Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 541 The Six-Eared Macaque

“Those things I saw… have all disappeared,” Xue Yue continued.

“Abnormal…it is indeed a bit abnormal,” Sun Hang said, looking at his other self not far away.

The course of events did indeed exceed Sun Hang's expectations, but it was only beyond his expectations, not beyond his control.

“It’s a bit unusual, but—” Sun Hang also laughed, “it’s very interesting.”

Seeing Sun Hang smile, the other Sun Hang, who was the embodiment of "desire," became wary. He stared intently at Sun Hang and asked, "Why are you smiling? You shouldn't be smiling at a time like this."

"Why are you so nosy? I can laugh if I want, it's none of your business!" Sun Hang gave his other self the middle finger.

"Sun Hang, who are you talking to?" Zhulong asked from the side.

“I know you too well, as well as I know myself… or rather, we are the same person.” The other Sun Hang said in a deep voice, “I understand very well what your smile means…”

"Oh, tell me about it," Sun Hang asked with interest. "I wouldn't even dare say I understand myself, yet you dare to speak so confidently?"

“Either you’re bluffing…or you have a trump card that can destroy me,” another Sun Hang said.

"As expected of me, you guessed right." Sun Hang nodded. "Then guess again, which situation is it now?"

“I don’t need to guess, I just need to kill you.” Another Sun Hang laughed as tens of thousands of Tai Sui mycelia wrapped in crimson spores spread out from behind him, and dozens of liquid metal flying blades of various shapes floated on his side. Between these liquid metal flying blades, bluish-white arcs of electricity could be faintly seen jumping back and forth.

Desire not only replicated Sun Hang as an individual, but also copied Sun Hang's meme abilities in one fell swoop.

“This is a very fair duel. To your friend, I do not exist in this world, and I will not have any other helpers. No outsiders will interfere in our battle… We have the exact same bodies and the exact same abilities, and even our ways of thinking and combat experience are identical,” the other Sun Hang said.

"Oh... after all that, you just wanted to kill me?" Sun Hang muttered.

"Only one of us can exist. If I win, I will replace you and become the only Sun Hang in this world." Sun Hang said with a sneer. The electric arc between the liquid metal blades suddenly increased, crackling incessantly, and a faint stench filled the air.

This is the smell of ozone produced when oxygen in the air is ionized under the influence of a high-voltage electric field. Sun Hang often smells this odor when using Kui Niu's lightning abilities.

“I suddenly feel like I should change my name,” Sun Hang said seriously.

"Change what?" another Sun Hang immediately asked.

“I shouldn’t be called Sun Hang, I should be called Sun Wukong.” Sun Hang pointed to his other self and continued, “And you, you can be called the Six-Eared Macaque. What do you think? Isn’t that fitting?”

“Then you must have heard a saying…” another Sun Hang said, “Actually, in the story of the true and false Monkey Kings, the one who was killed was the real Sun Wukong, while the one who accompanied Tang Sanzang to the Western Paradise to obtain the scriptures and eventually became the Victorious Fighting Buddha was actually the Six-Eared Macaque who deceived everyone…”

"Do you think Sun Wukong's abilities are cheat codes?" Sun Hang took a step forward.

"No," another Sun Hang said decisively. "Sun Wukong is very powerful, but in the world of Journey to the West, there are many beings more powerful than him..."

“But I know how to use it, and you don’t have this cheat yet.” Sun Hang clapped his hands. “Those three monkeys who have been spying on the screen can make their move now.”

"What do you want to say—uh...ah..."

Before Sun Hang, the embodiment of desire, could finish speaking, his body suddenly swelled up. In just a few seconds, he transformed from a normal-sized human male into a sphere with a diameter of over five meters. The flesh on his body was stretched to almost transparent, and one could vaguely see the twisted bones and shattered organs inside the sphere.

"What...what is this?!"

The other Sun Hang had lost the ability to speak, and his voice rang out directly in Sun Hang's consciousness.

“Just before I walked out of the tunnel, I used my ‘wish fulfillment’ ability on myself. The effect of the ability was to make me temporarily forget the existence of the ‘Three Apes.’ I can’t isolate the Three Apes’ perception of this world, but it’s still very easy to bury my head in the sand and deceive myself,” Sun Hang laughed. “So, the Sun Hang you copied is actually incomplete… You’ve missed that most abnormal and unreasonable cheat.”

"Three Apes? What are Three Apes?!" Another Sun Hang... no, now it should be called "Desire" was screaming wildly in Sun Hang's mind, "This is impossible... there can't be any monster that can restrain me! I am the sum of the desires of all intelligent beings in this world, my ability is..."

Before it could finish speaking, its consciousness was completely erased from this world with a soft "pop".

Just like a soap bubble that has been popped.

"What a pity." Looking at his other self, who had turned into pus and blood and was gradually seeping into the ground, Sun Hang sighed inwardly.

With the help of the three apes, he could easily kill the "desire" that he had tricked, but it was precisely because of the three apes' interference that he had no chance to devour the meme of "desire".

"Desire" is clearly an extremely overpowered Type A monster. Its rules are strong enough to "defy fate"—if Sun Hang hadn't made himself forget the existence of the "Three Apes" beforehand, the Three Apes might have been "copied" by Desire.

Moreover, "Desire" possesses a very clear sense of personality, making it a rare and communicative entity.

Whether it's its memes, its knowledge, or its memories, they are all incredibly valuable to Sun Hang... but with the Three Apes around, these things are destined not to fall into Sun Hang's hands.

Even if Sun Hang chooses to fight "Desire" one-on-one, the three apes will take matters into their own hands and eliminate Desire, leaving no room for maneuver.

As for letting desire replicate the Three Apes as well... that's far too risky. It's not even a question of whether to play it safe... Even with Sun Hang's own abilities, he couldn't handle the Three Apes. So what if there were two Three Apes existing at the same time...?

It's fine if these two apes fight each other, but what if... what if they team up?

The three annoying monkeys have turned into six monkeys; just thinking about it is enough to make my head spin.

Considering that the three apes would almost never obey Sun Hang's commands, the three apes copied by "Desire" would most likely not become "Desire's" vassals... So what was copied was not an ability, but rather the creation of an ancestor for oneself.

Of course, Sun Hang felt that the most likely scenario was that "desire" would be directly eliminated by the three apes during the replication process.

That conversation would never have happened—even though the information contained in that conversation was not important to Sun Hang.

"Desire" clearly doesn't know its own origins, which is fundamentally different from Anna. Anna would actively avoid the three apes' red lines, while "Desire" is just a simpleton, blindly running into the three apes' guns.

After realizing this, Sun Hang's feelings of regret lessened somewhat.

“Sun Hang, were you just… communicating with ‘desire’?” Zhulong pressed from the side. “You could see that strange creature? In what form did it appear before your eyes? And… does it possess self-awareness? Is it a personified strange creature?”

“It should be a Type A monster,” Sun Hang said, “but it has already dissipated.”

"Dissipated?" Zhulong's eyes widened in surprise. "You killed it?"

“Hmm.” Sun Hang nodded. “I had a thought that I wanted it to disappear, and then it very considerately died, fulfilling my wish.”

"This...this can't be right, can it?" Zhulong frowned. "Could it be a trap set by some strange creature?"

The moment the word "trap" was uttered, the ground in the hollow rock cavity suddenly began to shake violently, and countless cracks began to spread on the rock walls. Soon, the ground beneath the three of them had split into hundreds of pieces of varying sizes.

"It was a trap after all!" Zhulong hissed. "This place is about to collapse! We have to get out of here quickly!"

"Earthquake, no, it's not an earthquake." Sun Hang looked at the cracks around him, and an extremely powerful and eerie aura burst forth from them.

These memes carry a hint of "desire," but their frequencies are completely different from those of "desire" memes.

There are actually two powerful monsters at the bottom of this pit?
What happened to the saying "two tigers cannot share one mountain"?

“It’s a symbiotic monster,” Sun Hang suddenly said. “The monsters underground have a symbiotic relationship with ‘desire’… or rather, a parasitic relationship.”

"parasitic?"

"Desire is Type A... which is a rule-based monster. This type of monster has no physical form and does not exist in the world as an energy body, but desire has developed its own personality, which means it needs a physical entity that can bear its power. And the monster that is causing this earthquake is the host it parasitized... Now that desire has been eliminated, the host has regained its freedom..."

"How do you know all this?" Zhulong asked loudly as he steadied himself amidst the violent shaking.

"I guessed." Of course, Sun Hang wouldn't tell Zhulong that this was an answer he had come up with using "wish fulfillment" after expending a lot of mental energy. "Believe it or not!"

"I believe you!" Zhulong shouted. "So what do we do now?"

"Kill it. This should only be a Type C monster. Compared to the invisible, intangible, and unkillable Type A monsters, it can be killed!"

With a wave of his hand, Sun Hang created four iron pillars, each over ten meters long. He hammered one end of the pillars into the ground beneath his feet, while the other end supported the collapsing dome, temporarily creating a safe space.

"Should we fight here?" Zhulong's expression was somewhat grim. "This thing is probably enormous... I reckon we won't even see its true form before this place collapses completely! Perhaps we can go upstairs first! And attack it after this behemoth emerges!"

“Okay, take good care of Xue Yue, let’s go back to the ground first.” Sun Hang nodded.

The rock strata were collapsing, and the cavity was quickly filled with rubble, then torn apart. The vertical metal tunnel had now been peeled out from the collapsed rock strata, and from the outside it looked like a metal water pipe that was constantly shaking.

The walls of the metal tunnel were relatively thick and had not been flattened, but under the immense force emanating from within the rock strata, the metal was groaning under the strain, and the pipes were being twisted at a visible rate.

"Hurry up!" Sun Hang placed his hand on the metal pipe, and instantly the rigidity of the entire metal pipe increased many times over. Countless sharp spikes emerged from the outside of the metal pipe and pierced into the surrounding rocks.

Zhulong led Xue Yue up the pipe quickly, with Sun Hang following closely behind.

Pushing open the slightly ajar airtight door, the three returned to the shaft above. However, the shaft was also collapsing—before long, the entire mine would be gone.

"The road is blocked!" Zhulong swung his fist, and the falling rocks, frozen into ice by the cold power, instantly turned into dust. However, compared with the hundreds of rocks blocking the passage, this speed of clearing the road was simply a drop in the ocean.

In the time it takes for Zhulong to smash a boulder, more than a dozen boulders will fall from all sides. At this rate, the three of them will not be able to go far before they are buried alive in this well.

“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” Sun Hang pulled Zhulong back. “Don’t take the original route.”

"What do you plan to do?" Zhulong asked.

"Use a drill bit that can pierce the sky to drill a path directly!"

Centered on Sun Hang, all the metal objects within 500 meters of him in the mine, and even the metal elements in the rocks, were drawn in and formed a huge drill bit at the front of Sun Hang's right hand, which was raised above his head!

The next second, the giant drill bit spun rapidly and easily drilled into the rock layer above as if cutting tofu.

"Keep up!" Sun Hang shouted.

Two minutes later, the three of them finally returned to the ground. Sun Hang casually tossed the nearly broken giant drill aside, grabbed Zhulong and Xue Yue, and jumped to a relatively safe area outside the pit.

"I only have a third of my mental energy left... I've used up too much of it," Sun Hang muttered to himself. "It's a pity the Three Apes won't be making a move this time. I wonder if the remaining mental energy will be enough to take down this big guy."

Just then, Zhulong patted Sun Hang's arm and pointed to the ruins of a building not far away.

The ascetic who had led them earlier was now sitting against a broken wall, his eyes closed and his expression serene.

"he died?"

“With the ‘desire’ gone, the demons that were controlled by desire are naturally freed as well.” Sun Hang glanced at the lingering smile on the ascetic’s lips. “For this guy, it’s a great thing.”

"Has the desire really disappeared?" Zhulong asked doubtfully. "To be honest... I still find it hard to believe, after all, it was a Type A monster."

(End of this chapter)