Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 468 "The Tree"

……

The freight elevator descended rapidly, quickly reaching the deepest basement level, the third basement level. However, the elevator did not stop there; it continued to descend.

“After the renovation, the exterior of this building looks almost the same as it did decades ago, but the interior construction cost me a lot of money,” Lin Lun said, standing at the front and staring at the control panel of the freight elevator.

"Can the patented technology you developed sell for so much money?" Sun Hang asked with some curiosity.

"That was just my first pot of gold," Lin Lun said with a smile. "Given the current structure of human society, there are many ways to make money quickly, but none of them include researching and developing technical patents."

“That makes sense.” Sun Hang nodded in deep agreement.

Given Lin Lun's absolute power in the Willow Constellation region of the zodiacal layer, he has countless ways to make money if he wants to.

The white lights inside the freight elevator suddenly switched to red warning lights indicating maintenance. The sound of hinges and chain rubbing continued unabated. A hint of unease began to appear in Xue Yue's eyes. After hesitating a few times, she finally reached out and grabbed Sun Hang's sleeve.

"Aren't you afraid this is a trap I've set for you?" Lin Lun turned his head and glanced at Sun Hang out of the corner of his eye. "A hunter like you, who has the ability to read other people's minds, should be extra vigilant if your ability suddenly fails, right?"

“You’re right within my reach, why should I worry that this is a trap?” Sun Hang retorted.

"What if I were to get involved? When people are desperate, they'll do crazy things, like taking everyone down with them." Lin Lun said these terrifying words, but the smile on his face remained unchanged. "Not to mention, I'm the kind of person who doesn't care much about my own life or the lives of others."

“You’re right about one thing: you and I are very similar… or rather, very similar to me when I first woke up,” Sun Hang said. “But even if it’s a trap, I don’t care.”

"You don't care about your own life or death?" Lin Lun's smile faded slightly, a hint of curiosity flashing in his eyes.

“No, it’s just that I believe I won’t die,” Sun Hang replied.

"Ok?"

"If you could break through the barrier between the ecliptic and the Heavenly Market Enclosure on your own, you would have that confidence too. At least in one respect, the gap between us is still quite large."

When he said this, Sun Hang tried his best to control his expression—such a pretentious line had to be said with a blank expression to make it seem sophisticated.

"...I'm very curious." Lin Lun remained silent for a few seconds before speaking again, "What...is the strange thing that infected you?"

Different monsters possess different abilities, and it's extremely rare for a monster to possess multiple vastly different abilities. Furthermore, those infected by monster memes often only gain a fraction of the original user's abilities from the memes. For this reason, hunters are divided into many types—not all hunters are skilled in combat.

As for someone like Sun Hang, who not only possesses formidable combat abilities, remains unharmed even when directly hit by bullets, can see materialized negative emotions, and can even read other people's thoughts, but now claims to have the ability to penetrate a 120-meter-thick layer of concrete... Lin Lun had never even heard of such an "all-around" hunter, let alone seen him in person.

If this guy in front of me isn't lying, then why have I never seen him on the Hunter Rankings?

Could he be a "secret weapon" hidden away by the Tian Shu Tower?
Lin Lun took a deep breath.

"Boom."

The freight elevator stopped.

"Have we arrived?" Sun Hang asked.

"We've arrived." Lin Lun nodded. "Welcome to... the Well of Desire."

"The Well of Desire?"

“This is the name I gave this place.” After Lin Lun finished speaking, he looked at Xue Yue, who was hiding most of her body behind Sun Hang, “This is where she was born.”

Sun Hang followed Lin Lun out of the freight elevator. The underground space was filled with dark gray concrete, and in some places, steel structural supports embedded in the concrete could be seen, like bones exposed from flesh and blood.

“It took me four years to build this place,” Lin Lun said. “I know that compared to a city like Chunming City, this project is insignificant, but it is still very difficult to complete this project under the noses of Tian Shu Tower and the Garrison Legion. I once thought about giving up and moving to some second-tier cities where the population is not as large, but the supervision is relatively weak.”

"How did you manage to keep it a secret?" Sun Hang asked. "Those workers... You wouldn't be like those ancient tyrants who, to ensure the secrets and mechanisms of the tomb weren't revealed, had all the workers who built the tomb embedded in the tomb walls, would you?"

“Although I disregard life and have taken many lives, it still makes me somewhat sad to be compared to those tyrants,” Lin Lun said. “Building an underground space like this is something that undocumented vagrants cannot do; it can only be done by professional construction teams. And these people all have legal status and complex social networks. Killing so many people at once will only hasten the exposure of this place.”

"Not kill anyone? Then how did you keep quiet? Money can solve many problems, but it can't solve all of them."

“All we need to do is… strip away a part of their memories,” Lin Lun said. “They will forget everything that happened here. They might feel something is off at first, but time will eventually smooth things over… They will only remember taking over the renovation project of a pollutant treatment company’s factory, but they will not remember building a huge underground space under the factory.”

Lin Lun led Sun Hang and Xue Yue forward. Sun Hang could clearly feel that Xue Yue's grip on his sleeve had tightened considerably. The three of them passed through a corridor and came to an iron door—the door was unlocked, and a rusty door knocker was simply and crudely welded to it.

Sun Hang clearly saw that tangible negative emotions were like a hibernating black snake, coiled on the door knocker.

Lin Lun reached out, passed through the black snake's illusory body, grasped the door knocker, and forcefully retreated inward.

The edges of the iron gate made a screeching sound, and one searchlight after another lit up with a "click". The darkness receded, and at the end of this underground space, a strangely shaped "tree" appeared in Sun Hang's field of vision.

It's hard to describe what kind of eerie thing this is. The trunk and branches of this "tree" look like they are made of tangled muscle bundles from an animal. The deep red surface has clear muscle fiber textures and is covered with a thin layer of white fascia.

But its shape is very much like a tree, a perennial tree that rises from the ground and grows strong. It is rooted in a pool of blood-red soil, and its branches stretch upward with all their might, as if trying to touch the sky that does not exist in this underground space.

Sun Hang felt that what he was seeing was like an artist using drawing software to draw a bare tree in autumn and winter with all its leaves gone, then using the software's built-in cutout function to remove everything except the outline, and then filling the outline with muscle texture, finally resulting in a "tree" that had both plant and animal characteristics.

"Is this what you found?" Sun Hang asked.

“Yes…” Lin Lun walked forward.

The tree was planted in a huge pool filled with a blood-red substance that resembled soil. Outside the pool was an even larger glass dome, and beyond that was a suspended corridor that looked like a hangar maintenance platform.

The place where Sun Hang and his group entered was actually located "halfway up the mountain" of this underground space. At both ends of the suspended corridor were metal steps spiraling downwards... For some reason, Sun Hang always felt that the dark red rust on the metal steps looked like mottled bloodstains.

Lin Lun stopped at the edge of the suspended walkway and placed his hands on the equally rusty railing.

“When I got it, it was just a seedling.” Lin Lun looked up at the “canopy” that was a hundred meters above the ground and murmured, “But now, it has grown into a towering tree.”

"When do you plan to tell the second half of your story?" Sun Hang asked. "I suddenly understand the pain of those readers who follow online novels."

"You must have checked my personal file, right?" Lin Lun asked.

"researched."

"Can you find out how many times I've left Chunming City?"

"Yes, a total of sixteen times, and without exception, the reason was business trips." The mainframe's voice came through the earpiece, and Sun Hang read it aloud word for word. "Eleven of them were for selling the technology of Fuxing Pollutant Treatment Company and conducting business negotiations with companies in other places. The other five were noted as 'technical inspections'."

"It was during a 'technical expedition' that I discovered it on the Tatar steppe, a thousand kilometers away from Chunming City."

"The Tatar steppe?"

“There are many nomadic people on the Tatar steppe who live in tribes—due to their geographical location, they were almost negligibly affected by the First Monster War. And apart from mining the mineral resources of the Tatar steppe, the federal government rarely contacts these nomadic tribes,” Lin Lun said.

“We found it… It was July of the year 4710 in the Chinese calendar. At that time, you had not yet become the chairman of Fuxing Pollutant Treatment Company. You went to the Tatar grassland as a representative of the company to investigate the desertification problem. At that time, Fuxing Pollutant Treatment Company was not doing well. The company's management planned to transform the business, and you were sent to the Tatar grassland to investigate in order to determine the direction and feasibility of the transformation,” Sun Hang said.

“I spent three months on the Tatar steppe, during which time I came into contact with five local nomadic tribes… The first four tribes were quite friendly to me, an outsider… In fact, they are no longer nomadic tribes in the true sense. The resource subsidies given to them by the federal government far exceed the money they can earn from herding. Many young people in these tribes have gone to modern cities, and many of those who remain have chosen to work for mining companies instead of continuing to herd.”

Lin Lun continued, “Although their attitude is very friendly, they are not proactive in addressing the problem of grassland desertification. In their view, as long as the mineral veins under the grassland are not depleted, their livelihoods will be guaranteed. As for the sharp reduction in grazing areas caused by the decrease in grassland area, they do not actually care.”

“I stayed in those mining areas for half a month, and then an old woman from a tribe told me that deep in the grasslands, there was a nomadic tribe with extremely mysterious whereabouts. They had always followed the way of life of their ancestors. If I wanted to do some research, I might be able to go to them. This old woman was not very good at hearing or understanding. She always thought that I, with a camera hanging around my neck, was a reporter sent by a TV station.”

“In the darkness, I felt a voice telling me to go deep into the grasslands to find that mysterious nomadic tribe… After making some necessary preparations, the next day, I bid farewell to the person in charge of the mining area and, with some clues provided by the old man, embarked on the journey to find that nomadic tribe.”

"It took me two weeks to find this mysterious nomadic tribe by following the dung and campsites of cattle and sheep... To my surprise, when the people of this tribe found me, they were extremely unfriendly to me... A young shepherd even shot three arrows at me with a strong warning."

"The three arrows landed less than five meters in front of me, as if to tell me that if I took a few more steps closer, I would be pierced through the chest by the arrows."

“But I didn’t give up, because that voice told me that I was very close to the goal I had been pursuing all along… I followed the tribe from a distance, setting up camp when they set up camp, and moving with them when they migrated. I followed them for almost a month before a herdsman rode up to me on horseback and told me in broken Chinese that there were no mineral veins here and that I shouldn’t waste my energy.”

“I told him I wasn’t from the mining company, but a journalist,” Lin Lun said with a smile. “I even used the camera that had caused the old man’s misunderstanding to take a picture of him.”

"Although the people of this nomadic tribe were very xenophobic, they were surprisingly simple-minded. The herders quickly believed what I said... The children, who had never had their pictures taken before, crowded in front of me, laughing and wanting me to take a picture of each of them."

“Through these photos, I got along well with the people of this tribe. They gave me a lot of dried meat and cheese... But when I asked them if I could join them and take some photos of their daily lives, they clearly hesitated.”

(End of this chapter)