Village Doctor's Women

Chapter 311: Chapter 305: A Pleasant Dreamland

"Why is it so quiet!!"

After entering the boundaries of the urban village,

Wang Jian still didn’t find any sign of movement.

It gave him a feeling like he’d returned to the mountain village.

But at least in the mountain village there were insects and birds chirping; this kind of dead silence made people involuntarily feel that something was wrong.

According to satellite and nearby Skynet surveillance records, the information Wang Jian obtained was that the first place where changes occurred was a shantytown.

It also belonged to a garbage disposal area.

A lot of old, dilapidated little houses from before were piled up here.

The open space was large, but it was all trash.

And the people living here, each family squeezed together in a single room.

There was no shortage of water or electricity, so they could still get by.

The harsh environment was a minor thing; aside from those pampered types like Mr. Jing and Lord Hu who couldn’t stand it, normal people could accept it.

And in Wang Jian’s eyes, there were no waves at all.

He was a child who walked out of the deep mountains, and after several years of practicing medicine on the road, what scenes had he not seen?

When he was still in university, he followed his master to practice medicine and had even dug out someone’s anus to clear constipation.

It was just a waste dump, nothing to make a fuss about.

Wang Jian hurried all the way to this area without encountering any obstruction, but after stepping into this initial zone, he could clearly feel that everything had changed.

"It’s even denser—what on earth is the reason?"

Wang Jian didn’t rush to go further in. From a distance at the intersection he took a look at the cluster of houses amidst the garbage heaps, then retreated back to the outer ring.

He casually picked a building, leapt up, and entered one of the apartments.

As soon as he entered, he saw a whole family lying in the living room.

Three people had collapsed on the sofa—two elderly and one middle-aged—and there was also a child on the floor.

All of them had fainted.

There was even a dog in one corner of the living room.

Frowning, Wang Jian could tell at a glance that these people were all unconscious, but their bodies didn’t have any major issues, it seemed...

It seemed like they were in a dream!

"In a coma? Asleep?"

Aside from being in a deep sleep, there didn’t seem to be any other abnormal external symptoms.

"The black qi is condensed at the center of their foreheads; it seems to be related to changes in the brain."

Wang Jian’s whole body was wrapped in Spiritual Power. The black qi actually wanted to invade him as well, but it simply had nowhere to enter.

Yet the black qi on these people in front of him was only gathered around their heads, which was truly strange.

By Wang Jian’s experience, these things invaded all parts of the human body brainlessly; they shouldn’t be this concentrated.

Wanting to probe the real cause, he had no choice but to take their pulse and examine them carefully.

After checking them one by one, the conclusion he reached was indeed the same as what he had observed.

"Weird. Way too weird."

"It really is concentrated in the brain."

Wang Jian tried using Spiritual Energy to disperse the black qi that was coiled around their brains, but the effectiveness was terrible. As soon as he expelled a portion, fresh black qi immediately flowed in to replace it.

The black qi here was way too dense!!

If he tried to clean it up relying on himself alone, he might end up exhausted to death and still not gain much.

"Maybe I should solve the problem from the source."

Wang Jian frowned, left this apartment, and went next door.

The apartment next door was just like the previous one; a whole family had collapsed at the dining table.

The food on the table had already gone bad, yet they were still slumped there, sleeping soundly.

He even saw one person who no longer had any breath in them. On closer examination, he realized it wasn’t because of the black qi, but because they’d fallen face down into the soup and, with their consciousness gone, had suffocated.

This was something Wang Jian hadn’t expected.

Moreover, under the influence of the black qi, this corpse showed no signs of decay and even gave off a feeling of some kind of aberration.

This discovery also made him think of the ghosts and jiangshi that had appeared in the memories of the sages...

After he resolved the issue here, he’d have to get someone to deal with the corpse as soon as possible.

He went through several more buildings and found that the situations were all roughly the same.

Aside from that unlucky one who suffocated in the soup, there were some who, because they suddenly lost consciousness, had fallen from stairs or high places and gotten injured. Everyone else basically had no problems, just a simple sleeping sickness.

But Wang Jian noticed that while these people were asleep, the flow and activity level of qi in their bodies was similar to when they were awake.

This meant their brains were very active.

"Could they all be dreaming?"

Wang Jian rubbed his chin; he already had some conjectures in his heart.

But if he wanted to get to the bottom of all the details and settle what was happening here, he still had to find the source.

So he returned to the previous core area.

This time Wang Jian didn’t hesitate, heading straight for those few buildings.

The houses here were already wrapped in black qi, like black-colored buildings, extremely eerie.

And following the density of the black qi, he arrived at the entrance to the first-floor stairwell.

"You’ve got to be kidding me—there’s actually a basement here?"

Who would have thought that in the place with the worst environment, there was somewhere even further underground to live.

The black qi below was like a spring, continuously gushing outward and spreading in all directions.

This was far beyond the level of just a little crack!

Wang Jian had no choice but to limit his own sight so that he couldn’t see the black qi; only then could he clearly make out the original appearance of the buildings here.

The garbage piles outside were a mess, but inside the building it was actually tidied up quite nicely.

Apart from miscellaneous clutter piled here and there, the floor was very clean.

He pushed open the door to the basement. Inside there was only one young boy and one elderly man whose complexion was extremely poor.

The boy lay by the bedside with a beaming smile, tightly clutching the old man’s hand.

"A filial kid, at least."

With one glance, Wang Jian could see that the old man on the bed was inhaling less and exhaling more; he was already at the point where the illness had penetrated to the marrow.

His blood and qi were depleted, his five organs were failing; he was not far from death.

Even he couldn’t save this elder.

And judging from the old man’s condition, Wang Jian could tell that this illness had been dragged out over a long period of time.

Like mold, starting from a tiny speck, slowly eroding the entire body until it finally spread everywhere.

By the end, even an Immortal would have trouble saving him.

So why do people drag out an illness?

The answer was simple.

Wang Jian took in the palm-sized room with a glance; aside from the bare necessities for living, there was nothing of any value.

So what makes people drag an illness on without treatment? It’s simple: poverty.

Wang Jian’s master, Xu Changqing, had once said that diseases, they could treat—but the disease of poverty, they could not.

The longer he lived and the more patients he saw, the deeper this truth cut.

What he was seeing now only confirmed it all the more.

And it wasn’t just the old man on the bed; the boy kneeling before him wasn’t in much better shape.

With a single glance, Wang Jian could see the boy’s whole-body qi and vitality were clearly in decline, nothing like what a robust teenager ought to have.

Not only that, the boy was skin and bones; he probably didn’t even get enough to eat and had been malnourished for a long time.

His complexion was sallow and pale; he might even be carrying parasites.

And that wasn’t all. Wang Jian noticed many injuries on the boy’s face and body.

There were both old wounds and new ones!

The freshest injuries looked to be from about three days ago!

Wang Jian’s expression darkened.

First, he cursed inwardly at how anyone could raise a hand against a child, and not just once but repeatedly.

Second, he felt the world seemed to be dealing in coincidences again.

Right now he had suppressed his Spiritual Sense a bit, so he couldn’t clearly see where the black qi originated.

But given the scene before him, it wasn’t hard to guess the source.

The boy’s smile grew more and more pronounced; the corners of his mouth were even curling upward as he indulged in his beautiful dream.

"So, it’s a dream demon, huh?"