Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 399 - 43: Ants_2

They lay or sat, completely disregarding their bodies covered in mud and not caring about the radiation effects if they opened their masks, gulping down specially made nutrition supplements; some people injected themselves with an overdose of stimulants during the retreat, and now that the effect has worn off, they collapsed unconscious... Medics with red cross armbands moved among them, carrying those with severe injuries onto stretchers, then transporting them back to temporary hospitals in the rear using all-terrain vehicles or helicopters.

"Have you noticed that the radiation here seems to have weakened a lot compared to when we first arrived?" Sun Hang suddenly changed the topic.

"This was reported to me by the technicians half an hour ago," Ye Xuan said, "Chimera 17 is absorbing the radiation from its surrounding environment... Observers have also found that even the energy streams it emits are being reclaimed before completely dissipating. It seems to feel a sense of crisis from our operation and is unwilling to waste too much of its energy."

"Does that mean its hatching time will be advanced?"

"According to calculations, the amount of radiation in the environment is trivial in the total energy needed for its hatching..." Ye Xuan nodded and then shook her head, "The hatching time will indeed be slightly advanced, but only by a few minutes at most, which is within an acceptable range."

"It can absorb human memories, and I reckon it already knows about the ’Pesticide Plan.’" Sun Hang walked into the bunker as he spoke, glanced at Yang Qi’s image on the big screen, and asked, "Mr. Yang, do you have a countermeasure?"

"No," Yang Qi said with a tense expression, "the plan has already commenced, and it cannot be stopped or modified."

"The good news is that most Hunters taking part in the action don’t actually know the full details of the ’Pesticide Plan,’" said another researcher-looking person on the screen, whom Sun Hang had only met a few times, reportedly one of the handy assistants of the elderly director in a wheelchair.

"The vast majority of Hunters only know their mission is to collect memetic samples of Chimera 17; as to what these memetic samples are used for, they are not aware," Yang Qi followed up, "Only a few of you know the complete plan details, and luckily, you all returned safely."

"But Hunters are not fools. After knowing the mission content, they can more or less guess part of the plan’s content... not to mention a batch of Hunters who came on the same plane with the memetic reverse engineering team," Sun Hang insisted on his viewpoint, "And Chimera 17 isn’t stupid; it can mimic human thinking patterns and has information processing capabilities similar to a supercomputer... After gathering enough ’intelligence fragments,’ it can fully piece together the rough content of the ’Pesticide Plan.’ I think you should consider the plan as already exposed."

"But we don’t have the time to modify the plan again," Yang Qi sighed, "Following the original plan is already racing against time... Sun Hang, we really don’t have any time."

"There’s no need to make drastic changes to the plan... What I’m saying is, if Chimera 17 puts together some countermeasures based on your plan, can you prepare some counter-countermeasures to counter these countermeasures?"

Sun Hang felt as if he was speaking in tongue-twisters.

"I’ll figure something out..." Fatigue flickered in Yang Qi’s eyes, and she gently rubbed her temples with her forefinger, "You all worked hard... the first-phase goal has been achieved; let’s have them return to Tianfu City. Until the ’Pesticide’ is successfully developed, let’s not provoke Chimera 17 again to prevent it from mutating again."

...

...

At four in the morning the next day, Sun Hang was awakened by a pre-set alarm clock. He sat up and glanced at Wang Xiyi, whose sleeping pose was exceptionally poor. He gently unwound the dragon tail around his waist and then stretched comfortably.

This period was a time when researchers raced against the clock, working overtime... but for these Hunters, it was the last "vacation" before the great battle.

Sun Hang rolled off the bed, picked up the clothes and trousers thrown on the floor, put them on, and walked to the bedroom window.

Outside the window, it was an unchanging pitch black, looking the same whether it was four in the morning or four in the afternoon.

"Just slept for two hours?" Wang Xiyi’s voice came from behind, "Since when did you start learning from Yang Qi?"

"Yang Qi is just an ordinary person; she could die suddenly, but I won’t," Sun Hang exhaled deeply, "You could make me stay up ten nights in a row, and I might not even feel sleepy."

"Then why do you sleep? Why not just cultivate immortality directly?" Wang Xiyi chuckled.

"In fact, apart from sleeping, I found that I seem to be able to not need eating or going to the bathroom as well." Sun Hang opened the window, and the cold wind of minus ten degrees instantly whooshed in, and the air he exhaled immediately turned into a white frost.

"Then why do you eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom? I find these things troublesome," Wang Xiyi complained, "Even though they improved the flavor of the nutrition bars, eating them all the time still gets tiresome."

"Eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom make me feel like I’m still human," Sun Hang said.

Wang Xiyi suddenly fell silent. After about half a minute, she asked, "If I eat normal food, I might have to eat several tons in a day to get full. Do you think I’m still human?"

"What other people think doesn’t matter; it only matters what you think." Sun Hang closed the window and picked up the water cup nearby—only to find a thin layer of ice had formed on the surface.

"Then that’s it. Whenever you doubt you’re still human, just chant ’I am human, not a monster’ a hundred times in your heart... What’s that term? Oh right, it’s called ’cognitive imprint’... Just give yourself a cognitive imprint, wouldn’t you?"

"Have you ever done something like that?" Sun Hang looked at Wang Xiyi with a bit of a playful gaze.

"No, I haven’t," Wang Xiyi flicked the tail that was longer than her height, "I always believed I’m human, just an anomaly among humans."

"That’s good," Sun Hang sneered.

The biggest difference between him and Wang Xiyi was that she had a clear human identity... while Sun Hang didn’t even know where he came from.

If... the Surrendered Area is my "homeland"...

Then, could I be... a strange entity that looks like a human?

"Do you know how they originally distinguished between infected people and strange entities?" Wang Xiyi suddenly asked. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"The rate of change in the infection process? Or a clear self-awareness?" Sun Hang asked.

"Neither. It’s the emotions," Wang Xiyi shook her head, "Infected individuals with normal, reasonable human emotions were deemed as not fully turned into strange entities, in other words, still ’human.’ Those who lost all emotions or went to extremes and lost rationality in certain emotions were considered completely turned into strange entities, becoming a strange being."

"..."

"Of course, this method of distinction was not rigorous and was later discarded," Wang Xiyi shrugged, causing the blanket draped over her to slip, exposing a significant portion of her beauty.

"Do you feel you have those human emotions?" Wang Xiyi didn’t pull up the fallen blanket but rather unabashedly displayed herself to Sun Hang, "Happiness, sadness, frustration, disgust... or love?"