Chapter 34: Hospital

Chapter 34: Chapter 34: Hospital

Xiang Yi’s gaze kept drifting back and forth between the distant city and the abandoned district where he now stood.

He hadn’t noticed this place at all from the ship, yet it was actually sitting not that far from the city proper.

Close enough, and yet completely abandoned — the city showed no signs of rebuilding it, nor any intention of tearing it down. It had simply been left to stand here.

Unmaintained, it couldn’t function as a transit hub for people leaving the city. And it wasn’t close enough to the walls to serve any real purpose as an outer defensive enclosure either.

"City walls... an abandoned district outside the walls... what does any of this mean? What the hell happened on this planet?"

Xiang Yi found himself thinking without meaning to.

The purpose of city walls in ancient times was obvious — keeping out enemies. Even small villages would throw up earthen walls to keep the beasts at bay.

But in the modern age, walls had long since become obsolete. The advantages of open cities were plain for anyone to see.

And yet here, on a planet whose technology clearly surpassed anything from his old world, walls had been built again. Why? Was there some kind of external threat on this planet?

Xiang Yi couldn’t make sense of it.

Still, he could just barely make out figures walking the distant walls, accompanied by robots on patrol.

Probably a response to the ship crash earlier — the number of patrols, both human and robotic, was visibly growing all along the wall.

Though most of the activity seemed to be concentrated on the far side of the city, which was where the ship had actually gone down.

That was another strange thing.

Not the increase in patrols — rather, the fact that patrols existed at all. (Keeping sentries off the walls protected them from ambushes and reduced exposure to Abnormalities that couldn’t be detected by sensors. That was hard-won wisdom accumulated across years of experience in human cities.)

Automated systems were everywhere. Surveillance networks paired with fire control could handle external defense far better than any human — more reliably, more consistently, without ever getting tired. There was simply no practical reason to waste manpower on manual patrols.

Xiang Yi shook his head and stopped turning the problem over in his mind.

He had no information to work with. Speculating any further would just be spinning his wheels.

Better to pay attention to where he actually was right now.

Based on the surrounding structures and the battered, rust-covered power equipment, this looked like a substation — right on the edge of the abandoned district.

Judging by the extent of the rust on the machinery, the place had probably been abandoned no more than five years ago. Seven at the outside.

Xiang Yi glanced back at the substation office building he’d just come from.

The buildings showed no obvious signs of serious deterioration or deliberate damage — just the kind of wear that comes from neglect. The vegetation outside hadn’t grown nearly enough to reclaim the streets. That all lined up with what he’d figured.

What he couldn’t explain was why there was a tunnel beneath the substation in this abandoned district that connected directly to the city’s sewer system.

Completely straight, no turns, a solid forty-plus minutes of walking end to end. No matter how he looked at it, something was off.

If this district had originally been planned within the city walls — serving as a network linking essential civilian infrastructure — that might just barely account for it.

But it still didn’t explain why the whole area had been abandoned.

Everywhere he looked, there were fully completed buildings, some of them bearing clear signs of prior use. All that effort put into construction, and it was just... left to rot?

The entire abandoned district gave off a deeply unsettling feeling — like it had never quite belonged alongside the city behind the walls. Like two things forced together that simply didn’t fit.

Xiang Yi suddenly reached up and smacked himself lightly on the forehead, cutting his own train of thought short.

This seemed to be one of the side effects of awakening his Spiritual Energy — once his mind latched onto something, it wouldn’t let go. And because his thoughts moved so fast, by the time he snapped back to reality, his mind had already wandered miles away.

The upside was that his thinking was generally quicker now too, so these little mental detours only lasted a few seconds. Not too bad.

He refocused his attention on the abandoned district around him.

Abandoned, yes — but only five or six years ago.

There should still be plenty of resources left inside. Things he desperately needed right now: a fire source, food, and medicine.

He’d just have to go find them himself.

Fire, at least, wasn’t a problem anymore — the office building behind him had more than enough wooden furniture he could burn.

But food and medicine, especially medicine, were what mattered most to him right now.

The only places in a residential district where he’d reasonably expect to find medicine were private homes and a hospital.

A hospital was obviously the better bet.

A hospital wouldn’t be a small building. And even if the largest structure in the abandoned district wasn’t a hospital, odds were it was the old government administrative building.

A place like that would have a city planning department. Which meant there was a decent chance it still had maps of the district — exactly what he needed to find his bearings.

Plan settled, Xiang Yi took a moment to get his bearings on the roads, left the substation behind, and started making his way toward the largest, most prominent building visible in the district.

The downpour showed no sign of letting up. If anything, it was getting worse.

The streets in the abandoned district were in rough shape — cracked and uneven, the kind of surface that tripped you up with every other step. Every few paces he sank into an ankle-deep pothole, and one wrong placement of a foot could send him sprawling.

Abandoned vehicles were scattered all over the road, turning what should have been a straightforward path into an obstacle course.

Whether it was the mud or something about the materials the vehicles were made of, their surfaces were impossibly slick in the rain, making it a real struggle every time Xiang Yi had to clamber over one.

Even just walking normally, he could already feel that his body wasn’t right. Hauling himself over obstacle after obstacle was making his legs go progressively numb.

And then things got worse.

His head started to throb — a real, physical ache, not just exhaustion.

He might be running a fever.

His clothes had never dried out properly. The planet’s climate ran closer to early spring — cool overall — and he’d been soaked and cold for far too long.

Of course, there was a grimmer possibility: the fever could be from an infection.

He didn’t dare stop to check his wounds. If he stopped now, he was fairly sure he wouldn’t be able to start again.

He could only hope it was the former...

The deeper Xiang Yi pushed into the abandoned district, the worse it got.

The headache was building. His left leg had gone almost completely numb.

He’d been heading toward the tallest building in the district for the better part of ten minutes, and it still looked just as far away as when he’d started.

He wasn’t really walking anymore. He was dragging himself forward.

His movements never faltered, but somewhere beneath the surface, a quiet despair was slowly taking root.

The Mining Gun in his hand swept steadily through the darkness in flashlight mode, searching for anything that might be his target.

Then he swept the beam across a ten-story building.

And there, above the entrance to the ground-floor lobby, he spotted it — a bright red cross.