Chapter 127: Give Up

District Three.

Chen Ling pushed open the headquarters' main doors and stepped out.

The thick fog still hadn't lifted, like a pall hanging over everyone's hearts. Figures hurried along the street, carrying stretchers bearing either cold, pale bodies or bloodied, mutilated casualties. The once bustling district was now filled with groans of pain and anxious whispers.

Dressed in a black trench coat, Chen Ling stood on the steps outside the headquarters for a moment, then followed the stretchers, heading towards the other side of the street.

Next to the Enforcers' headquarters was the largest clinic in District Three. Despite being the largest, its size was comparable to the health center Chen Ling had seen in a small town in his previous life.

The two-story clinic was now packed with groaning patients. Countless red and white stretchers covered the floor, leaving aisles barely half an arm's width wide. The few doctors present were drenched in sweat, hurrying between the patients.

"Doctor... Doctor! Please, I beg you, look at my child first! He seems to be losing his breath!"

"Doctor! We're running out of gauze and disinfectant! The blood bank is almost depleted!"

"It hurts so much... I'm in so much pain..."

"Here's one with an infected wound... It can't be saved. Prepare for an amputation."

"Doctor! This patient has no vital signs..."

Groans and cries echoed throughout the clinic. Outside, stretchers lined the roadside, one after another, stretching from one end of the street to the other, with a constant stream of new arrivals.

How many patients were awaiting treatment? Two thousand? Three thousand? Chen Ling had lost count.

He stood at the clinic entrance, the only dark figure amidst the sea of white stretchers. His gaze swept over the hellish scene. His face was devoid of expression, as quiet as an unnoticed statue.

A doctor emerged from the operating room, his hands covered in blood. Several family members immediately rushed in, and seeing the cold body on the operating table, their wails of grief instantly filled the air.

The doctor stood before the operating room, looking at the hell inside the clinic, his eyes filled with endless sorrow and pity.

"This can't go on..." he murmured to himself.

"Abandon all critically ill and severely bleeding patients."

At his words, all the other busy doctors paused, looking at him. They seemed to want to speak but ultimately fell silent.

"Are we... are we just going to watch them die?" a nurse asked hoarsely.

"We no longer have the time or resources to save them," the doctor said, closing his eyes. "As for those with less severe injuries, gather them, explain the correct way to disinfect and bandage wounds, and let them find their own solutions."

"...Understood."

The Enforcers maintaining order immediately sprang into action, moving the many critically injured patients who were still alive out of the clinic to make space for those with lighter injuries.

Most of them were already unconscious, and those who remained lucid knew they had been abandoned. Stretcher after stretcher passed by Chen Ling. He could clearly see the pain and struggle on their faces, and the despair for life in their hollow eyes.

In the chaos, the boundary between life and death was sharply drawn. Humanity, a severely wounded beast, began to tear off its own decaying flesh in a desperate bid for survival.

Clinic staff found an empty lot not far from the street and gathered the abandoned, critically injured patients there. These blood-stained stretchers formed a sprawling mass, and the unconscious murmurs and groans of pain sounded like the continuous ravings of Death itself.

They were quietly awaiting death.

"What are you doing?! Why aren't you saving them?!"

"My dad was among the first brought in! Why aren't you saving him?! Why?!"

"The disasters couldn't kill my wife, so you're just letting her wait to die? You're not doctors! How are you any different from those disasters?!"

"You're murdering people!"

The family members, who had been anxiously waiting outside, saw their loved ones being abandoned, and their eyes instantly reddened. They rushed into the clinic like madmen, tackling doctors and nurses who were treating others, plunging the scene into chaos.

Just then, Xi Renjie, who was patrolling nearby, quickly rushed forward with several Enforcers to stop them.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

"By what right do you decide who lives and who dies?" a family member roared.

"Too many people here need treatment. We don't have enough resources or time. If this continues, even more people will die."

"Then why should they be the ones to die? We're all human. Why should they be abandoned?!"

"Because their injuries are too severe."

"But it's not their fault!"

Xi Renjie froze for a moment. He looked at the group of red-eyed family members before him, knowing that anything he said would be useless. He waved his hand, and the surrounding Enforcers immediately drew their guns, pressing them against the families' foreheads. In their terror, they finally quieted down.

The Enforcers used their guns to disperse everyone outside the clinic, and only then did order return.

Xi Renjie let out a long sigh. Seeing Chen Ling standing by the entrance, he walked straight over.

"Are you injured too?"

"...No," Chen Ling shook his head. "I just came by to take a look."

"With all that commotion just now, why didn't you step in to maintain order?"

"I was thinking about something."

"What?"

Chen Ling didn't answer. His gaze fell on the blood-stained stretchers of the abandoned at the street corner. Everything that had happened in the past few days linked together in his mind: the sudden withdrawal of raw materials, the halted factories, the vanished communications, the arrival of the fog...

After a long silence, he suddenly uttered something that made Xi Renjie's blood run cold.

"Is it possible that we, too, have been abandoned?"

Xi Renjie was stunned for a long time. "Are you saying..."

"All of this seems a little too coincidental," Chen Ling said, looking towards Aurora City. "I hope I'm just overthinking it."

Xi Renjie frowned, falling into deep thought after Chen Ling's words. The two stood on the steps in front of the clinic, and the air suddenly grew quiet.

After a long while, Xi Renjie whispered softly,

"No, that's impossible... The Seven Districts have hundreds of thousands of people, and their factories account for seventy percent of the entire realm's production. Without the Seven Districts' material supply, Aurora City would be like a disabled person with severed arms... How could Aurora City abandon us? We'll know for sure once Meng Ge returns."

Chen Ling glanced at him.

"Do you think, if Aurora City was determined to abandon District Three, would Han Meng even be able to return?"