Lin Wu told Yu Xi that when he first saved this group and decided to travel with them, it wasn’t because he was moved by their camaraderie. He had been to many apocalyptic worlds and had seen far more pitiful people.

He did need to escort a few people out of Hai Ru City, but there were too many people in this group, which would double the difficulty of the task. Even if he still had a heart of sympathy, he wouldn’t intentionally burden himself when it came to completing the mission.

The reason he stayed with them was because of the parasite hiding among the group.

Yu Xi could use her sense of smell to identify people carrying the black worms, thus identifying the infected. Naturally, Lin Wu had his own method of identifying them.

When he first noticed it, he found it hard to believe.

The reason for the catastrophe in this world was parasitism. All those infected—at least the ones he had seen—would lose their rationality, go mad, and become monsters that only knew how to fight.

Their bodily functions hadn’t ceased, but their brains seemed to be taken over. He wasn’t sure if this takeover was temporary or permanent. But if the black worms were taking over human brains, exhibiting undifferentiated aggression and violence would be understandable.

But evolving to mimic humans, or rather, to restore a human-like appearance, behaving completely indistinguishably from normal people, what kind of existence was that!?

They could talk, eat, smile, and cry… and “it” was completely undetected by the people around it. Not only that, “it” also knew how to guide and lure, leading these people to the hospital. That was terrifying.

Lin Wu led a group of six men, all the young and strong men from the team, except for Glasses and one boy’s father.

He had taken away all the strong young men, leaving the “weak” to “it,” which was a risky move. But because Yu Xi was there, he dared to execute this plan.

At the same time, it was necessary to get the medicine from the hospital.

Before the large-scale outbreak of the infected, he had visited a hospital. Considering the blood-seeking nature of the black worms, he wanted to get some blood bags from the blood bank, just in case. As it happened, a pregnant woman had an accident and was brought to the hospital.

When the ambulance arrived, and they were wheeling her into the emergency room, the pregnant woman on the stretcher suddenly screamed in horror.

She pushed away everyone and fell off the bed, clutching her painfully swollen belly, kicking frantically. Her skirt was lifted by her frantic movements, revealing a sight that made everyone around gasp.

The woman had been bleeding from her legs after the fall, and now the blood was covered in dense black “lines,” all moving in the same direction…

Even a seasoned surgeon like Lin Wu, who had seen countless bloody and horrifying wounds, was terrified by this sight.

This apocalyptic world’s disaster was extremely unfair to some women. They didn’t even have the chance to fight back; they were doomed from the start.

No wonder it was rated as an S-level high-difficulty mission world. The women living in this world had an incredibly tough life.

So, it was different for those he hadn’t seen and didn’t know, but for the girls in his group, given his ability, he wanted to help them as much as possible.

Lin Wu didn’t hold back. He thrust the spike at the end of his iron rod into the heart of the infected.

This was the last infected person on the first floor of the emergency building. Just as he had predicted, there weren’t many infected on the first floor, only four: one in the corridor, and the other three scattered in different examination rooms.

Because the doors were closed, they were in a relatively calm state, so it wasn’t necessary to lure them outside before dealing with them.

The iron rod in his hand was a special weapon, not just an ordinary iron rod. He had seen Yu Xi using a baton and a stun baton to deal with the infected, knowing she didn’t like blood, so he didn’t use the more gruesome forms of his weapon when helping her the other night.

Walking down the corridor to the left-hand pharmacy near the emergency entrance, several boys had already pried open the door. As soon as they stepped in, a foul stench hit their noses.

Inside, a shelf had collapsed, scattering medicines all over the floor. Next to it were two lifeless bodies, evidently having killed each other in a fight. It was unclear if they were both infected or a mix of human and infected.

The boys had seen similar scenes these past few days, and while they kept their composure, the stench enclosed in the small pharmacy was overpowering, making them turn pale and almost vomit.

“Move quickly, find the medicine,” Lin Wu instructed, then turned to another row of shelves. To be safe, he used his iron rod to knock out the cameras on both sides. While the others weren’t paying attention, he collected some useful medicine and stored it in his space.

His space had been upgraded several times, from one cubic meter during his first mission to the current nine cubic meters, allowing him to store quite a lot.

Typically, in such situations, he never missed an opportunity to gather supplies.

Soon, the boys behind the shelves let out low exclamations of delight, having found the medication needed for the girls.

“Take more of these. Look for anything with this ingredient and bring it all back!” One of the boys opened his backpack, excitedly stuffing it with medicine.

Others grabbed blood pressure medication for the elders, diabetes medication, various antibiotics, antiseptic solutions, iodine, and cotton balls.

While they were busy, they suddenly heard Lin Wu speak: “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“A strong, fishy stench.”

The boys sniffed but were overwhelmed by the odor of the two corpses nearby, almost unable to breathe. They suspected Lin Wu was making them inhale more of the stench on purpose.

However, Lin Wu’s face was serious. He looked up, peering through the small pharmacy window toward the plastic wind curtains covering the emergency door.

Outside the emergency door was a rectangular awning, but the three sides of this awning were glass walls, forming a small glass vestibule.

This setup slightly obstructed Lin Wu’s view from inside the pharmacy, preventing him from fully seeing outside.

Soon, he heard rapid, urgent footsteps approaching from the street. These frantic steps didn’t sound like the cautious movements of their group.

The plastic wind curtains of the emergency door were suddenly flung open, and Zhou Yun rushed in, dragging her mother. Both were breathless and terrified, barely able to speak: “Par-parasites…coming…”

But Lin Wu understood immediately.

The parasites were coming; a lot of them.

Soon, the other girls, the students’ mothers, and Glasses all rushed in.

The only student’s father came in last, protecting Chen Jia and Xu Jiajia. Everyone was there except Yu Xi.

“Get out quickly, we’re leaving now,” Lin Wu ordered, swiftly moving out of the pharmacy. Rounding the corner, he saw Yu Xi running in, holding a baton.

Yu Xi frowned. “Why are you stopping? Where are they? Hurry, let’s go together!”

Lin Wu’s gaze met hers, and though her tone was urgent, her expression told him that everything was still under control.

“Oh my god, it stinks!” The boys who had come out of the pharmacy covered their noses as they smelled the air in the emergency hall.

They hadn’t noticed it inside, but now they understood what Lin Wu had meant. “What’s going on? Why does it smell so bad?”

The stench was like accidentally entering a garbage dump full of rotting seafood that had been left to decompose for over ten days. It was unbearable.

“Forget about the smell! A bunch of parasites came out of nowhere and almost cornered us in that store!”

Zhou Yun, covering her nose, looked towards the right corridor. “We can’t go out through the front. Where’s the staircase? Jiajia said the second floor here is connected to the second floor of the outpatient building by a bridge. We can go directly across.”

“But there are parasites in the outpatient building too!” a boy said, already running past everyone to look out through the thick plastic curtain at the door.

One glance and he was terrified, immediately running to the staircase in the middle of the corridor. “Here! The staircase is here! Hurry up! Even if there are more parasites in the outpatient building, it’s still better than the ones outside.”

Seeing a group of red-eyed monsters armed with various weapons approaching was too horrifying.

The others, seeing his reaction, quickly followed suit.

Yu Xi remained at the back, being the last to leave.

She took an N95 mask from her pocket (Star House storage) and put it on, only feeling slightly better.

To her, the parasites weren’t scary; the fishy stench, comparable to chemical weapons, was terrifying.

Previously, the faint, almost disappearing fishy smell suddenly intensified by hundreds of times, making her almost throw up.

As someone with sensory strengths reaching 240 units, she endured a stench more than twice as intense as what ordinary people could. It made her eyes water.

Around sixty or seventy parasites were blocking the road on both sides of the clothing store. Surprisingly, they weren’t fighting each other but were instead turning their red eyes everywhere, seemingly searching for something. This eerie behavior frightened the others.

Several girls wanted to flee immediately but, thinking of the boys fetching medicine for them in the emergency room, ran towards the hospital instead.

Yu Xi escorted them into the emergency room, occasionally turning to hit or kick away any parasites that had caught up. These parasites arriving so suddenly seemed closely related to the fishy smell.

Strangely, they could have rushed and overwhelmed them but instead chose to advance slowly in a surrounding formation.

The students ahead ran quickly and were already out of sight. Yu Xi jogged to catch up, but as she reached the staircase on the first floor, she heard screams and footsteps returning from above.

“Retreat! The bridge is full of parasites too! It seems like all the ones from the outpatient building came over!”

“Damn it! Don’t they usually fight each other on sight? Why aren’t they fighting now?”

“They’re clearly targeting us! Stop talking and run!”

“But why? I don’t understand!”

“Stop arguing! Do you want to die?”

Everyone was out of breath, running back down. With parasites outside and above the emergency building, they were panicking like headless chickens until someone shouted, “Over here!” and everyone ran towards the voice.

This was the emergency room’s back entrance, located through the pharmacy’s safety door, leading to the hospital’s interior.

Outside the passage, two paths diverged: one leading to the outpatient building and the other continuing deeper into the hospital.

“We can’t go to the outpatient building. There are too many parasites.” The voice from earlier spoke again, and this time someone noticed who was speaking.

It was… quite surprising.

A usually quiet girl, unexpectedly reliable and decisive in a crisis.

Everyone was too busy fleeing to question why she had suddenly become so reliable and assertive. Seeing several girls following her, they quickly followed suit.

Lin Wu lagged a step behind and met Yu Xi’s gaze as she came from the back.

She pulled down her mask and mouthed three words to him: “Pheromones.”