Wasteland Border Inspector - Chapter 684

Chapter 684: Chapter 232: Infectious Proliferation, Mountains Descend from the Sky!

Looking down from the top of the cave, the entire cave can roughly be divided into three parts.

The largest area is the dense forest zone near the exit of the light gate, shaped like an irregular trapezoid.

Directly in front of the dense forest zone is the large lake area occupied by the Ten Thousand Orders Land Conch.

And to the right of the large lake area, there’s an additional region. Here, there are no dense trees or open lakes, only numerous small lakes of various sizes.

Although it is only one-tenth the size of the forest, it houses no less than twenty sources of infection.

Moreover, the pattern is quite clear: the larger the lake, the stronger the infection source within; the smaller the lake, the weaker the infection source.

But even so, even in the smallest lake, the infection source’s level has reached the terrifying Plague Level!

Those group-level and tide-level infection sources that are considered troublesome outside don’t even have the qualifications to take root here.

In front of a small lake towards the back of the area, Luokuke was gently clapping, the frequency of his claps varying, carrying a peculiar rhythm.

With his movements, the surface of the small pond suddenly rippled, and a bright red shrimp slowly emerged.

Its form was somewhat similar to the red shrimps outside but was several times the size of an ordinary red shrimp.

Even in the scaled-down cave, it was still as long as a forearm, its shell covered with dense and strange patterns, which under the faint light seemed unsettling the longer one looked.

“Hey, finally got you!”

Luokuke felt a surge of joy, yet he didn’t dare to slacken in his movements, continuing to clap gently at a fixed frequency.

When it came to dealing with those Crab-men, he really wasn’t proficient; his progress couldn’t even keep up with those blood-colored silhouettes who only acted recklessly.

But in dealing with these specific infection sources with clear habits, he was adept.

After arriving and carefully recognizing, he remembered over half of the infection sources in this area, and upon checking through Firewood Communication, he got the exact containment methods.

Although he hadn’t contained them before, as long as he grasped their behavioral rules and weaknesses, the difficulty would plummet.

Finally, the red shrimp slowly approached the shore, its bean-sized eyes flashing with a bewildering, human-like glint, clearly not yet fully awakened from the sound’s confusion.

Luokuke immediately stopped clapping, cautiously pulled out a short knife from his waist, and spoke in a even softer voice:

“Easy, easy, almost there!”

He slowly moved forward, gently pressing the short knife at the seam of the red shrimp’s head shell, carefully exploring along the patterns.

Soon, the knife point picked out a “small red shrimp” about palm-sized, glowing all over in red.

This was the core of the infection source.

Luokuke quickly retreated two steps, opened the containment box he carried with him, and steadily placed the core inside.

Once the connection between the core and the external body was severed, the giant red shrimp in the pond started shaking frantically, its shell humming as if equipped with a high-frequency vibrator.

When the vibration reached a certain critical point, the massive body collapsed with a boom, transforming into pieces of dry debris that silently blended into the lake water, not leaving a ripple.

“Three down!”

Luokuke glanced towards two already empty lakes beside the red shrimp, took a deep breath, and couldn’t help but let his mouth curl slightly upward.

Refreshing!

It had been a long time since he’d experienced such an exhilarating containment process.

Infection sources outside, as soon as they emerge in the human world and cause impact, are often already in the outbreak phase; it’s rare to encounter individuals in the slumbering or awakening phase.

But the infection sources in this pond were all in a state between slumbering and awakening, half asleep, half awake, and as long as the manual steps were strictly followed, the risk was extremely low.

He had already contained three Plague Level infection sources consecutively without any accidents.

“Once I contain the Immortal Objects, I can be allotted a Destruction Level quota, and this quota could help me advance to the Fourth-Phase.”

“As for these Plague Level quotas, they seem a bit wasted on me… maybe give two to Wang Kang? Help him quickly get through the probation stage, and consider it a favor to Cheng Ye.”

“With the remaining quotas, see if they can be exchanged for resources. If I make it out alive this time, Cheng Ye is sure to, like Cheng Long, become a core staff member trained at the checkpoint, with an unimaginable upper limit. If I can invest more in Dapo Town beforehand, perhaps…”

“No, I need to maintain my relationship with Cheng Ye, I absolutely can’t neglect this connection.”

One thought after another flashed quickly through Luokuke’s mind.

For an ordinary person in such an environment where a life-and-death crisis might occur at any moment, it might be hard to even stand firm, let alone dare to dream about what comes next.

But it was entirely different for an Inspector; facing life and death amidst the Wilderness was no longer a novelty for them.

The core of the checkpoint’s career advancement was “selection.”

Inspectors who survive to the Third-Phase basically have escaped from life-and-death predicaments more than three times.

Whether by luck or by quick wit, it’s false to claim they aren’t afraid at all.

But to say they’re so fearful that it throws them into disarray and makes them incapable of planning the future is absolutely impossible.

Otherwise, how could there be any Inspectors willing to step into the Wilderness? They’d all just hide in the Buffer Zone and await their death.

Thinking this through, Luokuke restrained his thoughts and focused his attention back to the present.

He had brought in four Containment Boxes, three of which were already used, leaving only the last one.

Once he used this one, he’d need to step out temporarily to swap for new boxes and return.

He glanced in the direction of the dense forest zone, vaguely seeing more grass and trees turning yellow, indicating that Cheng Ye did not seem to be slacking either.