Chapter 206: The Perpetual Cure
At the control console.
After spending an entire hour surveying every corner of his domain,
Su Wu's gaze finally landed on a comprehensive 3D map of Jianghe City.
On it,
countless light spots scattered like stars in every corner.
Each light spot represented a unit closely associated with him—whether it be workers and robots, vehicles, ships, buildings, or mining operations.
Unknowingly,
Su Wu had quietly established a vast network of influence across Jianghe City.
September 26.
The number of severely infected individuals in Jie Wei Shelter officially reached 700,000.
With the capsule beds reaching full capacity, no more patients could be accommodated.
Su Wu began implementing the diversion plan.
The remaining patients were transferred to Scenic Garden Shelter, where they would be isolated in honeycomb-style capsule beds, completely cut off from the rest of the shelter.
They would not interact with the healthy population until they were fully cured.
At the same time, as Su Wu moved more than 700,000 severely infected individuals into the shelters, many of the shelter populations had decreased by one-third or even half.
Even the official shelters had seen tens of thousands of residents relocated.
This created a noticeable emptiness within the shelters.
Many senior officials began to suspect that Su Wu was using the opportunity to conduct inhumane research on the infected, treating them as disposable experimental subjects.
Despite videos of the conditions in Jie Wei Shelter, filmed by several severely infected individuals during their recovery, being uploaded to the network, these doubts persisted.
After all, the number of severely infected individuals was too high.
Even though tens of thousands could still communicate with the outside world, the suspicion that more might have disappeared under questionable circumstances remained.
As these doubts spread from the shelter officials to the general public, Su Wu's transportation efforts began to face resistance.
Some shelters outright refused to send more severely infected individuals, while others demanded resource-based exchanges for their cooperation.
Some of the infected who were still conscious also refused to be relocated, preferring to wait for death in their original shelters.
In their minds, dying from the virus was far preferable to being used as experimental material.
However, these voices of opposition were still the minority.
The impact was mainly seen in a slight reduction in the number of people being transported, lowering the daily number of infected individuals being transferred from 70,000 to 60,000.
For Su Wu, this decrease actually reduced his pressure somewhat,
allowing him to redirect part of the Manufacturing Center's capacity from producing capsule beds to expanding the engineering team.
With the expansion of the engineering team,
the space they could dig out every day began to gradually increase from 1,000 square meters to higher levels, enabling the creation of more planting gardens.
This formed a virtuous cycle.
September 29.
By the time Scenic Garden Shelter had also accepted nearly 200,000 severely infected individuals,
the majority of those willing to be relocated to Su Wu's shelter had been collected.
The medium-sized hovercrafts that had previously been frequently transporting the infected across surface water areas finally got a chance to rest and undergo maintenance.
At this point, Su Wu was holding nearly 900,000 severely infected individuals.
Including the residents of the original affiliated shelters, his total population had reached 1.5 million.
"Those who shift from mild to severe infection,"
"I estimate will still be in the thousands every day."
"Once they are transferred to Owen Shelter,"
"it shouldn't be a major problem."
In the Farmhouse Shelter's Underground Control Center,
Su Wu glanced at the population report, feeling both the pressure and, at the same time, a sense of relief.
1.5 million people sounded like a lot.
But at least, their numbers wouldn't grow rapidly any longer.
After today,
as the Manufacturing Center shifted most of its production capacity to manufacturing engineering machinery,
and with the engineering team's ongoing work to expand the shelter's underground space,
the pressure would continue to decrease daily,
until the population was completely absorbed.
"But right now, there is still the biggest hurdle left."
"It has to be accelerated."
Su Wu hadn't forgotten.
The majority of the new population were severely infected individuals.
And he only had Type II treatment drugs that could extend their life for 15 days.
If, after a few more days,
the initial batch of severely infected individuals reached their time limit and no new treatment drugs had been developed,
the near 1 million severely infected individuals would perish at an astonishing speed in just a few days.
When that happens, not only would his expansion plans fail, but in the eyes of the world,
he would truly become a mad ruler, treating hundreds of thousands of people as mere experimental subjects to be discarded.
The consequences would be disastrous.
After weighing everything,
Su Wu decided to join the research efforts himself,
and invest all the spiritual energy he had, including the new spiritual energy accumulated daily, into this critical task.
Everything.
Just to develop the life-saving drug before the deadline arrived.
---
October 4.
After several days of tireless research with Chen Yue,
Su Wu finally made a breakthrough.
The newly developed treatment drug no longer had drug resistance.
It could be repeatedly injected into the same individual.
This meant that, as long as the injection was administered every 10 days or so, there would be no risk of death.
Additionally, after injecting the drug, the sleeping time of severely infected individuals would decrease to around 8 hours, making it nearly the same as ordinary people.
If not for the need for continuous injections to avoid death, they could actually live and work like normal humans.
Su Wu named this new drug the Perpetual Treatment Drug.
With the invention of this drug, Su Wu had essentially created a cure for the Rola Virus.
The only drawback was that infected individuals still needed to be isolated from healthy people, as they could still spread the virus.
(End of Chapter)