The middle-aged woman spoke lightly, her voice devoid of any real concern. "What a shame. You brought this situation on yourself. Just report the facts honestly, Team Leader Zhang. Or, if the higher-ups come after you for the missing delegation, you are finished."
It was clear she had already written off both Wu City and Zhang Xian. She had already moved on to the next phase of her new plan.
Zhang Xian gritted his teeth, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his phone. Fine. If that was how it was going to be, then he would first cancel Wu City's participation and shift all the blame onto them. After all, he couldn't reach anyone from their team! It was their own fault for vanishing into the mud without a word.
The official notification soon appeared on the association's big data portal. On the sprawling list of the thirty-one provincial Medicinal Herb Associations, Wu City's entry now had four bold, blood-red characters reading: "Disqualified from Competition."
It was a quiet update, and barely anyone at the event noticed it at first. However back home, Wu City's management exploded in a fury. Lao Zhou's phone rang nonstop, the vibrations buzzing against his desk like a swarm of angry hornets. The news eventually alerted the highest authority, Jin Tianci himself.
With the Wu City Medicinal Herb Association disqualified, their allocated resources for the entire coming year were gone. Even the latest energy technology, recently developed and highly sought after, was now off-limits to them.
For a moment, every official in Wu City was in an uproar.
Of course, Jing Shu had no idea any of this political maneuvering was happening. She was far too busy. She was truly, exhaustingly busy.
"I hope this last stop doesn't disappoint me," she sighed, her breath visible in the chilled air. Time wasn't on her side anymore.
"Miss Jing, this is one of the primary funeral management facilities. Every day, thousands of corpses are transported here for processing. These ones over here are the natural deaths. They will go in for secondary processing to reclaim whatever value remains. Next door is the crematorium. The unnatural deaths are burned on the spot to prevent any contamination."
Song Bin wiped the beads of sweat off his forehead with a sleeve, looking completely baffled by his companion. He had thought that since she had a high-level connection with the powerful Jun family, she would be tackling something incredibly difficult or prestigious. Even Jun Bao, the notorious smiling tiger of the capital, had personally ordered that anything she needed must be handled immediately. Yet here she was, insisting on visiting a grim funeral management center. What was so interesting about a pile of dead people?
And that wasn't all. Jing Shu's specific actions over the past few days had been downright confusing to him.
She had supposedly come to the capital to compete in the Medicinal Herb Association contest, an event that involved the distribution of nationwide resources. But instead of preparing for the show, she had tucked the other pharmacists away in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. She had forbidden them from leaving and reportedly implemented strict lockdown measures to prevent any of them from sending word back to the city.
And now, with the competition about to officially start, she wasn't even at the venue participating. What was she thinking?
First, she had investigated all the major herb associations' historical records. That was small stuff, nothing truly secret; the Jun family could easily pull those files.
Then she requested the full manifests of medicinal herbs each association had brought for the competition. Again, it wasn't secret information. There were registration records available from the moment the teams landed. Knowledge is power, after all.
Song Bin still remembered clearly how Jing Shu's eyes had lit up with a strange intensity when she learned the truth. The competition had been organized to consolidate the top botanical resources and find a desperate cure for the parasite infection.
Her eyes were shining so brightly. Did she already have a cure in mind? After the national research institute had been working for so long with only minor progress, she just shows up from the provinces and already has an answer?
Putting that possibility aside, her next investigation only made her expression darken. It grew heavy and gloomy, radiating a cold aura that made Song Bin feel short of breath whenever he stood too close to her. What had made her so angry?
Next, she had studied the confidential reports on grain reserves from all the surrounding regions. She visited the capital's botanical garden, the Ministry of Agriculture, and even several livestock breeding centers to check their storage warehouses. And the darker her expression got, the more confused Song Bin became.
Was she on a sightseeing tour? Or was this some kind of deep undercover investigation? What exactly was she up to? She wasn't some common thief trying to scope out the security, was she? Just thinking about the implications made him cautious.
Jing Shu frowned lightly at the heavy, gray gates in front of them. "Let's go check the crematorium for the unnatural deaths."
Song Bin's face drained of all color. "What? I heard these parasites can survive for a while. They say they can even cause a second infection if you aren't careful."
Jing Shu rolled her eyes at his fear. "Have you ever eaten a red nematode?"
Song Bin shook his head violently, his eyes wide. "Never. Not once."
"Then you are fine. According to my research these past few days, anyone who hasn't eaten them will be safe from the infestation." She impatiently pushed past him and went ahead on her own.
"Wait, wait! Hey! Slow down! This place is dangerous. At least put on some protective gear first! Wait for me! You can't get in there without my clearance!"
After donning her thick rubbery protective suit, Jing Shu and Song Bin arrived at the entrance of the massive crematorium. Business was busy today; corpses were constantly coming in on metal gurneys for immediate disposal.
The intense heat radiating from the rows of industrial furnaces kept the vast space uncomfortably warm and well-lit. Occasionally, there was a sharp popping sound from the oil fires as they consumed the remains. To the workers here, it was a normal, everyday sound.
Lao Wang the crematorium director, was in charge of the burning schedule. He stood by a console, looking weary.
"Hi there. We handle a few hundred bodies a day, maybe a thousand or two at the peak of a cycle. It's normal. The death rate hasn't spiked much recently. Even before the apocalypse, with the capital's massive population, a few thousand people died daily and had to be burned. After the world fell apart, they banned the burning for a while to save fuel, but it has restarted now. Otherwise, I would be out of work." Lao Wang puffed on a crushed cigarette, talking freely as he watched the temperature gauges.
He continued, his voice sounding slightly relieved. "Parasite infestations are tricky business. If the bodies aren't burned immediately, a much worse plague could break out. Don't worry, though; the parasites aren't contagious to anyone who hasn't eaten red nematodes. Otherwise, I wouldn't even be here."
Jing Shu remained silent, her mind processing his words. Some things, even if they were repeated by officials, still required careful, personal verification. Her knowledge from her previous life had been incomplete, shadowed by rumors and distance.
The documents from Jin Tianci had reported only a few thousand parasitic infections in the south, and the big data she had seen reflected the same numbers. But she didn't understand the real scale of the tragedy until she came to the capital and saw the operations of the crematorium firsthand.
She had been too naive. If there were truly only a few thousand cases nationwide, why would the capital suddenly announce a massive competition, gathering every top herb resource in the country to address this specific issue? The situation must have already reached a critical point. It was a crisis far too serious to publicly alarm the starving masses.
"I want to examine these corpses carefully before they go in. Is that okay?"
Lao Wang waved her over toward the side of the room, leading them to the long line of bodies queued for the fires. "There's nothing much to see, really. These people didn't even know they were infected until it was too late. Most are completely asymptomatic in the beginning. Only a few who noticed something wrong actually sought medical help, but even then, there's nothing that could save them. The ones eaten in the brain slowly lose their sense of self; they forget the pain as their minds go. The ones eaten in the intestines, however... that's worse. They suffer for over ten days in agony."
Song Bin's lips trembled as he looked at the covered forms. Damn, are these parasites really this terrifying? Nobody had told him the details were this grisly.
Jing Shu having already snapped on a pair of thick rubber gloves, had already begun a detailed examination of the corpses.