ATDIWR Chapter 10
by VolareJi An and Tang Ning searched the entire first floor of the building and finally found the entrance to the basement in an ordinary room.
“Mr. Ji, how did you know there was a basement here?” Tang Ning asked out of curiosity. Ji An didn’t answer, so Tang Ning didn’t ask further.
Opening the door leading to the underground base, they were met with a staircase wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. As the staircase extended downwards, they could only see pitch blackness, unable to see anything inside.
When Ji An was preparing to escape, he thought of this research base. Although he wasn’t sure if he would actually come, he still conveniently took Chen Chen’s flashlight to prevent the underground base from being too dark to see the way.
After airing out for a long time, Ji An felt it was sufficient and led Tang Ning down the stairs.
He was in front, Tang Ning was behind, both gripping their weapons tightly, fully alert. Ensuring that if there was any abnormality, they would slash out immediately.
The stairs leading to the underground base were made of iron. After years, they were rusty, and some places were even corroded and dilapidated.
Ji An’s foot stepping on them made a creaking sound, and they seemed to be on the verge of collapsing at any moment.
This made both of them walk very lightly on them.
The creaking sound echoed in the silent air, seemingly with an echo, making people involuntarily nervous and fearful.
Tang Ning was so nervous that she kept swallowing. From her perspective, she couldn’t tell if Ji An was nervous at all.
She thought, big shots don’t need to be nervous, because they have that kind of confidence.
Yes, for Tang Ning, Ji An, who could independently deal with Tier 2 zombies, was a big shot.
The underground base was too dark; the light from the flashlight shining into the distance was swallowed up, making it impossible to see clearly. They could only see the small area right in front of them.
Finally, they reached the bottom of the stairs. After walking about another hundred meters, they encountered the first door.
The door was locked. Finding a key was obviously unrealistic, but Ji An didn’t need a key either. He took out a piece of wire, the same wire that had pried open Tang Tang’s window. Now Ji An used this wire to pry open the anti-theft door in front of him again.
Ji An pressed his ear against the door. The faint sound of the wire manipulating the lock could be heard. With a crisp click, a smile appeared on Ji An’s face. The door opened.
“Mr. Ji, you can even do this? That’s amazing!” Tang Ning exclaimed.
Ji An didn’t answer anything. Who would have this kind of skill that would cause prejudice if they were a good child?
It was all brought about by certain tragic experiences. The older children in the orphanage would bully the younger ones, often driving the younger children out of the room in the middle of the night and then locking the door.
Ji An slowly learned how to pick locks and would sneak back in after the older children fell asleep.
“Let’s go, stay alert, watch out for anything behind the door,” Ji An reminded.
“Yes,” Tang Ning replied, becoming vigilant.
With a gentle push, the door made that old creaking sound, and heavy dust flew out, covering their faces. Fortunately, Ji An had covered himself tightly; otherwise, he would definitely be choking and coughing right now. Even through the tight protective suit, Ji An seemed to still smell that musty odor.
As the large door was slowly pushed open, darkness rushed out, like a monstrous beast with a gaping maw, just waiting for people to walk into its trap and be swallowed whole.
Quiet. Eerily quiet. There was no sound at all in the entire space. It was this silence that made people feel afraid and fearful.
“If you’re scared, you can leave now,” Ji An said, sensing Tang Ning’s fear.
“No,” Tang Ning was exceptionally firm. “Since I said I would go with you, I will never abandon you halfway.”
“We never said we would go together,” Ji An said indifferently. “I said I wouldn’t be responsible for your safety.”
Tang Ning chuckled, “But you’ve already saved me twice. However, if we encounter a danger you also can’t solve this time, you can fulfill your original promise, leave me behind, and leave by yourself.”
Ji An didn’t say anything more, just said faintly, “Be careful yourself.”
Ji An lifted his foot lightly, taking the lead and stepping into the maw of the man-eating monster, followed by Tang Ning.
The flashlight’s beam shone into the distance, but nothing could be seen.
Ji An shone the light left and right and found that he was probably in a corridor, with a room on the right-hand side.
The door was dilapidated, and the flashlight’s beam shone inside, but nothing could be seen.
Ji An did not enter rashly. Instead, he picked up a broken wooden board from the ground and threw it through the large hole in the door.
A dull sound echoed, and heavy dust flew up. After the dust settled, there was still no movement in the room.
Only then did Ji An kick open the door. He shone the flashlight on the small area he could see, and only after confirming there was nothing did he walk in.
The room seemed large and empty, with no furniture found.
Walking along, Ji An felt like he stepped on something. Looking down, it was a section of a leg bone.
Ji An frowned slightly, walked around the leg bone, and continued forward.
This time, he didn’t find anything until he reached the center, where two beds were placed. The beds were close together, about the distance for one person to pass through.
The flashlight swept over the two beds. Behind him, Tang Ning gasped sharply when she saw what was on the beds.
On those two beds were still fragmented human skeletons and scattered limbs. On one bed was a skull, its large, dark holes staring at Ji An and Tang Ning.
A surgical tray was placed by the bed head, containing a disassembled scalpel and a surgical clamp.
Next to both beds were monitors, but one was placed intact, while the other was smashed on the ground, broken into pieces.
Ji An was not picky. He placed his hands on the monitors and collected both monitors one after the other.
Just then, he saw two folders next to the monitors. Opening them, he found they were two medical records.
Tang Ning leaned over to look as well, finding that she could only make out a few words from the pile of characters. “This is Japanese, Mr. Ji, do you understand Japanese?”
“Mm, a little,” Ji An replied. But looking at Ji An’s focused reading, it didn’t seem like he only understood a little.
As Ji An read deeper, his brows furrowed more and more. Tang Ning asked curiously, “Mr. Ji, what’s written on this?”
“It’s the medical records of these two people,” Ji An replied. He turned a page, quickly scanned it, and threw it aside.
“These are two patients? But aren’t operating rooms single-patient rooms? How did these two people have surgery at the same time?” Tang Ning was a little suspicious that she had been in the Apocalypse for too long and her memory was confused, thinking she remembered incorrectly.
“That’s right, surgery is in a single-patient room, but this was a kidney transplant surgery,” Ji An’s eyes flashed with disgust. “Kidney transplant requires live organ transplant.”
Tang Ning connected this place being a hospital with the kidney transplant surgery not being performed there, but being experimented on in the underground base, and she instantly understood everything.
“So this is a black market hospital, not qualified to perform kidney transplant surgery, or rather, the organ source is illegal,” Tang Ning said in shock.
Ji An nodded. “The one whose kidney was removed was a seventeen-year-old boy, healthy and without any illness. His name is Li Yaozu.”
“Li Yaozu? Why does that name sound familiar, like I’ve heard it somewhere before?” Tang Ning tapped her head and suddenly said, “I remember now, wasn’t he the student who went missing from the boarding school in our area?”
With Tang Ning’s reminder, Ji An also had a vague impression. “He suddenly disappeared from school, causing a huge fuss. The police and parents searched for a long time but couldn’t find him. How did he end up here? Could he have been abducted?”
“I’m afraid not,” Ji An found a medical record cabinet in the corner and pulled out several medical records from it, almost all of which were organ transplant surgeries. Among them, there was even one case of a heart transplant surgery, only this time it was clearly an experiment. Both the organ recipient and the organ donor were Chinese, and they were both seventeen or eighteen-year-old students, and they were healthy and without any illness. The experiment failed.
“This should be a Japanese laboratory and organ operating room,” Ji An lifted the medical record folder in his hand. “These medical records are all organ transplant records. And except for a few failed experimental records, all organ recipients and organ donors in all surgeries were one Japanese person and one Chinese person.”
Tang Ning’s expression also changed. She asked almost certainly, “Are all the organ recipients Japanese, and the organ donors Chinese?”
“Yes,” Ji An nodded. “And these forced donors are all seventeen or eighteen-year-old healthy boys and girls.”
Ji An said a few familiar names, and Tang Ning’s eyes became fiercer. “I remember these children; they were all missing children. Three of them were classmates of Li Yaozu. That school must be related to this hospital run by the Japanese.”
Ji An remembered. “The school Li Yaozu disappeared from was a foreign-funded school invested in by the Japanese. Now it seems the students in that school were living organs raised by these Japanese people. Once these Japanese needed an organ transplant, the school would use the excuse of a physical examination to match students’ organs and then select the healthiest and best matched one from those who were successfully matched.”
“Damn it,” Tang Ning cursed softly. “Why didn’t those Japanese die out completely in this zombie virus? They’re too hateful!”
There was nothing else valuable in the operating room, so Ji An took Tang Ning and left.
The two continued deeper along the corridor. This time there was a fork, with a path on the left as well.
Ji An still chose to go to the right. It was still a dilapidated, unlocked door, and scattered bones on the ground. The good thing was there was no danger.
This room, Tang Ning noticed without Ji An’s reminder, was a laboratory. There were many laboratory equipment and laboratory apparatus inside that Tang Ning didn’t recognize.
Tang Ning felt that these laboratory equipment should be very valuable, because she noticed that Ji An’s attitude towards these laboratory equipment was very different from the monitors earlier. He was more cherishing and more cautious.
There was a lot of laboratory equipment, but it was collected very quickly, all put into the space within a few minutes.
The two continued forward, and there was another laboratory. Just as Ji An was about to enter by the same method, a withered hand suddenly reached out from inside the door.
The hand seemed unafraid of pain, reaching straight out, bringing the wooden board with it and striking towards Ji An’s face.
Ji An leaned back slightly, his right hand swung up, and a cold light sliced through the air. The thin arm immediately fell, blood splattering, dripping onto Ji An.
However, even with its arm cut off, the broken, bloody stump continued to poke forward, as if trying to pierce Ji An to death with it.
Ji An raised his hand and the knife fell, another cold light flashing. Both of the zombie’s arms were cut off at the root.
This action seemed to infuriate the zombie. It let out angry whimpers from its mouth, and actually tried to bite Ji An directly.