long had already flopped onto the bed, head back, and fallen asleep.
She needed to grab what rest she could, otherwise tomorrow, before the zombies even went down, she’d be the one to collapse first.
……
The next day she got up at barely six or seven, and Bai Long could already hear the cursing at the gate had grown even fiercer.
“Black-hearted hospital! They only care about their own profits and don’t give a damn whether the patients live or die!”
“Exactly! Why won’t they produce more suppressant?! One dominant player, charging these sky-high prices! It’s the apocalypse and they still want to exploit us ordinary people?! Are they even human?”
“Gathering all the doctors in one place, isn’t it just to force us to come here for treatment?! Getting treated is like getting robbed! They don’t even look at what times these are, still demanding money!”
“It’s such a simple thing, just prescribing some medicine, why won’t they agree?! Why won’t they give us the drugs?! It’s just because we don’t pay them enough! They’ve sold all their suppressant to the rich! Our lives are worthless, so it’s fine if we die, ha ha ha!”
“Everyone, stop crowding around here. These lofty doctors aren’t going to care whether we live or die anyway. We’re better off finding some other way to save ourselves while there’s still time!”
……
Bai Long listened, and the drift of this talk was clearly off.
That went double for the doctors and nurses who’d gone months without sleep, hanging on by sheer willpower to treat these people.
“What are they getting at?! We have no conscience? You get what you pay for, do we really have to treat them and hand over medicine for free?! Do we deserve to put up with their dirty looks and curses?! How many days have we gone without sleep or food?! There’ve been no fewer than dozens of medical staff who’ve collapsed these past days, what more do they want from us?!”
“Damn it! Whoever wants to treat this disease can treat it! I’ve had it with this crap! I’m done waiting on them!”
A doctor slammed his gloves into the contaminated-waste bin, his face flushed red with anger.
The prolonged mental strain had already left these medical workers low.
Hearing words like these now only stoked the fire.
“Enough, all of you, say less.”
Chi Shen and the chief directors of several departments knew full well that going on like this would only get more chaotic.
The zombie tide had been faintly threatening to break the boundary line these past days, people were on edge.
At a time like this, the medical staff least of all could afford to fall.
“Whoever’s done several surgeries in a row, go rest first, we can’t let any more people collapse. Anyone with energy left, step up. Hold on, everyone.”
Seeing that several of the doctors below were in a bad emotional state, Chi Shen sent them off to rest first.
The dark circles under Lin Xi’s eyes had grown heavier, and her eyelids were oddly a little swollen.
“Teacher, then I’ll go keep working at outpatient.”
Her teacher hadn’t rested in a long time either.
He had a surgery coming up, if she went, she could at least lend a hand.
“Are you sure you can?”
Chi Shen looked at her.
After what had just happened, he actually didn’t think Lin Xi should keep working.
Lin Xi smiled. “I’m fine, Teacher. I’ll manage myself.”
“And besides, we’re short-handed right now, this is no time for me to be dwelling on things like that.”
Chi Shen sighed. “All right then. You’ve been working a long time too. If it gets to be too much, take a rest on your own.”
Lin Xi nodded and headed off to outpatient.
By around nine or ten in the morning, something new had crept into the cursing at the hospital gate.
“Did you manage to buy suppressant?”
“I did, I did. That suppressant Kadi Hospital sells actually works pretty well. I was worried it might be fake, but the guy next door used it and his resistance clearly got stronger. I watched him walk out the door and run smack into a zombie, it bit his hand and he was totally fine.”
“Is it really that miraculous? Bitten and still fine?”
“I saw it with my own eyes, how could it be fake! Even the representative from that hospital took it, used himself as the test, and he was perfectly fine!”
“That’s right, that’s right! And Kadi Hospital belongs to Kadi Pharmaceuticals to begin with. Their suppressant sells for way cheaper than this Sinai place! You can buy it for just a tenth of the price!”
“Kadi Pharmaceuticals is a big pharma company too, how could it be fake!”
“Where’d you buy it? I’ll go get some too.”
“It’s over at…”
Hearing this, several of the guards exchanged a glance.
They knew about Kadi Pharmaceuticals, wasn’t that the company the doctors had blacklisted a few days back, the one they’d said to never let in again?
Weren’t they the ones cutting corners?! Was there really no problem with this medicine?
And then there was that so-called Kadi Hospital, a hospital nobody had ever heard of.
They hadn’t received any word from up top recently about another hospital opening, either.
The guards tried to talk those people down.
“What’s it to you?! You won’t give us suppressant, and now you won’t even let us find our own way to survive?”
“If you ask me, they just see that someone’s selling cheaper than they are. They’re scared their Sinai won’t have any business or any patients left, so they’re panicking.”
“Looks like that Kadi company’s medicine really does have something to it. The more you carry on like this, the more I’m definitely going to go buy it.”
The attempt to dissuade them failed, and the guards got cursed up one side and down the other for their trouble.
The guards were no pushovers themselves, and these past days the constant disturbances had worn them out body and soul.
Seeing they couldn’t talk anyone down, they just gave up.
Let them do whatever the hell they wanted.
On the other side, the news that Kadi was selling suppressant had also reached inside the hospital.
“This cheap? You couldn’t even make flour paste for that price. What were those people thinking, daring to use medicine like this?!”
“Now’s not the time to dwell on that. Other things aside, you can’t go around blindly using a drug like this. And from the looks of it, plenty of people have already gone to buy it. If there are side effects, we’re in trouble.”
“Every doctor in Songdu is right here. Where would they get the clinical data and experimental basis? It’s obviously a fly-by-night product with no credentials!”
“Going on like this, something’s bound to happen. We need to find a way to go take a look and see what this thing actually is.”
It was, after all, a private investigation, so they couldn’t make too big a deal of it, the leadership also wanted to find espers who could keep their mouths shut.
After Chi Shen learned of the hospital’s plan, he asked for Bai Long’s opinion.
It was voluntary, and there’d be a certain stipend.
As it happened, the little red bird had been cooped up in the hospital these past days and was getting a bit listless.
So Bai Long roped Fang Ling in and signed up.
A private investigation couldn’t involve too many people.
After Chi Shen submitted their names, the hospital leadership decided it would just be the two of them going, conveniently, they made up one team.
It happened to be noon, so Bai Long and Fang Ling slipped over while the company was on its lunch break.
Kadi Pharmaceuticals wasn’t hard to find in Songdu, it was, after all, a company with a proper office building of its own.
Their company’s location was right near the boundary line of the zombie tide.
Bai Long had the little red bird fly up high first to scout the situation.
Kadi Pharmaceuticals was mainly divided into two parts.
The public-facing office building, and the pharmaceutical plant located at the rear.
Bai Long and Fang Ling’s target was the plant at the rear.
Their suppressant was most likely produced there.
Two squads of security guards were patrolling the company’s entrance.
They didn’t look as imposing as the armed guards at Sinai’s gate, but in those work uniforms they cut a decent figure.
“Looks like they’re just ordinary humans.”
Bai Long observed for a while.
If they’d been espers, she and Fang Ling would have sensed it to some degree.
By now, with the apocalyptic mutations as far along as they were, the two of them could more or less tell the difference between espers and ordinary people.
Simply put, when an esper was out and about, they carried themselves with a bit more confidence than an average person.
For instance, the way they walked was different from ordinary folk.
“Should we make a move?”
Fang Ling asked under his breath.
He was faintly itching to give it a go.
This was a special covert infiltration operation, after all!
It just sounded so cool!
“With you here, no need.”
Bai Long looked at him meaningfully.
Fang Ling: “?”
And then he understood exactly what Bai Long meant.
There was a high-voltage electric grid running along Kadi’s outer wall, anyone climbing on it would definitely be fried black.
And if Bai Long’s water-rope tried to carry the two of them over like climbing a city wall, they’d obviously get shocked into a three-day, three-night coma.
So she switched approaches: she wrapped the water-rope around Fang Ling’s waist and, with all her strength, hurled him over like a javelin.
Once again, all thanks to the beastman’s powerful physique.
Fang Ling, nearly six feet tall, was like a bamboo pole in Bai Long’s hands.
Whoosh, and over he went.
Only in midair did Fang Ling realize what Bai Long had meant.
The wind was so strong that day, and his heart was so cold.
But the moment he landed, he obediently opened a portal for Bai Long anyway.
For the Nth time, Bai Long marveled:
The soul gate really is so handy~!
Kadi’s anti-intruder door was nothing in the eyes of two espers.
It was midday now, and the plant workers had all gone off to rest.
So there was no high voltage on the plant’s outer wall.
Bai Long and Fang Ling found a blind spot around the back and easily climbed up to a small window.
The plant’s lights were off, and being somewhat backlit to begin with, the equipment inside was hard to make out clearly.
Bai Long hauled the little red bird in through the window.
“Light.”
The little red bird got it instantly, obediently opened its beak, and spat out a small ball of flame, holding it at about the size of a fist.
An essential for home and travel—
, the birdie lamp.
It was an enormous mixer.
Inside the mixing vat was an unfinished half-product, a pitch-black mass of something.
Bai Long was far away, but she caught a faint whiff of a bloody, gamey smell.
A truly foul and indescribable odor, like meat that had rotted for a long time, with a moldy note to it.
“Let’s go down and take a look.”
From this distance she couldn’t see clearly what it actually was.
The two of them planned to find an opening and grab some raw material to take back for the doctors to analyze.
They both touched down lightly, only to turn their heads and see a worker staring at them, dumbstruck.
“You, you two…”
The worker spoke coldly, looking the next second like he was about to call for help.
Fang Ling made a snap decision and chopped the side of his hand down on the back of the man’s neck.
The worker immediately twisted up his face in pain.
But he didn’t pass out.
He was just in a lot of pain.
Fang Ling was aghast: ???
Fang Ling, utterly shocked: “Aren’t you supposed to be able to knock someone out by chopping the back of the neck?!”
Bai Long was shocked too: “That’s so obviously a lie from novels, come on!!”
“What are you two doing here?!”
The worker clutched the back of his neck, baring his teeth in pain as he demanded.
“We’re from the Drug Administration.”
Seeing there was no chance to make a move now, Bai Long simply declared righteously.
“We received a report that someone here is manufacturing and selling drugs illegally. We came to… make an incognito inspection.”
Bai Long suddenly blanked on how to say the actual term and just grabbed a phrase to make do.
“Drug Administration?”
The worker clearly faltered, but he still had a bit of common sense. “Do you have credentials?”
“It’s an incognito inspection, understand? It’s a covert investigation, how could we bring credentials?”
Fang Ling played the part of a competent lackey, stepping up right behind her with a face full of righteous indignation.
“All right, since you’ve seen us, there’s nothing for it, so tell me, what is it you’re making here?”
Bai Long clasped her hands behind her back, and for a moment really did exude the aura of an official on an inspection visit.
For this she had her boss at the funeral home to thank.
The boss didn’t dare look at corpses, but he loved putting on that kind of bureaucratic airs.
Watching him often enough, Bai Long had naturally picked it up.
These days, who can’t do an impression of an official?
The worker was cowed by her aura for a moment and didn’t dare run his mouth.
His eyes darted everywhere, looking anywhere but at Bai Long and the others, plotting to secretly tip off his boss.
The main thing was, what they were making here simply couldn’t survive an inspection!
While the worker was avoiding her gaze, Bai Long was also scanning the surroundings, and quickly locked onto one particular item.
“Why aren’t you talking?”
She kept her voice calm while quietly letting out a thread of water from her hand.
The worker’s hand had already reached his star-ring, on the verge of pressing it.
The next second, a muffled thud rang out in the factory.
The worker’s eyes rolled back, and he crumpled limply to the floor.
Bai Long set down the frying pan she’d been gripping and let out a breath.
“Quick, let’s grab what we need and get back.”
She had no time to deal with Fang Ling’s worshipful look, she turned and started searching the factory.
The main target was that biggest mixer.
Bai Long walked over to it.
From a distance the machine hadn’t seemed like much, but up close it was a full three people tall, with a ladder propped against its side.
Bai Long climbed the ladder and looked down.
What she hadn’t been able to make out before now came into focus.
It looked like a huge mass of minced meat.
In among the blackish minced meat, she could faintly make out bits of bluish-purple skin and white shreds.
Bai Long already had an answer in her mind.
“Holy crap…”
Fang Ling cursed under his breath. “Boss, are they using…”
“…zombies to make medicine??”
Right before him was a pile of dismembered zombie flesh, about to be tossed into the mixer.
Bai Long raised her star-ring and saved one photo after another.
Just as she was coming down off the ladder, the plant door was suddenly flung open.
Glaring sunlight poured in.
Several people came rushing straight at them with hurried steps.
“Grab them! Don’t let them get away!”
a voice snarled, livid.
Bai Long saw that the man was the very one from Kadi who’d gone to Chi Shen talking about cooperating.
Fang Ling didn’t hesitate, he immediately threw open a portal.
Bai Long let out the little red bird.
The little red bird suddenly spat out a blaze of fire, blocking the pursuers’ advance.
All those people could do was watch helplessly as Bai Long and Fang Ling’s figures vanished into the purple mist.
And when they charged forward to follow them in, the mist abruptly dispersed.
Unable to stop in time, they stumbled forward.
“Boss… what do we do now?”
the assistant at the man’s side asked carefully.
“Find them! You’d better find them for me! Go put out a post, say someone’s trying to smear us. We have to beat them to it!”
The man’s face was dark.
His gaze fell on the zombie flesh off to the side, and a streak of viciousness flashed across it.
“Boss, this is bad!”
Another person came rushing in from outside.
“What is it?”
“There’s a group of people outside, claiming to be from the Drug Administration.”
“They say someone reported us for illegal drug manufacturing and they want to come in and investigate.”
The man who’d run in had gone pale.
“They even showed credentials, and they’re already heading this way…”
The man trembled with rage, fists clenched white, but in the end he could only swallow his fury and go out to deal with them.
……
Bai Long and Fang Ling suddenly materialized in the office, startling the several doctors there.
“My god, Boss, you’re amazing. You actually really did report them to the Drug Administration.”
Thinking back on Bai Long’s maneuver before they went in, Fang Ling worshipped her all the more.
Bai Long, though, didn’t think Kadi Pharmaceuticals would fall just like that.
A company with the nerve to use such a huge machine in such an obvious place definitely wouldn’t be easily investigated and shut down.
But thinking about how it would keep Kadi’s people busy and frantic for a good while, she figured it was worth it.
She’d never really expected to take them down in one stroke, the goal of making their lives miserable had already been achieved.
Bai Long showed the photos she’d taken to Chi Shen and the other chief directors.
Their faces darkened on the spot.
“This, this, this is simply outrageous!”
A venerable old director trembled with rage.
“Can this stuff be given to people to eat?! Have they gone mad with greed for money?!”
“Zombies were people too, before they mutated! How could they… how could they…”
The doctor couldn’t even get the words out.
“We have to report them right away! It has to be exposed! We can’t let any more people take it. Otherwise the consequences will be unthinkable!”
Chi Shen looked at his star-ring and said heavily, “It’s too late. They posted first.”
At that very moment, a post Kadi Pharmaceuticals had put up not long ago had been pushed to the top of the trending list on the star-net.
But that trending status was likely partly natural and partly driven by people behind the scenes.
【Kadi Pharmaceuticals: Just now, our company’s pharmaceutical plant was broken into by criminals. They actually dumped a large quantity of zombies into our pharmaceutical machinery! To ensure the safe and proper production of our medicine going forward, our company has decided to suspend drug sales for one month to clean and replace the plant equipment! Addendum: Our company will do its utmost to negotiate with Sinai Hospital to open up a suppressant-purchase channel for the public. Although Sinai Hospital’s policies are harsh, our company will deploy its greatest efforts to discuss a solution with them! Kadi Pharmaceuticals absolutely places the safety of the public as its foremost priority!】
Below the post was a long string of netizens raging on the company’s behalf.
【Wait, are these people insane?! How vicious do you have to be to put zombies in medicine?! Brain-dead or what?!】
【Argh! Now we’ve got no medicine for a month, what about our safety?! Kadi Pharmaceuticals was our last hope! I hope whoever did this turns into a zombie too!】
【Kadi Pharmaceuticals really is a conscientious pharma company! The next month will be hard, but we’ll support you!】
【Wait, hold on, doesn’t this just put Sinai back in the position of being the single dominant player? It couldn’t be that they sent people to do this disgusting thing, could it? Would Sinai really stoop to that?! You were the ones who wouldn’t give us medicine before, and now that we’ve finally found a way to survive, are you trying to drive us ordinary people to our deaths?!】
……
Reading the comments at the top, Bai Long actually felt quite at peace.
She was very curious how Kadi Pharmaceuticals felt seeing those netizens’ comments.
Because all that rotten business was entirely Kadi’s own doing.
No matter how harshly people cursed, it was Kadi Pharmaceuticals they were cursing, what did any of it have to do with her, Bai Long?
“This evidence still isn’t enough to prove Kadi Pharmaceuticals’ wrongdoing.”
Chi Shen and the others just felt a splitting headache.
“Not necessarily.”
Bai Long said suddenly.
Everyone turned to look at her.
“How about we have a listen to a recording?”
Bai Long gave the device in her hand a little shake.
During the retreat, she’d had the little red bird drop a mini recorder into that man’s pocket.