Embers Ad Infinitum

Shang Jianyao thought for a moment and came up with the ‘best’ suggestion. “Let’s ask him directly later.”

“…” Jiang Baimian deliberated for a few seconds. “Let’s forget it. What if it’s a secret religion that can’t be known by others? We have to respect the privacy of others.”

Shang Jianyao’s train of thought had already run off in an unknown direction. He continued, “That religion’s ritual is to whip oneself, drip oneself with candle wax, prick oneself with a needle, and cut oneself with a knife?”

Jiang Baimian felt that something was amiss the further he went. “Why does it feel strange…”

Could this be the legendary masochism religion? She dragged out a long sound and came up with another explanation. “Maybe Ugo uses such pain to suppress his biological instincts?”

I wonder where he learned these methods…

As the two of them discussed, Ugo’s door creaked open.

Ugo had changed into a linen shirt. His blond hair was very wet, and his face was slightly pale.

The vomit and all kinds of junk on the cement floor in the room had been cleaned up.

Shang Jianyao was just about to speak when Jiang Baimian glared at him, so he forcefully changed the topic. “Boss, have you seen a cat that looks like a ghost?”

Ugo looked up and coldly replied, “I’ve never seen a ghost.”

Jiang Baimian exhaled silently. “It’s a mutated creature that has infiltrated the city. We took on a mission and are searching for it and its companions…”

She roughly described the appearance characteristics of the Slumber Cat and Nightmare Horse.

Ugo shook his head. “If I encounter such an obvious aberration, I’ll try hunting it.”

“Then, have you seen a child? He likes to play games and wears tomato scrambled eggs. Oh, you don’t know what tomato scrambled eggs are. It’s a set of clothes that match red and yellow,” Shang Jianyao said.

Ugo looked at him and asked, “Is that also a mutated creature?”

“No, he’s my friend. He should’ve come to First City,” Shang Jianyao explained sincerely.

Ugo thought for a moment and said, “I’ve never seen him.”

He then answered a few of Shang Jianyao and Jiang Baimian’s questions and didn’t mention a word about what had happened in the room.

Jiang Baimian knew when to stop and led Shang Jianyao out of the hotel.

She looked back at the surveillance camera at the door. “I’ll get Old Ge to flip through the surveillance footage during this period. It’d be good if it captured Slumber Cat, Nightmare Horse, or Xiaochong. Yes, he’s the most efficient.”

“What should we do then?” Shang Jianyao asked.

Jiang Baimian pointed in a direction. “Go to Patient Zero’s home for the recent Heartless epidemic. Patient Zero is always the most special; it often reveals something.”

Patient Zero in the recent Heartless disease epidemic was Aisha. She lived on the fourth floor of an apartment at 19 Bar Street.

Her husband was a dockworker, and she didn’t have a fixed job. She did clothes, accessories, and certain components to cover some of her family’s expenses while taking care of her two children.

In the Green Olive Zone, there were many such non full-time female workers. They were mainly concentrated in the garment industry. As a large number of factories had relatively old production lines and hadn’t been modified, many small accessories for clothes—such as flowers of different parts and special buttons—required workers to use their hands to complete them.

This wasn’t complicated, but the quantity needed was tremendous. For a factory, it wasn’t worth it to hire a large group of people just for this. On the one hand, they would receive a fixed salary every month. On the other hand, the next batch of clothes didn’t necessarily need such processing. Maybe four to five people could complete it with a machine.

Therefore, the owners of small and medium-sized clothing factories chose to find contractors. The contractors would distribute and pay for the flowers, buttons, and other accessories that needed to be processed per piece, allowing women like Aisha—who didn’t have a fixed job—to complete them at home.

There were only two things a contractor needed to do. The first was to find a skilled worker to train Aisha and the others before distributing the materials. The second was to pay the gangs a certain fee. Not only could they prevent any damage, but they could also use them to deter the non full-time female employees from selling the materials they had received. The money couldn’t be recouped and could only be made up with their lives.

Bar Street wasn’t far from Ugo Hotel. Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao only took five minutes to reach their destination and enter Apartment 19.

This place was very humid. Winter was bone-chilling, and it was like a large steamer summer. Fortunately, it wasn’t the hottest months yet, so it only made Jiang Baimian feel a little stuffy.

The two of them walked up the mottled stairs to the fourth floor and knocked on Aisha’s door.

“Who is it?” A young boy’s voice sounded from behind the dark-red wooden door with many scratches and peeling spots. His tone revealed undisguised vigilance.

Shang Jianyao replied in all seriousness, “Would you believe me if I said that I’m here to make friends with you?”

“No,” replied the boy behind the door without hesitation.

Jiang Baimian had already thought of an excuse and smiled gently. “We are Ruin Hunters, just like adventurers in stories. We are investigating a strange cat and want to ask if you’ve seen it.”

“What kind of cat…” An even younger girl’s voice sounded.

The boy quickly interrupted her. “Don’t talk to strangers. Daddy said that there are bad people outside and that they will sell us! We can only open the door when he returns.”

The little girl no longer made a sound.

Jiang Baimian took the opportunity to ask, “What about your mother? Isn’t she home?”

At this moment, she suddenly felt a little guilty and felt that she was digging into the child’s wound.

The two children behind the door fell silent for a while before the boy replied, “Daddy said that Mommy is sick and went far away. She can only come back after she recovers.”

Phew… Jiang Baimian exhaled and prepared to inquire.

At this moment, Shang Jianyao asked on her behalf, “Did you see how Mommy became sick?”

The boy’s tone became very depressed. “I saw it…”

“Did she fall sick at home?” Shang Jianyao asked.

The boy sobbed. “No. That day, she went to Auntie Anna’s house to get flowers for work. She wasn’t back by noon, and Sia and I kept waiting for her. We were so hungry… Later, we heard voices on the street, so we went to the window and looked out. We then saw Mom. Her eyes were red, and she kept shouting. She was very sick…”

Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao knew of the subsequent developments. Aisha had hurt a few people, avoided the sheriff’s pursuit, and was shot to death near Labe Street.

Shang Jianyao asked, “Were there those flowers around her?”

“No,” the boy replied before emphasizing, “I can’t talk to you anymore!”

Shang Jianyao took out a few Ralph candies and placed them in the gap at the bottom of the door. “Thank you for your answers; this is your payment. This kind of candy will make you have diarrhea. You can’t eat too many, or you’ll get sick.”

As he spoke, Jiang Baimian also squatted down and picked up three of the Ralph candies. She shook her head at Shang Jianyao and suppressed her voice. “The children here have no resistance to sweets. They will definitely eat too much.”

She then smiled at the tightly shut door. “Each person only gets one. Don’t fight for it.”

She stuffed the two Ralph candies in one after another and confirmed that they had been obtained by the boy and girl.

“I won’t get diarrhea if I lick it a few times, right?” the little girl asked innocently.

“I’m not sure either. Why don’t you ask your father when he returns?” Jiang Baimian maintained her tone used to speak to children.

The boy acknowledged it a little loudly.

Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao stood up one after another and left Aisha’s house.

Jiang Baimian analyzed as she walked down the stairs. “From the answer of Aisha’s son, she should’ve obtained the batch of handmade flowers she needed to make before her illness acted up…”

This was because Aisha’s house wasn’t far from the subcontractor, Anna’s house. She didn’t walk for more than 15 minutes. Even if one counted the training time, she definitely walked back before her illness acted up. This was also the result of the sheriff’s investigation. From the fact that the batch of handmade flowers didn’t scatter around her, it was highly likely that she had suddenly contracted the Heartless disease on her return journey.

The sheriff in charge of this matter didn’t investigate this clearly. It seemed like he couldn’t determine the exact location of Aisha’s Heartless attack because the batch of handmade flowers had been picked up by passersby.

At this point, Jiang Baimian suddenly turned around and glanced at Aisha’s door. She sighed and said, “After the Heartless disease acted up and turned her into a beast, she still made it all the way here…”

Shang Jianyao didn’t respond.

Jiang Baimian quickly composed herself. “We’ll simulate Aisha’s route later and see where we’ll pass on the way. We’ll first visit the residents on the floors below. These were the people Aisha might’ve encountered when she left.”

“It’s also possible that it’s someone from above. They happened to encounter Aisha in the corridor.” Shang Jianyao helped perfect the details like he usually did in team discussions.

This time, his thoughts weren’t that jumpy.

“Yes.” Jiang Baimian exhaled again. “We’ll pay them a visit as well.”

For the next half an hour, they knocked on doors one after another and saw all kinds of residents.

There were Ruin Hunters who had risked their lives in the North Shore wastelands and were injured; a family with a husband who was busy at the factory with his wife and part-time street girl; a temporarily empty room; a couple who had painstakingly entered First City after saving up a sum of supplies and had yet to obtain citizenship while living very arduously; a middle-aged couple who had been sick and had lost their loved ones because they had been drinking untreated water and eating Red River Fish for a long time…

Finally, the two things fixed in Jiang Baimian’s mind were: Narrow, dark stairs; nobody above the age of 50.

“Let’s go.” Jiang Baimian left the apartment first.

She and Shang Jianyao followed Aisha’s possible route to the subcontractor, Anna’s home. Along the way, they questioned the residents on both sides like official sheriffs, wanting to completely determine where Aisha contracted the disease.

After a patient investigation, the two of them roughly locked onto an area. There were seven to eight-story condominiums here that lined together, making the street ‘cramped.’

Jiang Baimian looked up and casually asked Shang Jianyao, “What do you have in mind?”

Shang Jianyao replied seriously, “Wait for a power outage.”