Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 355 Lurker

Not long after Sun Hang finished saying this, an engineer with his head down walked over slowly. Just as he and Song Yarong passed by each other, he suddenly turned around and pounced towards Song Yarong!
It was also at this moment that Sun Hang felt the extremely strong aura of the weird meme emanating from him!

In less than 0.1 seconds, this engineer transformed from a completely normal human being into a strange creature with a strong aura!

The engineer immediately threw Song Yarong to the ground and strangled her neck with both hands!

He put his cheek close to Song Yarong, looking as if he was going to kiss her, but his mouth was already split to his ears, and a tentacle as thick as an arm and covered with sharp teeth replaced his tongue, stretched out from his throat, and went straight to Song Yarong's face.

Although Song Yarong is a monster hunter, she is not a combatant in the strict sense. Neither her fighting skills nor her reaction speed can compare with those elite hunters who have been fighting monsters for years. After being knocked down by the monsterized engineer, she just struggled instinctively, trying to push the other party away from her.

But what surprised her was that the power emanating from this strange engineer was even more terrifying than herself who possessed the Tai Sui meme!
The opponent's knee was pressed firmly against Song Yarong's lower abdomen, his elbows were opened outward, pressing down on Song Yarong's arms, and his hands were completely wrapped around Song Yarong's neck, strangling her to death.

If Song Yarong was not infected with Tai Sui, her neck would have been strangled.

Not even suffocation.

Feeling the smell of blood coming towards her, Song Yarong kicked upwards with all her might - this was the only part of her body that could move now. Her powerful kicks continuously hit the crotch of the weird engineer...but the other party was completely unmoved.

After the engineer turned into a monster, his physiological weaknesses that were unique to men seemed to have disappeared.

"Don't move! Tilt your head back and keep it close to the ground!" Sun Hang's voice came from the side. Song Yarong did not hesitate and did as he was told.

A strong wind blew, and the head that was less than five centimeters away from Song Yarong instantly disappeared from her sight, and the fanged tentacle that was already attached to her face left blood marks of varying depths on her face.

Fortunately, with the recovery ability of Tai Sui Meme, this minor injury did not cause disfigurement - if it were not for the high-tech prosthetic eye that could provide a lot of convenience in research, Song Yarong could even grow back her missing eye.

The pressure suddenly eased, and Song Yarong realized that it was Sun Hang who broke the weird engineer's neck with a kick. The head with long tentacles flew far away like a football, and fell heavily on the frozen soil with a dull sound.

"Not dead yet?"

Sun Hang frowned, and saw that the headless monster began to change again - its entire upper body split open, forming a big mouth full of sharp teeth, and then it leaned down and swallowed Song Yarong's entire head! !

But before the big mouth closed, the monster froze in place.

Tens of millions of hyphae have pierced its body, completely absorbing all the memes in it!

"A disgusting smell of decay..." Sun Hang briefly commented on the "food" he had just eaten, and then retracted the mycelium.

The empty shell without the meme suddenly turned into a pool of pus and blood, which spilled on Song Yarong's body.

The expensive down jacket was immediately corroded by pus and blood and was riddled with holes. The white goose and duck down inside leaked out. When it came into contact with the pus and blood, it made a hissing sound, and a foul smell of burnt protein soon spread.

Fortunately, the combat uniform Song Yarong was wearing had strong corrosion resistance and water repellency. As soon as the sticky pus and blood fell on the surface of the combat uniform, it turned into small round droplets and then rolled down from both sides.

"Are you still alive?" Sun Hang pulled Song Yarong up from the ground.

"...alive." Song Yarong nodded, trying to slow down her rapid breathing little by little.

The surrounding area has been placed under martial law. Soldiers and operators in charge of security rushed in and pointed their guns at the researchers and engineers who had not yet realized what was happening.

"Put down your guns!" Sun Hang shouted loudly.

Embarrassingly, these soldiers did not obey Sun Hang's orders.

"Everyone... ahem... put your guns down!" Song Yarong repeated Sun Hang's order.

The soldiers hesitantly put down their guns.

Song Yarong also knew why Sun Hang asked the soldiers to put down their guns - since Chimera No. 17 could turn an engineer into a monster, it could also turn a soldier on guard into a monster. Once one of these soldiers was caught and opened fire on the group of researchers and engineers... then the development progress of PFDA would instantly regress a lot... especially those precious technicians. It would be almost impossible to select and train another batch of them in the remaining time.

These people are treasures... In other words, their lives are valuable.

"Implement emergency plan No. 3. Everyone must return to the institute's headquarters immediately. Also, notify the institute to conduct the most comprehensive and detailed physical examination for all members of the project team!" Song Yarong said.

"This will waste a lot of time..." Sun Hang muttered softly.

"We can't help it. With something like this happening, everyone is worried... If we don't conduct a comprehensive inspection, I'm afraid no one will be able to work." Song Yarong sighed and whispered to Sun Hang, "No one wants a colleague around them to suddenly turn into a weird creature when they are concentrating, right?"

"Were you shocked just now?" Sun Hang asked.

"I was a little scared... Mainly because it happened so suddenly that my brain didn't react at all. My whole mind was blank." Song Yarong touched the healed wound on her face, "I even forgot to use my ability."

"Add more practical training when you have time in the future... After all, you still have the identity of a monster hunter." Sun Hang said.

"Let's talk about the future later... If we can't solve Chimera No. 17, how can we have a future?" Song Yarong said, "Let's get back to the point... Did that guy just now suddenly become a weird thing?" "Yes." Sun Hang nodded, "It was not until he turned into a weird thing that I sensed his breath... Before that, he gave me the same feeling as an ordinary person."

"What is the cause of the transformation? Is there something unclean in the test site, or has he been infected for a long time but has only been in the 'incubation period'? Or is it..."

Song Yarong couldn't help but lower her voice when she said this: "Is it because of...emotions?"

Emotions can cause humans to become strange... This is already a semi-open secret in the academic community, especially after the Chen Hongjuan incident. Every researcher who has come into contact with this matter has signed a confidentiality agreement at the request of Tianshu Tower, and Song Yarong is one of them.

In order to prevent people from panicking, this cannot be made public... But quietly, both the federal government and local weirdo research institutions have been conducting research on the effects of emotions on humans.

The most notable point is that a large number of psychological counseling institutions have been set up in Tianfu City, and dozens of special hotlines for psychological counseling and emotional counseling have been opened. On the surface, this is to ensure the mental health of Tianfu City citizens in special times and special environments, but in fact, these investments are entirely for the purpose of discovering signs of abnormalities as early as possible and collecting data for subsequent research work.

"It doesn't seem like an emotion." Sun Hang shook his head.

If this engineer turned into a monster because of negative emotions, Sun Hang should have seen the shadow rising behind him a long time ago - everyone has negative emotions, but if the negative emotions are strong enough to make a person become a monster, then the shadow of this person's figure will become extremely huge and blazing, and it would be impossible for Sun Hang not to notice it.

"Could he be an infected person in the incubation period?" Song Yarong frowned. "There shouldn't be any 'dirty things' in the test site... We have checked this place countless times, and drones are used to conduct carpet scans every day..."

"My suggestion is to check who this guy has had contact with recently," said Sun Hang.

While devouring the weird engineer meme, Sun Hang also devoured the remaining memories in the other party's meme.

There aren't many memories left in the meme, and looking back there are only forty-eight hours of memory.

The engineer has been busy all day today - he is responsible for the fuel of the PFDA thrusters and belongs to the fourth group. Apart from dealing with people in the PFDA project team, he has not come into contact with any outsiders. The only time he left the institute was when he came here with Sun Hang, Song Yarong and a group of people to test the PFDA "Prototype No. 1".

The food he ate was also very clean, with meals and drinking water provided by the institute... If the source of infection came from food, then everyone present would be at risk of infection.

The engineer's memory went back to the day before, when he took half a day off.

The reason for the leave was simple - the fuel ratio of the thruster had been finalized, the simulation test and the actual machine test had been completed, and the remaining projects of PFDA were only the unresolved issues on the mecha body, and the work on the thruster part had come to an end. For this reason, the engineer asked for half a day off to go back and spend time with his family, whom he had not seen for more than a month due to the high intensity of overtime work.

The engineer has a nine-year-old daughter and is from a single-parent family. His wife died of illness when the child was very young. In addition, yesterday was the little girl's birthday, so Song Yarong agreed to this "reasonable but not very reasonable" leave application.

The memory continued to go back, and as the time interval gradually lengthened, the memory fragments began to become intermittent, mottled and blurred. Sun Hang could only vaguely see that the engineer used his connections to ask the institute's cafeteria to make a cake base for him, and then went to the warehouse to get some candles... The next scene was already in his own home.

The father and daughter used a spoon to spread the whipped cream on the cake base...insert the candles, light the candles, make birthday wishes, and then blow out the candles...

The moment the candle was blown out, the entire memory scene suddenly fell into darkness.

Sun Hang couldn't help but shiver.

"What's wrong with you?" Song Yarong noticed Sun Hang's coldness and asked immediately, "You shouldn't... feel cold, right?"

"It's not cold...the head of that guy just now? Where is the head that I kicked off?" Sun Hang asked.

"People from the field department are handling it." Song Yarong said.

"Bring that head here! Quickly! Hurry!" said Sun Hang.

He suddenly realized a problem... In the memory fragments just now, the engineer's daughter, the nine-year-old girl... had no face!
A container that looked like a large protein powder jar was brought over. When the container was opened, a bloody head appeared in front of Sun Hang's eyes. Sun Hang kicked the monster's neck, but the monster's head did not suffer too much damage, and the basic structure remained intact.

"Fortunately I didn't kick the head to pieces, otherwise it would be troublesome." Sun Hang said in his heart.

The body of the monster had been sucked dry by Sun Hang and turned into pus and blood, but its head was still "alive" - ​​when Sun Hang opened the container, it still tried to attack Sun Hang with its tooth-covered, cactus-like tentacle, but was grabbed by an "iron hand" made of liquid metal and torn out of its mouth.

"What are you going to do?" Song Yarong couldn't help but ask, and Fukada Miki beside her also looked interested.

Sun Hang did not say anything, but drove the mycelium into the eye sockets of the skull and directly into the brain.

The brain and memes are both carriers of the infected person's memories, but there are some differences in the memories they carry.

"Are you going to swallow it? But I think... if we leave this head, it might be helpful for the subsequent investigation? The research institute can also use it to determine whether Chimera No. 17 is the culprit of this incident..." Song Yarong said this, but she had no intention of stopping Sun Hang's actions.

"What I am doing now is investigation work." Sun Hang did not explain much, but continued to "browse" the remaining memories in the engineer's brain.

The memory in the brain and the memory image in the meme are almost the same, except that some vague details are clearer... Sun Hang glanced at today's content and quickly fast-forwarded his memory to the previous day, when the little girl celebrated her birthday.

He finally saw the little girl's face.

She was smiling, but that weird smile... shouldn't appear on the face of a nine-year-old girl.

(End of this chapter)