Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 249 Leftovers
"It's hard to say..." Sun Hang shook his head, "Can you let me in?"

"What do you want to do?" Yang Qi asked.

"Let's see if this guy can communicate."

"How do you plan to try it?" Yang Qi asked again.

"What else can I try? Just go up to her and ask her a question to see if she reacts." Sun Hang said, "Besides, a large part of the negative emotions that caused her to turn into a monster was due to her hatred for me. She shouldn't ignore me, right?"

"What you should worry about is whether she will suddenly go crazy when she sees you," Yang Qi said.

"Even if she goes crazy, you should have a way to calm her down, right?" Sun Hang glanced at several huge aluminum alloy boxes placed in the corner. These boxes were filled with wonderful tools for dealing with monsters, including but not limited to 12.7mm caliber lead core armor anesthetics... although most monsters have a high resistance to this anesthetic.

"The highest security measure here now is you." Yang Qi said, "I advise you to take it easy."

"It's not a big problem... You didn't put this thing in a Class A containment area, which means that in your eyes, it's not much of a threat, right?"

"Do you really want to go in?" Yang Qi confirmed again.

"What else? Are you planning to bombard it with noise all night long?" Sun Hang asked back.

"Okay...if there is an emergency, try to save its life. You should be able to do it, right?" Yang Qi asked.

"If I wanted to kill it, I would have killed it at the resettlement camp long ago."

……

Yang Qi took Sun Hang around to one side of the laboratory, where there was a secret door. After opening the secret door, they walked through a dark and narrow corridor, opened a 340 mm thick alloy gate at the end of the corridor, and entered the experimental area where Chen Hongjuan was.

Yang Qi fumbled on the wall of the corridor for a while, found a hidden lock and pressed it. Then the wall opened, revealing a storage cabinet hidden in the wall.

"There are level 4 standard all-purpose protective suits in the cabinet, as well as some emergency tools and weapons," said Yang Qi.

"No need." Sun Hang waved his hand.

"Then you should be more careful." After saying this, Yang Qi walked out of the corridor.

Only after the secret door was closed did Sun Hang place his palm on the sensor lock of the alloy gate.

"Scanning palm prints... Comparing with the database... Identity confirmed, strange hunter Sun Hang, serial number 0420, authority level: highest."

Along with the sound of the hydraulic rod piston pushing inside the gate, the door panel weighing several tons moved back half an inch, and a ray of light came through the gap in the door.

Sun Hang slowly pushed open the gate and walked in.

The four walls of the laboratory are made of one-way glass, just like the room where Sun Hang was originally imprisoned. Looking out from the inside, the walls are all large mirrors, while looking in from the outside, one can take in the entire scene in the room.

Sun Hang's mind moved, and the large mirror not far away suddenly turned into transparent glass. He could see Yang Qi and a group of researchers standing behind the glass, looking at him nervously.

"Relax." Sun Hang said to the glass.

The sound from outside cannot come in, but the sound from inside can come out.

Sun Hang walked up to Chen Hongjuan, first took off her earmuffs, and then took off her VR glasses.

The blood blisters that originally covered Chen Hongjuan's face had all burst, turning into layers of dead skin stuck to the surface. Her pair of red, swollen, pus-filled eyes were staring at Sun Hang who appeared in her field of vision...

The next second, Chen Hongjuan began to struggle violently, making meaningless roars from her throat, as if she had fallen into a state of extreme violence.

"What's the situation?" Sun Hang turned his head and glanced at Yang Qi outside.

"The brain waves are fluctuating violently! They are more obvious than when it heard those key words and saw those files before... In addition, its meme frequency has also begun to change. Although it is not obvious, it is indeed changing... This seems to be a sign of secondary weirdness." Yang Qi's voice came from Sun Hang's headphones.

"Second degree of weirdness? What is that?"

"When a normal thing is transformed into a weird thing, we call it the first weirdness. The second weirdness is when the weird thing has completely become weird, and the meme mutates in another direction... You can think of it as the evolution or mutation of the weird thing. The Bloody Mary you encountered in the basement of the amusement park was the product of the second weirdness of the first generation Bloody Mary. Although its change is not big, it has eliminated its fatal weakness of being afraid of fire, making it more difficult to deal with than the first generation Bloody Mary."

"But that thing was still burned to ashes by Lao Wang?"

"It wasn't the dragon flame that killed Bloody Mary, but the black dragon meme that came with the dragon flame." Yang Qi said, "Be careful, it's impossible to predict what Chen Hongjuan will become... To be on the safe side, after the experiment is over, maybe we should move it to a Class A containment area."

"What are the conditions for the second transformation?" Sun Hang asked again.

"I'm not sure. There are both external and internal factors. There is no unified explanation." Yang Qi replied, "Some weird creatures will self-collapse during the second weirding process and then completely die; some weird creatures will change into completely different forms after the second weirding... But for most weird creatures, the second weirding is equivalent to a strengthening, just like organisms spontaneously evolve to adapt to the environment."

"I see. In other words, this guy intends to evolve himself in order to kill me?" Sun Hang nodded. "Doesn't this second degree of transformation have any price? Can I become stronger if I want? If that's the case, I can just hide in the mountains and forests for a hundred years, set up a powerful imaginary enemy for myself every day, and directly evolve to the second, third, fourth... hundreds or thousands of degrees, wouldn't I be invincible?"

"Of course there is a price! Secondary transformation is very risky for a monster. The higher the degree of enhancement, the greater the probability of failure... Let's take Bloody Mary as an example. It iterates in the form of seeds and absorbs the living sacrifices offered by human believers, so that it can evolve to have the ability to not be afraid of fire... I also said that Chen Hongjuan only showed the signs of secondary transformation, but it is still a long way from the real secondary transformation."

"If you had told me earlier that it was almost gone... I thought it was going to transform on the spot. That made me a little nervous just now." Sun Hang glanced at Chen Hongjuan who was still struggling on the shelf. The movable base of the shelf was shaking and making clanging sounds, but the locks stuck on its limbs did not move at all. There was no possibility of breaking free by brute force.

"You don't look nervous at all."

"By the way, speaking of which, was Old Wang's behavior that day considered a second transformation?" Sun Hang suddenly asked.

"It shouldn't be considered... The concept of secondary transformation only applies to monsters that have been completely transformed, and it won't be used on infected people... In the case of Night Furies, it can only be said to be a memetic adjustment at best."

"Oh..." Sun Hang nodded, and a silver light flashed from his fingertips. The locks that imprisoned Chen Hongjuan were all cut off in an instant!

"What are you doing?!" Yang Qi shouted immediately.

After the restraints were removed, Chen Hongjuan rushed towards Sun Hang without any hesitation... However, before she could touch Sun Hang, she was kicked back by Sun Hang and fell heavily on the frame that had originally imprisoned her.

"Strange..." Sun Hang held his chin up, carefully looking at Chen Hongjuan, and muttered. "What's strange? And, lock it back quickly! Don't mess around!"

"I remember that it had the ability to change its limbs when it was in the resettlement camp," Sun Hang said. "At that time, it turned one of its arms into a long whip to attack me, and later it grew various offensive organs... I think I sliced ​​those organs. I remember you guys packed more than a dozen large bags just for these slices of meat... So why has it lost this ability now?"

Yang Qi was slightly stunned and fell silent.

Liquid nitrogen is very effective on Chen Hongjuan. After being put into the permafrost coffin, Chen Hongjuan stopped moving... But now it has been thawed for more than an hour. Logically, that ability should return to it.

In this case, it is impossible to lock it up with just the physical locks on the restraint device... unless you keep spraying liquid nitrogen on it.

"Not only that, I feel that its power is much weaker than when it just transformed."

Chen Hongjuan pounced on him again, and was kicked back by Sun Hang again.

"Don't touch it yet! I'll check the previous records... I remember that when I first took it in, the data should have been recorded. I should be able to find the problem by comparing it..."

"There's no need to be so troublesome..." Sun Hang muttered to himself. He walked forward and stepped on Chen Hongjuan to the ground. Two hyphae stretched out from behind like tentacles and pierced into Chen Hongjuan's brain.

Sun Hang immediately realized the problem...a large part of the meme in Chen Hongjuan's body seemed to be missing.

"Sun Hang, I found a problem!" Yang Qi's voice also rang out at the same time, "The length of the meme segment is wrong! Compared with when it was just recorded, the length of each unit of Chen Hongjuan's meme segment is at least one-third shorter! Its meme has serious defects!"

one third?

Sun Hang couldn't help but sneer in his heart.

It seems that the accuracy of human civilization's detection equipment is still not good enough...

The meme fragment that was shortened by one third was only the surface that the equipment could detect. Beneath this surface, the memes in Chen Hongjuan's body had almost been emptied!
To put it bluntly, the person now locked up in the laboratory is just an empty shell!
Sun Hang began to receive the information carried by the absorbed memes, and some vague images began to flood into his mind.

These images seem to be Chen Hongjuan's memories after she was put into the eternally frozen coffin. They are blurry, abstract, and intermittent...even time seems to have become extremely chaotic.

But among these blurry images, Sun Hang still captured several frames of key information.

It was a pale figure that flashed across the screen.

Then he felt a great sense of fear... This emotion came from Chen Hongjuan's fear of her own demise... That is to say, during that period of time, something almost took its life.

"I was beaten to it by someone else." Sun Hang sighed and came out of those vague fragments of memory.

That pale figure was most likely Anna, who was wandering around Tianfu City like a ghost.

She didn't know when she sneaked into the underground containment area of ​​the institute and "ate" most of the memes in Chen Hongjuan's body, leaving behind a lingering empty shell...

No wonder Sun Hang felt something was wrong when he first met Chen Hongjuan.

The real Chen Hongjuan had long since become Anna's nourishment.

"It turns out that she didn't attack Chen Hongjuan that night. She was planning to wait until she was completely transformed before having dinner?" Sun Hang muttered to himself.

Compared to human negative emotions, the transformed weird memes are obviously better ingredients.

But how did Anna predict that Chen Hongjuan would turn into a monster?

At that time, Sun Hang had not even announced the plan to recruit refugees, nor had he designated Resettlement Camp No. 6 as a pilot area.

If I hadn't come to the No. 6 resettlement camp to recruit soldiers, if I hadn't talked to Ling Xiao on a whim, learned about his family situation and asked him to sever his parent-child relationship with Chen Hongjuan... then none of this would have happened.

Chen Hongjuan might continue to live in the refugee camp with Ling Xiao; or perhaps Ling Xiao would be admitted to a training base, and Chen Hongjuan could enjoy the generous benefits alone as a guardian and direct relative...

No matter which situation it is, it is impossible for Chen Hongjuan to turn into a monster in a short period of time.

Then what's the point of Anna keeping her?

Are you expecting Chen Hongjuan to turn into a monster while quarreling with her neighbors?
Or can Anna... predict the future?

Sun Hang couldn't help but think of what Anna said to him when she "died physically".

"This is not a farewell forever. In the long river of time, we will meet again."

At first, Sun Hang thought it was just a line Anna created to maintain her image as a riddle man, and it was more pretentious than practical...

But it turned out that not only did they meet, but it was only a few days since their last separation.

And after that, Anna would make her presence felt in front of Sun Hang from time to time, like a lingering sickly female ghost.

So, what exactly does the “long river of time” in this sentence refer to?
Does it mean that Anna has the ability to travel freely between different timelines?
So she can predict the future?

Or is it that at different points in time, there are countless different Annas?

Anna was dead in the last second, but still alive in the next second?

If time is compared to a river, Sun Hang touched a stone called Anna in the river... and after he drifted downstream for a long distance, he reached his hand into the river and touched another identical stone... Is that what it means?

Then what kind of form did Anna, whom Sun Hang just saw outside the operating room window, take?

Projection? Or entity?
"Oh no, my scalp is itchy. I really need to grow a brain now..."

(End of this chapter)