Chapter 123: Even When Clapping with My Wife, I Get Reminded

Chapter 123 Even Sex with Your Wife Triggers Alerts

Just hearing about it made everyone feel immense pressure, imagining such a life becoming reality.

Fu Xuze couldn’t help but shudder.

Not staying up late wasn’t an issue—he rarely did anyway, maintaining a fairly good sleep schedule.

As for smoking and drinking, aside from social occasions, he hardly indulged, so quitting entirely wouldn’t be difficult. But in life, isn’t it all about eating and drinking?

For him, the greatest joy in life was food.

And yet, this *"Doomsday"* was a nightmare not just for food enthusiasts but even for those who didn’t care much about what they ate, treating meals merely as sustenance.

After all, no matter how indifferent one might be, no one is indifferent enough to willingly consume poison!

Forget about notoriously unsafe takeout—even what people considered healthy meals, once analyzed by the health band, no longer looked like food but rather like lab experiments.

Many people lose their appetite when someone talks bathroom humor during a meal, let alone seeing food labeled toxic.

And that’s not even considering the other issues beyond diet.

Stacked together, these factors might be manageable in the short term, but over time, they could push someone over the edge.

Humans naturally need to occasionally do mindless things to relieve stress.

"Everyone knows eating too much sugar is bad, that milk tea and cakes should be avoided. But when you’re feeling down, something sweet can really cheer you up."

"Who doesn’t understand that staying up late is harmful? But work and school are exhausting—sometimes you just wanna say ‘screw it’ and let loose. Pulling an all-nighter and then sleeping in can feel like a total reset."

"Smoking and drinking are harmful; sitting at a computer gaming for hours is unhealthy; walking tens of thousands of steps in a shopping spree is taxing… But when stress piles up, these are often the cheapest ways to blow off steam."

"It’s not just diet and habits—even your feelings get monitored."

"Extreme mood swings are harmful—many people know this too."

Sheng Qingquan looked at the newly opened chapter.

"A girl was heartbroken after losing a family member when her health band suddenly reminded her that being too sad was harmful and suggested she think of something happy."

"Her father had just died—how could she?!"

"No wonder she lost it. Her sorrow turned into a mix of fury and despair."

"This…” Just imagining it made Fu Xuze feel unbearable, let alone experiencing it firsthand.

"It’s the same when you’re happy."

"A young man had repeatedly failed civil service exams but finally passed just before hitting the age limit."

"He was ecstatic!"

"But right in the middle of his celebration, his health band warned him not to get too excited—excessive excitement was unhealthy."

"It was like a bucket of ice water dumped on him mid-celebration, killing the buzz. Worse, the phrase 'Don’t get too excited' gave off *‘Don’t jinx it’ vibes*—implying the joy might be premature, that his coworkers might hate him."

"What a buzzkill!"

"Everyone knows getting too emotional is unhealthy, that staying chill is best. But we’re human, not robots—who doesn’t feel sorrow, anger, or excitement sometimes?"

"We know the Health Band is just doing its job with reminders, but at times like these, we really don’t need it to be so diligent."

"Machines don’t get human feelings!"

"No, it’s not about whether it’s a machine or not—it’s just not advanced enough."

"The developers missed the human touch. If they had programmed the Health Band to send a comforting or congratulatory message in similar situations, this wouldn’t have happened."

The staff couldn’t help but speak up.

"And these are problems for healthy people. What if it’s a patient?"

"When someone is sick but hasn’t realized it yet, the Health Band can detect it early."

"That’s a good thing!" Fu Xuze initially thought. With diseases like cancer, catching it early makes treatment easier.

Many illnesses become fatal precisely because they’re only discovered at an advanced stage.

At late stages, many illnesses are incurable, and even extending life by a few years requires extraordinary medical skill.

But soon, Fu Xuze realized the problem. Seeing his wife go white, he knew she had reached the same conclusion.

At the same time, Sheng Qingquan’s thoughts echoed—the worst-case scenario had already happened in the book.

"If the disease is treatable, then the Health Band detecting it is a good thing. But if there’s no cure, or no cure within a certain timeframe..."

Even now, with medical pods on Tianlanxing, most major and severe illnesses are no longer a problem. Without them, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Yet, unlike household medical devices, medical pods still remain rare as hell.

What limits their widespread availability isn’t just technology but also raw materials.

So even now, medical pods on Tianlanxing are scarce.

"After the Health Band detects a serious illness, many people can’t get access to a medical pod and have to rely on basic treatments."

"When people are sick, they’re already on edge. Especially when suffering from illness, seeing healthy people might not provoke much thought. But seeing others with the same severe illness bounce back like nothing happened after securing a medical pod—who could keep their cool in that situation?"

"It’s hard not to blame the universe."

"Same serious illness—why do they get to recover while I’m left suffering, waiting for a long shot?"

"Why can’t the lucky one be me or my family?"

"Those more extreme, especially if life throws them further hardships, might snap and do something crazy."

"Killings skyrocketed during that time."

"Most victims were patients who had been cured by medical pods. They’d barely finished treatment when killers showed up."

"It wasn’t just those who had used the pods. Even those waiting for treatment were targeted. One killer, hellbent on getting his kid to the pod, took out half the waiting list."

"Now my kid’s gotta move up, right?!"

Parents would grab any chance they could for their children, even accepting death sentences to secure a shot. Yet, no one found that kind of ‘love’ touching.

This wasn’t one life for another—it was a dozen lives for one shot.

Who wouldn’t freeze at the thought of those who got cut down?

People in the past dared not get sick because they feared they couldn’t afford treatment.

In the future, people will fear falling ill not only due to insufficient medical funds but also because sickness could mean being taken by illness—or worse, being marked by death.

Every day, even every moment of their lives, they would live in constant fear. A stranger’s second glance could send shivers down their spine, fearing the person might suddenly pull out a knife to cut them down as a "drain on medical resources."

Worrying before treatment, worrying after treatment—Is this any way to live?

The real nightmare? Once someone resorts to such desperate measures for medical resources, others might copy the idea, seeing it as a loophole.

What kind of society would that be?

Even if officials eventually crack down by disqualifying such offenders from the queue, it’d be too late to undo.

"Missing the queue is bad enough, but getting one isn’t much better. The grueling wait is unbearable."

"It’s like some people, before knowing they had cancer, were healthy and enjoyed life. But once diagnosed, their will collapses, and soon they’re gone."

"While the disease plays a role, psychological factors weigh heavily too."

"During the wait, the mental strain is immense—fearing their condition worsens before their turn comes."

"And the health band keeps announcing their deteriorating state every day."

"It’s a constant reminder, impossible to ignore."

"This isn’t a health alert—it’s the footsteps of death, taunting, 'Your illness worsens, you’re closer to death, closer...'"

"A ticking clock to the end."

"Some patients couldn’t bear it and chose to end it all."

"'Like a killer issuing a threat, then closing in, blade in hand. Even if rescue might come, it could be too late. My illness worsens daily—I know I won’t last.'"

"'I can’t choose when I’m born, but I can choose when I die.' These were the words left in a suicide note."

Sheng Qingquan felt that bone-deep dread.

Shaking—like standing on a cliff’s edge, treading on thin ice.

Some might not grasp it, but the truth is—fear alone can kill.

Especially since medical cabins are reserved for the critically ill. There’s no "jump the queue"—because everyone ahead is dying too.

Being reminded repeatedly of worsening conditions? The toll is beyond words.

Fear breaks people.

"But suicides were few. More died in 'accidents.'"

"Exactly—not from illness, but 'accidental deaths.'"

"After killings to free up queue spots were stopped, patient mortality remained high."

"At first, police suspected a serial killer. But investigations showed no foul play—nor suicide."

"Their deaths were deceptively plain."

"Under immense mental pressure, they began to eat poorly, sleep poorly, and space out."

"With the way the *health band* nags, even healthy people could be driven mad—let alone patients worn down by illness."

"Some patients, while climbing stairs, would space out, miss a step, and fall fatally due to a bad angle. Others, while walking, wouldn’t notice oncoming traffic and got hit by cars. Some, during meals, would swallow sharp bones or fish bones because they weren’t paying attention, puncturing their intestines..."

"There were all sorts of freak deaths."

"That's why they're called accidents—they come out of nowhere."

"Often, things happened so fast that the *health band* couldn’t get a warning out in time."

"If not for the fact that everyone had protective gear, and very few forgot to wear or activate it, way more people would've died. Unfortunately, some accidents couldn't be fully prevented even with the gear. Choking on food, intestinal perforation leading to massive bleeding or fatal infections—none of these fell within the protective scope."

"The gear can't very well stop people from eating, can it?"

"It wasn’t just patients who spaced out—ordinary people driven to madness were everywhere."

"Everything you ate or drank would trigger a reminder. Even having sex with your partner too often would set off an alert: 'Excessive indulgence harms health.'"

"If you abstained, it would remind you that suppression wasn’t good either. And that was just the tip of the iceberg."

"Like marionettes, people lived merely to exist, devoid of any joy."

"In such a world, just getting by took everything you had, leaving no room for anything else."

"No one would want to bring children into a world like this."

Hearing this, the room went quiet. They now understood what this Doomsday crisis was about.

It wasn’t the accidental deaths, nor the suicides among patients, nor the killings over medical resources. While the body count from these causes was significant, it wasn’t enough to be called Doomsday.

In some provinces or cities, the death toll from these causes might equal that of a single large shipwreck—yet no one would call such a maritime disaster the end of the world.

This time, humanity wasn’t dying from conflict, but from stagnation.

"No one pursued science anymore, no one invented or created. Civilization just stopped. People's will to live bottomed out, even basic instincts dried up, and descendants became scarce."

"Just as expected..."

Sheng Qingquan flipped to the end—mankind just...ended.

But from the very beginning, Sheng Qingquan had one burning question, one shared by others.

"If everything was caused by the *health band*, why couldn’t people just rip the damn thing off when they realized something was wrong?"

"Wouldn’t ditching it fix everything?"