Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 308 Inner World

"Hello? Hello?" Jiang Yu adjusted the angle of the headset and tried pressing the side buttons of the headset a few times.

However, the communication channel was completely silent.

She couldn't help feeling a little uneasy.

With a "bang", Ling Xiao also crawled out of the ventilation duct and fell to the ground.

"Ling Xiao... I, my communication equipment seems to be broken." Jiang Yu said to Ling Xiao hurriedly, "Can you still contact the team leader and others now?"

"Your equipment is not broken, it's just that the communication has been cut off." Ling Xiao said calmly.

He took out the car-shaped drone from behind him. The red indicator light on the drone's rear, symbolizing "signal lost," was flashing rhythmically.

Generally speaking, for exploration operations like these of pipelines and tombs, the standard equipment should be a snake-shaped wired drone. However, the 67th Field Team received the mission in a hurry and had no time to return to the institute to re-select equipment. They could only rush to the target location with what they had on hand.

"What should we do?" Jiang Yu asked anxiously, "Should we go back the same way?"

Ling Xiao looked up at the ventilation duct on the ceiling and shook his head: "I don't think we can...'return the same way'."

Jiang Yu was a little confused: "What does this mean?"

"Do you remember that the team leader and Yin Xiang both said that the internal communication of Factory No. 105 has always been unobstructed, but no one answered the phone?" Ling Xiao said.

"Yeah...but, but our radio communications are..." Jiang Yu's sentence order was a little confusing, just like her brain now.

"There's a phone hanging over there. You can try to see if you can make a call." Ling Xiao pointed to the door of the entertainment room. On the right side of the door frame, there was a red wall-mounted phone. The power indicator and line indicator on the phone base were still on.

"This should be... the internal phone in the factory, right?" Jiang Yu muttered, "Is there no way to dial out?"

"I asked the team leader. The internal telephone in Factory 105 is actually connected to the external communication network. It just has a 'switchboard' as a gateway. All external communications must go through that 'switchboard'. Now the researchers should be calling the switchboard of Factory 105 all the time... Even if they can't get through, the 'switchboard' is busy."

Jiang Yu moved to the door and picked up the phone.

However, there was total silence in the receiver, not even the expected beeping sound.

"The phone... is broken?" Jiang Yu repeated the action of putting the phone back into the dock and then picking it up again, but nothing changed.

"Do you know the other world?" Ling Xiao suddenly asked.

Jiang Yu shook his head blankly.

"I used to like reading comics very much. In many comics about strange things, there is a mention of the existence of an 'inner world'." Ling Xiao said, "Under the influence of the power of strange things, a space is separated into two parts, the surface world and the inner world. These two parts overlap but are independent of each other, and there are also channels connecting them..."

"Are you talking about... a parallel universe?"

"Although it's not the same thing, it's not much different." Ling Xiao said, "When I was crawling in the ventilation duct, I felt a strange feeling for a moment, as if we had passed through a layer of something and came to another world..."

"Why don't I feel anything?" Jiang Yu asked in astonishment, "Ling Xiao, are you trying to scare me?"

"Sun Hang or Yang Qi, have they ever told you about me?" Ling Xiao asked back, "About the fact that I don't have any emotions."

"No..." Jiang Yu shook his head. "You don't have any emotions? Although I think you seem to be very indifferent on weekdays and never show any expression on your face...but I just thought that was caused by your personality..."

"No, I wasn't like this originally." Ling Xiao said, "During a special encounter with a strange creature, all my human emotions were taken away, including joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, and various desires... But after losing these emotions, I found that when I was extremely calm, my five senses became extremely sharp, especially for changes in time and space. I could detect even the slightest changes."

"You...you are really not infected?"

"The Weird Research Institute conducted a comprehensive and detailed examination on me, and I was not infected by the meme." Ling Xiao replied, "I think this ability may be a way for the human body to compensate for itself after losing all emotions. Of course, this is just my guess."

If Sun Hang were here, he would definitely have realized the key point - apart from allowing people to remain absolutely calm at all times, losing emotions cannot give humans any special abilities, especially the ability to perceive time and space... Even among the infected, this kind of ability is a very rare type.

Then there is only one possibility left.

Like Zhong Ling, Ling Xiao is also a human mutant who has not been infected by the weird meme but has gained special abilities.

It’s a pity that neither Ling Xiao nor Jiang Yu knew the existence of the “superpower”... Faced with his own “special abilities”, Ling Xiao could only attribute it to the body’s “self-compensation”.

"So what you mean is... we are now in the inner world of Factory 105?" Jiang Yu confirmed with Ling Xiao cautiously.

Ling Xiao nodded: "I'm not sure how big the inner world is, but as a 'copy' of the outer world, the inner world must have boundaries. As long as we find the boundaries, we will have a way to leave."

"Since we were able to enter this 'inner world' from the ventilation duct, can't we retreat along the same path and return to the 'surface world'?" Jiang Yu asked.

"The passage connecting the inner world and the outer world keeps changing." Ling Xiao shook his head. "Just now the entrance and exit were in the ventilation duct, but now they are not."

"This change... is also mentioned in those comic books?"

"No, I felt it." Ling Xiao closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I can feel that space is like air or water. It flows slowly and disorderly around me... It is dynamic and constantly changing, but in our normal senses, it has always maintained a relatively stable state."

"What are conventional senses?" Jiang Yu asked, "I remember we came in at the same time... Why do you know so much more than me?"

"What the eyes see, the nose smells, the ears hear, and the body touches." Ling Xiao said, "These are the conventional senses."

To be precise, humans have five normal senses, but neither Ling Xiao nor Jiang Yu would use their tongues to lick things around them, so he did not mention the sense of taste.

"I'll lead the way next. You follow me." Ling Xiao said as he walked to the door and held the door handle of the entertainment room. "My ability to perceive space may come in handy... If the world outside the door is the surface world, I will tell you."

"Behind the door, the outer world?" Jiang Yu said, "The inner world can't be limited to this entertainment room, right?"

"I don't know." Ling Xiao said, and turned the doorknob. The two of them walked as lightly as possible to the suspended corridor outside.

"How is it? Are we...going back?" Jiang Yu said in a low voice.

But due to the empty structure inside the factory, even though her voice was very soft, there was still a faint echo coming from the other side.

Ling Xiao shook his head.

Jiang Yu looked down and saw several huge glass covers turned upside down on the ground. Inside the glass covers was the dust-free workshop where the FL09 reagent was produced. Various equipment that she couldn't name was neatly placed inside the glass covers. The empty conveyor belts were still running, and the engine of the large exhaust fan next to it kept making a buzzing sound.

"I thought... the workers disappeared because they were locked in the inner world, so there was no one to be seen outside... But, there is no one here either." Jiang Yu muttered softly.

"The inner world may not only have one layer. It is also possible that... there is a person underneath." Ling Xiao suddenly said.

"where?!"

"The fourth clean room from the left!"

"Really someone!"

It was a woman in a black leather jacket. She lowered her head, and her long dark red hair fell to her knees. Her whole body was hung by iron chains on a mechanical beam about five or six meters above the ground. The chains pierced her body in many places. Not only was her leather jacket covered with blood, but there was also a large pool of blood just below her body.

Ling Xiao and Jiang Yu immediately ran towards the stairs.

"She...is she still alive?" Jiang Yu asked while running.

"do not know."

"Why is she hung up by chains...it looks like some kind of torture." Jiang Yu said, "Could it be that the weird creature that invaded Factory 105 did this?"

"I don't know." Ling Xiao's answer was still so straightforward.

"She has red hair... Could she be the missing hunter 'Red-haired Witch'?"

"I have never seen the 'Red-haired Witch'."

Jiang Yu ran a few steps along the stairs and suddenly realized that he was no longer the same person he used to be. He immediately jumped up and jumped down from a height of four floors, then landed steadily on the ground.

"Jump down and I'll catch you!" Jiang Yu shouted to Ling Xiao.

Ling Xiao did not hesitate and immediately followed Jiang Yu's example, climbing over the guardrail and jumping down from the suspended corridor.

Jiang Yu hugged Ling Xiao who was falling from a great height. The muscles and bones all over his body suddenly made a creeping sound, which eliminated the impact force caused by Ling Xiao's fall from a great height without a trace.

"Hurry!" Jiang Yu put Ling Xiao down and continued to run towards the dust-free workshop.

The door of the dust-free workshop was locked, but at this time the two of them didn't care about the regulations of not destroying the internal facilities of the factory. Jiang Yu directly pulled out a hunting knife and cut the combination lock with one knife. The second knife directly penetrated the lock, cut off the lock tongue stuck in the glass wall, and then pushed open the door.

However, the closer the two got to the hanging red-haired woman, the more they felt uneasy - the red-haired woman's entire body had drooped down, and the blood from the wound pierced by the chain had turned dark brown and hardened into lumps... What frustrates Jiang Yu the most is that she can't feel the other person's breathing or heartbeat at all, and there is not even any memetic fluctuation of the infected person.

"She is a monster hunter." Jiang Yu stopped five meters away from the red-haired woman.

She saw that the other person was wearing a hunter bracelet on his left wrist that was exactly the same as hers.

"It seems that she should be the missing red-haired witch." Compared to Jiang Yu's body that was transformed by the Tai Sui meme, Ling Xiao, who ran all the way, was still a little out of breath. "She found the weird thing, but was killed by it."

"Could that strange creature be nearby now?" Jiang Yu looked around nervously, with one hand already on the folded short bow.

"Not necessarily. Judging from the bloodstains, she has been hanging here for some time." Ling Xiao walked forward and reached out to touch the bloodstains just below the red-haired witch.

The blood had completely clotted, and the surface had become smooth and hard.

"She has only been in Factory 105 for less than an hour. Why would her blood be..."

"The speed of time in the inner world is not synchronized with that in the outer world." Ling Xiao said, "From our perspective, she has been missing for less than an hour, but in the inner world, she may have been hanging for several days..."

"Then what should we do with her body?" Jiang Yu asked.

Unconsciously, she had regarded this boy, who was younger than her cousin, as her backbone.

"Don't worry, let's check the surroundings, maybe we can find other missing people."

Just as Ling Xiao turned around, a voice came from above: "Don't leave yet! Put me down first!"

Jiang Yu was startled instantly, while Ling Xiao slowly turned around, looked up at the pair of eyes that appeared from the gaps in the red hair, and asked, "You are not dead?"

"I almost died, luckily I have the ability to play dead." The other party said, "I heard a noise just now, I thought that thing came back, so I immediately entered a state of suspended animation... I didn't expect it was a colleague."

The red-haired witch glanced at the bracelet on Jiang Yu's wrist and continued, "How did you two get in? So many days have passed. Has the 'insecticide plan' been completely ruined?"

"So many days?" Ling Xiao and Jiang Yu looked at each other, and the former asked, "How many days have you been hanging here?"

"I can't remember clearly... but from my personal feeling, it must have been at least seven or eight days." The red-haired witch said, "I once thought that the Federation had given up on me... So, can you let me go?"

"To people outside, you were missing for less than an hour," Ling Xiao said.

"Less than an hour? Outside?" The red-haired witch was stunned.

(End of this chapter)