Chapter 72: The Black Dental Clinic (Part 3)

Chapter 72: The Black Dentist Clinic (Part Three)

Zhu Ning's protective suit this time was different from the previous one. It was still entirely black but had some thin metal lines on it, closely resembling a demon hunter's uniform.

The sensitivity and hardness had been improved, making it less prone to damage.

Had Prometheus upgraded her equipment?

She rode her motorcycle to the slums, with the smart car navigation system connected to her secondary brain. It would only take seventeen minutes to reach her destination.

This place was only four kilometers away from the Hive. Despite living nearby, Zhu Ning seemed to have never explored the slums of Zone 103, which should form its own ecosystem.

This residential area was called "Ant Nest." The overall structure was ten times larger than the Hive, but there were few people inside. Only a few scattered lights illuminated the area.

The flames from the distant incinerator couldn't reach here, making Ant Nest resemble a forgotten wasteland.

A musty, decaying smell permeated the air.

The main gate was slightly ajar, and the security booth was empty, covered in a thick layer of dust. This residential area seemed to have been abandoned.

Zhu Ning parked her motorcycle and sent a message to Liu Niannian, asking her to meet at the dentist clinic in Ant Nest in an hour. Liu Niannian didn't reply.

Zhu Ning found this normal; they hadn't been in touch for a long time, and the young lady's daily life was probably much busier than she imagined.

If Liu Niannian couldn't make it today, Zhu Ning would have to gather a team on the Grave Post Forum, just like how Mountain Cat always called a professional cleanup team after entering contaminated areas.

The expansion of Zhu Ning's team couldn't keep up with their reckless expeditions into contaminated zones. Lin Xiaofeng was too young and clearly not ready for missions, leaving almost no one in her team who could be relied upon.

Once inside the contaminated area, they would lose contact with the outside world. In the past, Zhu Ning would estimate the duration, but this time she had her own AI butler.

Leaving the motorcycle outside, she set several commands, giving the onboard system maximum autonomy. The luxury vehicle, equipped with AI, could analyze the situation and make decisions based on current conditions.

After everything was set, Zhu Ning entered Ant Nest.

"Detected contamination level at 85."

After walking about a hundred meters, the internal helmet system automatically reported the contamination level.

Zhu Ning frowned. There were no gray lines in front of her, indicating she hadn't entered the contaminated area yet. But the contamination level here already met the standard of a D-level contaminated zone?

Zhu Ning had completed the demon hunter training and had even gone on missions with them. She could now read the data herself and understand what each internal helmet announcement meant.

A core contamination source was necessary to form a contaminated zone. If it was just contamination, it could only be called a polluted area.

So this residential area was completely contaminated, with a contamination source inside. Just stepping through the entrance resulted in an 85% contamination level.

What surprised Zhu Ning was that Ant Nest wasn't sealed off, with no warning signs at all.

People could freely enter and exit, and some even lived there. Hadn't anyone managed them for so many years?

The employee handbook stated that if you saw a polluted area, you should report it to the technical department immediately.

Zhu Ning thought for a moment, opened the internal website of the technical department, and entered the address. Ant Nest was already registered, but its priority kept being pushed back.

"Rank 1,700, estimated waiting time: three years."

Zhu Ning: "..."

Because it wasn't in a bustling area and the residents were all defective products, it had no priority and could only wait in line. The records showed it had been registered for five years.

The queue was endless, and more urgent matters could always cut in.

From a profit-driven perspective, Zhu Ning understood the cleaning center's actions. Purifying this area offered no benefits, as defective products were supposed to die anyway. Even if the contaminated zone expanded, it would only affect the Hive and other slums.

But she felt uncomfortable, perhaps because she herself was a defective product.

The buildings within Ant Nest were more complex. The Hive only had three buildings, each very large, thirty-six stories high, with sixty-nine households per floor. Zhu Ning often wondered how to escape in case of a fire.

But the layout of Ant Nest was strange. Each building was slender and tall, with the tallest reaching fifty stories but only one household per floor. Long aerial walkways connected all the buildings, like bridges linking the entire complex.

From a distance, the buildings looked like a vertical chessboard. The aerial walkways were the lines, and the rooms were the intersections.

Each resident lived like a chess piece on a point.

Together, they formed a 3D chessboard.

In theory, you could enter any room and crawl from one end to the other, assuming all internal passages were open.

This architectural design was bizarre.

Zhu Ning had never seen anything like it. It seemed the builders didn't consider human comfort when designing these small rooms, which resembled tiny cells.

If you got lost inside, you might never find your way out.

The dentist clinic was located in a residential building, something Zhu Ning had seen before. During her training, she met a teammate whose family ran such a clinic in a small city.

It was said to be very profitable, as one's wealth could often be judged by their teeth.

Teeth were often equated with money.

Many dentists chose to open their own clinics. Some were in residential buildings, while others were on the ground floor of office buildings.

In the Wasteland era, such clinics were likely quite old.

The grave post indicated the clinic's location as Building 35, Floor 35, or (35, 35) in coordinates.

The nearest building to Zhu Ning was Building 23, but she couldn't figure out the arrangement of the buildings, feeling a bit disoriented.

Zhu Ning wasn't directionally challenged; in fact, she had a good memory and no issues with directions. However, after entering, she felt a bit dizzy and walked for ten minutes without finding it.

It's too strange.

From the moment she walked in, everything felt strange, like some kind of mystical trap. Was this place designed not only to prevent outsiders from entering but also to stop those inside from leaving?

29, 30, 31...

As Zhu Ning walked, she roughly sketched a map in her mind. The building numbers were increasing, confirming that she was heading in the right direction.

33, 34, 36...

Wait, where was Building 35?

She tried stepping back, retracing her steps. If you get lost in a forest, every tree can look the same, making it hard to find your way.

In such situations, don't turn around or change direction randomly; you must determine which way is forward.

Since Zhu Ning hadn't turned back since entering, she continued to move forward, even when she felt she had passed the point, she maintained the same posture and moved backward.

Only a few lights were on in the neighborhood, with a faint glow at the entrance of the building corridor.

After retreating about ten meters, she saw Building 34.

What was going on?

Was there no Building 35?

There were only Buildings 34 and 36; what happened to the one in between?

Zhu Ning repeated this process twice more, and on the third attempt, she confirmed that Building 35 did not exist.

There were two possibilities: either it had disappeared or was hidden.

The second possibility was that either Building 34 or 36 was actually Building 35, just unmarked, similar to how some buildings skip the 13th floor, making the 14th floor the actual 13th.

Her task was to find the entrance to the contaminated area.

Once the contaminated area was opened, it could be difficult to find the way in. When she and Li Nianchuan encountered the fishmen, he mentioned that finding the entrance to the contaminated area was not easy, and they had been trapped inside.

The higher the pollution concentration, the harder it was to find the entrance.

During previous encounters, the fishmen had entered by mistake, Song Zhizhang had guided them to the hotpot restaurant, and the 777th experimental subject was already in the residential area, which she accessed with a universal key. At the aquarium, someone else had already opened the contaminated area, so she didn't participate in that part.

This time, she had to find it herself.

After a moment of contemplation, Zhu Ning decided to enter Building 34, as all the floors were connected, and she needed to explore to find the answer, regardless of the possibilities.

With a creak, she pushed open the old door. Inside, the layout was a standard square, narrow and cramped, with one household per floor, a square elevator shaft, and a square emergency exit.

The first household she saw was 34-1-01. It was unclear if anyone was inside, but strangely, the elevator was operational. She pressed the button, and the elevator doors slid open.

Inside was a 2x2x2 cubic elevator car, not a centimeter more.

When something is too precise, it can be unsettling for humans because nothing in nature is perfectly identical. Everything is irregular.

Humans invented various measuring tools, established rules, and created items that conform to these rules.

The elevator was perfectly aligned, without even a millimeter of error. Facing such a precise elevator, she felt an aversion to entering, as if it were a data block constructed by an alien civilization.

The sense of alienation and objectification reached its peak.

With a ding, the elevator doors closed.

Zhu Ning chose not to take the elevator, opting for the stairs instead, unwilling to confine herself in the small space.

The aerial walkways between buildings began on the second floor. Zhu Ning reached the second floor smoothly, though she wasn't sure if it was truly smooth. The wall of the corridor displayed the Roman numeral II.

Since entering this area, she realized that the marked numbers might not be real, and her perceptions could be misleading.

The closer she got to the contaminated area, the stronger this feeling became. The pollution concentration displayed on her helmet had already reached 96.

The structure on the second floor was slightly different from the first. The household here was 34-2-01, with an elevator and an emergency exit.

However, after exiting the stairs, two doors appeared on either side.

Opening both doors revealed long, dark corridors extending in opposite directions. There were no motion-sensor lights, and the narrow corridors seemed to stretch endlessly, like the throat of a monster.

Zhu Ning thought for a moment and decided not to linger on the second floor. She planned to continue moving forward.

If this bizarre ant nest was structured like a chessboard, she couldn't find Building 35, but she could find Floor 35. As long as she was on Floor 35, she would surely find the dental clinic.

It was like searching for coordinates; she needed to find either the x-axis or the y-axis.

Climbing 35 floors wasn't painful for her; it took about fifteen minutes to reach.

33, 34, 35...

This time, it was the 35th floor.

It seemed only Building 35 was missing, but Floor 35 existed.

On the 35th floor, there were two large doors on either side, each leading to a long corridor. She might end up in Building 33 or Building 35.

A choice needed to be made. If she chose wrong, correcting her path would be difficult, and she might get lost in the ant nest.

Observing.

Both corridors looked identical to the naked eye, and the pollution concentration displayed on her helmet was the same. There was no visible difference.

The sound was slightly different; upon closer listening, there was a breeze on the left side but not on the right.

She found the difference between the two sides, but it wasn't enough to make a judgment. Who knew if the side with the wind was the contaminated area or the side without the wind was?

Zhu Ning's hand covered the wall. Her metal manipulation ability could "diagnose" metal, instantly connecting with its structure. The ant nests used a similar type of contaminated metal as the beehives.

Here, she could use this ability, but the problem was that the metal structures on both sides were identical, rendering her talent useless.

Three minutes passed.

Nothing happened; this floor seemed unoccupied because she couldn't hear any sounds.

Since there was no movement here, Zhu Ning decided to create some noise herself.

Zhu Ning took out her gun and fired a shot toward the side with the breeze.

Bang!

The bullet pierced through the dark corridor, but the sound of it hitting anything was delayed, suggesting the corridor was very long.

Wait.

Just as Zhu Ning was about to move, she suddenly felt something was off.

The feeling wasn't obvious, extremely subtle, but if it were you, you would have noticed it immediately.

Something touched the tip of her boot.

Sometimes people are peculiar; even though they're wearing shoes, they can still feel when something from the outside touches them or when they accidentally step on something.

Especially with the work suit amplifying such sensations.

Zhu Ning looked down, and something was touching her repeatedly.

It was blood.

A pool of blood surged from the depths, the thick liquid slowly flowing.

With night vision activated, the blood appeared green under the green filter. It seemed as if tiny tentacles were reaching out from the pool, struggling and crawling up her feet.

Mental contamination.

Even before entering the contaminated area, the mental contamination had already begun.

Zhu Ning took a deep breath and tried to move her foot, leaving a clear bloody footprint on the ground.

This side must be the contaminated area.

Zhu Ning walked into the corridor. This corridor must lead close to the dental clinic; she had a strange feeling that she was walking into someone's mouth.

She had just fired a bullet, which had torn apart someone's mouth.

Now, that person's mouth was bleeding.

As Zhu Ning took a step, suddenly, she heard a ding dong.

Something fell to the ground and bounced twice in the empty corridor, sounding like a marble dropping from upstairs.

Then, crackle—

More and more things poured down, like a hailstorm. The falling objects hit her body like pebbles, making her helmet rattle.

Zhu Ning's vision blurred for a moment. Wearing full protective gear, the impact didn't hurt, and the objects quickly fell off her shoulders onto the ground. But the sensation was intense, every cell in her body screaming to run.

She extended her hand and caught a handful of something.

It was... teeth?

In her palm lay a handful of yellowed teeth. Some were broken, with only half the root remaining, while others had blackish-yellow stains, as if they were decayed teeth.

Now they lay in Zhu Ning's palm.

Here, it was raining teeth, and Zhu Ning stood beneath this rain of teeth.