The Crimson Moon hung high overhead. At some point, the atmosphere had become somewhat stifling, and the surrounding sounds seemed much farther away.
"Then you..."
Only after a while did Gao Ting speak hesitantly. She seemed unable to understand what Lu Xin meant.
Lu Xin looked very serious. He pushed up his glasses with his index finger, then lowered his head and flipped through the notes he had written earlier in his little notebook. "Now I can confirm that you really have been contaminated. However, the contamination you suffered is a type I've never encountered before. To be precise... you contaminated yourself, which is why you developed these symptoms."
He sounded very serious.
Gao Ting had indeed begun to show symptoms of contamination. When dealing with the Mental Monster earlier, she had been unaffected by it—or rather, she had greatly weakened its influence. When a thought was forced into her mind, her body nevertheless carried out different commands...
It was an extremely strange and twisted state.
And the reason she was in that state was that she had been contaminated.
The only problem was that her contamination had come from within.
"Wait..."
Gao Ting froze for a moment before reacting. "Are you serious?"
Lu Xin nodded gravely.
A bitter smile also appeared on Gao Ting's face. "How much did Old Zhou and his son pay you to help me like this?"
"They provide food and lodging, as well as fuel," Lu Xin said. "And they agreed to give me half the money they earn scavenging the wasteland."
Gao Ting was genuinely stunned for a moment. With a bitter smile, she asked, "Do you know that after this trip, they'll earn at most eight or nine hundred yuan?"
"Isn't that quite a lot?" Lu Xin said. "Back when I worked at