298: Chapter 298 "Activating the Emergency Surgical Plan."

When the paper-tape terminal spat out the record for the third time, the duty officer moved the plasma box from the corner onto the cart.

[Contraction interval: Four minutes.]

Su Xiaonuan stamped it with the official seal.

"Seal off the second floor."

The physical floodgates of the second-floor corridor fell, and Lu Yan led six people to clear the mechanical elevator shaft.

The backup stretcher was snapped into the track slot, and the hand-cranked winch was hung on the wall of the No. 2 lifting shaft.

Su Muxue had already changed into sterile surgical scrubs and pushed the instrument cart into the delivery room.

Xia Qingqiu followed closely behind, holding a hemostatic forceps in her right hand and carrying two bags of Type O plasma in her left hand.

Jiang Xiaowan leaned against the head of the bed, her hands gripping the rails.

After the contraction passed, she did not cry out in pain.

"Fetal position," she stared at Su Muxue. "Placenta. Probability of bleeding. Surgical plan."

Su Muxue pulled over the ultrasound machine.

The probe was pressed against the abdomen, and a grayscale image appeared on the screen.

"Head presentation, shifted 1.5 degrees to the left. The lower edge of the placenta is three centimeters away from the cervical os, with signs of 0.8 centimeters of detachment at the edge. The current bleeding volume is controllable, but it may accelerate after entering the active phase."

She handed over the informed consent form.

"Both the natural birth and emergency cesarean options are listed above. The Superpower-assisted plan is the primary option, and the conventional surgical plan serves as a fallback."

Jiang Xiaowan took the pen.

Another round of contractions pressed over, and her hand paused twice.

After exhaling, the pen tip fell back onto the paper.

The name was written completely.

Su Muxue took back the confirmation form without saying "Don't worry".

"Instruments in place. Personnel in place. Medicine in place."

She only spoke the facts.

Outside the delivery room, the nurse on duty ran toward Lin Yuan, clutching the last page of the plan form.

On the seventh column of the form, there was red bolded text.

[Extreme situation disposal: Save the mother or save the child.]

Lin Yuan took the plan from the nurse's hand.

He picked up the fountain pen on the desk, and the pen tip directly crossed through the seventh column.

A horizontal line ran from left to right, covering the entire line of words.

In the blank space, he wrote six characters.

[Both mother and daughter live. No upper limit set.]

The nurse was stunned for half a second.

Lin Yuan slapped the plan back into her hands.

"Unseal the blood bank. Take out all backup surgical instruments. Prepare two sets of each of the three types of hemostatic agents from the medicine warehouse. Go."

The nurse turned and ran.

The three solid cabin doors on B1 were opened one after another.

Two carts filled with blood bags rushed up the ramp passage.

The third one carried a portable ventilator and a hand-cranked negative pressure device.

Su Xiaonuan stood at the nurses' station and opened the new version of the evacuation form.

Her name was written on the first line of the first batch of important personnel.

The handwriting was left three days ago.

It was the first execution record after the new regulations took effect.

Yu Qingyi took over the medical district deputy command terminal.

The wristband lit up with the binding confirmation light.

"Housekeeper Su, you are now—"

"As long as I'm alive, the dispatching won't be cut off." Su Xiaonuan closed the seal box.

She folded the old evacuation form and sealed it into the bottom layer of the filing cabinet.

The new roster was pressed under the glass plate, and the red mark of the official seal was clear.

The duty officer looked up at her without replying.

The mechanical telescope on the outer wall observatory turned thirty degrees.

The observer tightened the eyepiece screw, and the pencil on the recording board stroked a line of words.

[The tenth round of the Red Moon has entered the visible area ahead of schedule. It is expected to cross the clouds in forty minutes.]

Lin Yuan took the note.

"Close all space interfaces."

"Mechanical elevators take over transportation. Physical storage is changed to manual registration."

"Offline paper-tape communication covers the medical district, the B1 defense line, and the three-place headquarters."

The external reading port of the Dimensional Space was disconnected.

Clockwork relays replaced electronic adapters, and gear sets drove the communication paper tape to run.

The stretcher was sent into the delivery area along the physical track.

The last gap of the space door closed, the lock core turned two revolutions, and the physical locking rod fell into the slot.

Inside the delivery room, Su Muxue condensed a layer of thin frost with her right hand to cover the hemostatic gauze.

The frost layer spread two-thirds of the way before breaking.

She lowered her head to look at her palm.

The ice crystals on her fingertips melted into water droplets and dripped onto the floor.

Xia Qingqiu reached out her hand, and warm yellow healing light gushed out from her palm, dispersing into spots of light after traveling half an arm's length.

Outside the delivery room, Lin Yuan raised his hand.

Grayish-white water streams precipitated from the air, losing tension as soon as they formed, falling to his feet like cut threads.

The three of them stopped at the same time.

Zhao Dingshan's paper tape from Shanghai arrived first.

[Superpower fluctuations are abnormal. Water-type, fire-type, and mental-type have all shown attenuation.]

Zhe City's second one.

[Zhou Heng reports: All personnel's Superpowers have failed. Mecha core crystal power supply is normal.]

Beijing's third one.

[Adam confirms: Global Superpower interruption has begun. Estimated duration unknown.]

Su Muxue took off her gloves and put on a new pair.

"The Superpower-assisted plan is void."

She removed the ice-crystal hemostatic gauze from the instrument tray and replaced it with ordinary gauze and coagulation factor syringes.

"Switch to the conventional surgical plan. Everyone operate under the condition of no Superpowers."

Xia Qingqiu pushed away the Superpower healing device and pulled over the physical ECG monitor and oximeter.

The lead wires were attached to Jiang Xiaowan's chest, and waveforms jumped out on the screen.

The delivery room recovered the look a hospital should have before the end times.

Tang Qiqi climbed up the stairs from B2, holding a stack of clockwork recording paper in her arms.

She did not use the communication channel.

The papers were spread out in front of Lin Yuan.

Two hand-drawn curves.

The first one: Jiang Xiaowan's contraction frequency.

The second one: Displacement of the black trace inside the Return-to-Zero Coffin.

Seven sets of control data.

When the contraction peaked, the black trace clung toward the direction of the medical district.

When the fetal heart rate fell back, the black trace retreated by one grid.

Tang Qiqi used a pencil to circle the overlapping points.

"Seven times. Error is zeroed out."

Lin Yuan stared at the two lines.

"Is it approaching, or is it being pushed away?"

Tang Qiqi bit down on her candy stick.

"I can't tell."

She attached the offline records of the clockwork device behind it.

The three-layer physical barrier of the Return-to-Zero Coffin was intact.

The black trace did not break through the outer shell.

But with every synchronization, the magnitude of its movement was increasing.

Lin Yuan picked up the pen and wrote two lines of words at the bottom of the paper.

[Seal off all interfaces from the Return-to-Zero Coffin to the medical district.]

[Only clockwork devices are allowed to observe. Any energy, Mental Energy, and spatial coordinates are prohibited from approaching.]

Tang Qiqi took the order and turned to run toward the stairs.

"B2 continues to use mechanical watches for recording. Copy once every ten minutes. Manually send the notes up."

Lin Yuan stood in front of the delivery room door.

His hand paused on the access control card reader.

Inside the delivery room came Jiang Xiaowan's lowered exhaling sound and the rhythm of the monitor.

Lin Yuan withdrew his hand.

He turned around and walked toward the outer main control console.

The blood bank register was spread out.

The personnel rotation roster was pasted on the wall.

The status of the three-place defense lines was written on the whiteboard with a pencil.

He sat down.

The Red Moon crossed the clouds.

The blood-colored light shone into the corridor from the observation window of the outer wall of the Heavenly Palace, spreading along the ground.

Lin Yuan raised his hand.

Habitually summoning the System panel.

There was nothing in front of his eyes.

He tried again.

Attribute page.

Contract page.

Superpower page.

Quest page.

Favorability page.

All of them disappeared.

A dark curtain covered the back of his vision, and not even the System text at the very bottom remained.

The blue interface that had followed him since the day of his Rebirth went dark as a whole for the first time.

Lin Yuan lowered his hand.

The rhythm of the monitor leaked out from the crack of the delivery room door.

One.

Two.

Three.

Fetal heart rate is stable.

The red light at the end of the corridor was lit, shining on the whiteboard in front of him.

At the very top of the whiteboard was only a line of words.

[Tenth round of Red Moon. Superpowers zeroed out. System offline.]

The delivery room door was suddenly pushed open by half a foot.

Xia Qingqiu's voice came out first.

"Dr. Su—"

Su Muxue's command followed closely behind, her speech extremely fast without pausing.

"Fetal position shifted. Placental detachment accelerated."

"Initiate the emergency surgery plan."

"Lin Yuan, sign."