Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 449 Not a Stray Bullet
“But I don’t recommend you go to Egypt at this time,” Pei Zongjun’s holographic projection sighed. “It’s my personal request, but I hope you can stay in Xiazhou for a while in the future.”

"Why?" Sun Hang asked, puzzled.

"You should know what happened in Baikal, right?"

"Death Aurora?"

“That’s right… The Sphinx’s prophecy mentioned that the Xia State Federation would face a great upheaval in the near future.” Pei Zongjun’s holographic projection walked to his own coffin, looking down at his own corpse through the transparent coffin lid. “I saw a person walking slowly on a tightrope high in the sky… One step and there’s an abyss below.”

"Is this something you saw in the prophecy?" Sun Hang asked.

Pei Zongjun's holographic projection nodded silently.

"The prophecy mentions yellow sand again, what does that mean?" Sun Hang asked again.

“That means I…can’t stop you.” The holographic projection simulated by the mainframe was extremely realistic; Sun Hang could even see a deep sense of helplessness and sadness in “Pei Zongjun’s” eyes.

“How can I be sure that your real purpose isn’t to get me to help you retrieve the other half of the Sphinx’s brain?” Sun Hang walked to the other side of the transparent coffin, squatted down, and carefully examined the corpse preserved inside. “After all, this isn’t the first time you’ve ‘tricked’ me.”

The body underwent very special preservation treatment, and there were no signs of decay, not even livor mortis. It looked as if the person inside was still alive, just asleep.

“You can read my mind; I will not hold anything back from you,” the mainframe said. “You can even devour me.”

To be honest, after learning about the Sphinx's half-brain abilities, Sun Hang was indeed somewhat interested in it. However, upon reflection, he realized that even this thing couldn't defeat the three apes, and his newly aroused interest was quickly extinguished.

“But I have one condition: after you devour me, you must take on my responsibilities,” the mastermind said. “You must lead human civilization to continue walking this tightrope.”

"Not interested." Sun Hang refused without even thinking.

"Aren't you interested in power?" Pei Zongjun's projection stared directly at Sun Hang.

“No.” Sun Hang shook his head decisively. “Power doesn’t really appeal to me.”

"So what is the thing you want most?" the AI ​​asked again.

“I want to figure out my past.” Sun Hang pointed to his forehead with his finger, “and to find back my past memories.”

“I once saw a scene in the prophecy of the Sphinx, but I don’t know if I should give it to you.”

"What do you mean?"

“That footage is related to you, and it’s extremely closely connected to you,” the mastermind said. “But if I give it to you, it could very well backfire… just like it did twenty-six years ago.”

What are the consequences of the backlash?

"The mainframe is completely destroyed, the Tian Shu Tower is completely shut down, and the entire Chunming City will be affected... Only the mainframe's computing power can coordinate such a massive city. Once the mainframe crashes, countless accidents will occur in every corner of the city," the mainframe said.

"You're not lying to me?" Sun Hang asked, somewhat doubtful. "If there really is a backlash, then you should have already suffered the backlash when you saw that scene. What does it have to do with whether you show it to me or not?"

“You have the ability to read my mind, so I have no reason to lie to you.” Pei Zongjun’s projection walked in front of Sun Hang. “When I told you about this, I knew I couldn’t stop you… You can watch if you want, but there’s a condition.”

"What premise?"

“You devoured Lucas, so the life force within you is now almost inexhaustible… I hope that as I show you this prophecy, you can continuously infuse the main brain with life force to ensure that the main brain does not die from the backlash.”

"Can injecting life force counteract that backlash effect?"

"The last backlash occurred when the cells of the main brain's biological structure began to rapidly die under an unknown force. As long as the rate of cell proliferation can exceed the rate of cell death, the harm caused by the backlash can be minimized," the main brain said.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Sun Hang strode to the glass tank and placed his right palm on the side of the tank. "What about the content of that prophecy?"

"You can just read my thoughts directly," the mainframe said.

The next second, Sun Hang's consciousness sank into a dreamlike world.

It was a dilapidated, dark, and damp attic, with a faint smell of rotting wood in the air.

The only light source in the attic was a handheld emergency lamp, but its battery was almost dead, and the light it emitted was extremely weak, not even as bright as the sunlight shining through the small window that was completely covered with newspaper.

Several plastic bags, filled with empty instant noodle bowls, were piled on the attic floor. A worn-out Simmons mattress lay on the floor, and an old-fashioned electric fan next to it slowly oscillated, its rusted bearings creaking loudly with each half-turn.

Sun Hang found himself in someone else's perspective, and this person was currently squatting next to Simmons, wolfing down a bowl of instant noodles that hadn't even fully dissolved.

The instant noodles hadn't dissolved because the remaining water in the kettle had cooled down considerably—for some reason, this thought naturally popped into Sun Hang's head.

"I should go downstairs and get a kettle of hot water. Now a kettle of hot water costs 80 cents... That's outrageous."

"I'm almost out of money, I need to find a way to change jobs." "The most urgent thing is to get an ID card... Regardless of whether the photo on the ID card matches my age... At least with an ID card, I can find a decent job... So I won't have to eat instant noodles every day."

A jumble of random thoughts also flooded into Sun Hang's mind, causing him to jolt awake.

The main perspective seems to be none other than himself—Sun Hang before he lost his memory!

"So, I used to live in an attic like this?"

Before Sun Hang could recall more details, a scream suddenly came from outside the attic, followed by the piercing sound of police sirens and various shouts.

Explosions could be heard in the distance, mixed with what sounded like buildings collapsing.

"Bang!!"

Gunshots rang out, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps downstairs. Someone burst through a door and rushed out.

Then came the sound of flesh being torn apart—although Sun Hang did not see the person who ran away being torn apart with his own eyes, he was still certain that it was the sound of some kind of beast's claws tearing flesh apart.

Sun Hang stood up—in his memory, he seemed to be trying to open the window that was covered with newspaper, but before he could reach the bedside, the small window, which was only twenty centimeters square, was smashed to pieces along with the surrounding wooden wall. A strange-looking giant beast crashed through the attic wall and knocked Sun Hang to the ground.

This behemoth had the head of a goat, the body of a bison, and the limbs of a primate. Its entire body was covered in blue fur. With just a couple of light sweeps of its scaly tail, it cleared away everything behind it—garbage bags, a Simmons mattress, and a broken electric fan were smashed to pieces. Half a metal fan blade flew over with a "whoosh" and slammed into the wooden floor less than two inches from Sun Hang's head.

The giant beast had just raised its head when another, even more ferocious beast face appeared on its chest, staring intently at the suppressed Sun Hang—this beast face had a gaping maw almost as wide as the giant beast's body, with bits of flesh and blood still clinging to the edges of its lips and teeth.

This behemoth can definitely be classified as a chimera, but Sun Hang, this guy also has an official scientific name given to him - "Taotie clone".

"So this is what the Taotie looks like."

The thought flashed through Sun Hang's mind, and then the giant maw on the chest of the Taotie clone directly bit off Sun Hang's neck.

Death is a strange feeling, especially when you feel your life force slowly draining away from your body, and the surroundings becoming darker and colder. But the blood spurting from his neck is scalding hot, dripping onto Sun Hang's skin, making him feel as if he were being dripped with crimson lava. The burning pain caused his dying body to convulse violently.

A thick, bloody smell filled Sun Hang's chest, and he felt as if his body was melting—the flesh that had lost its fixed shape crawled up the body of the Taotie clone like some kind of mollusc, gradually seeping into its fur.

It was only then that Sun Hang noticed that the seemingly fierce beast face on Taotie's chest actually conveyed fear in its eyes.

It was afraid, it had been afraid from the very beginning... but it did not choose to escape from Sun Hang, instead letting Sun Hang's flesh and blood seep into its body.

The roles of hunter and prey seem to have been reversed; it's not like it's hunting Sun Hang, but rather like it's offering itself up for Sun Hang to "eat".

Sun Hang's vision began to distort. He realized that his head had also melted into that writhing flesh and blood, slowly crawling onto the Taotie's body and squeezing into the gaps in its fur.

Sun Hang didn't know how much time had passed. When his consciousness returned to clarity from its daze, the Taotie clone had disappeared. The attic, which had lost an entire wall, became brighter than ever before. From this angle, the severely damaged street was clearly visible.

The entire street looked as if it had been ravaged by artillery fire. Nearly a third of the houses had been reduced to ruins, and human corpses were scattered everywhere. Crimson blood seeped into the cracks in the cement pavement.

Sun Hang moved his limbs in a daze. He looked around the attic but couldn't find any trace of the Taotie clone, not even bloodstains—he clearly remembered that the Taotie clone bit off his neck and his blood sprayed everywhere.

But apart from the stubborn stains accumulated over the years, there were no traces on the wooden floor under his feet—if the wall of the attic facing the street hadn't completely disappeared, Sun Hang would have even suspected that everything just now was just a nightmare.

"Phew... Is this the scene when the Taotie clone attacked the human residential area that day...?" Sun Hang had asked Yang Qi for the case file of this incident, but the video data included in the case file was only the part about cleaning up the scene after the incident. As for the surveillance video of the attack process, it was completely missing.

"Four minutes before the Taotie clone appeared, the street's surveillance system went down. It wasn't until two hours later, after the Taotie clone's aura had completely disappeared, that the system returned to normal. Technicians conducted multiple checks but couldn't find the cause of the malfunction." These are Yang Qi's exact words.

The street in front of us is very similar to the street that Sun Hang saw in the video footage... but the damage to the buildings on that street was much more severe... at least half of the houses were destroyed.

Wait... does this mean the attack isn't over yet?

Sun Hang wanted to stay in the attic and observe for a while longer, but he was just a first-person observer and had no way to control the behavior of the person in charge or make any "extra actions".

Sun Hang climbed down the remaining half of the stairs to the attic—the first floor of the house had not suffered any serious damage; the Taotie clone seemed to have jumped directly from the opposite roof and crashed into the attic.

The door on the first floor was wide open, and there was a pool of bloody mess at the entrance. The shoe lying next to it looked familiar to Sun Hang—the landlord had boasted to him yesterday that it was a high-end brand-name shoe that his son had brought back from Chunming City, and that a pair of shoes could be worth four months of Sun Hang's rent.

The shoes seem to be of poor quality; the upper and sole have separated, and the opening looks like a gaping mouth, silently staring at the pile of flesh not far away.

"Your son probably bought a fake," Sun Hang thought to himself. "Or you're just bragging."

Sun Hang walked out onto the street, intending to check if any of his neighbors were still alive, when several disheveled sheriffs emerged from behind a collapsed ruin.

When the sheriffs saw that Sun Hang did not show the proper reaction one would expect after seeing a survivor, but instead displayed extreme fear, one of them immediately drew his pistol and pulled the trigger on Sun Hang!
Sun Hang felt as if he had been punched hard on the side of his head. A huge impact knocked him to the ground, and then his vision went dark.

Damn it, it wasn't a stray bullet after all.

(End of this chapter)