Chapter 1341: New Opportunities Arise Amidst Adversity

Chapter 1341: New Opportunities Arise Amidst Adversity

On the second day after Nu Yue successfully infiltrated the cruise ship, Wan Qingge also selected a hospital he planned to target.
The hospital he chose was the largest in the city, gathering top medical resources from the surrounding areas. As a result, it attracted countless patients from nearby towns and villages seeking medical treatment. Regardless of day or night, the hospital was always crowded with people lining up for registration: shoulders bumping into shoulders, toes stepping on heels, the heat of the crowd pressing in, and the sound of coughing echoing back and forth. Here, nobody could expect to maintain their dignity.
The posthumans were unaware of how long this country had been quietly monitoring them. It could be imagined that their appearances and gaits had long been included in surveillance databases, making them targets wherever they went. Along with a few others, Wan Qingge had learned Lin Sanjiu's techniques for changing gaits. Now, with hundreds of people providing cover for him, he blended into the crowd like a drop of water merging into the ocean.
However, as a posthuman, enduring the jostling and collisions without pushing people away was even more exhausting than changing gaits.
Wan Qingge wore a mask and quietly walked through the crowd, heading straight for the third-floor internal medicine department. It was eight o'clock in the morning, and the assistant doctors in the internal medicine department were already preparing for work. The office was filled with the sound of water splashing, footsteps, and conversations, warming up for the day.
He waited at the corner for a while. When a man wearing a blue shirt and carrying a bag entered the room and came out shortly afterward with a thermos cup, still wearing the blue shirt, Wan Qingge seized the opportunity. With a few quick steps, he entered the office, only to inwardly curse his luck as soon as he did.
Another middle-aged female doctor was in the room, fixing her hair in front of a small mirror. As soon as she lifted her head, she saw Wan Qingge standing at the door.
But that didn't matter.
Wan Qingge swiftly moved to his target without hesitation—the white coat draped over the back of a chair directly opposite the female doctor's desk.
As he grabbed the white coat, the female doctor noticed the movement and looked away from the mirror. She raised her head and asked, "I heard they're not distributing grain and oil this year. Is that true?"
Wan Qingge smoothly turned, blocking her line of sight with the white coat held behind him. He murmured a low "Hmm" from his throat as he slipped his arm into one of the sleeves.
"Oh my! So we won't receive anything all year?" In this brief moment, the female doctor only saw the open white coat and a dark figure in mid-air. She then lowered her head to the mirror and complained, "I'm so tired every day."
With the white coat on, Wan Qingge swiftly walked out of the room before she could finish her sentence. By the time the man in the blue shirt returned, he would find that the coat hanging on the chair was gone—not just the coat, but also the work badge clipped to it.
Now, Wan Qingge had become Dr. Bao.
The medication storage room was in the adjacent management building. Now wearing the white coat, the security guards at the door didn't even spare him a glance as 'Doctor Bao' walked in easily. Everyone had their strengths, and one of Wan Qingge's strengths was this: no matter what kind of group it was, once he was placed inside, within two minutes, everyone would think he belonged there.
He confidently opened the door to an office and, behind his mask, asked the person inside, "Where's the person from the medication room? I'm looking for him."
Seeing the white coat, a woman looked up and said without hesitation, "I don't think he's arrived yet."
Wan Qingge nodded. "You're here quite early."
The woman widened her eyes, obviously embarrassed to directly ask who he was. She smiled and said, "Came early to avoid traffic jams."
Not having come to work is a good thing. Wan Qingge turned and walked straight to the pharmacy; for him, the door lock might as well not exist, as ten seconds later, there was a sound of the lock cylinder hitting the doorframe, indicating the abandonment of defense. He pushed the door open, looked around, and strode towards the Emergency Medicine cabinet.
Epinephrine pens treat acute allergic shock and are considered life-saving medicine in critical moments. The hospital cannot be without them. However, after searching through several locked cabinets, he couldn't find a trace of them.
He was a bit dumbfounded. Were they in the emergency room?
But even if ordinary people needed medication, they wouldn't require more than 1mg. Even if there were pens in the emergency room, the quantity wouldn't be large, and certainly wouldn't be enough for four posthumans to double up on.
Wan Qingge refused to believe it. He searched the entire storeroom several times until he felt people who came to work might be arriving soon, then cursed and left. He quickly went to the emergency room, intercepted a young nurse, and ordered sharply, "Quickly, get me an epinephrine pen!"
"Uh, but—"
"Hurry up, someone collapsed at the door. We can discuss the rest later!"
Although it was evident from his voice, build, and ID badge that he wasn't a doctor in the emergency room. When Wan Qingge shouted like that, the nurse also became urgent, hastily turning and hurrying off to fetch the medicine. Wan Qingge followed closely behind her, glancing into the room where she retrieved the medicine, took the epinephrine pen, and left. Not even two minutes later, taking advantage of no one paying attention, he quickly turned back, slipped into the room, and opened the medicine box the nurse had touched.
There wasn't a second epinephrine pen.
Even if he had guessed that the emergency room's stock was limited, this was too little, right? If two people were experiencing anaphylactic shock at the same time, would one just have to accept their fate and die?
Wan Qingge knew he couldn't stay here for long. Clutching the only trophy, a mere 0.3mg of epinephrine, he quickly went upstairs via the stairs and left the emergency room on the ground floor. Stealing medicine from a hospital seemed simple, but how was it so difficult? It seemed that even this country knew that epinephrine could slow down the rate of degeneration. Even human lives had to take a back seat; they were really going all out to prevent and suppress posthumans.
On the third floor, Wan Qingge slowed down in the corridor, making himself less conspicuous.
Had this country suffered a big loss from posthumans, hence the tight security? But if something major had happened, it shouldn't be able to be kept from the general public. Furthermore, the primary goal of posthumans was still to survive. Imagine someone on the brink of death in the desert; if they suddenly saw an oasis, would they rush to drink and rest, or would they set fire to the trees and urinate in the water? Similarly, which mentally ill person would, upon seeing a world of normal people, start wreaking havoc?
"Teacher Wan?"
Wan Qingge paused, stopping in his tracks.
"Teacher Wan!" The girl behind him called him again, suddenly becoming certain, instantly resembling a duckling seeing its mother from afar, quickly catching up and lifting a small face to him, her eyes sparkling excitedly. "It's really you?"
"Shh." Wan Qingge quickly pulled the girl aside and whispered, "I'm Dr. Bao now."
The girl immediately grinned but still lowered her voice, swiftly becoming part of the conspiracy. "Okay, Doctor Bao... I haven't seen you in so long. Didn't you say you would come back to school to see us? You lied."
"Why did you come to the hospital?" Wan Qingge felt a headache coming on.
"My dad is the chief physician here," the girl said matter-of-factly. "When my mom is busy, my dad lets me come here to do my homework."
"Don't you have to go to school?" Today was clearly a weekday.
"The school is having exams today, so we're all on holiday." The girl wasn't easily distracted and continued to ask, "How did you become a doctor again? Why are you pretending everywhere?"
Wan Qingge glared at her, but she just giggled and reached out to grab his arm. The kids at the school where he taught liked him, especially the little girls. They automatically became five years younger whenever they saw him, blushing as they clung to him. On the other hand, the boys seemed to automatically become five years older when they saw him, deepening their voices as they thought they were discussing matters maturely with him.
Several kids knew he wasn't actually a school employee, but nobody cared that he was freeloading at the school—this girl named He Huang Que was one of them.
"What do you mean pretending?" Wan Qingge rolled his eyes and said, "If it wasn't for my pretending, your skin would have been peeled off by your mother long ago. I came to the hospital to get something, you don't have to care.".
"I don't care what you do." He Huang Que immediately followed him, not listening to reason. "I know my way around the hospital. What are you trying to get? Stealing is wrong."
Wan Qingge always suspected that she and a few other girls treated him like a stray dog they found and secretly kept. They had indeed found a stray once, but when the teacher found out, he drove the dog out of the school with a stick. When the girls were heartbroken, Mr. Wan was conveniently teleported over and filled the void left by the dog.
"Epinephrine pen, you don't know what it is, do you?" he said casually, without giving it any thought.
Suddenly, He Huang Que took two steps back, forgetting her admonition about stealing. "I know, and I know where it is!"