The woman said lightly, "What a shame, you brought this on yourself. Just report it honestly, Team Leader Zhang, or if the higher-ups come after you, you're done for." Clearly, she'd already written off Wu City and Zhang Xian, and had moved on to her new plan.
Zhang Xian gritted his teeth. Fine, then first cancel Wu City's participation and pass the blame. After all, they couldn't reach anyone from there!
The notification soon appeared on the big data page. On the list of the 31 provincial Medicinal Herb Associations, Wu City's entry now had four bold red characters reading "Disqualified from Competition." It was quiet, barely anyone noticed, but Wu City's management exploded. Lao Zhou's phone rang nonstop, even alerting the authority, Jin Tianci.
With Wu City Medicinal Herb Association disqualified, their resources for the whole next year were gone. Even the latest newly developed energy tech was off-limits!
For a moment, everyone everywhere was in uproar.
Of course, Jing Shu had no idea any of this was happening. She was too busy, truly busy.
"I hope this last stop doesn't disappoint me," she sighed. Time wasn't on her side.
"Miss Jing, this is one of the funeral management facilities. Every day, thousands of corpses are transported here for processing. These ones are natural deaths… they'll go in for secondary processing. Next door is the crematorium… unnatural deaths are burned on the spot."
Song Bin wiped the sweat off his forehead, completely baffled. He'd thought that since she had a connection with the Jun family, she'd be tackling something difficult. Even Jun Bao, the smiling tiger of the capital, had ordered anything she needed to be handled. Yet here she was, coming to a funeral management center? What was so interesting about dead people?
And that wasn't all. Jing Shu's actions over the past few days had been downright confusing.
She came supposedly to compete in the Medicinal Herb Association contest, which involved nationwide resources. But she tricked the pharmacists into staying in the middle of nowhere, forbade them from leaving, and reportedly implemented lockdown measures to prevent anyone from sending word.
And with the competition about to start, she wasn't even participating. What was she thinking?
Right, first she investigated all the major herb associations' records. That was small stuff, nothing secret—the Jun family could easily get that.
Then she requested the full lists of medicinal herbs each association had brought to the competition. Again, not secret. There were registration records from the start. Knowledge is power, after all.
Song Bin still remembered clearly how Miss Jing's eyes lit up when she learned that the competition had been organized to consolidate the top resources and find a cure for the parasite infection.
Her eyes were shining so brightly… did she already have a cure? After the research institute had been working so long with only minor progress, she just shows up and already has one?
Putting that aside, her next investigation only made her expression darken—heavy, gloomy, radiating a cold aura that made Song Bin feel short of breath. What had made her so angry?
Next, she studied reports on grain reserves from all regions, visited the capital's botanical garden, the Ministry of Agriculture, even livestock breeding centers, and checked storage warehouses. And the darker her expression got, the more confused Song Bin became.
Was she on a sightseeing tour? Or some undercover investigation? What exactly was she up to? She wasn't some thief trying to scope things out, right? Just thinking about it made him cautious.
Jing Shu frowned lightly. "Let's go check the crematorium for the unnatural deaths."
Song Bin's face drained of color. "Ah? I heard these parasites can come back for a second infection."
Jing Shu rolled her eyes. "Have you ever eaten a red nematode?"
Song Bin shook his head violently. "Never."
"Then you're fine. According to my research these past few days, anyone who hasn't eaten them will be safe." She impatiently went ahead on her own.
"Wait, wait… hey! Slow down! This place… at least put on some protective gear! Wait for me! You can't get in without me!"
Wearing her protective suit, Jing Shu and Song Bin arrived at the massive crematorium. Business was busy, corpses constantly coming in for disposal.
The heat from the burning corpses kept the space warm and well-lit. Occasionally, there was a popping sound from the oil fires. It was normal.
Lao Wang, the crematorium director, was in charge of the burning.
"Hi. A few hundred bodies a day, maybe a thousand or two at peak. It's normal. Death rate hasn't spiked much. Even before the apocalypse, with the capital's population, a few thousand died daily and had to be burned. After the apocalypse, they banned burning for a while, but it's restarted now, otherwise I'd be out of work." Lao Wang puffed on his cigarette, talking freely.
He continued, slightly relieved. "Parasite infestations are tricky. If they're not burned, a worse plague could break out. Don't worry, the parasites aren't contagious to anyone who hasn't eaten red nematodes, otherwise I wouldn't even be here."
Jing Shu was silent. Some things, even if repeated, still required careful preparation. Her knowledge from her previous life hadn't been complete.
The documents from Jin Tianci had reported only a few thousand parasitic infections in the south, and big data reflected the same. But she didn't know the real numbers until she came to the capital and saw the crematorium firsthand.
She'd been too naive. If there were only a few thousand cases, why would the capital suddenly announce a competition, gathering all top herb resources to address this issue? It must have already reached a critical point, one too serious to publicly alarm the masses.
"I want to examine these corpses carefully. Is that okay?"
Lao Wang waved her over, leading them to the line of bodies queued for cremation. "Nothing to see really. These people didn't even know they were infected. Most are asymptomatic. Only a few who noticed something wrong 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, forget the pain. The ones eaten in the intestines… that's worse. They suffer for over ten days."
Song Bin's lips trembled. Damn, are parasites really this terrifying? Nobody told him this.
Jing Shu, in rubber gloves, had already begun a detailed examination of the corpses.