Chapter 19: The Man-Eating Hot Pot Restaurant (Part 8)

Chapter 19: The Man-Eating Hot Pot Restaurant (Part 8)

Zhu Ning rolled to one side, while Liu Niannian crouched in the corner, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Zhu Ning: "The boss was a defective individual. In his desperation, he saw Yongsheng Pharmaceutical's experimental recruitment and they sent him a cultivation chamber and treatment drugs. The experiment involved injecting small doses of contaminant factors to gradually change the human body, but it failed."

Zhu Ning stared intently at the mirror. Every word she spoke seemed to alter the room. Zhu Ning and Liu Niannian's reflections vanished from the mirror, making it seem less like a mirror.

Liu Niannian realized that Zhu Ning wasn't speaking to her but to the contaminant.

"The boss began to mutate, and his appearance became hard to conceal, so he moved to the basement to avoid people. Only Yang Tao could visit him there every day. They agreed that if anything happened to him, Yang Tao should kill him immediately."

The bell in the store was a hospital bed call button.

The guillotine might have been prepared then, as a fail-safe for the hot pot restaurant owner. If he turned uncontrollable, Yang Tao was to activate the mechanism immediately.

"He thought hiding would prevent harming others, but he didn't know that once contaminated, he would continuously emit contamination, affecting others mentally."

"The first person contaminated was Little Hui. While handling cash, she felt her drawer was full of fingers, suspecting the meat served to customers was problematic. She saw Yang Tao as a pig head, becoming paranoid and suspicious of everything."

Swish—

Zhu Ning couldn't fully dodge the fourth attack; the guillotine grazed her back. More experienced this time, she quickly patched herself up and applied healing agents.

"Later, Little Hui left. She might not have died here; she simply quit. After she left, panic spread, and others started overthinking."

"Wang Ming had already been mentally contaminated. To him, Little Hui's departure meant death. He began to speculate whether her meat ended up in the kitchen, or whether it had been cooked into the hot pot. What kind of meat did the restaurant serve?"

From the beginning, Hao Zaile Hot Pot Restaurant was just a mass mental contamination event.

Zhu Ning surveyed the room, searching for a way out while continuing to speak. "Wang Ming suspected he would be next. So he began observing the boss, planning to strike first. He entered the boss's medicine room and discovered he had been injecting himself with drugs for body modification experiments."

"Wang Ming dug a hole in the floor of the medicine room and uncovered the boss's secret—he was a defective individual."

Boom—

A strange sound came from the mirror, causing Liu Niannian to nearly faint.

The mirrors were moving. The mirrors on all four walls slowly shifted, threatening to crush Zhu Ning and Liu Niannian into flat pancakes.

Liu Niannian instinctively looked up at the ceiling's hole, hoping to return through it.

But dozens of sinister eyes met her gaze. The pig-headed people and others had recovered, surrounding the hole with bloody faces, smiling menacingly.

This is it, this is it. All escape routes were sealed off.

Zhu Ning had angered the contaminant, and the contaminated area entered hunting mode.

Liu Niannian looked at Zhu Ning pleadingly, urging her to find a way out, but she seemed engrossed in her story, insisting on talking to a contaminant.

She looked like she was courting death, refusing to stop until the contaminant was thoroughly enraged.

Zhu Ning dodged another attack, never taking her eyes off the mirror.

"Wang Ming planned the murder. When the boss was asleep and Yang Tao wasn't paying attention, he sneaked into the basement, stood by the boss's bed, and..." Zhu Ning paused deliberately, "raised the knife."

In Wang Ming's recording, he got it wrong. He said the boss stood by his bed, but it was actually Wang Ming standing by the boss's bed with a knife.

The walls suddenly began to warp, reflecting pig faces in the mirrors. Their bulging eyes made them look like three-dimensional reliefs. Liu Niannian would rather die than be crushed into mincemeat by these creatures.

The guillotine's momentum decreased due to inertia, allowing Liu Niannian to cautiously crawl towards Zhu Ning.

"The boss died, but he was already contaminated before his death, so he released contaminant spores. Even a single spore could regenerate the contaminant. The blood-red spores instinctively sought a host. Wang Ming hadn't taken any precautions, so he was parasitized by the spores."

The pig-faced figures in the mirrors struggled, seemingly enraged by Zhu Ning, trying to break free.

Zhu Ning was clearly here to provoke, speaking faster. "After being parasitized by the spores, Wang Ming didn't lose his mind immediately, but he could feel something inside him. He didn't expect that killing the boss wouldn't end the nightmare but create a new one. He didn't know how to remove the spores from his body."

"When the symptoms began showing, his eyes changed, and he wanted surgery to get new ones. When his arms mutated, he wanted surgery to get new hands."

"Eventually, he realized the difference between contaminants and psychics was that the latter retained their sanity. Thinking he was clever, he began offering high rewards for psychic genes."

"But no one took his ridiculous offer seriously."

"Shut up!" The pig faces in the mirror twisted.

It worked, Zhu Ning thought. She had finally succeeded in provoking the contaminant.

"Ordinary willpower can't resist the erosion of contaminants. The next day, the contaminants in your body gained control. Their instinct is to reproduce, infecting more people."

Zhu Ning switched to addressing Wang Ming directly.

"You lost your mind and became the source of contamination in the hot pot restaurant, its ruler."

Inside the hot pot restaurant, the structure was pyramid-shaped, with Wang Ming at the top.

"You placed the boss's corpse back on the bed, pretending he was still alive. Everyone in the restaurant was mentally contaminated and couldn't tell the difference. Even Yang Tao forgot the boss's instructions."

"You cut the boss's flesh to contaminate more people. Those who were mentally contaminated found the rotten meat delicious, making it the restaurant's signature dish. You continued the tradition of hiring new employees, until one day, the contaminated area could no longer be controlled and attacked the customers."

That day, tentacles emerged from the hot pot, grabbing the customers' chopsticks and pulling them in. The severe incident led to the restaurant's closure, officially due to the boss's illness.

Thirty years ago, the Federation's cleanup of contaminants in various districts was incomplete. With limited resources, they only knew there was a contaminant in the area.

But the hot pot restaurant remained stable, forming a perfect ecological loop unknown to the outside world.

They killed each other internally, occasionally attracting new customers who became their new kindred spirits. Thus, the Federation only posted a warning sign.

Until Liu Niannian, a curious rich girl, arrived.

As Liu Niannian stepped into the hotpot restaurant, a gray tombstone post appeared on the Cleaning Center forum, successfully drawing Zhu Ning to the scene.

"Are you finished talking?" A face slowly materialized in the center of the mirror, his features cut and stitched together, twisted and enormous, towering at two meters tall.

Wang Ming, the true source of contamination, had appeared.

Wang Ming's face was only two meters away from Zhu Ning, allowing her to see his saucer-sized eyes.

The walls closed in, reducing the space where Zhu Ning and Liu Niannian stood to just five meters wide, leaving them with no escape route.

Zhu Ning stood up, surrounded by four walls, her body fragmented into countless pieces by the mirrors.

The source of contamination had emerged, yet Zhu Ning didn't act; she didn't raise her gun. What was Zhu Ning doing? Shoot already; isn't she an excellent marksman?

Was she mentally contaminated?

Liu Niannian, trembling, raised her gun and fired several shots. But the bullets spun into the mirror, as if sucked into jelly.

It was useless; guns couldn't kill the source of contamination.

"I'm finished talking," Zhu Ning responded calmly.

Snap, snap—

The sound of shattering mirrors was piercing, and broken shards littered the ground.

Liu Niannian's face turned pale as she watched a massive figure emerge from the mirror. This creature's head was the size of a wall, standing over three meters tall, with visible stitches on its face and sharp mirror shards embedded in its eyes.

Wang Ming opened his mouth wide, revealing a black tongue, covered in disgusting protrusions.

What was he going to do? Swallow us whole?

Zhu Ning suddenly asked, "Do you feel guilty about killing the boss?"

Liu Niannian was desperate. Why was Zhu Ning talking to the contaminant? Did she think she was a mental health counselor for pollutants?

"You said in the recording that you suspected you killed a guest, and you were scared and guilty," Zhu Ning said.

The recording was a trap left by Wang Ming to mentally contaminate those who entered the contaminated area. The events might not be real, but the emotions were genuine.

Very guilty? How deeply had Wang Ming been mentally contaminated?

The monster's open mouth suddenly froze. Was it working? Liu Niannian felt a glimmer of hope, but then she heard a shrill noise.

It sounded like hundreds of hands scraping a chalkboard, so loud it nearly drove her mad.

"It was him who wanted to kill me!" the source of contamination shouted. "He started it first!"

"I was just defending myself! What's wrong with that?"

As he spoke, Liu Niannian saw hundreds of black insects pouring out of his mouth.

Ugh—

Liu Niannian couldn't help but feel nauseous.

Hundreds of insects swarmed towards them, searching for any tiny gap to burrow through and devour skin.

Zhu Ning, wearing protective gear and a black full-enclosure helmet, looked tiny standing before Wang Ming, like an ant before an elephant.

Zhu Ning lifted her head, her voice calm: "He didn't want to kill you; it was all in your imagination."

The boss never harbored murderous intentions.

Zhu Ning asked, "When you killed him, did he even struggle?"

Wang Ming's brows furrowed. With his exaggerated facial features, even his micro-expressions were hard to miss. Liu Niannian sensed that Wang Ming seemed more tormented by these words.

Wang Ming stood before the boss with a knife, looking at him as if he were a mortal enemy. But the boss's gaze was peaceful, accepting his fate.

The boss died without a ripple, which meant he wasn't the source of contamination. The source must have an obsession; this world was based on mental values.

Please stop, Liu Niannian thought, wanting to cover Zhu Ning's mouth. Don't provoke him anymore.

The entire basement was writhing, and the person peering through the ceiling hole smiled and clapped, while the dead boss's eight-hundred-pound corpse continued to expand.

"Shut up!"

"Die, die, both of you die!"

The source of contamination's face twisted, and blood began to trickle down from the ceiling like a bloody waterfall, emitting a strong stench.

Liu Niannian couldn't take it anymore and shouted at Zhu Ning, "He's insane! Shoot him!"

Zhu Ning had truly angered the source, causing the entire hotpot restaurant to tremble.

Zhu Ning still didn't move. Liu Niannian confirmed that guns weren't effective in this contaminated area. Zhu Ning had bombs in her backpack, and the simplest solution would be to detonate them, but the basement had become a sealed space. If they exploded, Zhu Ning would be immune, but Liu Niannian would die instantly.

She needed another method to complete the task. Zhu Ning accessed her system panel.

System: "Corrupted Fish Head activated. It will consume 5 life points. Use mental contamination on Wang Ming?"

Zhu Ning: "Use."

Since Wang Ming was deeply mentally contaminated, Zhu Ning didn't mind adding a bit more.