Mayflies in the Mortal World (Thanks to the Alliance Leader Who Is Not an Old Dog)

After leaving the ward, Wen Wen had not actually gone far. She had merely gone up two floors, turned a corner, and entered an empty conference room.

Tong Hua was sprawled across the table, sleeping like the dead. Snores rang out, and she still had several files clutched in her arms. Clearly, she had no idea how many all-nighters she had pulled.

As for whether those all-nighters had been for climbing the rankings or doing actual work... that was open to debate.

Bang!

Wen Wen slammed her fist onto the table without the slightest courtesy, jolting awake the subordinate who had been slacking off and sleeping.

"What's wrong? What's wrong?"

Tong Hua warily snatched up her phone. "Who set off the big one?"

The pitch-black, extinguished screen showed no game. It merely reflected the expressionless face behind Tong Hua as Wen Wen bent down and leaned close, gently reminding her at her ear:

"Next time you stay up late again, I'll snap your phone in half. Got it?"

"I wasn't sleeping. I'm awake. I'm awake!" Tong Hua wiped her face and tried her best to look radiant, only making the two dark circles under her eyes stand out even more.

Like someone presenting a treasure, she raised the files in her hands.

"I've found out everything."

"Then let's hear it." Wen Wen flipped through the files in her hands. "What are their backgrounds?"

"The main ones first. That woman you asked about last night is Zhu Hong, thirty-one years old."

Tong Hua merely ran a hand over the file, and everything was already clear to her. "On the surface, she runs two chain restaurants and KTVs, but in reality, she's only a figurehead.

"Her true identity is... well, she's the mistress of the second-in-command of the Quanxiang Fellowship—the one people on the street call the Quancheng Gang. She supposedly used to work as a drinking hostess or something along those lines. Later, after getting under Chen Xingzhou's wing, she hooked up with her current lover... Though that lover of hers was seriously twisted. Anyway, none of that matters.

"After Zhu Hong contracted Blood Thirst Syndrome, he was the first person she ate. You know what happened afterward. Once it started, there was no stopping it. She nearly ate all her sisters and best friends.

"In just two weeks, she reached the fifth stage: bodily mutation, a change in life form, complete transformation into an Abomination Species. At that point, she could already be called a Mutant Ghoul.

"Of the infected in Yacheng, more than half were infected by her. Following this lead, Little An, Lao Zhang, and I worked all night and dragged more than twenty people back!"

Ignoring the exaggeration in the phrase "the few of us slaughtered everything in our path," Wen Wen asked bluntly, "How were they handled?"

"According to your rule, Wen-jie, anyone who's eaten a person gets put down. Those who haven't reached the third stage are sent to the sanatorium for mandatory treatment. The money still comes out of the company accounts. The detailed expenses are here..."

Wen Wen did not even glance at the bills. She casually tossed them aside.

"Anything else?"

"There's also that Famous Quotes Bro you mentioned—cough, cough—well, that student Ji Jue spoke of. The old man who went to his house and attacked him. We investigated his situation too. It's here."

Tong Hua rummaged for a long while, found two sheets of paper, and pushed them over.

A weightless lifetime.

Chen Lusheng, male, seventy-one years old, scavenger.

When he was young, he idled around and became a thug who loved fighting. His wife ran off with someone else, and he did not care. Later, after his mother died, he finally mended his ways—but it was too late.

Aside from odd jobs and manual labor, nowhere was willing to hire him.

He had worked nearly every trade there was: bricklaying, hauling bricks, repairing sewers. After growing old, he saved a little money and opened a recycling station. He even collected refrigerators and televisions, reselling them for cash and scraping by.

That was the uneventful life of a man at the bottom. There was nothing praiseworthy about it.

Until... he found a child in a garbage heap.

She had a hereditary disease. Her entire body was ulcerated, and several of her fingers had been bitten off by rats. Everyone said she would never survive. Only the increasingly taciturn old man stayed by her side without a word, enduring an entire winter with her, keeping each other company.

They made it through.

But they did not make it through for long.

That difficult yet happy life lasted only seven short years.

"Congenital immune-system deficiency and damage. During the period after Sea Burning Day, children born during that time had a chance of developing this condition. Sin Corruption infection. Families with money and influence could go to Central City for surgery. Families that couldn't afford it... well, those children didn't live long.

"Even if they sold everything they owned, all they could do was come to a place like Jici Hospital for conservative treatment and barely keep the child alive."

Tong Hua sighed. "When I went to check, the neighbors said he was sick and hadn't come out for several days. He had probably already been close to losing control a few days ago.

"Before he lost control, he borrowed from every friend he had. He even mortgaged his property and took out a loan from loan sharks, scraping together a large sum of money and depositing every cent into his daughter's medical account at the hospital."

Wen Wen was silent for a long time before asking softly, "Did his daughter know?"

"She's already dead."

Tong Hua took another death report from the file. "She died the night before last. Massive internal bleeding. Resuscitation failed... She left this world even before he did."

"..."

Wen Wen did not speak again. In the silence, only her lips moved soundlessly.

She cursed.

Even though she had long since grown accustomed to death, death was not always equal.

Some people could stir the winds and clouds while alive and shake heaven and earth when they died. But most people lived in obscurity and died without making a sound.

Alive or dead, neither was up to them.

Pain, wails, despair, and tears all vanished into a silence that no one noticed.

"That's why I hate this goddamn world."

She closed her eyes.

The massacre at the North Mountain District club, the slaughter that tore out Zhu Hong's infection by the roots, had merely curbed the spread of Blood Thirst Syndrome. The true source was still roaming free.

This time, the fact that she had made that bastard from the Dragon Offering Society reveal a flaw was truly thanks to Ji Jue. Otherwise, who knew how much longer that bastard would have hidden?

With Tong Hua, who had inherited [Matrix: Yesterday Reappearance], here, once someone had appeared even once, there was no way he could keep hiding. Sooner or later, he would be dug out.

But with the clues they had now, it was still not fast enough.

However, weren't more clues already right before their eyes?

Fifteen minutes later, case files had completely covered the conference-room table.

Several doctors accompanying them were answering Wen Wen's questions, while Tong Hua's fingers swept between the case files and records. Among the Twelve Supreme Goodnesses, the Aether Path excelled at reading and observing the information and phenomena of the world. With this chaotic heap of material placed before Tong Hua, she processed it even more outrageously fast than the legendary "Quantum Fluctuation Speed Reading."

Unfortunately, useful information was scarce.

After reading everything, Tong Hua slowly shook her head at Wen Wen.

"That's all?" Wen Wen frowned.

"It's all here."

The Vice Dean wiped away his sweat and said with a bitter smile, "Aside from patients' medication fees, the vast majority of Jici Hospital's income comes from church donations. We still haven't managed to go paperless, and the number of patients is limited as well. As for the patient records you mentioned—abnormal test results and short-term signs of rabies—there are only this many."

"Besides that?"

Wen Wen pressed on. "Anything else related, you can bring it all out. If it's too much to move, we can go look through the archives ourselves."

The Vice Dean fell silent and sighed, but ultimately said nothing.

Instead, a young doctor following behind him hesitated before finally speaking up. "What you're concerned about should be blood-borne infectious diseases, shouldn't it?"

Wen Wen's brows lifted. "What makes you say that?"

"..."

The doctor realized he had let something slip and fell silent. Several of his colleagues were already glaring at him. He lowered his head and staggered back a step. His leg was still in a brace, making it clear that he had difficulty walking.

But some things could not be said.

At least, they could not be said by someone from the hospital to the Security Bureau.

"Your hospital is, after all, assisting the Security Bureau with official duties. To be frank, all those other messy matters have nothing to do with me, and I don't want to interfere."

Wen Wen frowned and warned coldly, "I hope no one makes this ugly in the end."

"No, no, it's not that we deliberately wanted to conceal anything. It's just..."

The Vice Dean sighed. "If you want to investigate blood-borne diseases, there's certainly nothing wrong with starting from the hospital. It's just that, most of the time, there's nothing we can do.

"Most patients who still have a choice and need blood usually won't come here and simply endure."

He gave a bitter, self-mocking sigh. "Because we can't afford it."

Yacheng's blood banks were profit-making institutions. Their first priority was always private hospitals and high-end sanatoriums that could afford to pay. A hospital like Jici Hospital, barely surviving on church sponsorship, could not afford the exorbitant annual contract fees, and its patients could not afford blood priced by the gram.

More often than not, even when surgery required it, they would choose to... bring their own.

After all, where there was demand, there would be a market.

If the excessively expensive official blood banks were beyond their means, those who could not survive would naturally choose channels that were less secure, such as...

"An Illegal Blood Bank?!"

Tong Hua stared blankly, her eyes widening. "There are such places?"

Wen Wen said nothing, her expression dark.

At last, she understood.

This was also why Jici Hospital was unwilling to mention it of its own accord. Who knew how many patients with no other choice were relying on that slender straw to save their lives? Even if it was unsafe, even if it carried the risk of infection, even if it was riddled with problems—sometimes, without that straw, all they could do was wait to die.

For a major clan like the Tong Clan of Yacheng, the family owned countless businesses and held shares in more than one hospital. A place like an Illegal Blood Bank was destined to have nothing to do with her entire life. Not to mention Wen Wen, a Chosen One with golden-member service at [Hope Hospital]. Even if she were hacked into pieces, as long as her head was still attached when she was sent there, those lunatics could piece her back together again.

These gray areas of the medical industry were far too distant from Chosen Ones.

And the person hiding behind the scenes only needed to follow this invisible thread and pass through a few blood packs to release the Blood Thirst Syndrome virus into Yacheng, planting it in the pain and despair of innocents, where it could spread and sprout silently from the darkness.

They had finally found it.

Another trail left behind by the path they had walked...

"Let's go, Hua." Wen Wen snatched up the car keys from the table and shoved open the door.

"Huh?"

Tong Hua looked bewildered. "Where are we going?"

"To find someone!"

Their voices drifted away down the corridor, trailing metallic echoes.

"Then kill his entire family!"