Chapter 15: Seeking Medical Treatment
Waking up early, Zhao Man laid out his woven sacks one by one and spread the sliced water bamboo across them piece by piece.
The water dropwort in the bamboo tube had turned into a high-radiation plant. Its little flowers had all fallen off, turning into tiny black specks, and the entire stalk drooped listlessly.
He packed the plastic bags he’d bought and his scavenging gear into his backpack, drank a vial of nutrient solution, locked the door, and headed out to scavenge.
Laying out the water bamboo to dry had eaten up some time today. By the time he arrived at West Gate 3, it was already half-past five. There weren’t many people outside the gates, but just in case, Zhao Man walked a little further ahead, switched to a different side path, and followed the markers in his terminal. He kept a sharp eye out as he walked, stopping to test any plants that looked potentially edible. Unfortunately, the side trails branching off the main road were all the same: full of lush green weeds, but anything edible was stripped away the moment it broke the soil.
After walking for half an hour and confirming no one was around, Zhao Man picked up his pace and made a beeline for the water bamboo patch.
Upon arriving, Zhao Man saw that the high-radiation water bamboo he had discarded yesterday had been eaten by something. There were bite marks on the leftover stalks, the cross-sections curved yet smooth.
His heart skipped a beat. Should he just head back? But looking at the water bamboo right in front of him, he couldn’t swallow the reluctance. Standing in place, he picked up rocks and clods of dirt and threw them into the surrounding brush. He listened intently for a while, but heard nothing. Picking up his stick from the ground, he whacked his way around the perimeter of the patch, then tossed pebbles into each cluster of water bamboo and rapped them with his stick. Once he was certain there were no hidden dangers, Zhao Man decided to harvest. After all, he was already here.
When he tested the water bamboo yesterday, Zhao Man had peeled off the outer sheaths and only scanned the flesh inside. But figuring that keeping the husks intact would help them stay fresh longer, today, after harvesting a cluster, he tested the outer sheath first, then the core. He soon discovered a pattern: if the outer sheath’s radiation was low, the inner core was guaranteed to be low. But if the outer sheath’s radiation was high, the core’s level was a toss-up.
He would first slice the outer husk and smear the sap from his dagger onto the terminal: High radiation, ingestion not recommended.
Then, wiping his dagger and terminal clean with a cloth, he would carefully peel back a bit of the husk, score the core, and test that sap on the terminal: Moderate radiation, edible.
He harvested and tested one cluster at a time, yielding about two to three good shoots per clump. The small pond held thirteen clusters of water bamboo in total. He had harvested five yesterday. Because he arrived early today, he finished testing the remaining eight clusters by eleven o’clock, yielding seventeen edible shoots.
His backpack could barely squeeze in eleven of them. Zhao Man packed the remaining six into a plastic bag and looped it over his arm. With his stick in one hand and machete in the other, he followed his terminal’s navigation toward the marked berry bushes.
After a nearly twenty-minute trek, he arrived at the berry spot. Finding a large, concealed boulder, Zhao Man set down his water bamboo and began picking the berries.
The ground around the bushes was carpeted in fallen leaves. Zhao Man swept the area with his stick to ensure no camouflaged predators were lurking, then crouched beside a bush and set to work.
The shrubs reached Zhao Man’s knees, their branches clustered tightly together and dense with dark green foliage. The plump, purplish-blue berries were interspersed throughout, making the bushes look almost like floral bouquets.
The stone forest wasn’t large, and there were only a handful of berry bushes, but every single one was laden with fruit. Zhao Man didn’t care if they were ripe or if they had peck marks from birds; he stripped the bushes clean, not leaving a single berry behind.
An hour later, nothing but leaves remained on the shrubs in the stone forest. Zhao Man returned to where he had stashed the water bamboo. Now, there was only one problem: how to haul all this back without drawing attention.
He had a full bag of berries, leaving his backpack bulging conspicuously. One glance was enough to tell he was carrying a hefty haul. Not to mention the water bamboo, which couldn’t be completely concealed with foxtail grass this time.
He pondered for ten minutes, and the conclusion he arrived at was that there was simply no good way. If he hid them here, going by what happened at the pond, mutated animals would definitely come eat them overnight.
Checking the time, he saw it was 1:30 PM. Still early. Zhao Man stuffed as much water bamboo into his backpack as it could hold, bundled the rest with rope, and tucked them securely under his arm. Carrying the bag of berries and gripping his machete, he strode quickly toward the base. As long as he made it to the city gates, he’d be safe.
Zhao Man moved swiftly, practically at a jog. Twenty minutes later, he encountered the first person on his route. It was a scrawny Beta. After sizing him up and concluding the man wasn’t a threat, Zhao Man quickly bypassed him. However, the man had clearly noticed the bag in his hand, the water bamboo tucked under his arm, and the bulging backpack.
Zhao Man ignored him and kept up his brisk pace. He was still about twenty minutes away from the base. The further he went, the faster his heart pounded. Less than three minutes later, he noticed the man was tailing him, furiously tapping away on his terminal. Zhao Man guessed he was calling for backup.
After another five minutes of jogging, the base gates were vaguely visible in the distance, but Zhao Man had already encountered three more people. He counted himself lucky that it was still early; the only people loitering around the base perimeter right now were the elderly, the weak, the sick, or the disabled.
But his current situation wasn’t much better. The four individuals had formed a loose semicircle, slowly closing in on him. Zhao Man broke into a full run, but the four stayed hot on his heels. Realizing he couldn’t shake them off and confirming the path ahead was clear, Zhao Man made a split-second decision. He dumped the berries, water bamboo, and his backpack by the roadside, gripped his machete tight, locked onto a target, spun around, and slashed. He didn’t score a direct hit, but the curved tip of the machete caught his pursuer’s arm, ripping open a long gash.
It was the scrawny man who had been tailing him from the start. All four attackers were Betas: an old man, a child of about seven or eight, and two teenagers. They were all armed with small knives, and all of them were skin and bones. One of the teens even looked sickly and frail.
Seeing that Zhao Man was actually willing to draw blood, the other three hesitated. Zhao Man steadied his trembling arm and shot them a freezing glare. “Get lost,” he spat.
With that, he walked quickly to the side of the road. Just as he bent down to pick up his water bamboo, he felt a sudden rush of wind. He threw himself into a roll, swinging the machete behind him as he moved. Standing back up, he saw the old man clutching his thigh, his face twisted in agony.
A sharp pain flared in his own shoulder. Zhao Man stepped forward briskly, lined up his strike, and swung again. The blade sliced a deep, long gash into the old man’s other thigh. The old man stumbled and collapsed to the ground, groaning. Seeing this, the remaining three scattered, bolting in three different directions.
Zhao Man shouldered his pack again, scooped up the water bamboo, hooked the bag of berries over his arm, and readied his machete to leave. But hearing the old man’s feeble, pained groans, he couldn’t entirely harden his heart. Leaving behind two stalks of water bamboo, he sprinted toward the base. The city gates were just ahead, but due to the recent discovery of low-radiation water, the area was absolutely swarming with people.
Zhao Man felt a spike of panic, but he knew the base maintained strict personal property laws. Nobody would dare rob him in broad daylight here; at most, they’d try to pick his pockets in the chaos. Gripping his machete tightly, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to march briskly toward the gate.
Perhaps because the crowd at the gate was mostly Alphas who didn’t care about his meager haul, Zhao Man passed through the checkpoint without a hitch.
Inside the city, high courtyard walls lined the streets, and no one was loitering outside. The moment Zhao Man arrived home and dropped his gear, his legs gave out. He slumped down against the wall.
His heart was hammering wildly, his hands shaking, his legs completely jelly. He had actually thought he was going to kill someone. When he slashed the old man’s second thigh, his hand had been trembling; he’d pushed through entirely on sheer, desperate adrenaline.
After catching his breath for ten minutes, the pain in his left shoulder flared up. Zhao Man touched it and his hand came away wet with blood. He slowly dragged himself up and headed for the hospital.
At the hospital, he received disinfection, bandages, and a vaccine shot. When his terminal pinged with a deduction of 20 points, Zhao Man immediately questioned if the hospital was overprescribing and overcharging, and filed a formal complaint through his terminal on the spot.
The feedback on his appeal came through quickly: combining his medical records, it was determined that Zhao Man’s wound was caused by a scavenging dagger. The dagger had been tainted with high-radiation plant toxins that infected the wound. Because he hadn’t sought immediate medical attention, the toxins had begun to spread slightly. The treatment methods and medications administered by the hospital were deemed fully compliant with standard procedures. Appeal rejected.
Staring at the deduction notice on his terminal, Zhao Man finally understood why people in his past life threw violent tantrums at hospitals. Right now, he really wanted to cause a scene himself.
What a massive loss!!
