Hunter of Mysterious Creature

In just a few seconds, an entirely new ominous creature was born in front of Sun Hang.

"Sun Hang! The equipment has reacted! This courtyard has completely transformed, turning into a type-G ominous creature!" Yang Qi shouted from outside, "Get out of there quickly!" 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"..." Sun Hang stood once more before the door, then kicked it wide open with his bare foot.

If the previous mimetic fragments were akin to the leftovers and scraps of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and ducks, then now they’ve been reprocessed by some unscrupulous factory, reemerging as "synthetic meat"... On the internet, such things are often referred to by netizens as "technological synthesis."

"Sun Hang! Why haven’t you come out yet?!" Yang Qi’s voice grew increasingly anxious, and the frequency of the ominous creature’s impacts on the door also began to quicken.

The courtyard gate was severely deformed, but in this situation, the metal material unexpectedly showed incredible flexibility—not only was the gate not broken, but it remained flush with the ground, and the courtyard walls on both sides, ensuring that the blood pool inside the courtyard, now reaching nearly knee-high, didn’t leak out at all.

This courtyard wall completely isolated the inside from the outside... Sun Hang was somewhat curious, wondering what would happen if the blood pool rose to the same height as the top of the courtyard wall. Would it overflow and spill outside?

It’s a pity he probably wouldn’t give it such a chance.

Sun Hang had already sensed the "core" of this newly born type-G ominous creature, so he walked straight ahead, and the Taishan mycelium with metallic blades cleared all obstacles in his path—desks, chairs, screens were all shredded, even the wall at the end of the foyer was smashed open by mycelium twisted into a large hammer.

Sun Hang finally saw the first villager since entering the village... Or rather, the villager’s body.

A woman dressed in traditional Qiang attire sat in a chair, her head bowed, wearing a blue-faced, tusked Nuo Opera mask, her long black hair draping down, soaking into the blood pool that reached above her knees.

Her arms stretched out to the sides, with an incision running from the armpit to the palm on the inner side, and the skin around the cut was turned outward, while the blood vessels underneath were picked out one by one...

These blood vessels were clearly mutated... They resembled wild vines, connecting this corpse to the blood pool.

The blood pool seemed to have flowed from within this corpse.

"Tsk... So much blood; if it were normal human plasma... wouldn’t the blood banks in Tianfu City be terribly envious?" Sun Hang muttered under his breath.

The consecutive disasters after the eternal night led to a severe shortage of blood supplies in Tianfu City, with tens of thousands of injured needing blood in the west district alone due to the Dragon Rock Fortress incident... Although the Xiazhou Federation had urgently mobilized blood products from various city-states to Tianfu City, it could only be described as a drop in the bucket for the huge gap there.

Before Sun Hang set out for Chunming City, Yang Qi, Yang Lian, Ye Xuan, Ye Jiu, and others had already been summoned to donate blood... If Sun Hang hadn’t been an infected person, he likely would have been "forced voluntarily" to donate blood too.

"Such a waste." Sun Hang walked in front of the corpse.

A few strands of mycelium slowly climbed along the back of the chair, lifting the corpse’s drooping head up.

Sun Hang wanted to remove the Nuo Opera mask from the corpse’s face, but after a few attempts, he discovered that the mask seemed to have grown into her face, making it impossible to remove... By exerting more force, blood continued to drip from the gaps in the mask... Sun Hang estimated that if he forcibly ripped it off, the corpse’s face might be torn off along with it.

The "bleeding" seemed to have slowed considerably; given the initial rising speed, the blood pool should have reached Sun Hang’s waist by now, but nearly half a minute had passed, and the liquid level remained about a centimeter above his knees.

"Finally run out of blood?"

Sun Hang heard a sound behind him but didn’t turn around. Two eyeballs growing at the ends of the mycelium glanced over his shoulder, "watching" the situation behind him—two ominous creatures trudged through the blood pool into the room.

Both creatures wore Dubhe Tower’s specially-made "combat uniforms"—these uniforms served as both their armor and restraints, with "002" printed on the shoulder of one and "013" on the other.

"He’s fine." The faint voice of Zhong Ling sounded via the headset, along with Yang Qi’s sigh of relief.

"Sun Hang, what’s the situation over there now?" Yang Qi spoke again, "If you don’t respond, we’ll force our way in."

"I’ve discovered the core of this type-G ominous creature," Sun Hang said, "It’s the place with the highest memetic density."

Sun Hang spoke, pulling out his phone—but before taking a picture, he first previewed the image captured by the lens.

The room contained only a chair soaking in the blood pool, and the chair was empty.

"There’s a chair in the room, with the corpse of a female villager sitting on it, and a mask on her face... Or, more precisely, the mask is part of her face," Sun Hang said, "I tried to remove her mask but, unfortunately, failed... Just like those masks in the exhibition room earlier, the phone camera can’t capture the corpse."

"I know... Zhong Ling told me," Yang Qi responded, "Her ominous creature can see the corpse."

Sun Hang glanced at the "left and right guardians" standing behind him and remarked, "I didn’t expect these two to be more effective than my phone camera."

"The ability to remain invisible before electronic devices, coupled with the parasitic entity in the villager’s ominous creature’s skull... It’s almost certain that Chimera 17 is behind this series of events," Yang Qi said, "The tunnel Chimera 17 dug up during escape ended abruptly after extending three kilometers... Unexpectedly, it ran into these mountains. Who knows what its ultimate purpose is..."

"Recovering, preying, recuperating," Sun Hang stated, "Those are the most likely purposes..."

However, what concerned Sun Hang more was not Chimera 17 escaping into the mountains but the appearance of Anna Demosheva in his dream last night... and the relationship between them.

But just as Sun Hang thought about Anna, the corpse sitting on the chair suddenly moved, and a voice only Sun Hang could hear whispered in his ear.

"Mom... have you come to find me?"

"You’re here?" Sun Hang took a deep breath, retracting all the scattered metal blades and mycelium, while speaking into his earpiece: "Zhong Ling, retrieve your ominous creature first."

The two ominous creatures didn’t linger and quickly exited the room.

Yang Qi, conversely, kept asking questions over the communication channel... However, fortunately, Candle Dragon promptly pulled her back; otherwise, she might have already climbed over the courtyard wall and charged in.

"No, I’m not here." Anna’s voice seemed both close and far away, "I’ve been here, but what you’re encountering is merely a trace of my consciousness left behind."

"Your purpose here was to kill these villagers?" Sun Hang asked, "Or did you grant them ’immortality’?"

He didn’t dare to ask too directly, fearing to attract the attention of the three apes.

"No, it wasn’t me." Anna replied, "I was tracking a thief, a notorious thief."