Chapter 950: Side Mission
A flicker of embarrassment flashed across the boss's face, but he quickly put on a smile. "Brother Ma, this is a bar customer, from out of town. You're free to drink today, and we just got a batch of good liquor in. I'll open one for you."
The man called Brother Ma ignored Xu Huo, grinning as he wrapped his arm around the boss's waist and headed into the bar. "Haven't seen you for a bit, and you're already batting your eyes at other men. If you don't drink your fill with me today, I'm not paying for the booze!"
The boss grabbed his wandering hand, laughing nervously as he led him inside.
"Wait." Xu Huo called out to them. Brother Ma's two underlings immediately stepped forward to block him.
Xu Huo pulled a small roll of White Notes from his pocket, extracted a hundred, and handed it over. "Trouble you to save me two dishes."
The boss quickly broke free from Brother Ma and came over to take the money.
Glancing at Brother Ma, Xu Huo slowly stuffed the money back into his pocket and walked along the street.
From here to the incineration plant wasn't far, just over ten minutes on foot. He slowed his pace, bought a bottle of water along the way, and asked a shopkeeper about nearby job openings. When the shopkeeper mentioned that the incineration plant had been busy lately, Xu Huo borrowed paper and pen to jot down three addresses, the last one being the incineration plant.
One of the two people tailing him left, while the other followed him to the first two addresses.
Once it was dark enough, Xu Huo turned back toward the incineration plant. As he passed through the woods, Brother Ma and his underlings blocked his path.
Grabbing a stone from the ground and hiding it behind his back, he eyed the three warily. "What do you want?"
"What do we want?" Brother Ma spat on the ground, lounging lazily. "Blame yourself for not having good eyes. Couldn't you tell the owner of Star Bar is my woman?"
"You'd have been fine if you'd just left, but you had to run your mouth. Going back at night? With that pathetic look, you think you can play the hero?"
"First, I'll cut off that middle leg of yours!"
Xu Huo took a step back. "Aren't you afraid the Enforcement Team will catch you if you start trouble here?"
"The Enforcement Team doesn't bother with petty stuff like this," Brother Ma said smugly. "Lucky for you, you picked a good spot. Die here, and we'll toss you in the incinerator. Who's gonna look for an outsider like you?"
"Makes sense." Xu Huo crushed the stone in his hand right in front of them, picked out a piece, and flung it forward. The man in front took it to the head and crumpled to the ground, dead.
"A player!" Brother Ma and the other man screamed and turned to run. Xu Huo dealt with them the same way, gathered the bodies, and carried them into the incineration plant.
Security at the plant was lax. He put on his Invisibility Cloak and walked straight through the main gate. Inside, workers were logging the number of items brought in for incineration. Most of the mutant corpses, sealed in plastic bags, had been specially treated to prevent leaks. Only a small portion had started to rot, piled onto a small cart.
"Wait for Old Ding and the others to start work before burning the smelly ones." A masked worker pointed from a distance and left. Xu Huo moved closer, using an identification item to probe the pile of corpses. Suddenly, a prompt appeared on his game panel:
[Player Passerby A has triggered a side mission — Countdown: 48 hours. Failure to complete the side mission by the time the instance is cleared will affect the instance rating. It is recommended that players complete the side mission while ensuring instance clearance. Due to the high difficulty of this side mission, completion will grant additional rewards and an instance rating no lower than A-level excellence.]
He'd triggered a side mission.
This was somewhat different from Xu Huo's expectations. Compared to Teacher Ai and the base laboratory, he thought the incineration plant would be a low-probability trigger point. Of course, there might be more than one side mission in the instance, but this one was likely related to the role of the living samples sent to W37.
The living samples had two destinations: the laboratory and the incineration plant. The laboratory was a virus source — the epidemic that had once swept the base station had first erupted there. As for the incineration plant, the ash from burned corpses was used as fertilizer. One spread the disease to people, the other polluted the environment.
So far, this epidemic had little effect on players. Even if it spread or contaminated the environment, only ordinary people would suffer. Under player control, even a riot by ordinary people could cause only limited damage. In other words, it wouldn't shake W37's foundations — unless other base cities took advantage of the chaos to attack.
It was hard to say whether W37's relationship with other base cities was as bad as rumors suggested, but W37's leadership at least knew the inside story. Especially since they didn't react even after instance players took away the mutant corpses. Their stance was almost clear: W37 base city was meant to be sacrificed. Whether the samples lived or died, or whether they were delivered, didn't matter.
This loosely tied into the "48-hour countdown."
Of course, besides a base city war, there was another, more horrifying possibility.
But the thought flashed through Xu Huo's mind and was dismissed. After confirming there was no virus identical to the living samples, he entered the incinerator workshop, figured out the process for transporting the ash after burning, and tossed the three bodies into the incinerator before leaving.
On the way, he posted a bounty on the Under Dimension for information about the epidemic. The Game Government library also had some data, but it wasn't very detailed.
Based on the current situation, this virus seemed to weaken over time and with repeated transmission. The crops grown by infected people in the quarantine zone weren't contaminated either, so it couldn't reach the scale of a mass outbreak.
The living samples transported from W11 were likely virus carriers similar to the source.
Currently, two of the three living samples were with Xu Huo. The third had left W19 the earliest. If it had been successfully delivered to W37, it would now either be rampant in the laboratory or reduced to ash and sent to the quarantine zone.
If the living sample's ashes were still infectious, the first people to come into contact would definitely be infected. The incineration plant workers hadn't shown symptoms yet, so he decided to check the quarantine zone first. Those already infected might be more susceptible to the virus.
The quarantine zone's entrance and exit were guarded by players, with lights blazing on both sides of the wall, making it hard to approach. He circled to a spot far from the entrance, used "Gentleman's Poise" and the strings to vault over the wall from above, and landed in the quarantine zone's residential area.
The place consisted of two neat rows of houses on either side. Quite a few people were moving around at this hour, most of them wearing long sleeves and pants to cover the blotches on their skin. Xu Huo watched for a while, then followed a few children playing in the afternoon.
The kids, running barefoot through the fields, had plenty of mud on their legs. They didn't seem bothered by the strange spots left by the virus, scratching at the marks as they played.
The broken spots oozed a bit of unpleasantly colored pus. A little girl started crying, and her mother came running. Seeing the wound, despair instantly spread across her face. She pulled the girl's pant leg down and carried her inside.
After the mother and daughter left, others came to take the playing children away. The quarantine zone, which had been noisy moments before, quickly fell into dead silence:
It seemed the last living sample had been successfully delivered.
(Chapter End)