Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 274 Nameplate
The asphalt road, which had been in disrepair for a long time, was instantly smashed into pieces. The flying asphalt fragments and pebbles hit Ye Jiu's armor, making crisp crackling sounds.

The giant metal snake also noticed Ye Jiu's movements. It was about to bend down to swallow Ye Jiu, but Wang Xiyi obviously did not agree - she turned into a drill wrapped in flames, pierced directly into the giant snake's neck, and then went out from the other side!

A piercing wail erupted from the giant metal snake's throat - it was called a wail, but in fact it was more like the huge noise made by countless irregular metal objects rubbing against each other violently. Even Zhulong, who was standing far away, subconsciously covered his ears.

"It worked!" Wang Xiyi somersaulted in the air and turned back. A giant palm made of flames slapped the giant snake's head. "It seems to be afraid of your behavior! It is risking its own flaws to stop you!"

"That's right!" Ye Jiu's spirits lifted, and the wolf-tooth spear in his hand fell down again!

The cracked road surface extended for nearly a hundred meters, and the part of the giant snake hidden underground was exposed in front of Ye Jiu. Ye Jiu dragged the wolf-fang spear and ran forward along the edge of the crack.

Soon, Ye Jiu felt a place with a very strong meme atmosphere.

"Found it! Seven inches! I found the 'seven inches' of this snake!" Ye Jiu shouted ecstatically.

"Then kill it!" Wang Xiyi shouted. At the same time, she once again turned into a blazing fireball and crashed into the mouth of the giant metal snake!
The red molten iron flowed in the body of the giant snake. There was a loud bang, and a rolling fireball flew out from the middle of the giant snake's body, bringing out a large amount of bright and dazzling molten iron!

"Give! Me! Die!" Ye Jiu shouted loudly, and the wolf-tooth spear in his hand emitted a dazzling flame and smashed heavily towards that position!

"boom!!!"

A deafening roar swept across the entire valley. The giant metal snake's body stiffened for a moment, and after a few seconds, it turned into a shower of iron rain and fell from the sky.

Countless metal objects fell on the road, and crisp collision sounds occurred one after another.

"Am I awesome?" Ye Jiu raised the wolf-fang spear high above his head and asked loudly in the communication channel.

"Awesome." Zhulong agreed with a smile, while on the other side, Wang Xiyi had folded her wings and fell from the sky.

The metal giant snake's "weak spot" had been smashed to pieces by Ye Jiu's wolf-fang spear, but in this mess, Wang Xiyi vaguely felt a familiar breath.

"How was it? Wasn't my spear strike awesome... Hey? Old Wang, why do you have such a weird expression? Shouldn't you be happy that you killed such a powerful monster?" Ye Jiu turned his head and saw Wang Xiyi walking towards him with a frown.

Wang Xiyi ignored him and jumped directly into the crack.

Hard dragon scales instantly covered her hands and arms. She squatted down and started rummaging through the pile of scrap metal.

After a while, Wang Xiyi found something emitting a faint fluorescent light from the pile of scrap metal.

"What is this? Is this the core of this strange thing?" Ye Jiu was slightly startled. "By the way, is this thing not dead yet?"

"Take a look for yourself." Wang Xiyi threw the thing to Ye Jiu with a serious expression.

Ye Jiu took it and looked at it. It turned out to be a metal nameplate - commonly known as a "dog tag". However, the texture, size and shape of this nameplate did not match the soldier identity card of any existing military unit in the Federation. The workmanship was also very rough. It looked more like a "toy" customized by some military enthusiasts.

But when Ye Jiu turned the nameplate over, he was completely dumbfounded.

On the other side of the nameplate, two words were etched using laser.

This is a name, a name that Ye Jiu is extremely familiar with.

They risked their lives on this trip just to find the person with this name.

"Sun Hang".

"This...this, this, this word, couldn't it be that you, Old Wang, just carved it?" Ye Jiu said with a stammer, "This joke is not funny at all!"

"I'm not that bored." Wang Xiyi said gloomily, and with a little force on her slender legs, she jumped out of the pit. "You're right, the ability of this weird thing does belong to Sun Hang..."

“Shit, shit, shit…” Ye Jiu stamped his feet in annoyance, cursing non-stop. “Could this be a coincidence? Could it be that they have the same name? The Xiazhou Federation has such a large population, there must be at least eighty people named Sun Hang, if not a hundred?”

"No, Yang Qi and I have both seen this nameplate." Wang Xiyi shook her head. "Sun Hang's past has always been a mystery. When the rescuers from the Investigation Bureau found him, the only thing on his body that could prove his identity was this nameplate... Apart from his name, we know nothing about his life experience. Even whether this name really belongs to him is probably a question mark."

At this time, Zhulong had also come closer. He naturally saw the words on the nameplate in Ye Jiu's hand and sighed, "This is the first time I feel that being too accurate intuition is really a bad thing."

"Sun Hang... couldn't he be dead?" Ye Jiu murmured, "Otherwise, his nameplate wouldn't appear here, and his ability wouldn't be transferred to this giant snake..."

"Don't talk nonsense." Zhulong glanced at Ye Jiu, "It's just an external thing. If you found a part of Sun Hang's body in the giant snake, you can say so, but this is just a nameplate. It's too early to draw such a conclusion."

"It's not just the nameplate! The key is the ability! Sun Hang's ability! It appeared on this strange creature!" Ye Jiu shouted, "How do you explain this?"

"It's an infection." Wang Xiyi took back Sun Hang's nameplate from Ye Jiu's hand. "Since dead things can become weird things, then by the same token, the infected can infect living things, and they can also infect dead things, right?"

"What do you mean?" Ye Jiu's breathing stagnated, and he turned to look at Wang Xiyi. "Sun Hang must have carried this nameplate with him every day. Over time, this nameplate is likely to be infected by him... Sun Hang can turn Song Yarong and Jiang Yu into infected people, and I think he can also turn this nameplate into an artifact-like strange object." Wang Xiyi analyzed.

"This is impossible? If so, the underwear Sun Hang wears is in close contact with him every day, why didn't his underwear turn into a weird thing?" Ye Jiu said.

"There are examples of dead objects being infected by infected people and becoming strange creatures... I remember there are some, very few, but definitely not zero." Zhulong pondered, "But the only thing I don't understand is, if this nameplate was infected by Sun Hang, then why is its ability stronger than Sun Hang, the 'mother'? Although I have never fought with Sun Hang, as far as I know, even if Sun Hang's ability to manipulate metal is used to the limit, it is impossible for him to create such a huge metal snake."

"Red square crystal! Could it be because of that red square crystal?!" Ye Jiu's eyes suddenly lit up, and he spoke quickly, "Sun Hang told me that the red square crystal found in the underground palace has the ability to mass-produce artifact-like strange objects. Could this nameplate have been modified by him using the red square crystal? Doesn't this make sense?!"

“It still doesn’t make sense.” Zhulong shook his head. “We have all seen the creations of the red square crystal. Although it can indeed create strange things out of thin air, the strength of the strange things it creates is generally not high… I don’t think it can create such a powerful strange thing in such a short time.”

"Could it be because of the occupied area?" Ye Jiu said, "Doesn't Sun Hang still have the ability of Taotie? What if this thing can also devour other monsters, and then by chance in the occupied area, it swallowed a few powerful monsters, and then became what it is now..."

"Theoretically, it's possible... but in such a short period of time, it's hard to grow to this extent." Zhulong sighed, "What do you think the probability is?"

"At least it's not zero!" Ye Jiu raised his eyebrows. "Alas, to put it bluntly, there's no point in discussing this. The most urgent task is to find Sun Hang - as long as we can find him, these problems can be solved naturally."

"No, it does make sense." Zhulong shook his head slowly. "Since this nameplate belongs to Sun Hang, it is a very important clue for us - at least, we are not on the wrong path."

Just when Ye Jiu was about to say something, he suddenly found that Wang Xiyi was holding the nameplate with a strange look on her face. She took two steps in one direction, then returned to the starting point, changed direction and took two more steps.

"Old Wang, what are you doing?" Ye Jiu couldn't help but ask.

"This nameplate... seems to be able to sense Sun Hang's presence." Wang Xiyi murmured, "As its position changes, the strength of its aura keeps fluctuating... So, I wonder if the factor that determines this is the distance between it and Sun Hang."

"Could it be that Sun Hang is nearby?"

“Not sure…” Wang Xiyi tried several directions back and forth, and finally pointed to the eleven o’clock direction, “In this direction, the increase in aura is most obvious!”

"Really?" Ye Jiu asked for the nameplate and tried walking back and forth several times. In order to ensure accuracy, he extended the round trip distance to more than two hundred meters.

"Shit, it's true!" After trying a few times, Ye Jiu ran back to where he was and said to the other two, "It is true that when walking towards eleven o'clock, the aura of the nameplate is most obvious, and then when moving in the opposite direction, the aura will be significantly weakened... So it seems that Sun Hang should be in that direction!"

"Unfortunately, the intensity of the aura is nonlinear, otherwise we might be able to calculate the distance between Sun Hang and us." Zhulong sighed.

Although Wang Xiyi and Ye Jiu said it was a "clear change", in fact, if this change was described with numbers, I'm afraid they would have to add a series of zeros after the decimal point - only elite hunters and qualified people like Wang Xiyi and Ye Jiu could sense such subtle changes in the aura. If a second- or third-rate hunter held up this nameplate, he might not be able to feel the change even if he walked a few miles away.

"Map." Wang Xiyi said in the communication channel.

Soon, a portable projector was set up, and a three-dimensional holographic map of all the surrounding terrain was projected onto the hood of car No. 3.

"It's this direction." Zhulong took the sensing pen and drew on the holographic map. A striking red mark immediately appeared on the blue holographic map.

"If we go in this direction, we need to cross two mountains with an altitude of more than 4,000 meters. Even if we calculate it by relative altitude, it is more than 1,000 meters higher than where we are now." Zhulong said, "There is no road here, so cars definitely can't drive through. At our speed, even if we don't encounter any monsters along the way, it will take four to five days to cross these two mountains."

"I can fly there directly." said Wang Xiyi.

"It's not advisable to advance alone." Zhulong shook his head. "I don't want the mission to change from searching for Sun Hang to searching for you and Sun Hang."

Hearing what Zhulong said, Wang Xiyi "tsk" a little impatiently, but ultimately didn't say much.

"Besides, the premise is that we don't encounter any strange creatures... According to the original route, taking Highway 4218 through the Hengduan Mountains should be the safest..."

"Is the highway really safe?" Ye Jiu turned his head to look at the wounded soldiers lying nearby, as well as the sacrificed operator whose face was covered with clothes. "I always feel that walking on a mountain road is actually no different from walking on a highway."

"Even if the degree of danger is the same, we can cross the Hengduan Mountains faster by taking the road. The less time we stay, the lower the probability of encountering danger," said Zhulong.

"But if we continue driving along Highway 4218, we will get further and further away from the direction we sensed," Ye Jiu said.

"My idea is to cross the Hengduan Mountains first, and then use the nameplate to reposition ourselves after reaching the plains," Zhulong said. "If we are sure that Sun Hang is on the plains, we will go in a straight line to find him. If we find that Sun Hang is actually in the mountains, we can also readjust the route into the mountains. What do you think?"

"I have no objection." Ye Jiu said, "I am only worried about one thing now, that is, whether the direction indicated by the nameplate is really Sun Hang's location."

"This is the only clue. We have no choice." Zhulong said, "As for how to deal with the victims and the wounded, Ye Sha, you decide."

"Give them car number three, and let the lightly wounded take the seriously wounded and the bodies back to the border post. The rest of us will take car number four and continue on."

Vehicle No. 4 is a multi-functional engineering vehicle. The word "multi-functional" naturally also includes the function of "personnel transportation" - the transport cabin of this vehicle is exactly the same as the Federal Army's "Tortoise III" armored transport vehicle. Its internal space can accommodate eight fully armed soldiers at a time, which is more than enough to carry the remaining few people in the team.

(End of this chapter)