Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 516 The Dissolving Man
“Hey buddy.” The mercenary walked up to the car and tapped the badly damaged hood with the muzzle of his gun. “Can you guys get out yourselves? Uh, don’t get me wrong, I mean, do you need emergency medical services…”

He frowned, took a few steps back, shrugged at the cars, and continued, "Judging from the condition of these cars, you seem to have been through a fierce battle."

No one responded to him, and the car door remained unopened.

The entire convoy remained stationary, without making a sound.

"Something's not right, something's really not right..." A murmur rippled through the crowd.

"Can you sense the meme atmosphere inside the car?"

"Yes...but it's very strange..."

"Could it be..."

"Shh, don't talk nonsense!"

"I seriously doubt whether the driver is a person or something else... Damn it, who can tear that thing behind the windshield!"

"If they were monsters, they should have just driven right into us, right? Even if Simmons isn't dead, he'd at least have a few broken bones... But they listened to Simmons and obediently stopped the car."

"Hey, Simmons, go up and take a look!" a hunter urged.

"I'm not going!" Simmons, the mercenary who had just stopped the car, shook his head. "There's definitely something wrong with this convoy!"

"You've always been known for your bravery, haven't you? Why are you chickening out now?" another mercenary with a thick beard mocked.

"You fucking bastard, shut the hell up! I may be bold, but I'm not stupid." Simmons spat on the ground. "You don't know anything! This isn't cowardice, it's caution!"

“Here’s what we’ll do, Simmons, I’ll offer you a thousand dollars.” The hunter who had initially egged him on spoke up again, “You go up and open the car door, and the thousand dollars is yours.”

"A thousand dollars? You want me to take that risk?" Simmons shook his head with disdain. "Dream on!"

"I'll add another five hundred!" The bearded man held up five fingers. "No, a thousand directly. Just open the car door, and I'll give you my thousand dollars and the blue-eyed guy's thousand dollars!"

Simmons swallowed hard... Earning two thousand dollars just for pulling the car door open was a rare treat... But after a few seconds, he shook his head: "No way."

"I'll add two hundred too."

"Go open the car door, and I'll give you another five hundred!"

The crowd immediately started talking all at once, and the "pool" had accumulated to 6,800 pieces.

“Simmons, if you’re not going to do it, I’ll… it doesn’t matter who pulls the car door anyway,” the bearded man suddenly said. “If I pull that car door, your price will still be valid, right?”

"Of course it counts!"

"It doesn't matter who pulls it!"

"Hey, you go tell that coward Simmons to come back here!"

The crowd immediately started to cheer.

"Stop arguing!" Simmons roared. "Six thousand eight, huh? I'll take it!"

Everyone suddenly became quiet.

Under the watchful eyes of dozens of people, Simmons carefully walked to the left side of the lead car in the convoy.

He took a deep breath, raised the butt of his gun, and gently knocked twice on the driver's side door.

“Hey bro,” Simmons called out to the car, “Don’t mind if I open the door for you?”

As before, there was no response from inside the car.

"Phew..." Simmons let out a long sigh, hung the assault rifle behind him, and drew the pistol from his waist.

He held a pistol in his right hand, pointing it at the driver's seat, while his left hand slowly rested on the car door handle.

Simmons held his breath and pulled hard.

"Shit!" Simmons cursed. "The car door is fucking stuck!"

Everyone was startled by his sudden outburst of profanity, but the atmosphere immediately eased after they heard that the car door was stuck.

"Simmons, do you need us to get you a hydraulic shears?" the bearded man shouted.

"Why don't you try the other doors? They shouldn't be able to get stuck, right?"

Simmons examined the car door again, then pulled the handle, saying with some doubt, "The car body doesn't look deformed... and the door handle feels... a bit strange..."

"What do you mean by 'a little strange'?" asked the hunter nicknamed Blue Eyes.

"I realized that when I pulled on the door, it was actually loose... It wasn't like it was stuck, but rather like it was being sucked in by something," Simmons described.

"Why don't you try using a little more force?" Blue Eyes suggested.

"Two of you come over here and keep an eye on the people in the car," Simmons beckoned to the onlookers. "I'll give each of you five hundred!"

The crowd looked at each other, but no one stepped forward.

“Damn it, a thousand each!” Simmons yelled.

"The roles have changed a bit too quickly," Sun Hang said to Zhulong with a smile, his hands in his pockets as he watched the spectacle from a distance. "Just a moment ago, this guy was trying to raise the price, and now the roles have been reversed."

"Can you sense whether there's a person or a monster inside the car?" Zhulong asked.

“Judging from the meme frequency, the infection level is very high, but it shouldn’t have exceeded the danger threshold yet,” Sun Hang said after a moment of thought. “But we can’t rule out the possibility that some methods have been used to hide the true infection process… If the people sitting in the car are normal infected individuals, there’s no reason for them not to get out now, right?”

“I can’t sense anything,” Xue Yue suddenly said. “I can’t sense any emotion in those cars.”

As the saying goes, a great reward will surely bring forth brave men. This was true for Simmons, and it was also true for the group of hunters and mercenaries.

After the price was increased to 1,300, two mercenaries stepped forward. They went around behind Simmons, climbed onto a pile of rubble on the side of the street, and set up a gun for Simmons from a high vantage point.

"Hey, what's the point of you guys standing so far away?" Simmons said, somewhat annoyed. "Do you think my money is just for feeding dogs?" "Shut up, Simmons. What's the difference between five meters and fifteen meters?" a mercenary with a gun said. "Whether it's a monstrous skeleton or some other strange creature that crawls out after you open the door, I can blow its head off! As for you, stop dawdling and open the door already!"

"Damn it!" Simmons cursed, holstered his pistol, grabbed the car door handles with both hands, and pulled back forcefully.

With a loud bang, Simmons opened the car door and fell backward to the ground.

A strong smell of blood immediately filled the air, and thick blood plasma flowed out from inside the car along the edge of the door.

"Holy crap..." The two mercenaries crouching on the ruins didn't fire their guns. Instead, they stood up in astonishment and took off their goggles.

Simmons scrambled to get away from the car, while onlookers rushed to the side of the street to try and get a better look at what was inside.

"Fuck, what is this?"

It was only then that everyone realized that what was covering the car window was actually a layer of fleshy membrane that was still slowly wriggling—almost the entire interior of the car was covered by this fleshy membrane.

The person sitting in the cockpit—let's still call him a "person" for now—looked like a wax figure near a heat source, his flesh and blood silently melting, turning into viscous blood that flowed down the seat, collected inside the car, and then overflowed from the edges of the doors…

The viscous plasma was not pure blood, but a mixture of the "person's" skin, muscles, internal organs, and other substances melted together.

But what's even more astonishing is that this melting human figure is still alive!
Its white bones were exposed in many places, but its hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly and its right foot was still on the brake. However, its leg bones, having lost muscle, had no strength. If the car hadn't been in neutral, Simmons, who had just blocked the way, would probably have been knocked to the ground.

The wax figure turned its head with some difficulty and opened its mouth towards the crowd, but could not make any sound—its vocal cords and organs had melted, and it had completely lost the ability to speak.

Or to put it more bluntly, the fact that this person isn't quite dead yet is itself an unbelievable thing.

"Clap."

One of its eyeballs fell out of its eye socket and into the "blood plasma" on the ground.

The eyeball rolled around in the blood plasma a few times, then quickly "shriveled up" until it merged with the blood plasma.

Immediately afterwards, the muscles and ligaments connecting the upper and lower jaws dissolved, and its entire lower jawbone fell off its face.

"My God!" Simmons' hands, gripping the gun, trembled slightly, but he still didn't pull the trigger.

Simmons sensed a plea for help in the other person's last remaining eye.

“Sorry, I can’t help you.” Simmons took two steps back and shook his head. “Dude, nobody here can help you, sorry.”

Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, the infected person's body was completely reduced to a pool of pus and blood, leaving only a stark white skeleton sitting on the car seat.

"He...he...he...did he drive back like this?" a mercenary stammered. "What about the other cars..."

Everyone couldn't help but turn their attention to the other cars in the convoy.

"Should we... help him collect his remains?"

"Don't touch these things yet," a seasoned hunter shouted. "If you don't want to end up like that!"

"Then what should we do?"

“Send someone to inform the boss of Chunfeng… Also…” the old hunter said after a moment of thought, “Whatever you do, don’t open the doors of the other cars!”

"why?"

"Judging from the rate at which this person dissolves, it's impossible for him to have driven this car from the no-man's land to Yumen... In other words, the dissolution process started when Simmons opened the car door." The old hunter immediately pointed out the crux of the problem.

"You mean, I killed him?" Simmons asked, startled.

“No, this has nothing to do with you. Whoever opens the car door is doomed.” The old hunter shook his head. “We should try to rescue the people in the other cars now… at least, we can’t let them die before they can speak.”

"Could it be the air?" The bearded man had a sudden inspiration. "Simmons just said the car door was sucked in, which means the car was completely sealed before. Forcibly opening the door caused air to rush in... and they might be infected with some kind of special meme that causes the body to dissolve once it comes into contact with air..."

“Besides air, it could be sunlight, or something else,” a female mercenary with short, dark blue hair said coldly. “Don’t jump to conclusions… If we misjudge, the people in the other vehicles could be killed.”

The bearded man glanced at her, strode to the second car, knocked hard on the window, and shouted, "Hey, guys inside! I know you're in a dangerous situation! But to save you, we need to check on you! If you can hear me, please make a sound! Flashing your headlights would be fine too!"

"Big Beard, are you blind...? Didn't you notice that the headlights of this car have been smashed?" a mercenary complained.

The second vehicle was a modified minivan, but the entire front of the vehicle was now crushed. Fortunately, the minivan's engine was embedded in the bottom of the vehicle rather than in the front, otherwise the vehicle would probably have been totaled long ago.

The van's headlights were off, but the windshield wipers suddenly started moving.

"I can hear him!" the bearded man exclaimed excitedly. "He can hear my voice!"

Immediately afterward, he pounded on the car window and shouted, "Brother! Hang in there! We'll find a way to get you out! If all else fails, we'll pack up these cars and send them back to Longcheng! Trust me, Longcheng will definitely have a solution!"

Before the bearded man could finish speaking, he noticed a rather unfamiliar young man walking up to him.

"Who are you?" the bearded man asked, glancing at Sun Hang.

Sun Hang ignored him and instead placed his hand on the car door.

"What are you doing?" The bearded man's face darkened when he saw Sun Hang's actions. "Don't do anything rash! If you open the car door now, who killed them!"

Instead of opening the car door, Sun Hang had a thin mycelium drill a small hole in the door and probe into the car.

“No emotions, no memories… nothing at all,” Sun Hang said with some regret. “There’s only a bunch of completely disordered memes, and the apoptosis of cells and the collapse of the body are completely irreversible… He’s beyond saving.”

"What are you talking about?" the bearded man glared at Sun Hang. "And who the hell are you?"

“I said, the person sitting in the car is already dead.”

"A dead man? Can a dead man drive? He just responded to me!" the bearded man said defiantly.

"That's just a conditioned reflex left over from the body."

"Bullshit, how can a conditioned reflex start a car?"

“Obsession… or you could say it’s the last breath these people held onto before they died,” Sun Hang said. “When you stopped the convoy, that breath dissipated.”

(End of this chapter)