Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 410 - 49: The Reverse World

"Hello? Hello?" Jiang Yu adjusted the angle of her headset and tried pressing the side buttons a few times.

But the communication channel was dead silent.

A creepy feeling crept over her.

With a "thud," Ling Xiao also climbed out of the ventilation duct and landed on the ground.

"Ling Xiao... My communication device seems to be broken." Jiang Yu hurriedly told Ling Xiao, "Can you still contact the team leader and the others?"

"Your device isn’t broken, the communication has just been cut off." Ling Xiao said calmly.

He took out a small car-shaped drone from behind him. The red indicator light on the back, symbolizing "signal lost," was flashing rhythmically.

Generally, for explorations like these in ducts and tombs, the standard equipment should be snake-shaped wired drones. However, the 67th Field Team received the mission urgently and had no time to return to the institute to choose equipment, so they had to set off with what they had on hand.

"So what do we do?" Jiang Yu asked anxiously, "Do we head back the way we came?"

Ling Xiao looked up at the ventilation duct port on the ceiling and shook his head, "I don’t think we can... ’head back the way we came’."

Jiang Yu was puzzled, "What do you mean?"

"Do you remember the team leader and Yin Xiang said that the communications within Factory 105 were always clear, but calls were never answered?" Ling Xiao said.

"Yes... but our radio communication..." Jiang Yu’s voice was disordered, just like her mind right now.

"There’s a phone hanging just over there; you can try it to see if you can make a call." Ling Xiao pointed to the entrance of the recreation room. On the right side of the door frame, there was a red wall-mounted phone. The power and line indicator lights on the phone’s base were still on.

"This should be... an internal phone in the factory, right?" Jiang Yu mumbled, "It can’t dial out, can it?"

"I asked the team leader, the internal phones in Factory 105 are actually connected to the external communication network. There’s a ’switchboard’ acting as the gateway, and all external communications must go through that ’switchboard’. Researchers should be calling the switchboard of Factory 105... even if it can’t connect, the ’switchboard’ would be busy." Ling Xiao explained.

Jiang Yu moved to the door and picked up the phone.

But the receiver was silent; not even the expected tone could be heard.

"The phone... is broken?" Jiang Yu repeated the action of putting the phone back on the base and picking it up again, but nothing changed.

"Have you heard of the hidden world?" Ling Xiao suddenly asked.

Jiang Yu shook her head, confused.

"I used to love reading comics. In many comics featuring mysterious creatures, there’s often a mention of a ’hidden world’." Ling Xiao said, "It’s a concept where, under the influence of mysterious creatures, a space is divided into a surface world and a hidden world. These two parts overlap but are independent, with connecting passages between them..."

"Are you talking about... parallel worlds?"

"It’s not exactly the same, but it’s similar." Ling Xiao said, "While crawling through the ventilation duct, there was a moment when I felt something strange, as if we passed through something and entered another world..."

"Why didn’t I feel anything?" Jiang Yu said, astonished, "Ling Xiao, are you trying to scare me?"

"Did Sun Hang or Yang Qi ever talk to you about me?" Ling Xiao asked in return, "About how I have no emotions."

"No..." Jiang Yu shook her head, "You have no emotions? Though I’ve always thought you seemed aloof, never showing any expression... I just thought that was your personality..."

"No, I wasn’t always like this." Ling Xiao said, "During a special encounter with a mysterious creature, all my human emotions were stripped away, including happiness, anger, sorrow, and desires... But after losing these emotions, I discovered that my senses became extremely acute in a state of absolute calm, especially regarding changes in time and space, even very subtle changes I could detect."

"You’re... you’re not an infected, are you?"

"The Mysterious Creature Research Institute conducted a comprehensive and detailed examination of me, and I am not infected by any meme." Ling Xiao answered, "I think this ability might be a compensation by the body for the loss of emotions. But of course, this is just my guess."

If Sun Hang were here, he would have realized the key point—losing emotions, aside from granting absolute calm, shouldn’t grant any special abilities, especially the perception of time and space... Even among those infected, such abilities are a very rare type.

So there’s only one possibility left.

Like Zhong Ling, Ling Xiao is also a human with special abilities who gained them without being infected by the mysterious creature memes.

Unfortunately, neither Ling Xiao nor Jiang Yu knew about the existence of these "special individuals"... In the face of his "special ability," Ling Xiao could only attribute it to the body’s "self-compensation."

"So you mean... we’re now in the hidden world of Factory 105?" Jiang Yu cautiously confirmed with Ling Xiao.