ICUGW Chapter 16

Chapter 16: The Man-Eating Hot Pot Restaurant (5)

Defective product?

Zhu Ning paused when she heard these two words. The hot pot restaurant owner was a defective product, and defective products have short lifespans, just like Zhu Ning. So it wasn't that the owner was sick, he had just reached the end of his lifespan as a defective product.

Zhu Ning later looked up some information about defective products. In this world, every person born will undergo large-scale genetic screenings to check for genetic defects.

One side effect of this world's advanced technology was that it can accurately predict someone's future. Genetic diseases can be detected immediately after birth, and even the approximate life expectancy can be calculated.

In this world, humans, robots, and clones were artificially created beings. The defective products they produce were akin to operational errors on an assembly line. As long as something were mass-produced, there will definitely be some unqualified ones.

Defective products can be improved through genetic drugs, but the effects vary from person to person. Yet, even with genetic drugs, defective products cannot be guaranteed to be the same as normal people. Moreover, the development of genetic drugs had not yet matured thirty years ago.

"My memory had become blurry since I came in here. I don't know how much I can still remember." A man's voice came from the recording.

"Xiao Hui told me before that I should record my memories while I'm still lucid. She's been writing in a diary every day lately. But I live with Yang Tao, so I can't write. I can only record and hide it on the toilet lid. If someone finds this, don't bother calling the police."

"I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think there's any chance to escape here."

Xiao Hui should be the cashier employee, and the person recording the audio might be another unfortunate employee hired by the hot pot restaurant.

Zhu Ning pushed open the door, and behind it... was very messy with a lot of white plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling. When she pushed the door open, a gust of wind blew the sheets, producing a crackling sound.

Zhu Ning closed the door with her backhand.

The room was very large, with two rows of shelves on both sides of the walls. The white plastic sheets somewhat obstructed Zhu Ning's vision, but if she moved through the plastic sheets, it would make rustling noises, exposing her position.

Zhu Ning didn't hesitate. She moved forward carefully, gun in hand while listening to the recording.

"We were usually under the supervision of the store manager and had never seen the boss. It was only when Yang Tao asked me to help carry a giant recuperation chamber into the basement that I saw the boss. He was half paralyzed and couldn't even stand up."

"At that time, I felt pity. Such a young successful boss was actually a defective product."

"Yang Tao asked me to keep it a secret and not tell anyone else, saying that if I did, it would give competitors a handle. I knew that the store's business was booming and many people were jealous, so I kept it to myself. It had nothing to do with me anyway."

Zhu Ning lifted a piece of plastic sheet. The sheets resembled ghosts moving around in the room.

"But one day, I was resting alone in the staff dormitory when I suddenly saw a figure standing at the end of my bed."

"I woke up with a start."

"It was my boss."

"When I blinked, he was already standing at the head of my bed, staring at me. How can I describe the look in his eyes? It was like he was looking at a piece of meat."

"As soon as I woke up, I called out to him, but he didn't respond at all and just walked away slowly. I stared at him for a long time before I realized, 'Wasn't he paralyzed? How could he be standing up?' Later, I found out that he seemed to be... doing some kind of experiments."

Snap—

Zhu Ning's boots crushed something—a glass bottle. Zhu Ning picked up the crushed medicine bottle. On the broken bottle were four words: Eternal Life Pharmaceutical.

There was more than one bottle of medicine in the room. This room should be a medicine storage room.

Zhu Ning carefully lifted the plastic sheets. The shelves on both sides were densely packed with medicines, injections, medicines in glass bottles, and even a sets of scalpels.

Attached to it was a pink card with a smiling face on it: Welcome to participate in Eternal Life Pharmaceutical's free experimental project.

The man's voice, mixed with electricity, continued to emanate from the headphones:

"Things were getting more and more eerie. The meat in the kitchen was getting weirder, the smell in the hot pot restaurant started to smell unpleasant, and my spirits were getting worse every day. My memory was very blurry, until one day–"

His voice paused then continued with choked tears, "Xiao Hui went missing."

"I suggested finding Xiao Hui, but Yang Tao didn't care at all. He immediately posted recruitment notices, looking for new employees. He wanted new cashiers, chefs, waiters... he wanted a lot of people, but this store doesn't need so many employees at all!"

"They were like, like my reserve. I had this feeling that if I died, someone would be able to take my place immediately."

Bang--

Zhu Ning turned around. Her back had hit something.

In the darkness, a three-meter-tall object stood in the room, part of it pressed against Zhu Ning's back. Shrouded in layers of plastic sheeting, the massive object looked down on her like a monster.

Zhu Ning's hair stood up, instinctively wanting to shoot immediately. But her mind suppressed the urge. She only pointed the muzzle of the gun at the giant, her fingertips hovering over the trigger.

The monster stared down at her, its thick black shadow enveloping the entire room like it was its territory.

'Avoid doing anything rash in the contaminated area.'

"I wanted to call the police and quit my job, but I always felt like everyone was watching me: Yang Tao, the other employees, even the diners. They were watching me all the time. If I tried anything funny, I know they would kill me. I couldn't even sleep well."

"The boss started getting better and better. He was energetic every day, like a normal person. But the healthier he was, the more scared I am. I feel like he was no longer human. No! I'm sure he was no longer human!"

"Today he said he wants to close the store and focus on his treatment. He also said that the money from closing the store would be distributed among us employees as compensation."

"When I heard the amount of money, I hesitated and thought I should get the money first before leaving."

"Later, the store closed, but customers still came late every night. The store manager asked us to serve them well because they were our VIP customers."

The man's voice grew lower and shakier.

"Something started to happen with the guests. I saw one guest stick his index finger into the hot pot the other day and it got burned, but he kept smiling."

"I'm starting to wonder what the guests were eating. Am I an accomplice? Am I... killing them?"

"Am I a murderer?"

"Wang Ming!"

A voice called out in the recording.

"Where have you been hiding? Yang Tao is looking for you."

The man's breathing became panicked. Then the recording stopped abruptly.

Wang Ming's recording was two minutes long.

Ding–

[Mental value decreased by 5%]

Recordings were also a form of pollution. After listening to them, Zhu Ning's mental state began to destabilize. The pollution in the recording was much higher than the diary. An ordinary person listening to it would likely have been brain-dead by now.

She turned off the recording and deleted the entire folder.

The employee who was recording the video was called Wang Ming, and he seemed to have encountered the same problem as Xiao Hui.

Zhu Ning had been facing the giant monster for a while, and the other side remained motionless. She was affected by mental pollution and had a preconceived notion that the thing in front of her might not be a monster at all.

Humanity's greatest fear is the fear of the unknown; imagined fear can kill you.

She gritted her teeth and quickly tore off the last piece of plastic sheet, revealing what was behind it.

Sure enough, it was not a monster, but a... large chamber?

The three-meter-tall chamber shaped like a test tube was completely transparent. The glass had been violently smashed, and the contents inside were gone.

What had been inside? Where was it now?

Zhu Ning had already formed a rough guess based on the cashier's diary. The owner of Come Again, Okay? Hotpot Restaurant was a defective product. He had participated in Eternal Life Pharmaceutical's free experimental program, but the experiment had clearly failed.

Zhu Ning guessed that he might have become a contaminant, and employees Xiao Hui and Wang Ming had both suffered varying degrees of mental pollution.

The pig man Yang Tao might have listened to his boss for money at first, but later it seemed he got parasitized by contaminated spores.

But her guess wasn't entirely accurate. Both Xiao Hui and Wang Ming were both mentally contaminated, making their words less credible. Furthermore, many things remain unexplained. While hiring so many employees might be an explanation, what about the subsequent organ hunting rewards?

Was the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and mutant genes for experiments?

The bell inside the hot pot restaurant continued to ring. It had been at least six minutes.

The pollution concentration was increasing, and Zhu Ning had to hurry.

If the system says there's a survivor here, the unfortunate survivor may already be brain dead.

Zhu Ning carefully checked the recuperation chamber to make sure that everything inside had been taken away.

There was a light source behind the chamber, casting the shadow of the chamber inside the room. It created the illusion that there was a monster here.

This thing was used to confuse people. It was not on the same level as the rotten flesh fingers and tentacles in the trash can that Zhu Ning had seen before. It seemed more like something a child would make while playing house.

The light source came from a palm-sized hole at the back of the chamber. Someone had dug a hole here to look into the basement.

'Who did it?'

Through the hole, you can peek into the basement filled with warm orange light. Zhu Ning squinted her eyes to get used to the light.

The pig man and other employees gathered in the basement, kneeling in an orderly manner.

The pig man knelt at the front, the waiter knelt behind him, and the customer, who was supposed to be deemed 'always right', knelt at the back row, all in neat order, like an... inverted WiFi icon.

The smallest WiFi icon point was a hospital bed.

Zhu Ning didn't even know what to call the thing lying on the bed. A mass of rotting flesh in the shape of a human lay on the bed. Its body constantly wriggling, each piece of flesh seemingly growing.

The rotten flesh continued to wriggle and slowly overflowed from the bed. Its rate of growth might fill the entire hot pot restaurant in no time.

If she guessed correctly, the person lying on the hospital bed should be the boss.

The pig man led the employees to kneel in front of him and began to chant something, as if praying to a higher being.

The pig man knelt respectfully and took out a knife.

'Ohhh? Civil War?'

The pig-headed man aimed the knife at the person on the hospital bed and cut off a piece of flesh, still squirming after leaving the body.

The employee behind him took it respectfully with a black plastic bag. Every time a piece of meat was cut, the employee and the customers behind him would smile with satisfaction.

Zhu Ning: “…”

So that was where the meat came from? Isn't this owner a little too great? He single-handedly supports an internet-famous hot pot restaurant.

Now that she has a clear understanding of the situation, she needs to get out of the contaminated area as soon as possible. Zhu Ning was about to get up when she heard a snapping sound.

She was very familiar with this sound–the sound of loading a gun.

The gun was now pointed at the back of Zhu Ning's head.

Hah, so there really was another person in the room.

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The translator has something to say:

Sooo, the owner rings the bell and they would come cut the overflowing meat from the owner. Kind of like a haircut...?

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