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

After leaving the hospital room, Wen Wen did not actually go far; she simply went up two floors, turned a corner, and entered the empty meeting room.

Tong Hua was sprawled across the table, fast asleep and dead to the world. A snoring sound echoed, and she was clutching several files to her chest, clearly having pulled who knows how many all-nighters.

As for whether that late-night toil was for climbing the game ranks or for actual work, well... that remained open to debate.

Bang!

Wen Wen slammed her fist onto the table without ceremony, jolting her slacking, sleeping subordinate awake.

"What? What happened?"

Tong Hua grabbed her phone in a state of alert. "Who started the match?"

The dark, extinguished screen showed no game interface, only reflecting the expressionless face behind Tong Hua. Wen Wen leaned down, drew close, and whispered a gentle reminder into her ear:

"If you pull another all-nighter, I'm snapping your phone in half. Got it?"

"I wasn't sleeping, I was awake, I'm awake!" Tong Hua wiped her face, struggling to pretend she looked radiant, which only served to highlight her two dark circles.

She held up the files in her hands as if presenting a treasure.

"Everything has been investigated."

"Then let's hear it." Wen Wen flipped through the files and asked, "What kind of backgrounds do they have?"

"The ones leading the pack—the woman you asked about last night is named Zhu Hong, thirty-one years old."

Tong Hua only had to glance at the files to have everything clear in her mind. "On the surface, she's the operator of two restaurant chains and a KTV, but in reality, she's just a figurehead.

"Her true identity is that of the mistress to the second-in-command of the Quanxiang Fellowship—well, what the streets call the Quancheng Gang. It's said she used to work as a hostess, and after she latched onto Chen Xingzhou, she hooked up with her current paramour... though that paramour of hers had some truly twisted tastes. Anyway, it's not important.

"Regardless, after Zhu Hong contracted Blood Thirst Syndrome, he was the first one she ate. You know what happened after that; it spiraled out of control, and she nearly finished off all her little friends and besties.

"In just two short weeks, she reached the fifth stage. With limb mutation and a change in life form, she completely became an Abomination Species. Having reached this point, she can already be classified as a Mutant Ghoul.

"Currently, more than half of the infected in Yacheng were infected by her. Following this lead, Little An, Lao Zhang, and I spent the whole night busy catching over twenty of them!"

Ignoring the exaggeration in the claim of "we were slaughtering them left and right," Wen Wen asked straight to the point, "How were they handled?"

"According to your regulations, Wen-jie, anyone who has eaten a human is executed. Those who haven't reached the third stage were sent to the sanitarium for mandatory treatment. The costs were charged to the company account; the specific expenses are here..."

Wen Wen didn't even glance at the bills, simply tossing them aside.

"Anything else?"

"There is one more thing. That 'Famous Quotes Bro' you mentioned—cough, cough—well, the old man who ran to his house to attack him, as per student Ji Jue's account. His situation has also been investigated. It's here."

Tong Hua flipped through the papers for a long time, found two pages, and pushed them over.

A light, fleeting life.

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

In his youth, he was idle, a brawler, and a hoodlum. He didn't care when his wife ran off with someone else. After his mother died, he finally turned over a new leaf, but it was too late.

Aside from manual labor and odd jobs, no one would hire him.

Bricklayer, mover, sewer repairman—he had worked basically every trade on the market. As he got older, he saved a little money and opened a scrap yard, collecting old refrigerators and TVs to flip for a living, barely scraping by.

This was the dull life of someone at the bottom of society, nothing worth mentioning.

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

She had a genetic disease, her body was festering, and several of her fingers had been bitten off by rats. Everyone said she wouldn't survive, but only the increasingly taciturn old man stayed by her side without a word, enduring the entire winter together, keeping each other company.

They made it through.

But they couldn't make it for long.

Those difficult yet happy days lasted only seven short years.

"Congenital immune system deficiency. For a period after the Sea Burning Day, children born had a probability of developing this condition. With Abomination infection, wealthy and powerful families could go to the Central City for surgery, but those who couldn't afford it wouldn't live long.

"Even if they bankrupted themselves, they could only go to places like Jici Hospital for palliative care, barely clinging to life."

Tong Hua sighed, "When I went to check, the neighbors said he had fallen ill and hadn't come out for days. I'm afraid he was already on the verge of losing control days ago.

"Before he lost control, he borrowed from every friend he had and even mortgaged his property to take out a high-interest loan, scraping together a huge sum of money, all of which he deposited into his daughter's medical account at the hospital."

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

"She's already dead."

Tong Hua pulled another death report from the files. "Just the night before last, internal hemorrhaging, resuscitation failed... she left even earlier than he did."

"..."

Wen Wen said nothing more, her lips moving silently in the silence.

She cursed under her breath.

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

Some people can stir up the world while they live and leave an earth-shattering impact when they die, but most people live in obscurity and die without a sound.

Living, dying—none of it is up to them.

Pain, wailing, despair, and even tears are all extinguished in the silence that no one notices.

"That is exactly why I hate this shitty world."

She closed her eyes.

She had left a trail of carnage among the gangs in the North Mountain District and uprooted the infection Zhu Hong had spread, but that had only curbed the spread of Blood Thirst Syndrome; the true source remained at large.

Wen Wen really had to thank Ji Jue for making that dog from the Dragon Offering Society show his hand this time; otherwise, who knew how much longer that guy would have stayed in hiding.

With Tong Hua here, who had inherited the [Matrix: Yesterday Reappearance], as long as he had appeared once, it would be impossible for him to hide any longer. He would be dug out sooner or later.

But with the current clues, it still wasn't fast enough.

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

Fifteen minutes later, the table in the meeting room was covered in medical records.

Several accompanying doctors were answering Wen Wen's questions, while Tong Hua's fingers were already skimming through the files and archives—among the Twelve Supreme Goodnesses, the Aether Path was most adept at reading and observing the information and phenomena of the world. Now that this pile of chaotic things was placed before Tong Hua, the speed at which he processed them was even more exaggerated than the legendary "Quantum Fluctuation Speed Reading."

It was just a pity that there was very little of use.

After finishing, Tong Hua slowly shook his head at Wen Wen.

"Is this all there is?" Wen Wen frowned.

"Everything is here."

The Vice Dean wiped his sweat and said with a bitter smile, "Aside from the patients' medical fees, the vast majority of Jici Hospital's income comes from church donations. We haven't even achieved paperless office work yet, and the number of sources of illness is limited. These are the only records of abnormal test indices and patients with rabies-like tendencies in the short term that you mentioned."

"Anything else?"

Wen Wen pressed, "Anything else related to this can be brought out. If it's too heavy to move, we can go to the archives and look ourselves."

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

Instead, a young doctor following behind hesitated for a moment before finally blurting out, "What you're concerned about should be blood-borne diseases, right?"

Wen Wen lifted an eyebrow. "How so?"

"..."

Realizing he had spoken out of turn, the doctor fell silent. In fact, some colleagues were already glaring at him. He lowered his head and took a slightly stumbling step back; he was wearing a brace on his leg, and it was clear he had trouble walking.

But some things could not be said.

At least, not as someone from the hospital speaking to the Security Bureau.

"Your hospital is assisting the Security Bureau in official business, after all. To be honest, those other messy matters have nothing to do with me, and I don't want to deal with them."

Wen Wen frowned and warned coldly, "I hope things don't end up getting too ugly for everyone."

"No, no, no, it's not that we are deliberately hiding anything, it's just..."

The Vice Dean sighed. "If you want to investigate issues related to blood-borne diseases, looking from the hospital's perspective is certainly correct, but there are many times when we are truly powerless.

The vast majority of people who still have a choice—patients who need blood—usually don't come here to just suffer through it."

He smiled bitterly and mocked himself, "Because we can't afford it."

Yacheng's blood bank was a for-profit institution, and priority supply always went to private hospitals and high-end nursing homes that could afford the price. A hospital like Jici, which barely survived on church sponsorship, couldn't afford the expensive annual contract fees, and the patients couldn't afford blood priced by the gram.

Most of the time, even if surgery required it, they would choose to... bring their own.

After all, where there is demand, there is a market.

If they couldn't afford the official blood bank's exorbitant prices, those who couldn't survive would naturally choose less secure channels, for example...

"Illegal Blood Bank?!"

Tong Hua was stunned, his eyes widening. "There's such a thing?"

Wen Wen didn't speak, her expression grim.

She finally understood.

This was why Jici Hospital was unwilling to bring it up voluntarily. There was no telling how many patients with no other choice were pinning their hopes on this single straw of survival. Even if it wasn't safe, even if there was a risk of infection, no matter how many problems there were, sometimes, if you didn't have this straw, you could only wait for death.

For a noble family like the Tong Clan of Yacheng, they had countless family assets and stakes in more than one hospital. A place like an illegal blood bank was destined to have nothing to do with her in this life. Not to mention a Chosen One like Wen Wen, who even had gold membership services at [Hope Hospital]; even if she were hacked to pieces, as long as her head was still there when she was sent over, those lunatics could stitch her back together.

These gray areas in the medical industry were too far removed from the Chosen Ones.

And the person hiding behind the scenes, as long as they followed this invisible thread, could use a few blood bags to release the Blood Thirst Syndrome virus within Yacheng, planting it in the pain and despair of the innocent, spreading and sprouting silently from the shadows.

Finally found it.

The footprints left behind by the other party...

"Let's go, Ah Hua." Wen Wen grabbed the car keys from the table and pushed through the door.

"Huh?"

Tong Hua was dazed. "Where to?"

"To find someone!"

The words echoed through the corridor, carrying the lingering sound of metallic vibrations.

"And then kill his whole family!"