Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 210 Mountain Road
"This is my profession and my job!" Yang Qi said seriously.

"This operation is very dangerous, you might die," said Sun Hang.

"When I applied to be your direct supervisor, my teacher told me that this job was very dangerous and I might die," said Yang Qi.

"What if it's something more terrifying than death?" Sun Hang asked, "For example, your consciousness is assimilated by a weird thing and you suffer eternal torture?"

“I was already prepared for this when I started working here.”

"Okay, good words can't persuade a damned ghost." Sun Hang gave up. He looked back at Zhulong and Zhong Ling and said, "Are you two also so stubborn?"

"If I were afraid, why wouldn't I stay in Chunming City?" Zhulong asked with a smile.

"Okay, then Yang Qi's safety is in your hands... If they really encounter any strange creatures, you don't have to take any action, just protect them." Sun Hang said.

"Okay." Zhulong agreed readily.

Sun Hang turned on the car's built-in navigation and entered the place name "Liangshuigou" in the search bar.

"We are navigating you to Liangshuigou. The total distance is 297 kilometers. The road conditions are smooth and the journey is expected to take five hours and twenty minutes. Please fasten your seat belts and turn around at the intersection fifty meters ahead." The voice of the navigation software sounded in the car.

……

……

Mountain roads are not easy to drive on. The navigation system estimates the journey based on normal speed, but in reality, Sun Hang can only drive at 45 miles per hour... If he drives faster, an accident resulting in car damage and loss of life will easily occur.

Now all parts of Shuzhou are implementing measures for centralized energy supply. Roads like this, which originally had little traffic, have been closed one after another, and power supply has been cut off. Eye-catching warning signs reading "Road closed, civilian vehicles prohibited from entering, violators will bear the consequences at their own risk" have been posted at all entrances and exits.

The winding mountain road was completely dark, with the only light coming from the car's built-in lights. Under the influence of the eternal night, there was no difference between the sky at 9:30 in the morning and 9:30 in the evening.

Oh no, there is a difference... In the past, thanks to the light pollution emitted by the city, the brightness at 9:30 in the evening was even higher... But now, the source of light pollution has become one dark and cold forest of steel and concrete after another.

The four people in the car were silent. Occasionally, they could see a few distorted figures flashing around the road - those were the corpses controlled by Zhong Ling. They followed closely around the car, performing the functions of "bodyguard + living radar".

"Yang Qi," Sun Hang suddenly asked after driving for nearly an hour, "Can we access Lizhou City's military drone network?"

"Yes." Yang Qi nodded, holding the laptop.

In fact, with Sun Hang's current authority, let alone accessing Lizhou City's military drone network, he could even mobilize all of Lizhou City's drones to follow behind their cars.

“How many drones are hovering in this airspace?”

"Six." Yang Qi said, "The one with the number LZ852SA93 is right above us."

Yang Qi transferred the image received by the laptop to the car's central control screen, and saw a long strip of light moving slowly in the pitch-black mountains - this light spot was the SUV they were sitting in.

"The height is too high, can it be lowered a bit?" Sun Hang asked.

"Yes." Yang Qi's slender fingers tapped on the keyboard, and after the relevant parameters were modified, the drone quickly lowered its altitude... The outline of the vehicle appeared in the picture, and the long strips of light that were originally mixed together also turned into two - that was the light beam emitted by the high beam of the car, hitting the road surface dozens of meters away.

"Let this drone follow us all the time and transmit the video footage to the Lizhou Abnormal Investigation Bureau in real time... No, directly to Tianfu City." Sun Hang said, "If the previous investigation team also let the drone follow them all the way, they wouldn't have disappeared."

"It was mentioned in the action plan that the investigation team brought their own reconnaissance drones," Yang Qi said as he operated the drone, "but they didn't release the drones before arriving at the target area."

"I suggest that this incident be treated as a classic case and included in the teaching materials of the Weird Talent Training Base." Sun Hang said, "So many people died, is there really no lesson to be learned?"

"Perhaps it's to save energy." Yang Qi said, "After all, the convoy has limited supplies, and calling in the military's drones for monitoring the mountainous areas is against regulations..."

"It's against the regulations... This stupid regulation has been abolished long ago." Sun Hang couldn't help but complain, "Oh, and there's also the one that says a person is considered missing only after 72 hours of being out of contact... The regulations are dead, but people are alive. Don't they even understand this?"

"In fact, many people know that these regulations are unreasonable." Zhulong said, "But in fact, these rules and regulations have taken various situations into consideration. If these regulations are abolished, it will fall into an even more chaotic situation."

"To put it bluntly, it's just laziness?"

"It can't be summed up with just one word: lazy. People's abilities and cognition vary. Unless you can let all administrative agencies across the federation share a super brain to think, then these rules and regulations are really unnecessary... But since it can't be done, then the existence of rules and regulations is reasonable." Zhulong explained.

"...I suddenly feel that your suggestion is quite constructive."

"Ok?"

"Let a supercomputer manage the entire federation... As long as it can solve the problems of intelligent machine crisis, virus infection, private privileges and the computer itself being attacked by strange intrusions, then this is indeed a good solution." Sun Hang said in a joking tone.

"You are too idealistic. If the Federation really has the ability to solve these problems..." Yang Qi looked helplessly at the back of Sun Hang's head in the driver's seat, "We would have already started to recover the lost territory."

"I just said that casually," Sun Hang slightly stepped on the accelerator, "Anyway, I don't have to worry about this kind of thing... As a hunter, I only need to be responsible for fighting."

"But I think Mr. Pei wants to train you to be his successor?" Zhulong said.

"That's a problem he needs to consider. It's none of my business." Sun Hang muttered, "He can't force me to learn all kinds of management and research knowledge, right?"

"That's hard to say..." Yang Qi said dimly.

"Then I'll just play dumb." Sun Hang chuckled, "I'll just pretend to be illiterate. I'll just hold the Xinhua Dictionary and learn a lot of knowledge!"

"Sun Hang." At this moment, Zhong Ling suddenly said, "It seems like something has sneaked in."

"What got in? What?" Sun Hang was slightly startled, then he stopped joking and asked in a low voice. "I have arranged eleven strange corpses around us... but now, twelve of them are following us." Zhong Ling said.

"Good fellow...he's trying to fish in troubled waters." Sun Hang's eyes quickly swept through the left and right rearview mirrors. However, there were only bare rock walls and low bushes on both sides of the mountain road. Even the figure of the strange corpse controlled by Zhong Ling was difficult to spot. "Can you establish a consciousness link with this 'new' guy?"

"No." Zhong Ling shook his head, "It seems that there is another source of control."

"Can't we bull it?"

"The priority of that control source is very high, and there seems to be another strange object inside the strange skeleton." Zhong Ling said.

"Okay, an episode of pure love warrior ecstasy..." Sun Hang slowly stepped on the brakes, "Let your brothers find that guy out."

"Won't this alert the enemy?" Yang Qi asked as he closed his laptop.

"When Zhong Ling failed in his attempt to control the strange corpse, the other party already knew that he was exposed. If that's the case, why should we still be nice to it?"

After Sun Hang finished speaking, he opened the car door. Just when Yang Qi thought that he was going to catch the strange corpse himself, Sun Hang actually walked directly to the side of the road, untied his belt and started to pee.

"You...why are you doing this at this time..." Yang Qi suddenly felt speechless.

"I suggest you solve all the personal problems you can at this time." Sun Hang shook his head twice and pulled up his pants, "Because you may not have time to go to the toilet later."

Before he could finish his words, two figures struggling with each other rolled down from the uphill slope on one side of the road. Before they hit the ground, thousands of bundles of hyphae swarmed over them, wrapped them up into two mummy-like things, and lifted them into the air.

"Is that strange corpse yours?" Sun Hang turned around and asked Zhong Ling who was in the car.

"The one on your left." Zhong Ling replied.

The mycelium spread out, and a thin corpse with a row of dorsal fins similar to those of Godzilla on its back fell down. As soon as it landed, the corpse rolled over and climbed up, hunched over, and stared at another corpse that was still in a mummy state.

Accompanied by a rustling sound, several strange skeletons of different shapes squeezed through the bushes on the roadside, walked to the center of the road, and surrounded the mummy.

"It's a rare opportunity to have more people against fewer." Sun Hang said, "I'm going to let it go. Brothers Gui Hai, give it some strength and don't let it run away."

"Don't worry, you can't run away." Zhulong also got out of the car at this time. A terrifying cold and gloomy aura spread out from him, completely enveloping this section of the road.

"Collect." Sun Hang imitated the Wukong in Journey to the West and raised his hand to make a collecting gesture. The hyphae that were tightly entangled in the last second suddenly dispersed and were collected back into Sun Hang's body in the next second.

A corpse with no obvious mutation features fell down, and the surrounding corpses that were ready to attack immediately rushed over and knocked it to the ground.

"Why do I feel... this skeleton is a little weak?" Looking at the skeleton that was completely unable to struggle, Sun Hang couldn't help but feel like he was using a cannon to kill a mosquito.

If judged solely by the strength of the aura, this corpse is only slightly stronger than the girl infected with the Tai Sui meme that Sun Hang met at the breakfast stall.

"This strange corpse seems to have just been transformed, and the memetic frequency is still very unstable." Yang Qi stared at the laptop screen. The device used to detect memetic fluctuations was placed on the back seat, connected to the computer with a cable as thick as a thumb. "And it has not been specially modified, so it is naturally incomparable to the puppeteer's strange equipment."

"Speaking of which, Zhong Ling just said that there is another strange object inside this strange corpse. Can your equipment detect it?" Sun Hang asked.

"This corpse does have another memetic fluctuation with a completely incompatible frequency, but the intensity is not that high." Yang Qi said, "But you'd better be careful."

Sun Hang walked closer and noticed that although the corpse was wearing clothes similar to those of the people in the city, it had a green turban wrapped around its head - this was a distinctive attire for Qiang men. This meant that the corpse was most likely a villager from a nearby Qiang village.

"It's a Qiang." Zhulong also noticed this. "This place is quite far from Liangshuigou. How could it appear here?"

"It may not be the villagers of Liangshuigou Village..." Sun Hang murmured, "Which Qiang village is closest to our current location?"

"Qiujiawan." Yang Qi opened the electronic map. "It's at the intersection we just passed. Take the fork road on the right and it's about five kilometers away."

"Send the drone to Qiujiawan!" Sun Hang said immediately.

"You suspect Qiujiawan also..."

"It's not doubt, it's certainty!" Sun Hang said, "That group of good-for-nothings who only know how to follow rules and regulations have wasted too much time... If it drags on, there will be no living people on this mountain!"

"The drone will arrive over Qiujiawan in about four minutes." Yang Qi said with a heavy expression, "I have already notified the Lizhou City Urban Management Committee, but..."

"But, didn't they tell you that if we want to find definitive evidence, we need at least enough video footage to prove that abnormalities have also occurred in other villages, right?"

"Uh..." Yang Qi nodded.

"Directly transmit this information to Tianfu City!" Sun Hang flipped his right hand, and a sharp liquid scalpel instantly appeared at his fingertips. "Where is the thing inside this strange corpse?"

"Brain." Yang Qi said immediately.

"Help me hold this guy down and don't let it move." After Sun Hang said that, he raised his knife and cut open the skull of the strange skeleton like cutting plasticine.

On the withered and shrunken brain tissue, there was a sticky mass... This thing looked like a semi-dehydrated starfish, and also like a neuron cell magnified countless times.

It is translucent all over, with eight synapses (or tentacles) tightly wrapped around the skeleton's brain, and the ends of the synapses penetrate deep into the brain tissue.

"Eight synapses..." Sun Hang tilted his head and looked carefully at this strange tissue.

The more he looked at it, the more he felt... this thing looked like a melted spider.

(End of this chapter)