The carrot-and-stick approach had always been a tried-and-true tactic.
The Ke Er and He Er brothers didn't dare make a move. They hurried over and crouched beside La Mu.
Getting into an Isolation Pod at least gave them a chance of surviving. But if Cheng Ye shot them as Infected right now, they'd truly be calling to heaven with no answer and to earth with no response.
"Sir."
"Shut up!"
When Xi Mo noticed Cheng Ye approaching, he had barely opened his mouth before Cheng Ye cut him off without mercy.
"Whatever I do next, you'll put up with it. Otherwise, you can go to the Isolation Pod. Understand?"
"Understood, understood!"
Realizing there was hope of surviving, Xi Mo's tired eyes suddenly lit up, and a little life returned to them.
Unlike the Central Main Checkpoint, which only took the temperatures, heart rates, and breathing rates of refugee survivors before immediately isolating or driving out anyone with abnormal readings, the Quick Checkpoint served mostly residents of Xingfu City. To balance efficiency and accuracy, it was equipped with additional testing devices.
Cheng Ye raised his hand and swiped his Identity Badge over the black case on the table.
Click.
The latch sprang open, revealing two pristine devices that inspectors rarely used, along with a scalpel and a metal tray.
Vital Sign Dual-Mode Detector.
Rotten Light Metabolism Detector.
The first could be used as a handheld imaging device, displaying a rough image of the person's insides in real time on the screen at the back.
The second specialized in checking wounds. When illuminated with a light source of a specific wavelength, infected areas would glow visibly.
If the results matched data on known Infection Sources, the fluorescence would glow a glaring red. If they didn't match, it would appear a normal green.
It sounded useful enough, but why were the devices pristine?
The answer was simple: there was no need to use them.
Nearly three hundred people were locked in the Isolation Pods in Quarantine Zone A. Some were Infected, of course, but at least ninety-five percent of them were fine. Otherwise, who would dare risk running out there?
But few inspectors were willing to take responsibility. When faced with abnormal readings that couldn't be explained, rather than investigate step by step, they preferred to label the person a high infection risk and toss them into an Isolation Pod for a while.
Whether they made it out alive was never something they considered.
And if they needed to explain themselves, they had a ready-made excuse:
"We're thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people in the Buffer Zone. We can't put them at risk just for your sake, can we?"
"You can still move, right?"
"Yes!"
"Turn your body as I instruct you."
The "dual-mode" referred to the Micro-focus CT Module and the Photoacoustic Imaging Module.
Cheng Ye had never seen these in the modern world. This was his first time using them.
But the image on the screen was quite clear, only slightly inferior to a scan taken at a hospital.
A small gray three-dimensional figure rotated back and forth on the screen. Its right leg glowed with a faint red warning light.
After the image was processed and enlarged, the muscle fibers around the bite were shown to have torn apart in a radiating pattern. The tissue along the edge of the wound had been eroded, leaving a large area of low-density shadow, like a sponge corroded by strong acid.
As for the rest of his body, it was covered in circular or irregular high-density shadows. These were the characteristic shapes of bleeding lesions, caused by the high density of hemoglobin.
"No problem. This is the only bite. The rest are bruises and scrapes."
Cheng Ye breathed a little easier.
The examination made sense. The focus of the infection test was on the wound's appearance.
With only this one wound on his leg, the likelihood of infection immediately dropped considerably.
After all, as Brother B had said, Infected attacked without any pattern. Once they locked onto a target, they charged like rabid dogs. They would never fixate on just one part of the body.
Next, the Rotten Light Metabolism Detector!
A pale green light shone on the wound on his leg. It soon showed a green glow, with no red light in sight.
That meant that if the injury had been caused by an Infected attack—
the Infected could only have been like Rotten Vine, unregistered in Xingfu City's database.
The odds of infection dropped further.
"There's one last step. I need to cut off a piece of your flesh. Can you handle it?"
"What?"
Xi Mo froze, then his face broke into uncontrollable joy.
What had he just heard?
The last step?
Heavens, God, was this inspector an angel sent by God?
"Sir, cut wherever you like. You could take my whole leg and I'd be fine. I can handle it!"
"It won't be that bad. Just a tiny piece."
Cheng Ye managed a faint smile, but it wasn't to ease Xi Mo's nerves. He was trying to calm himself down.
He didn't panic when shooting Infected, because he knew they were no longer human.
His subconscious treated them as monsters. Shooting them was no different from shooting at a wooden target.
But now he had to use a blade on a living person, and he couldn't help feeling uneasy.
Luckily, the scalpel in the case was exceptionally sharp. Cheng Ye found a spot near the edge of the wound and made a light cut, removing a piece of flesh about the size of his little fingernail.
To his surprise, Xi Mo didn't even flinch. Cheng Ye couldn't help clicking his tongue inwardly.
Impressive.
If it were the guys from the "Tangguo Chaotian" boy band, they'd probably be screaming loud enough to be heard three miles away by now.
"Raven, take this piece of flesh and check whether it matches any known Infection Source. Hurry!"
"Understood, sir!"
While the four men were being examined, Raven and Owl had actually been waiting outside the isolation door.
From an Observer's perspective, they found Cheng Ye's actions difficult to understand. There was no need to go to all this trouble for a few ordinary people.
But from an ordinary person's perspective, their feelings were complicated. For a moment, they didn't know what to say.
They could only hurry to take the sample to the Laboratory Building in Checkpoint Zone E for comparison.
Time ticked by, second by second.
More than ten minutes later, Raven returned and passed a slip of paper through the isolation door.
"Something wrong?"
Cheng Ye frowned slightly and took it. The slip said normal.
Then he realized the Observer was quite clever. If Raven had called the result out loud, the three men would have heard it, stealing the spotlight from him as the inspector. Letting Cheng Ye announce the result himself showed a deep understanding of workplace rules.
"All right, you three. Stop crouching there and peeking. Get dressed and come over."
Back behind the table, Cheng Ye spoke quietly.
The next moment, it was as if springs had been attached to their feet. The three men sprang over to Xi Mo.
"Thank you, sir! Thank you!"
The four men embraced and wept. Their cries caught in Cheng Ye's throat, and for a moment, he didn't know what to say.
This world was absurd.
He'd merely done his job as an inspector and followed the standard examination procedures in the inspector's handbook. Yet they were thanking him with the devotion people might show a god.
It wasn't that I was too good. It was that this Checkpoint was rotten to the core.
Cheng Ye reflected silently, then his thoughts shifted.
If this was how things were throughout Xingfu City, what would he do if something similar happened to him one day, and he had to depend on someone else's mercy to survive?
"The sense of crisis is through the roof. I'm afraid everyone in the Buffer Zone is climbing the ladder to avoid that day."
When the four men's sobbing gradually died down, Cheng Ye pulled himself out of his thoughts.
"You said earlier there was something else you wanted to give me. What was it?"
"Oh, right, right! It's Meteorite Iron. We got it from the Qingshi Gathering Place!"
Ke Er slapped his forehead and hurried to the trunk, pulling out a fist-sized piece of black ore.
"Have a look, sir. This stuff is really hard. We don't know what it's made of. Would you like to keep it?"
"Meteorite Iron?"
Cheng Ye took the ore and squeezed it. Its cold, hard surface pressed against his fingertips.
There was nothing remarkable about it at a glance. It was nowhere near as impressive as the piece of Fire Hidden Iron he'd seen earlier.
"I'll ask Master Liu to have a look when I pick up the weapons the day after tomorrow."
Cheng Ye nodded in satisfaction.
Without an action skill, he had no way to make use of the raw ore.
But now that he had an action skill, he could find a forging skill and figure out how to get forging equipment. Then he could forge all kinds of weapons however he pleased.
"This might be useful to me, so I'll keep it. But you should take these Happiness Coins back."
As he spoke, Cheng Ye pushed the six coins on the table back toward them.
Happiness Coins weren't much use in the Buffer Zone. The things he wanted could only be bought with Contribution Points. Besides, he had no idea how long it would take to spend all the Happiness Coins Cheng Long had left behind.
"Sir..."
"All right. I'll keep one, so you can feel better."
Seeing the four men gazing at him anxiously, Cheng Ye sighed helplessly. "If you come across more ore like this, you can bring it to me. My Defense Communicator ID is 96061."
"Sure thing, sir! Don't worry. If we find any more ore, we'll bring it straight to you!"
Ke Er's eyes suddenly lit up.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get in an inspector's good graces. Forget an inspector who was Dongren; even if the person sitting behind the table were a dog—cough, cough.
That was simply how power worked.
But then again, Cheng Ye really was different from the other inspectors.
The four exchanged glances, excitement reflected in each other's eyes. The reward for the Lithium Deposit would give them a very substantial amount of startup capital, and getting a reliable inspector on their side could spare them plenty of trouble.
After nearly five years of scraping by in Xingfu City, if this worked out, they'd be riding a wave straight to success!
"Get him treated as soon as possible. Hurry. His leg should still be salvageable."
"Thank you, sir."
The four nodded repeatedly. Ke Er dashed to the driver's seat and started the vehicle, while He Er helped the other two back into the rear compartment.
Cheng Ye pressed a button. The isolation doors at the exit slowly slid apart.
But just as Ke Er waved excitedly and was about to step on the gas—
Rumble.
The isolation doors that had just opened slammed shut. The metallic crash rang out deafeningly.
At the same time, a piercing alarm erupted throughout the Checkpoint. Two long blasts and two short ones rang out in succession, echoing through the vast facility.
"What's going on?"
The four men looked up in bewilderment, only to see Cheng Ye and the inspector in Zone B abruptly rising in alarm.
As if a bomb had gone off in the Checkpoint, hundreds of armed guards poured out of the four Quarantine Areas amid the blaring alarms, braced for battle!
"Two long, two short. That's the highest alert at the Checkpoint. Either an Infected Tide is coming, or..."
Cheng Ye whipped around. The Four Brothers followed his gaze.
Two flags had appeared on the Checkpoint's machine-gun watchtower.
One was as red as blood. The other as pale as paper.
They meant—
"Red means danger, white means sacrifice. The Red White Double Flags are flying together."
Cheng Ye's voice dropped. "The Duty Station Chief has been killed!?"
Before you continue