Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 539 Appeal
If it's the former, wouldn't that be a disguised form of "wish fulfillment"?

Moreover, it was the kind of wish fulfillment that didn't require Sun Hang to pay any price.

As for the side effects of this thing, judging from the gambling addict's memories, it mainly affects a person's mental state and emotions—but with Xue Yue around, this side effect is basically non-existent.

"Could such a good thing really happen?" Sun Hang muttered to himself.

Sun Hang looked at Zhulong and scrutinized him from head to toe until Zhulong seemed a little uncomfortable before asking, "What do you want most? Think it over carefully and tell me, follow your truest feelings."

“The things I want most…” Zhulong paused slightly, “There are so many… but if I were to rank them one by one… to be honest, it would be very difficult.”

"why?"

“People’s desires change depending on their environment and emotions,” Zhulong said. “For example, a person who is about to die of thirst while traveling in the desert probably won’t have any other desires besides a glass of clean, ice-cold water. There’s an old saying, ‘When people are well-fed and clothed, they think of lustful desires.’ Lustful desires can refer to many things: sex, status, power, fame, wealth… But no matter what kind of desire it is, it will only arise from a person’s heart after the basic conditions for survival have been met…”

“Even at different times, as social experience, cognition, and ways of thinking change, people’s desires will also change.” Zhulong shook his head with a wry smile. “Take an ordinary little boy as an example. When he is young, his dream may be to become a special forces soldier, a scientist, an astronaut… When he reaches adolescence, he may yearn for a passionate love or to get into his ideal university; but when this little boy grows up and has been beaten down by society, his wish has probably changed from those lofty ideals to the most simple two words—'make money'.”

"So, you can't even be sure what you want most right now?" Sun Hang asked.

“I can’t be sure, but I can try to guide my thoughts to make me abandon other desires as much as possible and artificially create something that I ‘desir most,’” Zhulong said. “But I’m not sure if this method can fool the monster below.”

"The desire you intend to artificially create is..."

“The other half of the Sphinx’s brain,” Zhulong said solemnly.

……

……

The three continued deeper into the well. Due to the gambler hunter's memories, the entire well gave Sun Hang a vague sense of familiarity, yet this familiarity was tinged with a touch of strangeness.

The shaft must have undergone some subtle changes, and it differs slightly from my memory.

However, this is quite normal. After all, more than a year has passed since the time I remember. It is normal for some minor changes to occur in the well during this year—it would be abnormal if there were no changes at all.

After walking for a while, Sun Hang stopped and walked to the wall. The "prohibition" symbol drawn with paint pen was still there, but compared to how he remembered it, its color was much duller, and a small part of it had even cracked and peeled off, giving it a "mottled" look.

"What is this?" Zhulong also noticed the symbols on the wall and asked.

“Left by the hunters who explored the well before,” Sun Hang said.

“Judging from the marks, this symbol shouldn’t be more than five years old… no, two years,” Zhulong said. “Paint pens don’t adhere well to this type of rock. If it were more than five years old, the symbol should have completely peeled off and we wouldn’t have been able to find it.”

"That's a very accurate assessment." Sun Hang nodded.

"Was it left behind by that hunter?"

"No, it was the previous group. The hunters who just arrived were tasked with searching for the hunter who left this symbol..."

“Search and rescue mission, I think I vaguely remember it.” Zhulong immediately opened his phone, and a few dozen seconds later, he pulled up a hunter file marked as “MIA”.

"Qideli, the memetic he was infected with came from the monster 'Emerald Eye.' He worked for the Luojing Monster Research Institute for six years, and later, after meeting the requirements, he applied for resignation and became a freelance hunter, active in the Yumen Longcheng area. He had a gambling addiction and owed a large amount of gambling debts. In November 4718, he took on a search and rescue mission located in Nanhua Town, and eventually disappeared during the mission... This Qideli, should be the infected person you just shot in the head, right?"

"Hmm, his surname is Qi, and he's a heavily indebted gambler. That must be him." Sun Hang nodded.

"Five people went missing during that operation. Besides Qi Delie, there was a female free hunter codenamed 'Blade Whip,' and three mercenaries who had served in the Dragon City garrison. Their mission was to search the mines in Nanhua Town for another team that had gone missing four days earlier. These two groups are the most recent missing persons among those with detailed records."

"After Qi Deli and the other four went missing at the bottom of the pit, didn't their teammates go down to look for them?" Sun Hang asked, somewhat puzzled. "Their search and rescue team must have had more than just those five people, right?"

“Less than twenty minutes after they entered the mine, a small-scale deadly sandstorm struck Nanhua Town, leaving only two survivors on the surface who made it back to Dragon City,” Zhulong said. “After that, the employer suddenly canceled the search and rescue mission for some reason, and no one has come to Nanhua Town since.”

"Cancel the mission... Didn't they say they wanted to see the person alive or dead? Could it be that the young master of the Song family is facing a financial crisis and has no money?" Sun Hang muttered to himself.

Do you know who the employer is?

“There’s no record of it. The employer didn’t publicize the mission online. Instead, they found these hunters and mercenaries through an agency in Dragon City. And that agency keeps its clients’ information completely confidential…” Zhulong said.

"Secret? Even the Heavenly Pivot Tower's access rights can't find out?"

"It can't be found because they communicate face-to-face and don't keep records. So even the mastermind can't find the employer's true identity through the intermediary's information. However, the mastermind might be able to deduce the employer's identity by tracing where the intermediary's people went and who they met during that period... Anyway, the mastermind's authority is with you, so you can give it a try."

"Never mind, this isn't important." After saying that, Sun Hang suddenly turned to look into the depths of the well. A humanoid monster, resembling a dried corpse, limped out of the shadows, clutching a long metal whip tightly in its hand.

“That weapon… belongs to another female hunter who disappeared with Zidre, the ‘Blade Whip’,” Zhulong immediately reminded her.

“I know.” Sun Hang nodded. He not only knew that the humanoid monster was Blade Whip, but he also knew that Blade Whip was killed by Qi Delie, and he even knew the manner of his death.

“Unlike the infected person from before, I can’t sense any emotion from it,” Xue Yue said softly.

“Of course they’re different. That guy was at least alive, but this thing in front of us is a monster that has truly come back from the dead,” Sun Hang said. “If we’re talking about similarities, it’s more like the ascetic monk who led the way for us.”

As he spoke, the resurrected Blade Whip, no longer staggering, began to run wildly, its metal whip lashing out at Sun Hang with a whooshing sound.

The shaft here is quite spacious, so there's no need to worry about the metal whip being unable to be used effectively like it would be in the tunnel.

However, the enemies it faced were not ordinary hunters like Zidre, who only had a dagger and whose physical abilities were not much stronger than those of ordinary people.

When the metal whip was still several meters away from Sun Hang, it had already liquefied into a stream of silvery molten iron, rolled once in the air, and finally fell into Sun Hang's palm. The next second, the molten iron condensed again and became a javelin, which Sun Hang "gently" threw out.

With a "thud," the spear pierced through the withered flesh of the blade whip in an instant. The enormous kinetic energy dragged the blade whip backward for more than ten meters before pinning it to the ground at an angle.

Blade Whip did not die; a mere penetrating wound to the chest was not fatal to a monster like it.

It grabbed the javelin with both hands and tried to pull it out a few times, but the javelin was firmly embedded in the ground and it could not pull it out with its strength.

Seeing this, the blade whip plunged its ten claw-like fingers into its own chest, tearing its chest open and thus breaking free from the spear's control.

As the chest was torn open, its internal organs were fully exposed to Sun Hang and his companions—organs such as the heart, spleen, and lungs were all shriveled into blackened, dried-up lumps of flesh. There was no blood in its body; pale fascia and ligaments wrapped around the bones, and dark red muscles, like cured meat, propelled this mummified body… It was hard to imagine how those completely dehydrated muscles could stretch or contract like normal muscles. However, what intrigued Sun Hang more than this was the reason for its “resurrection.”

Unlike Qi Delie, Blade Whip and the ascetic monk were originally dead... People who are completely dead have virtually no chance of being resurrected unless they are infected by some kind of zombie meme. However, Sun Hang did not sense any strange meme aura on Blade Whip or the ascetic monk...

The ascetic monk wasn't infected to begin with, so it's reasonable that he didn't have any memetic aura. As for the whip, the memetic within it should have completely dissipated after its death. If an infected corpse isn't completely corrupted, it will eventually become like a normal person after a while, and even the body organs mutated by the monster memetic will gradually return to their original state…

From another perspective, the dissipation of the memetic aura on the blade whip also confirms the reality of its death...

But if that's the case, how did it come back to life without any influence from the weird memes?

Does "desire" have the ability to be resurrected?

Sun Hang was startled.

He suddenly remembered the few words that Zhulong had just said to him.

When a person is dying of thirst in the desert, their greatest desire is to drink a sip of water.

As human beings, among all desires, the desire for survival is the first to be satisfied. Only after the desire for survival is satisfied will other desires arise...

A dying person... her greatest obsession, or rather, her strongest desire before death, was probably—"not to die."

So that strange object that Sun Hang temporarily named "Desire" could even do this?

No, no, no... that's not the point. The point is that the Blade Whip has really come back to life!

Although it looks a bit like a zombie now, it proves that "desire" has the ability to interfere with reality!

Before her death, Blade Whip's mind was already in disarray. All she wanted was to live, but she probably didn't understand how to live. In this situation, the effect of "desire" would also be distorted—like the genie who turns a black person into a white toilet: it only fulfills your wish, and if you don't explain the process in detail, it means it's left to "play by its own rules"...

If a person who is clear-headed, has meticulous thinking, rigorous logic, and is completely unaffected by negative emotions were to appear here... wouldn't this so-called "desire" be no different from Aladdin's lamp?
Suppose this person has extremely lofty ideals, and their greatest desire is to completely eliminate the monsters from this world and restore humanity's previous life. Wouldn't this "desire" then come up with an "ultimate solution"?
No...that's not right!
Sun Hang was suddenly startled. He realized he had made a mistake—he almost turned into a white toilet like the black man in that joke.

How to eliminate all the monsters and restore humanity's former life is a question that even humanity itself does not know the answer to. This means that if we make this request to "desire," then in the process of fulfilling this wish, it will most likely be distorted... As for how distorted it will be, that is hard to say.

A simple desire to "not want to die" can turn a person into a zombie, let alone a grand wish that could change the entire world.

Fortunately... fortunately, Nagano Soya's father didn't actually make that request to "desire" back then, otherwise, who knows what the world would be like now.

But Nagano Soya was right about one thing: this thing can indeed change the current state of human civilization.

[P.S. Although this joke is quite old, I'll still explain it here for some readers who might not have heard it: A black man, lost and dying of thirst in the desert, found a magic lamp and made three wishes to the genie: 1. To have water to drink; 2. To become white; 3. To see women's butts every day...]

(End of this chapter)