Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 265

……

Chunming City, Tianshu Tower, Gengwu District.

"Are you looking for Li Junwen?" A researcher wearing glasses thicker than a beer bottle glanced at the document in his hand, then looked at Wang Xiyi and others in front of him, "Although you have obtained the permission to contact him directly, I suggest that you observe him first before meeting him."

"Observe?" Ye Jiu was a little puzzled. "Didn't they say he wasn't infected? Is there still a risk in contacting him?"

"He is indeed not infected...but his behavior and cognition are different from those of ordinary people. You will understand after watching the surveillance."

After the researcher finished speaking, he led everyone to the monitoring room.

"Put the surveillance footage No. 4 from Li Junwen's room on the big screen." The researcher said to his colleagues in the monitoring room.

The picture on the big screen, which was originally divided into dozens of parts, suddenly became one. In a luxuriously decorated living room, there was a bloated... No, bloated may be difficult to define the figure of the man in the picture. To be precise, it should be a large mass of fat wrapped in skin piled up on the huge sofa. The stretched skin was covered with fat wrinkles and red, swollen and pus-oozing scabies... In fact, even if the researcher told them that the person in the picture was actually an infected person, no one would have any doubts.

"This person... is Li Junwen?" Yang Qi looked at the file in his hand, then looked at the fat pig in the surveillance screen, and couldn't help but frowned.

There are three photos of Li Junwen in the file. One was taken when he was serving as a temporary investigator, one was the photo on the wanted poster when he was wanted by the federal government, and the last one was taken after he returned to the human world from the occupied area and was "sheltered" by the Tianshu Tower.

In the first photo, he looks like a young boy; in the second photo, although his facial shape has not changed much, his overall temperament has become much more mature and sophisticated; the third photo shows the biggest change... Although he had already taken a bath and had his hair and beard shaved when the photo was taken, he still showed a sense of decadence and fatigue that was visible to the naked eye. Although his skin was clean, his face was so thin that it looked unrecognizable, as if a piece of skin was covered over a skull, with sunken eye sockets, dull eyes, and very obvious ulcers at the corners of his mouth.

But no matter which photo it is, it cannot be equated with the person that Yang Qi and the others see now.

"How can this guy be so fat?" Ye Jiu couldn't help but complain, "Are you raising him the same way as raising pigs?"

"It's really not our fault..." The researcher said with a wry smile, "Li Junwen seems to have been stimulated in some way in the occupied area, which caused him to have an extremely strong stress response. Among the many stress responses, the most notable one is his craving for food."

"The craving for food... this is normal." Yang Qi nodded. "After all, it must be difficult to find food in the occupied areas. It is normal for people who have been hungry for a long time to have this reaction."

"But his desire for food is not normal... When he first came here, the total calories he consumed every day were at least eight to ten times that of a normal adult... And even so, he was always hungry. Once his food needs are not met, he will fall into a state of extreme irritability or even extreme panic, and will try to attack and destroy everything that appears in his field of vision, and even hurt himself." said the researcher.

Ye Jiu subconsciously turned his head to look at Wang Xiyi, but the latter glared back: "I eat a lot because I consume a lot. This person's situation is completely different from mine."

"Are sedatives useless?" Yang Qi asked.

"It worked at first, but the effect was limited, and he quickly developed drug resistance," the researcher replied. "Plus, we need to observe his daily life to collect information, so it's impossible for him to remain dormant for a long time..."

"So you just keep giving him food?" Ye Jiu said in surprise.

"Yes... With such overeating, his gastrointestinal system soon had problems." The researcher sighed, "He has undergone more than twenty gastrointestinal surgeries alone. Now more than 70 percent of his esophagus, stomach, large and small intestines are artificial." said the researcher.

"The gastrointestinal system you modified for him is quite strong. He can make people so fat..." Ye Jiu complained, "People with gastrointestinal problems usually have poor nutrient absorption. They can never gain weight no matter how much they eat. My sister has this physique. She is 1.7 meters tall and weighs less than 90 kilograms."

"In addition to his unusually large appetite, he also has another quirk, which is that he likes to eat raw meat, and it must be fresh meat with blood." The researcher said, "Of course, in an experiment, we found that if there is no fresh meat, he will also eat rotten and spoiled meat, but his mood will become extremely depressed when eating."

"Who can be happy eating rotten meat...Isn't the second half of your sentence pure nonsense?" Ye Jiu said.

"His quirk may be related to his experience in the occupied area." Yang Qi said, "It's hard to imagine what he survived on in there."

"What's so hard to imagine... He eats whatever is edible." Wang Xiyi said expressionlessly, "Grass roots, mosses, bugs, all kinds of animals... This must include rotten corpses. I can only say that he is very lucky. He didn't eat anything infected by the weird meme, nor those microorganisms that are deadly enough."

"It is also possible that he ate it but was not infected." Yang Qi said in a deep voice.

The probability of being infected by eating monsters is high, but not 100%.

"One more thing... Oh, it's time for lunch, Lao Liu, turn the camera 30 degrees to the left." The researcher patted the shoulder of his colleague sitting in front of the console.

Yang Qi glanced at her watch. It was 9:50 in the morning, which was not even time for lunch.

"Oh, I forgot to mention that he eats every 20 minutes." The researcher obviously noticed Yang Qi looking at his watch. "The meal time I mentioned refers to his eating time."

As the camera moved, everyone realized that in this luxuriously decorated room, more than half of the space was occupied by a dozen iron racks, and several slices of processed pork, beef and mutton were hung on each iron rack.

If the other half of the room can be considered a top-notch luxury house, then this half is a complete meat processing plant.

"No, buddy." Ye Jiu was speechless. "You just hang the meat in his room? With your ability, you can process the meat and store it. When he wants to eat it, he can just use a machine to deliver it to him. It should be easy, right?"

"This involves another quirk of his, which is the one I was about to talk about but was interrupted." The researcher continued, "He has a strong sense of crisis about food shortages. We must always ensure that there is enough food within his field of vision, otherwise he will fall into a state of anxiety and mania. We tried to set up a window in his room that can automatically spit out food, but it didn't work."

"My goodness, this is even more outrageous than the most crazy person in the survivalist bar." Ye Jiu muttered, "Now I am really curious about his experience in the occupied area... By the way, has he mentioned these things?"

“Never.” The researcher shook his head regretfully. “He never mentioned that experience… and we didn’t dare to take any tough measures against him.”

"Have you tried any other methods?" Yang Qi turned to look at the researcher. "For example... hypnosis?" "Of course we have tried it. We invited a famous hypnotist that time, but during the hypnosis, Li Junwen suddenly went berserk and grabbed the hypnotist's neck, and bit off a large piece of flesh from her face with her teeth... If the security personnel hadn't rushed over in time, the consequences would have been disastrous."

"Uh, let me interrupt..." Ye Jiu suddenly said, "Did he swallow the piece of meat bitten off from the hypnotist's face?"

The researcher nodded. "He ate it."

"Hiss...Even people are eaten?"

"That's why I was surprised when I first received the document from above." The researcher sighed, "The difficulty of your trip is not in obtaining the permission to bring him in, or even in how to transport him to the mission location... The biggest difficulty is communicating with him."

"I think it's hard." Ye Jiu shook his head repeatedly. "This guy refused to talk about his experience in the occupied area. He must be suffering from severe PTSD... If we tell him that we are going to take him back to the occupied area, this guy will probably jump up and fight us to the death, right?"

At this time, Li Junwen in the surveillance video had already started eating - an iron rack with half a pork hanging on it moved in front of him, and with the swift and precise cutting of the laser knife, slices of raw meat with slightly burnt edges fell into a metal plate that had been prepared long ago. Li Junwen sat up with some difficulty, reached out to pick up the slices of meat, and stuffed them into his mouth impatiently.

"Eating raw pork is also awesome." Ye Jiu complained.

Although the raw pork provided by Tianshu Tower certainly does not contain parasites such as pork tapeworms, the taste and texture of the raw pork are not very good just by imagining it. However, Li Junwen ate it as if he was enjoying the most delicious thing in the world... At the end of the meal, he even pounced on the half of the pork and started to chew it with his teeth.

Seeing him greedily sucking the blood oozing from the raw meat, everyone couldn't help but feel a chill down their spine.

"Actually... we don't necessarily need him to lead the way." Yang Qi said hesitantly, "As long as we can get some valuable information from him, our trip will be worthwhile."

"We got some valuable information from him..." The researcher laughed bitterly, "We have been working on this for twenty years, but there is still no progress."

"Can he communicate like a normal person?" Wang Xiyi suddenly stood up and asked.

"When he's full, yes." The researcher nodded.

"I'll go in and talk to him." Wang Xiyi said.

"I'll go in with you." Yang Qi also stood up immediately, stretched out his hand unnoticeably, and held Wang Xiyi's fist.

……

As usual, when Li Junwen had just finished his meal and lay down comfortably again, the password door on the side of the room was suddenly opened, and a tall, beautiful female "person" with a pair of curved horns on her head and a long tail behind her walked in. Following her was a female researcher wearing a white coat and goggles on her face.

"You... who are you?" Li Junwen was obviously a little scared when he first saw Wang Xiyi, but after seeing Yang Qi following behind Wang Xiyi, his fear seemed to ease. "And the researchers... what are you... what are you going to do? Where are the researchers who are in charge of managing me? Where are they?"

"We are from Tianfu City. We want to talk to you about something." The two women sat down on the sofa opposite Li Junwen.

"If it's those things, then forget it." Li Junwen's eyes moved to the wall on one side, "I forgot, I can't remember it at all."

"Really?" A faint blue flame ignited at Wang Xiyi's fingertips.

The temperature in the room suddenly rose.

"You are a hunter, right? They plan to let you force me to speak?" Li Junwen suddenly smiled, "It's useless... I really forgot. Even if you kill me, it will be useless."

"You know, the human brain has a protective mechanism that automatically forgets those bad memories." Yang Qi said calmly, "But the word 'forget' should be put in quotation marks, because you don't really forget them, but seal them deep in your mind... I think I might be able to find a way to help you remember them."

"Then you should just kill me. I'm not afraid of death." Li Junwen had obviously experienced similar conversations countless times. "When I surrendered, I was already prepared to be shot. Tell me, what else do I have to be afraid of? I also know that I'm very abnormal now. Haha, look at me like this, do I still look like a normal person? I overeat, eat raw meat, drink blood, and lose control when I look up and don't see the mountains of food... Do you think I don't know that I'm abnormal? I know, I know it too well! But I just can't control myself! Hehe... Maybe, killing me will be a relief for me."

"Damn it, what a piece of crap." Ye Jiu couldn't help but curse in the monitoring room.

"Aren't you afraid of death?" Wang Xiyi asked.

"Not afraid."

"Then are you afraid of hunger..." Wang Xiyi asked again.

"...I'm not afraid." Li Junwen replied after hesitating for a few seconds.

"At worst, I'll starve to death." After a while, he added, "That's a relief."

"Are you afraid? We will take you back to that place." Wang Xiyi asked finally.

This time, Li Junwen's eyes finally changed.

A deep fear welled up in his eyes.

(End of this chapter)