Chapter 92: The Outbreak of the Plague

Soon the emergency center in Golden Ridge City was overwhelmed.

Those still trapped inside the city were gripped by fear and unease. They knew it was a plague, the same kind of catastrophe that had ravaged Europe with the Black Death, swept the world with the Spanish flu, struck during the SARS outbreak, and later with Ebola and others besides.

No one knew when they themselves might be infected. They wanted to flee, but Golden Ridge City had already been sealed off. It was not a matter of singling them out; isolating the source of contagion was the usual measure for controlling an epidemic.

The sudden outbreak threw all previous plans into disarray.

The European investigative delegation could no longer leave.

And the Falcon Three Brothers, who had been planning to use this lull, when no assignments were pressing, to visit relatives in Sand River City, could not leave either.

Not only could they not go, they had also received a new assignment: assist in handling this plague crisis.

When it came to combating the epidemic, the core force was, of course, the medical team hastily dispatched to the city, along with the professors from the Medical Science Academy searching for the pathogen. What the Falcon Investigation Team could mainly do was trace the source of the plague. In plain terms, to find out who had brought this disaster on. It was dangerous work, meaning close contact with infected patients, and also, without any warning, contact with carriers who had not yet fallen ill.

The Falcon Investigation Team risked their lives to investigate the first man to fall ill. His daily life before the disease, the people he had recently been in contact with. They found nothing unusual. And those he had contact with, including some close contacts, had not become ill either.

That did not add up. Could it be that this pathogen was not contagious? Then how had people been falling ill one after another and ending up in the hospital?

They pulled the records of other patients and found that these people had not had close contact with one another, and most of those they had met also remained healthy, showing no signs of illness at all, not even any warning signs before the onset.

The initial expectation had been different. By starting from these infected people, they found no source of infection, and even reached the conclusion that the illness was not contagious.

Could it really be a coincidence that so many people fell ill one after another? Though the facts stood before them, it made no sense. The Falcon Investigation Team, which believed that seeing was not always believing, analyzed the infected patients once more, searching for what they had in common.

An analysis of age and sex revealed nothing unusual; the infected included men and women, young and old.

An analysis of their places of residence also yielded nothing new. They did not live in concentrated areas, which meant this was not a mass poisoning incident.

But when the Falcon Investigation Team examined the patients’ meals and routines in the twenty-four hours before infection, they finally found a clue. At the very least, within the forty-eight hours before falling ill, these people had all drunk the same brand of bottled water. As the saying goes, illness enters through the mouth. Could the water be the problem?

Yet this bottled water was common, sold in almost every supermarket in every city.

With nothing to lose, the Falcon Investigation Team sent the bottled water these people had drunk, along with other food samples, to a professional laboratory for testing.

After receiving the samples, the testing center worked around the clock and rushed the experiments through. Sure enough, they found several kinds of viruses and bacteria in the water, though the specific diseases were still unclear. When they fed the water to laboratory mice, the mice reacted violently, in a manner similar to the infected patients.

Realizing how serious the problem was, the Falcon Investigation Team did not dare delay and immediately reported the findings.

The National Emergency Disaster Relief Committee received the report and, at once, summoned the bottled water producer involved. It was a long-established brand, one of the drinking water suppliers designated by the committee itself.

Faced with this sudden accusation, the producer did not panic. They knew very well that every product they made underwent strict factory inspection. From the water source onward, controls were rigorous; an incident like this was absolutely impossible. In other words, the bottled water drunk by the infected was very likely counterfeit.

The supplier argued forcefully, insisting that their products were sound. They even specially invited food-testing experts to conduct an on-site inspection. Naturally, the experts found nothing abnormal. In fact, the producer had indeed been wronged.

After identifying the cause of illness, the Falcon Investigation Team immediately followed the trail of the bottled water to the distributor, then kept tracing it step by step until they truly found the source of the contaminated water. It was a factory little more than a makeshift workshop, filling empty mineral water bottles with spring water, slapping on labels from a best-selling bottled water brand, and sending the goods into the market for huge profit.

In truth, that workshop had long known there was a problem with the bottled water. Before the first infected person appeared, several of the workers had already suffered a string of bizarre deaths. The superstitious老板 believed heaven was punishing him and even hired a wandering monk to perform exorcisms.

Only after Golden Ridge City began producing one infected patient after another, and the rumor of a plague spread everywhere, did the unscrupulous boss realize something was wrong. He immediately shut down the factory and dismissed all the workers.

By the time the Falcon Investigation Team followed the trail and found the place, it was already deserted. They had come up empty, but not completely empty-handed. Damin and Brother Long found a ledger, a record of production, sales, and inventory kept by the factory managers.

Faced with that thick stack of records, the Falcon Three Brothers were instantly overwhelmed. The contaminated water had long since been sold all across the country, and even shipped overseas, crossing the ocean to the far side of the world.

Shocked by the truth, the Falcon Investigation Team immediately reported the terrifying news. To avoid causing panic, the authorities decided to secretly recall and destroy the contaminated water without making the matter public.

But it was already too late. Infected patients began appearing one after another all over the country. This time, the incident had truly spread and become a global disaster.

Although this plague was not especially contagious, it was still transmissible, and with no effective treatment yet found, hospitals were instantly packed to capacity. Beds became impossible to find.

The first wave of infected patients began dying one after another. Panic only deepened.

As for the investigation team, after asking around everywhere, they finally found the person in charge of the offending factory. When the investigator came knocking, the small-time boss trembled so badly he could hardly speak.

From his halting account, the Falcon Investigation Team realized that this boss truly had not understood anything. He only wanted to sell some counterfeit goods and make a little money; he had never imagined he would cause such a huge uproar.

Looking at the black-hearted boss crouched on the ground with his head in his hands, Brother Long grew angry and kicked him hard.

The boss yelped in pain and pleaded repeatedly for mercy, crying out things like “Spare my life, hero,” while also saying he was willing to take the team to the water source in hopes of making amends.

Making amends was impossible, of course, but the Falcon Investigation Team did think they should go check the source. So they put off settling accounts for the moment and first let him lead the way to the water source.