Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 482 Specialty Latte
“As Lu Xun once said,” Sun Hang said, “‘There was originally no road in this world, but as more people walk on it, it becomes a road.’... If all else fails, why not just build a road in the city?”

“Yeah, why not just blast a passage through?” Wang Xiyi chimed in.

She has a lot to say on this point—she has done it more than once while carrying out all sorts of missions.

Putting everything else aside, just consider the first meeting between Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi. The latter used her own body as a kinetic energy projectile falling from the sky, crashing down from the roof of the haunted house and carving out a "passage" straight to the basement.

Yang Qi asked Wang Xiyi more than once if she did this because of the violent tendencies caused by the black dragon meme, and Wang Xiyi's answer was very straightforward - "to save time".

"..." Yan Yu'an remained silent for a long time before finally managing to utter, "You can give it a try."

Sun Hang: "Alright, let's start assigning tasks now—Zhong Ling, can your monstrous remains be controlled like an autonomous military robot?"

“Once a specific command is set, it will continue to execute even if it leaves my sight,” Zhong Ling replied. “However, when it encounters something beyond the scope of the command, it will not react at all, and the battle will rely entirely on the instincts of the undead.”

“That’s enough. You leave a few skeletons here with the fisherman, Xue Yue, Lieutenant Colonel Yan, and the truck driver.” Sun Hang nodded. “Me, Lao Wang, along with you and the remaining skeletons, we’ll go straight into the Baikal Remains.”

"You can't leave me here!" Yan Yu'an immediately protested. "I must ensure your safety at all times. I want to go in with you."

"Are you sure?" Sun Hang glanced at her. "This is the remains of Baikal after nightfall. You'd better think it over."

"No need to think about it, this is my mission." Yan Yu'an's attitude was very firm.

"And what about you? You're not coming along, are you?" Sun Hang turned to look at the fisherman.

"I...cough cough..." The fisherman took a deep breath, and finally chose to follow his heart, saying righteously, "The task of guarding here is also very important. You can go in with peace of mind. I will help you guard the way back!"

He had to admit that his request to come with Sun Hang earlier was 80% due to a moment of impulse—but now, after a few scoops of ice cream, his mind had completely calmed down.

"Don't think I'm chickening out. I'm just feeling a little off. Maybe I ate too much ice cream and got a stomachache... There are indeed toilet-like structures in the remains of Baikal, but I wouldn't dare use them—who knows if a claw will suddenly stick out of the pit and rip my intestines out while I'm squatting down."

Although the fisherman had said he couldn't eat anymore, he eventually gave in to Xue Yue and finished off the remaining ice cream for her... He didn't understand why this little girl couldn't bear to throw away the ice cream she couldn't finish, even though there were plenty of ice cream scoops in the cafeteria, which made his stomach feel like it was about to churn.

"Could it be because of nervousness?" the fisherman muttered to himself. Back in the day, he was the first person in Baikal City to swallow monsters whole, but now he couldn't even handle a few small ice cream balls.

“Actually, you don’t need to explain.” Sun Hang patted the fisherman on the shoulder and gave him an “I understand” look. “Sometimes, the more you try to explain, the worse it gets.”

"Yes, yes, yes... I'm just a chatterbox, you'll get used to it." The fisherman rubbed his stomach and smiled somewhat awkwardly.

While Sun Hang was talking to the fisherman, Yan Yu'an pulled a heavy equipment bag out of the trunk of the car. She unzipped her down jacket—just as Sun Hang had guessed, she was wearing a military exoskeleton underneath.

To be precise, it should be the inner lining frame of the exoskeleton. At this moment, Yan Yu'an took off his down jacket and began to fit the modular powered exoskeleton pieces onto the inner lining frame, like assembling a steel plate.

When she finished installing the last piece of armor, she had transformed from a 1.8-meter-tall woman into a steel warrior who was over 2 meters tall.

“This armor is pretty fun,” Sun Hang said. “However, I seem to smell a strange scent on it.”

“This suit of armor is model ‘ARM-03P’, officially called the Intelligent Lightweight High-Mobility Tactical Powered Armor ‘Willow Leaf’. However, mine has been modified by the Equipment Department of Tian Shu Tower. Strictly speaking, it should be considered a set of dummy equipment.” Yan Yu’an’s voice came from under the visor.

"Are you still a suitable user of the Ghostly Weapon?"

“No, I am not a suitable candidate.” Yan Yu’an shook his head. “This suit of armor is a ‘mass-produced, general-purpose monster device’ that can be operated without synchronization. The equipment department implanted a portion of artificially cultivated monster tissue into this suit of armor and fused it with the armor, giving the armor some of the characteristics and abilities that originally belonged to the monster.”

Before Yan Yu'an could finish speaking, her figure gradually faded away, almost blending into the background.

“For example, the optical camouflage coating on the armor surface comes from a type E monster called ‘cryptobacterium’.” Yan Yu’an looked at the No. 1 monster standing behind Zhong Ling. “The armor on that monster skeleton also has a cryptobacterium coating on its surface.”

“I know that. The Night Owl special fighter jet also has this kind of coating.” Sun Hang nodded. “But I remember that this stuff doesn’t seem to have much effect on monsters, right? After all, as long as it’s a monster, it has some kind of memetic sensing ability. Applying this stuff not only won’t hide your whereabouts, but it will also make you more conspicuous in the eyes of monsters, right?”

“Most of the memetic sensing range of the most monsters is very short. At long distances, the field of vision is still the main source of information for many Type C monsters,” Yan Yu’an said. “Moreover, the weight of the cryptic coating is almost negligible, so the people in the equipment department often add it when developing this type of armor.”

"How do you control this thing?" Sun Hang asked curiously.

"The optical camouflage ability of the cryptic bacteria is generally triggered by electrical stimulation, and the energy required to use the ability is provided by the coating itself. These cryptic bacteria coated on the armor are all alive, and they can draw energy from the outside world as long as there is sunlight and oxygen."

"So you mean those stockpiled equipment need to be taken out and aired periodically?" Sun Hang complained. "Otherwise, if the fungi die off, won't the optical camouflage coating be ruined?"

"That's the theory."

“What a hassle.” Sun Hang shook his head. “I was thinking of getting an invisibility cloak like the ones in Harry Potter, but now I think I’ll pass.”

Sun Hang could also simulate the optical camouflage ability using "Wish Fulfillment," but it consumed a lot of mental energy and wasn't very useful in battles against strange creatures... He wanted to get an invisibility cloak purely out of a playful mindset.

"Let's go." Sun Hang grabbed his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and headed towards the remains of Baikal.

Wang Xiyi flapped her wings and rose into the air again, while Zhong Ling was carried on the back of a burly, grotesque skeleton. Yan Yu'an glanced back at the people guarding the entrance, said nothing, and silently followed.

The entrance to the Remains of Baikal is a dead-end road that extends out of the city and then abruptly ends at the city's edge. This dead-end road was supposed to connect to an intercity highway, but due to the frequent changes in the structure of the Remains of Baikal, it is no longer in its original location.

As the sun gradually dimmed, the dead-end road moved to the right at a visible speed, along with the buildings on both sides of the road.

“Since this road keeps moving to the right, let’s turn left at every intersection so we don’t get too far from the entrance,” Sun Hang said.

“Your idea is too naive,” Yan Yu’an said in a deep voice. “It’s moving to the right now, but that may not be the case later.”

"Well, we always have to choose a path at a fork in the road, so I'll choose left," Sun Hang said. "When you're on a mission inside the Remains of Baikal, what do you usually do when you encounter a fork in the road? Do you roll dice?"

"It depends on the specific circumstances," Yan Yu'an said.

Wang Xiyi landed on the roof of a building by the roadside, and then walked a few steps forward directly on the roof.

“These buildings look quite sturdy,” Wang Xiyi said. “I tried to put a little more pressure on them, and the roof only cracked a few times.”

Wang Xiyi's "slightly increased force" would probably have punctured the roofs of ordinary houses in Tianfu City... but the structural strength of the buildings inside the Baikal Remains is obviously much stronger than that of conventional reinforced concrete and brick structures.

This means that it will be a little more difficult for them to "carve" a road out of the building than they expected.

But it's only a little bit.

Wang Xiyi increased her strength by half again, and with a "crack" sound, her right foot had already pierced through the roof.

"These houses actually look quite decent," Sun Hang said as he walked forward, looking at the buildings on both sides of the road.

These buildings are clearly copied from Baikal, exhibiting a distinctly Russian style. At first glance, they resemble a Baikal that has survived a massive fire, where all the buildings were charred but not reduced to ashes…

But everything within sight—whether it be roads, buildings, roadside benches, or even fire hydrants—doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

These things contain too many logical errors, like images generated by AI but not properly edited.

At first glance, it looks quite plausible, but upon closer inspection, it's filled with eeriness and chaos.

"This should be a coffee shop, right?" Sun Hang stopped in front of a building with four and a half doors on one side of the wall.

Why is it called 4.5 doors? Because the second and third doors are "stuck" together, with nearly a quarter of their area overlapping, while the fifth door at the very edge is only three-quarters the width—and beyond that, it's the wall of the shop next door.

Although it's quite bizarre, it must be said that this strange creature is quite ethical; the doors are all on its own walls, neither occupying public areas nor encroaching on the space belonging to its neighbors.

That's something I'm better at than people.

Sun Hang reached out and pushed the first door, only to find that it didn't open to the side as it should—the part where the door connected to the wall was on the ground. This made it seem as if Sun Hang had overturned the entire door with brute force, rather than pushed it open.

"It's like the kind of 'avant-garde design' that a brain-dead architect would come up with," Sun Hang muttered, stepping over the door and walking inside.

The café was dark, and even with Yan Yu wearing a spotlight on his armor, it was difficult to illuminate every corner of the shop.

Sun Hang snapped his fingers, and instantly all the lights hanging on the ceiling lit up, and even the advertising signs at the store entrance lit up.

Sun Hang didn't know if there were corresponding circuits behind these light bulbs, but it didn't matter anyway, since what made them light up was Sun Hang's "power of thought," not electricity.

Sun Hang suddenly remembered that the first time he used this ability after waking up was when he turned the fluorescent lights in the hospital into warm light—but at that time he didn't have good control over this ability, and not only did he suffer a backlash, but he also caused a small-scale power outage.

"It really is a coffee shop." Wang Xiyi walked in as well. She folded her wings and reached out to touch the rough wall with great interest.

Sun Hang believed the building was a coffee shop rather than a restaurant mainly because the strange characters on the storefront sign looked more like variations of the letters "Coffee"—a phenomenon similar to AI-generated images: in AI images, almost any text is turned into gibberish, with smaller text becoming barcodes or QR codes, while only larger text retains the original text's general structure.

The coffee cups on the table also proved that Sun Hang's guess was correct.

Sun Hang tried to pick up a coffee cup to examine it, only to find that the cups were "welded" directly to the table. With a little force, he broke off the handle.

Sun Hang walked around to the front of the bar, where several things that looked like coffee machines were placed on the bar and the cabinet behind it.

With a flash of silver light, Sun Hang used the liquid metal blade to "slice" a coffee cup off the table and placed it under a coffee machine, then pressed the only button on the machine.

A few seconds later, a gurgling sound came from inside the machine, and a viscous black liquid was ejected from it.

"This must be the 'specialty latte' the fisherman mentioned, right?"

(End of this chapter)