Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 211 Qiujiawan

"Yang Qi," Sun Hang raised his head suddenly, "Is there any record of Chimera 17's meme frequency in the database?"

“Yes, yes…” Yang Qi nodded. “Tianfu City recovered the wreckage of Chimera 17. The memes remaining in the wreckage completely disappeared, and they were recorded… But these meme fragments are incomplete and not complete…”

"Compare the meme fragments of Chimera 17 with the meme of this thing." Sun Hang said, "Now, immediately, right away."

"I am connecting to the core host of the Tianfu City Weird Things Research Institute. The comparison process may take a few minutes." Yang Qi replied while typing on the keyboard, "Do you suspect that this thing is related to Chimera No. 17?"

"Don't you think they look alike?" Sun Hang pointed at the thing attached to the brain tissue of the strange corpse. "This thing is almost exactly the same as the symbiotic offspring of Chimera 17, those little spiders we saw in the video."

"Exactly the same?" Yang Qi was stunned for a moment. "Now that you mention it... the shape of this thing does look a bit like a spider, but the style is a bit more abstract."

Sun Hang did not stop what he was doing. He dissected the entire corpse. Apart from the foreign matter attached to the brain tissue, this corpse was completely unremarkable. Even the memes that infected it were just very common remnant meme fragments.

In academia, such memetic fragments are generally referred to as "scraps". Just like the fragments of DNA that become fragmented after being exposed to high-intensity radiation, things infected by such memetic fragments can rarely be completely transformed into weird things... They either become weird skeletons or are destroyed in the process of transformation.

But in the eyes of "weird gourmets" like Taotie, there is a more vivid word to describe this thing.

"Get into the water."

Sun Hang suppressed his nausea and absorbed the meme of the strange skeleton, but as expected, the memories "stored" inside the meme were empty... Long before Sun Hang took action, all the memories had been absorbed by something else.

"unlucky."

Sun Hang spat on the ground, then went back to the car to get a bottle of water and drank half of it in one breath. Only then did the nausea feel a little better.

But it only relieved a small part... After all, memes are not food. Even if Sun Hang drank more water, he could not completely dilute the fishy and rotten smell.

This feeling is like eating a bowl of rotten pig offal raw.

"Are you okay?" Yang Qi looked at Sun Hang with some concern. "You look a little uncomfortable."

"Nothing, it's just that the meme of this thing... tastes terrible." Sun Hang sighed, "I feel like I'm eating shit."

"Uh...are you sure you're really okay?"

Sun Hang waved his hand, shook the remaining half bottle of water, walked to the corpse, picked up the thing attached to its brain tissue with a scalpel, and stuffed it into the bottle.

This thing looks palm-sized, but its body is very soft, and can easily pass through a bottle mouth with a diameter of less than three centimeters - no wonder there is no external injury on the head of this strange corpse, this thing probably got in through his nasal cavity or ear canal... Sun Hang suddenly thought of the infamous prefrontal lobotomy back then, where those quack doctors inserted ice picks into the nasal cavity or bottom of the eye sockets of the "patients who needed treatment" and then cut off the patient's frontal lobe by swinging it.

This surgery will create a silent zombie, while this little thing that can only drill into the brain of a living being can create a zombie that can obey orders.

The parasite with eight synapses immediately showed a stress response when it came into contact with water. It began to twitch first, then rolled continuously in the water, and its synapses repeatedly whipped the wall of the plastic bottle, as if it was trying to tear the bottle open and escape from it.

At the front end of the synapse, there are extremely sharp serrations - obviously, it was this thing that it used to pierce the bones and diaphragm of the skeleton and drill into the cranial cavity... Logically speaking, the thin plastic bottle cannot withstand such tossing, but no matter how hard the parasite's synapse tries, it can only create white marks on the inner wall of the plastic bottle, and it cannot cut this seemingly soft but actually extremely tough bottle.

This is not because the bottle is so magical, it is just that Sun Hang attached a layer of liquid metal coating on the outside of the bottle that is so thin that it is almost transparent - the synapses of the parasite can cut through the plastic, but cannot cut through the metal film that is tightly attached to the plastic.

"This guy seems a little restless." Zhulong came over, took a look at the parasite in the bottle and said.

"Then let it be quiet." Sun Hang bit the tip of his tongue lightly and spat a small drop of blood into the bottle.

The drop of blood instantly spread in the water, and the parasites that came into contact with the blood seemed to be paralyzed and stopped moving all of a sudden.

Sun Hang screwed the bottle cap on, sealed it with a metal coating, and then threw the bottle into the car.

"What are you going to do with it?" Zhulong asked curiously.

"I don't know, I just think it might be useful to keep it." Sun Hang shook his head and returned to the driver's seat.

"The drone sent back the footage." Yang Qi's face was very ugly. "Just like Liangshuigou, there were no signs of any villagers' activities in Qiujiawan... The whole village was dead silent."

"What do you mean? Should we continue to go to Liangshuigou, or should we go to Qiujiawan first?" Zhulong asked.

"Qiujiawan." Sun Hang turned the steering wheel to the bottom, and the car turned 180 degrees and headed in the direction they came from.

……

Compared to most of the closed Qiang villages, Qiujiawan is a relatively open type. Not long after Sun Hang and his companions drove into the fork in the road, they saw a large billboard standing on the side of the road. On it were written the words "Qiang Characteristic Farmhouse" in eye-catching orange fonts, and below it was a photo of a beautiful Qiang girl in ethnic costume.

The girl was holding an exquisitely crafted porcelain plate in her hand, on which was placed a dish that seemed to be fried bacon.

"Are the villagers of Qiujiawan unwilling to leave the village and seek refuge in the city?" Sun Hang asked as he drove. "It seems that they don't seem to be the kind of backward and isolated Qiang village."

"I checked and it's true, as you said, Qiujiawan is an outlier among these Qiang villages." Yang Qi's voice came from the back seat, "But the reason they don't want to leave is not because of their ancestral teachings..."

"What's that for?"

"Due to the vigorous development of tourism and farm stays, Qiujiawan is one of the most affluent villages in this mountainous area. Many villagers have built small villas in the village. There are also various restaurants, farms and a retro Qiang village to attract tourists..."

"Don't tell me that they don't want to leave because they can't bear to part with these real estate." Sun Hang immediately guessed the answer.

"Although it's not explicitly stated in the Lizhou City Public Security Bureau's operational file...but it's pretty much the same meaning." Yang Qi nodded.

"People die for money." Sun Hang couldn't help but sigh.

He thought of the driver from the Tianfu City Research Institute... The eternal night enveloped the entire Shuzhou, but few people wanted to escape from this place...

The reason is very simple. Their families, houses, jobs, and careers are all rooted in this land. If they go to other places, they will only become refugees with nothing... What's more, given the current situation in Shuzhou, it is extremely difficult to sell real estate. It is too difficult to start a new life in other cities relying only on the little savings on hand.

The federal government will only provide refugees with the most basic survival guarantees, but other than that, there is nothing else... For the people of Shuzhou, leaving Shuzhou means that their former lives will never come back, and their efforts in the first half of their lives will also come to nothing...

If you stay, maybe you can see the day when the sun rises again.

The car stopped with a slight brake sound.

Sun Hang got out of the car and took a look at the big stone more than five meters high beside him. Six big characters "Qiujiawan Welcomes You" were engraved on the stone, and the palm-wide groove was filled with bright red paint... This color tone was originally quite festive, but in this dark and silent atmosphere, the big blood-red characters reflected by the car lights suddenly became a little creepy.

Especially when combined with the tattered red lanterns hanging at the entrance of the village, Sun Hang suddenly felt that it would be perfect if he placed a pair of exquisite embroidered shoes in the middle of the road.

"Have any fluctuations of the weird meme been detected?" Sun Hang asked.

"No." Yang Qi shook her head. "I have already maximized the search range and power, but still found nothing."

"Almost. I can't smell anything either." Sun Hang patted the hood. "You guys stay in the car first. I'll go into the village and take a look."

"Try not to go indoors and get out of the drone's surveillance range." Yang Qi instructed, "If something happens, send the predetermined code and we will immediately go to the village to support you."

"clear."

Sun Hang snapped his fingers, and liquid metal immediately flowed out from his sleeves, condensing into a dozen sharp flying blades that hovered around him, and then he slowly walked into the village.

There are two farmhouse restaurants at the entrance of the village. From the cars parked in front of the restaurants, it can be seen that the wealth and living conditions of Qiujiawan are indeed incomparable to other Qiang villages.

Sun Hang pushed open the door of the farmhouse on his left. The space inside the yard was very large. There was a heavy stone mill in the corner, two motorcycles leaning against the wall, and several small benches scattered around the yard. The yard was full of traces of human life, but Sun Hang couldn't see any living people.

Oh, let me correct you, dead people can’t see it either.

Sun Hang walked to the door and was about to open it when Yang Qi reminded him through his earphones: "Don't leave the drone's field of view. Be careful!"

"Okay." Sun Hang took a half step back, and the action of opening the door turned into knocking, and he asked loudly, "Is anyone home? I'm from the Lizhou City Public Security Bureau, and I'm on a routine visit."

No one answered.

"Yang Qi, military drones should have the function of scanning heat sources, right?" Sun Hang said into the headset, "Scan this house and see if there are any living things inside."

"Yes, but it consumes a lot of power... If you scan every house, the drone will probably have to return home very quickly."

"Let's clean this one first." Sun Hang said, "If there's no one in this one, the other houses are probably the same."

"Okay... we are scanning now." Yang Qi said softly, "The results are out, just as expected, no heat source was found in the house."

Sun Hang did not stay at the door for long, but walked to the window beside him and stood on tiptoe to look inside.

Through the glass covered with purple sun-protection film, Sun Hang could vaguely see several faces behind the window staring at him.

That was not a human face, or rather, not a normal human face.

The proportions of their facial features are extremely exaggerated, like gods and ghosts, but not like humans.

Sun Hang was not panicked, because he did not sense any breath of life or any threat from these faces.

The metal blade silently cut through the glass window and removed the entire piece of glass. Only then did Sun Hang see clearly that the strange faces behind the windows were actually Nuo opera masks displayed on the shelves...

Nuo opera performance is also one of the entertainment activities provided by Qiujiawan Farmhouse. Sun Hang remembered that he had seen it on the price list at the entrance. The charge was quite expensive, with the ticket price being two hundred and forty yuan per person, and children half price. Moreover, there must be more than twenty people in the audience before the performance will start.

"City people really have nothing to do after having enough food." Sun Hang took another look at the Nuo opera masks that had the uncanny valley effect at full force. "If a child sees this, I'm afraid they'll wet their bed at night."

"What did you see?" Yang Qi couldn't help asking, "Why did you stay in front of the window for so long?"

The drone's field of view is almost vertical, so Yang Qi could only see Sun Hang standing in front of the window and cutting the glass with a metal blade, but could not see what was inside the window.

"Here, let me show you."

Sun Hang took a few photos of the Nuo opera mask and sent them.

"What is that?" Yang Qi's voice in the headset suddenly sounded a little strange, "There's nothing here?"

"Nothing?" Sun Hang was stunned and quickly flipped through the photos he had just taken.

The photo only shows an empty display stand, without those weird and creepy Nuo opera masks.

Sun Hang raised his head suddenly and saw that the masks were still hanging on the shelf, staring at him with a smile or with wide eyes.

Sun Hang slowly took two steps back.

"What's wrong?" Yang Qi's tone was a little anxious, "What did you see?"

"Damn, there's something dirty." Sun Hang said.

(End of this chapter)