Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 458 "Auntie"

"Shut up," Sun Hang hissed.

Xue Yue was startled and pressed her lips tightly together.

"I wasn't talking about you." Sun Hang waved his hand. "Go on, what other special abilities do you have?"

"As for special abilities... I'm stronger than the average person, but to avoid attracting attention, I never dare to show it too obviously..."

Before Xue Yue could finish speaking, a mycelium puppet suddenly separated from Sun Hang's side. The puppet took two steps forward with a blank expression and stopped less than a meter away from Xue Yue.

“Use all your strength to punch this puppet,” Sun Hang said.

"Good, good."

Xue Yue nodded quickly, then took a step back, assuming a posture that made it easier to exert force.

Although her body was slender and thin, the physical strength of her muscle bundles and bones was significantly greater than that of ordinary people. When all the muscles in her body tensed up, Sun Hang could clearly feel a strange sense of power.

The strange thing about this feeling is that it's like there's a skinny, bony child in front of you, but he has the power to punch a bull to death.

"ah!"

Xue Yue let out a low shout and delivered a straight punch with a whooshing sound to the abdomen of the mycelium puppet. The mycelium puppet staggered back more than ten steps before it could barely regain its balance.

A noticeable indentation appeared on the abdomen of the mycelial puppet.

Through his connection with the mycelium puppet, Sun Hang was able to determine that the force of Xue Yue's punch was between 270 and 290 kilograms.

This data is comparable to that of many top boxers, but it does not exceed the limits of human physiology.

"Was that a full-force punch?" Sun Hang asked Xue Yue for confirmation.

"Mm." Xue Yue nodded.

"Other than that?"

"I can run very fast and hold my breath underwater for a long time... Oh, and if my body gets injured, I recover very quickly... I've observed other humans, and injuries that take them several days to heal, I can recover in half a day at most."

Sun Hang glanced at Xue Yue's knee, which had been a bloody mess not long ago, and saw that the wound had already scabbed over... As for the scrapes on her body, they were now mostly healed.

"So, have your abilities become stronger as you absorb more and more negative emotions?" Sun Hang asked again. "For example, if you initially only had 100 kilograms of force in your punch, but after absorbing negative emotions for a month, your punch strength increased to 120 kilograms... Has anything like this happened?"

The first thing Sun Hang needed to determine was whether this strange creature had the potential to grow stronger... If it could grow stronger by absorbing negative emotions, then Sun Hang had to be more careful—no one could guarantee that if it was allowed to grow like this, it wouldn't become a monster that even Sun Hang couldn't handle in the future.

Xue Yue shook her head repeatedly: "When I first entered this body, this happened... but at that time I hadn't discovered that the black mist could fill my stomach..."

"You mean, after you possessed Xue Yue's corpse, the corpse's various physiological functions rapidly improved to their current level in a short period of time, and then remained unchanged?"

"Ah."

"Then what's the point of absorbing all that negative emotion? Just to fill your stomach?" Sun Hang was puzzled.

This is unreasonable!
Let alone a monster eating, even humans gain weight when they eat. It can't be that this thing's metabolism just happens to be stuck in a delicate balance, and all the negative emotions it absorbs are precisely consumed, resulting in this bizarre situation of "absorbing nothing".

"After you absorb those negative emotions, will you gain those people's memories?" Sun Hang asked again.

“Memory? Never had it… If I hadn’t heard you say it, I wouldn’t have known that the black mist was human negative emotions…” Xue Yue stammered.

"So what did you originally think this black mist was?"

"A kind of...food".

Sun Hang let out a sigh of helplessness.

He suddenly felt that Xue Yue was a bit too naive, so naive that Sun Hang even suspected that she was pretending to be stupid.

"What would happen if you stopped absorbing the black mist... stopped absorbing these negative emotions for a period of time?" Sun Hang changed the angle of his question. "Would your bodily functions decline?"

"No... I only felt extremely hungry, and that feeling was terrifying. When I was extremely hungry, all sorts of random thoughts would pop into my head... thoughts that even terrified me..." A look of lingering fear appeared on Xue Yue's face. "But after I 'ate my fill,' I couldn't remember those thoughts at all. I only remember that they were all terrifying..."

“Hmm…” Sun Hang pinched his chin and pondered.

For Xue Yue, negative human emotions seem to be a kind of "stabilizer." Without regularly taking in this "stabilizer," her mental state seems to fall into a very "dangerous" state.

I just don't know which of those thoughts it described as "extremely terrifying" actually refer to...

Could this guy have a split personality... a double personality?

The outer ghost is a timid and harmless underage girl, while the inner ghost is a cruel, ruthless, and bloodthirsty demon king.

Ricci must absorb those negative emotions to satisfy his "needs," otherwise he will gain control of his body.
It's not difficult to confirm this. Just find an opportunity to "starve" it for a period of time—starve it beyond its tolerance limit, and you might find out what those terrible thoughts are referring to.

Of course, this is on the premise that safety measures are in place to prevent Xue Yue from going berserk and losing control.

“It’s a complete waste for it to absorb those negative emotions; it’s utterly useless to Mom,” Anna’s voice rang in Sun Hang’s ears again. “Kill it. Don’t waste your time on it.” However, Sun Hang completely ignored Anna’s words and said to Xue Yue, “Here’s what we’ll do: from today onwards, you’ll stay by my side and not leave my sight without my permission. I’ll ensure you have plenty of food—both the food a human body needs and those negative emotions that look like black mist. But in exchange, I’ll conduct a series of observational experiments on you, and I need your cooperation as much as possible…Deal?”

"Experiment...what kind of experiment?" Xue Yue asked timidly, "Will they dissect me?"

“I will try my best to ensure that these experiments will not harm you… I say ‘try my best’ because things like blood tests or tissue biopsies are unavoidable. Although the ‘harm’ is very minor, it is still a kind of harm. I don’t like to lie, so I won’t make any absolute statements,” Sun Hang said.

In this statement, he left himself a lot of leeway—even if he really planned to dissect Xue Yue in the future, it wouldn't be considered a breach of his promise.

After all, he only said "try to ensure".

“Okay…” Xue Yue nodded. “Then can I stop worrying about being arrested by the research institute or the Bureau of Anomalies?”

“I’ve got your back, so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” Sun Hang said. “Just tell everyone you’re my sister. I’ll have the mainframe forge a legitimate identity for you… well, not exactly forge, the mainframe creates real identities, since it controls all the citizen registration records in the entire Xia State Federation right now.”

"..." Xue Yue stared at Sun Hang for a long time before finally managing to squeeze out a single word, "Brother?"

"Master, I don't think what I'm doing is against the rules, right?" Sun Hang asked the bracelet.

"According to the assessment results, no obvious threat was found in the creature codenamed 'Xue Yue,' so your actions are still within your authority. However, I still suggest that you remain vigilant about the creature at all times. 'Xue Yue' is a completely new kind of creature, and we know very little about it. We cannot guarantee that it may be hiding some abilities, nor can we guarantee that what it tells you is the truth."

“The latter is certain,” Sun Hang said. “I used mind reading on it, and it was telling the truth.”

Besides reading thoughts, Sun Hang also tried to peek into Xue Yue's past memories, but all he saw were fragmented pieces of life. He didn't see a monster lurking in human society plotting some conspiracy, but only a little girl living at the bottom of society struggling to survive in this bright and bustling metropolis.

"Xue Yue's new identity has been generated, and as you requested, you have become her sole guardian; the relationship is that of siblings," the mainframe said. "I will blur her identity file to ensure it has no connection to the stolen body file."

It must be said that the mainframe is very efficient. Just as they finished speaking, the sound of drone propellers echoed in the pipes... Before long, a drone delivered a freshly printed, still-warm ID card to Xue Yue's hands.

Holding the ID card with her photo and name printed on it, Xue Yue couldn't hide her surprise and joy—she would have agreed to Sun Hang's conditions even if it was just the ID card as a bargaining chip, let alone all the food and lodging.

Meanwhile, Anna kept muttering in Sun Hang's ear, "Kill it, kill it, kill it, kill it, kill it... Why not kill it?"

“Please show some respect to your aunt,” Sun Hang said to Anna. “She is your elder now.”

Anna fell silent for a moment, and after several seconds she said, "Then I'll do it myself."

"Do you really have to kill her? What's your reason?" Sun Hang asked, puzzled. "Just because she took your food? But negative emotions are so abundant in the human world that you can't possibly 'eat' them all up, right? Couldn't you just share some leftovers with her?"

"Reason?" Anna let out a scornful laugh. "It's simple, I don't like her."

"Okay, I'll grant you one request: you give up the idea of ​​killing her, okay?"

"it is good."

"What are the conditions?"

"Kill her."

"another."

"Let me kill her."

“Fuck your mother…” Sun Hang swallowed back the half-swear word he had just uttered, because he realized something—for Anna, all those classic swear words associated with “mother” seemed to be a form of self-insult.

"Let's go," Sun Hang said to Xue Yue.

"Where...where are we going?" Xue Yue asked.

"We have to find you a place to stay, right?" Sun Hang originally wanted to take Xue Yue back to Tian Shu Tower directly, but considering that Tian Shu Tower has all kinds of monitoring equipment for strange creatures, as well as a large group of madmen with different ways of thinking... for Xue Yue, the outside world might be safer.

"I...I have a place to stay," Xue Yue said softly.

"where?"

"Huangdaoceng Liusu District, No. 615 Xinxing Street".

"That area was originally an underground industrial zone in Chunming City, mainly used for processing fuel needed for the old power center. After the complete upgrade of the Chunming City power center, the industrial zone was abandoned. Later, in 4695 of the lunar calendar, it was demolished and redeveloped into a residential area. It is one of the worst-off districts in Chunming City in terms of living conditions and security. The advantage is that the rent is very low, and you can find many jobs that do not require legal status. According to statistics, nearly one-fifth of the people without legal status in Chunming City live in the Liusu constellation of the zodiacal layer." The mainframe immediately informed Sun Hang of the relevant information.

"Do 'slums' exist even in a megacity like Chunming City?" Sun Hang asked.

“Slums exist in every city; it’s unavoidable,” the mastermind replied. “Just as human society will always be divided into different classes due to differences in material conditions.”

"Then why not spend some money to turn the slums into normal residential areas, and give those unregistered residents a household registration so they can work like normal citizens?"

“Cities like Chunming City are constantly absorbing outsiders… Many people believe that they will have a better life after coming to a big city. The attraction of big cities is enough to make them abandon their hometowns, identities, and even relatives…” the mastermind replied, “If you ‘eliminate’ a slum today, a new slum will appear on the outskirts of the city tomorrow… The only way to solve this problem is to take extremely harsh measures against these people, but that goes against federal law.”

“Okay…” Sun Hang sighed. He was neither a sociologist nor a politician. Rather than letting an outsider like him point fingers at these issues, it was better to leave them to the main brain and members of the Federal Parliament to worry about… He didn’t have the energy to deal with these things, nor did he want to.

"Get me a vehicle and take us to the address Xue Yue mentioned."

(End of this chapter)