“Mosquito larvae. The larval stage of mosquitoes. Four molts…”
“Doctor Han, do you understand what your proposal means?”
“If you want this proposal approved, then you must give me an absolute guarantee that you can cure them.”
Liao Chengyu looked at the ten people restrained on the hospital beds. Some were soldiers under her command, while others were evacuees whose faces she recognized. Among them was even a girl who looked to be only in her teens.
Their faces were gaunt and their spirits were listless, but they still clearly possessed human consciousness and vital signs.
If they had already become variants, she would have killed them without hesitation.
But now…
When those familiar faces heard that there was a possibility of being cured, they desperately turned their heads toward them, looking at them with hope.
If she killed them under these circumstances—
How would that be any different from murder?
Therefore, when Han Jianhong proposed that he could cure the infected, she hesitated.
“Don’t worry, Captain Liao. You know that my primary field of research is parasitology.”
Han Jianhong’s hand, which he had originally extended, remained suspended in the air for several seconds. Seeing that the guard before him had no intention of shaking it, he smiled faintly, withdrew his hand, adjusted his glasses, and looked toward Liao Chengyu.
“My apologies, Captain Liao. It seems Lieutenant Xiao Jiang doesn’t trust my medical skills.”
He gave a helpless little laugh and shook his head.
“Young people are always like this—reckless and unwilling to consider the consequences. How could we simply give up on more than a dozen lives?”
His words sounded gentle and magnanimous, but beneath the surface was unmistakable mockery.
Wendy looked the young man up and down before smiling lightly.
“Since Doctor Han is so confident, if you fail to control the situation and it ultimately affects the entire ship, are you willing to take responsibility?”
Han Jianhong was looking at Liao Chengyu when a leisurely question came from the side.
He frowned and turned toward the speaker.
“The Fish-Scale Disease that broke out in Huaijiang and other places during the early days of the apocalypse was also caused by parasitic variants. The infected were initially sent to Huaijiang First People’s Hospital.”
The girl paused, her dark eyes meeting Han Jianhong’s through her goggles.
“But if I remember correctly, the first place in Huaijiang to fall was the hospital.”
“Doctor Han, are you really certain that your expertise is better than that of all the doctors at Huai Medical?”
Han Jianhong pushed up his slipping glasses. A trace of disgust flashed behind the square frames, but he quickly concealed it, once again replacing it with a refined smile.
“Huaijiang had no preparations whatsoever at the time. Its fall was only to be expected.”
He sighed lightly.
“Lieutenant Xiao Jiang, why such a sharp tone? I only want to do what I can to help.”
Liao Chengyu had been staring at the people on the hospital beds the entire time. Hearing their exchange, she couldn’t help frowning and looking at Han Jianhong.
“It is good for the guards to think things through carefully. We have never encountered parasitic variants before, so the Fish-Scale Disease outbreak in Huaijiang is an excellent reference case.”
For a moment, the expression behind Han Jianhong’s glasses cracked.
He gritted his teeth.
Fortunately, at that moment, a doctor walked out of the ultrasound room and handed him a scan report.
“Captain Liao, Doctor Han, Mr. Wang’s ultrasound results are ready.”
Han Jianhong lowered his head and flipped through the report.
The seriousness that had appeared on his face when the results first came out completely relaxed. The corners of his lips lifted slightly, as though he were now completely confident.
“Captain Liao, look. These insects are parasitizing the patient’s abdominal cavity.”
He turned slightly toward Liao Chengyu and pointed to a section of the ultrasound image.
“These relatively regular and stable grayscale structures are Mr. Wang’s solid organs. These several dynamic grayscale structures attached to them are the insects inside his body.”
“I was originally worried that a patient as severely infected as Mr. Wang might already have suffered serious complications such as organ perforation. Fortunately, he hasn’t.”
Han Jianhong smiled calmly.
Standing behind Liao Chengyu on her right, Wendy could also see the ultrasound image Han Jianhong was pointing at.
Her first instinct was to look at Wang Tianci’s brain.
The grayscale appearance was uniform and regular, with no signs of parasitism.
On top of his abdominal organs were four attached mosquito larvae of different sizes. The largest was nearly half the length of an arm, while even the smallest was about the size of a thumb.
She glanced toward the ultrasound room and frowned slightly.
If the variants were parasitizing the abdominal cavity, then why was Mu Yan exhibiting symptoms suggesting that her thoughts were being affected?
And more importantly…
Why were there four?
The surveillance footage had clearly shown only one insect entering Wang Tianci’s body.
Had more parasitic mosquito larvae entered his body through the drinking water afterward?
“See? I told you. These parasites aren’t nearly as dangerous as you imagined.”
Han Jianhong put away the report and looked at Liao Chengyu. His peripheral vision swept over the silent guard girl nearby, and he smiled faintly.
“They merely enter the patient’s abdominal cavity and attach themselves to the organs, feeding on the patient’s nutrients. Other than causing an otherwise healthy person to rapidly lose weight and eventually die, they don’t cause any other abnormalities.”
“Infected people parasitized by these variants are no different from ordinary patients. If we place them inside the recovery chambers, biological electrical stimulation can force the parasites out of their bodies. Then we can kill them immediately after they are expelled, and the problem will be solved.”
Han Jianhong’s treatment plan sounded flawless.
Liao Chengyu readily agreed.
The ten people restrained on the hospital beds were successively carried into the recovery chambers in the inner hall.
Weak cries of pain rang out one after another, but soon subsided.
The dozen or so guards who had accompanied Liao Chengyu were responsible for killing the variants after they were expelled from the infected patients.
When Wendy saw a guard carrying out the corpse of a mosquito larva in a sealed container, she entered the room with her gun.
Before the apocalypse, technological restrictions had prevented these high-tech products from ever being brought to market. When the disaster struck Huaijiang without warning, the fall of the entire city could only be attributed to bad timing—it had inevitably become a discarded pawn.
But now, the 028 escape ship was equipped with the most advanced medical equipment available outside of Noah’s Ark.
Wendy also wanted to see whether humanity truly possessed the ability to deal with parasitic variants.
The next person placed inside the recovery chamber was the girl who looked only seventeen or eighteen years old.
Wendy vaguely remembered her.
The girl had boarded the escape ship with her father, and before the apocalypse, she seemed to have still been a high school senior.
Through the transparent cover of the recovery chamber, the girl twisted her body in agony.
Her face was pale, her cheeks sunken, and she looked extremely uncomfortable.
She was muttering something.
Wendy frowned and took two steps closer.
Sounds ordinary people couldn’t hear and movements they couldn’t see were magnified and slowed to the extreme the moment she activated the sea people’s enhanced five senses.
The girl struggled, her lips trembling as she whispered with difficulty.
“Don’t…”
At the same time, an already swollen, pale antenna suddenly protruded from her open mouth.
Something surged up her throat.
The girl trembled and tilted sideways before violently vomiting.
Four swollen mosquito larvae were expelled, writhing several times amid the vomit.
The girl was quickly removed from the chamber.
The expelled mosquito larvae were restrained, and Wendy took aim and fired several shots in rapid succession.
The four larvae stopped moving.
The portions blasted apart by the bullets mixed with the vomit, looking thoroughly dead.
After vomiting, the girl underwent a full-body examination.
Aside from significantly reduced blood and biochemical indicators and some signs of malnutrition, everything else had returned to normal.
Everyone in the medical department relaxed and smiled.
Being parasitized by a variant was curable.
What enormous news!
As more and more infected people successfully expelled the variants from their bodies, everyone in the medical department—whether guards or resident doctors—began smiling with joy.
Han Jianhong maintained his refined, self-satisfied expression, adjusting his glasses as he accepted everyone’s praise with a faint smile.
Amid the cheerful atmosphere, Wendy walked out of the inner hall carrying a sealed container.
Her gaze fell upon the four swollen mosquito-larva corpses inside the transparent container, and her eyes darkened.
She hadn’t heard the notification that normally followed the killing of a variant.
The true variant inside the infected person’s body had not been expelled.
Outside the medical department, Ge Jiang from Team A was using a flamethrower to collectively incinerate the mosquito-larva corpses.
Wendy walked over and poured the larvae expelled from the girl into the flames.
“Four again.”
Ge Jiang glanced at them.
“Do these bugs have to be in groups of four to parasitize someone?”
Wendy’s eyes flickered.
“Every infected person expels four variants?”
“Yep. I was bored, so I deliberately counted them.”
Ge Jiang muttered, “It’s the same for every single person. Exactly four each time. That’s why I thought it was strange.”
Mosquito larvae. Four of them.
It seemed as though something was beginning to connect in Wendy’s mind.
She frowned and quickly walked to a nearby corner before raising her wristband.
028’s automatic monitoring and reporting function had failed, but fundamentally, it was still a massive database containing both pre-apocalypse data and information collected after the apocalypse.
And the combat wristbands carried by the guards, aside from assigning missions and transmitting their locations, had another more important function:
They were connected to 028’s database.
In other words, the wristband could also function as a search engine.
Wendy stared intently at the wristband.
She urgently needed to verify a thought.
Fortunately, the search function had not malfunctioned.
Several seconds later, the relevant information gradually appeared.
[Mosquito larvae: The larval stage of mosquitoes. An important stage in the mosquito life cycle. They live in water.]
[After molting four times, the mosquito larva develops into a pupa. During the molting process, its old exoskeleton falls away from its body, while the new exoskeleton becomes better adapted to its increased body size.]
[After each molt, the mosquito larva’s body grows noticeably larger. Once it reaches maturity, it transforms into a pupa. The pupal stage is a transitional phase in the mosquito’s metamorphosis, after which it emerges as an adult mosquito.]
Four molts. Four mosquito larvae.
The four mosquito larvae expelled from the patients’ bodies were different in size, which meant that the parasitic larvae inside all the infected people had already completed their molting stages.
Then what exactly was inside the infected people now?
Pupae, or adult insects?
And where exactly was the hidden, differentiated variant concealing itself?
Wendy closed her wristband, raised her head, and returned to the medical department.
The little girl’s father had already arrived. He was sitting beside her bed, keeping her company. When he saw Wendy return, he hurried over.
“Oh, Lieutenant Jiang, thank you so much. Thank you for staying with my daughter during her treatment.”
As he spoke, the corners of his eyes gradually reddened.
“My wife passed away early. She’s all I have left. If something had happened to her this time, I… I really wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“Sweetheart, hurry, hurry and thank this big sister.”
Wendy silently looked at the father before her, who was still overwhelmed with fear and guilt.
Then she looked at the girl on the hospital bed.
The little girl’s face was pale, and her body was still thin, but she already looked much more energetic than she had before the treatment.
She didn’t thank Wendy as her father had told her to.
Instead, slowly… very slowly…
she forced a smile.
Author’s Note:
The information about mosquito larvae was taken from Baidu Baike.
I was a little tired after class today, so I took a nap as soon as I got home. I didn’t expect to oversleep, ahhh!
So, starting today, I’ll go back to updating at 3 a.m. It supposedly helps me take advantage of Jinjiang’s mystical luck. From now on, you can just get up in the morning or come home at noon and you’ll be able to see the new chapter~
Ahhh, and I’ve read all of everyone’s comments! I’m so happy that you all like the story I wanted to write. I’m seriously so, so happy!!!
Oh, right! Has anyone received the Jinjiang Coins? This is my first time doing this giveaway, so I don’t really understand how it works. It’s already past midnight and it’s still going on. I don’t know if any of you have received them.
I’ve talked so much, seriously. Okay, I won’t say anymore.
And if there are still any little angels who haven’t gone to sleep at three in the morning, then this goodnight is for you~