Trickster Hunter

Chapter 289 Parasitic Tentacles

"Is this strength...high?" Wang Xiyi squeezed the steel pipe and it became an irregular iron lump in her hand.

"Sister, can your strength be compared to a mudslide?" Sun Hang was a little speechless.

"Then it can only be done by a weird creature." Wang Xiyi spread her hands and said. "The observation post No. 5 was attacked by a strange creature and the whole army was wiped out. This is in line with the previous guess... Also, you are not allowed to call me big sister."

"What should I call you?"

"Code name, full name, and 'Lao Wang' that you often called me before... Or call me sister, it's okay, anyway, you have called me that before." Wang Xiyi glanced at Sun Hang, "Of course, I don't mind if you call me mom."

Before Sun Hang spoke, Zhong Ling's weak voice suddenly came from the headset: "You... do so many things in private?"

"Do you want to join us?" Wang Xiyi turned her head to look at Zhong Ling and said in a teasing tone, "I will take you with me next time."

"Wu... Next, next time?" Zhong Ling was speechless and her face flushed.

Although she had been thinking about what happened in the dream, the face of an inexperienced girl was still thin after all, and she could not compare with Wang Xiyi, who "doesn't care about life and death, and will fight if she doesn't agree."

"If you're shy, forget it." Wang Xiyi swung her tail, sweeping away the rain.

"I..." Before Zhong Ling finished speaking, his face suddenly changed, and he whispered, "There's something!"

About a hundred meters away from where the three people landed, the No. 001 strange skeleton suddenly broke out of the ground. On its slender arms, there was a humanoid body wearing a protective suit covered with mud.

The five fingers of No. 001's palm were put together, and the sharp fingertips penetrated from the heart of the humanoid body and came out from the back - this kind of injury should have been dead for humans at this time, but this body was still struggling desperately.

"It's the missing field operator." Wang Xiyi immediately put away her smile and said sternly, "Has this guy been dormant in the mud?"

"Either, this guy's heart grows on the right side." Sun Hang said lightly, "Or, it is no longer a human being."

Before he finished speaking, the protective suit on the special agent's body had been torn open from the inside, and countless tentacles poured out of the protective suit, madly wrapping around the No. 001 strange skeleton!

These swollen and pale tentacles look like spoiled pickled pepper chicken feet... Not only in appearance, for Sun Hang, from the perspective of food, this thing can indeed be compared to the expired chicken feet that spray out a smelly soup as soon as the package is torn open.

To describe it in four words: no appetite.

The No. 001 Skeleton reacted quickly. It pulled its right arm out of the opponent's body, and the ten fingers of both hands danced quickly, forming an airtight barrier in front of itself. Those tentacles that touched the barrier would instantly turn into scattered pieces of meat, and could not touch the body of the No. 001 Skeleton at all.

"There are more than one." Sun Hang's eyes twitched. The next second, several giant spikes made of white mycelium rose from the ground around. On each spike, there was a monster transformed from a lost field operator.

For these monsters, Sun Hang had no desire to absorb them at all. After analyzing their memes, he directly cut off the connection between these giant spikes and himself, and these monsters whose meme structures were completely destroyed turned into pus and blood in an instant, mixed into the mud flowing on the ground.

"Can you confirm what kind of weird thing infected them?" Wang Xiyi asked, "Is it Chimera No. 17?"

Although Sun Hang had not had direct contact with Chimera No. 17, he had a "closer" contact with Wang Xiyi, who had direct contact with Chimera No. 17. From Wang Xiyi, Sun Hang had obtained enough information about Chimera No. 17.

For some reason, this weird thing gave Sun Hang a feeling of both familiarity and strangeness. Indistinctly, he always felt that he seemed to have come into contact with something similar somewhere, but when he recalled it seriously, his brain fell into a blank.

Sun Hang estimated that he should have had contact with Chimera No. 17... However, the memory related to the contact was sealed deep in his mind because of his "amnesia".

Not only that, the memory related to "Anna" was also gradually fading in Sun Hang's mind-it was as if there was an eraser, erasing the pictures in his head every day, so that Sun Hang had to recall what happened between him and Anna every once in a while.

It was like using a pencil to re-draw the images that had been erased to the point where only a faint shadow remained.

But even so, the scene when he "first" saw Anna had become quite blurry now.

Those images looked like the perspective of a highly myopic patient who forgot to wear glasses.

"No." Sun Hang shook his head, "It was a meme fragment that I was completely unfamiliar with... Of course, it is not ruled out that Chimera No. 17 had undergone a mutation, and the meme had become very different from when you beat it half to death that day."

"Well..." Wang Xiyi nodded, "It abandoned most of its body that day and escaped underground... At that time, its core meme was on the verge of collapse. It's a pity that I was unable to chase it, otherwise, there wouldn't be so many troubles later."

"Did you really intend to trade your life for itss?" Sun Hang asked.

"What else?" Wang Xiyi turned her head and rolled her eyes at Sun Hang. "If I hadn't taken action, few people present that day might have survived."

"Do you care about their lives?" Sun Hang asked again.

"I am a tool 'made' to deal with strange things. That is my duty." Wang Xiyi said seriously, but she suddenly laughed the next second. "But not now. I sold my last life to them. Now I want to live well with this life."

"You look really good when you smile."

Wang Xiyi pouted and muttered, "You have said this to many girls, right?"

"Well, let me think... It seems that since I woke up, I have said it to Yang Qi and you, but I am telling the truth. You two look better when you smile than when you have a stinky face. ..."

"Let me believe you for once... Besides, don't you care about the lives of ordinary people? If you don't care, why do you want to participate in this operation? With your authority, the Disaster Countermeasures Committee should not be able to force you to participate, right?"

"I just had a deal with Old Man Pei." Sun Hang sighed, "But you did remind me that it's time to find Old Man Pei to cash in part of the reward. Just wait until the meme sample collection is completed. Three days should be enough for a round trip."

"Old Man Pei... Old Mr. Pei, what did he promise you?" Wang Xiyi asked curiously.

"He said that I can choose any of the weird things stored in the Tianshu Tower."

"You can choose whatever you want..." Wang Xiyi was stunned for a moment, "You mean, after picking them out... use the ability of Taotie to devour those weird things?"

"What else?" Sun Hang shrugged, "To put it bluntly, it's just a buffet ticket that never expires."

Wang Xiyi frowned: "Have you never considered the risks... The more powerful the weird things are, the more dangerous it is to absorb them. They may even turn the tables and devour and assimilate your self-consciousness... If you really want to absorb them, I suggest that you start with weaker weird things, step by step, to be safer."

"Do you think the black dragon is a powerful weird thing?"

"Yes."

"I can even absorb the black dragon meme in your body. I think that even if there are weird things stronger than the black dragon in the collection of the Tianshu Tower, they should be rare." Sun Hang said.

"You were just lucky that time... Besides, I just inherited part of the black dragon's meme. A breath of the complete black dragon can burn a city to ashes. Even if you have no idea of ​​strength, you can't just equate me with the black dragon, right?" Wang Xiyi said helplessly.

"Then the complete black dragon can't be contained by the Tianshu Tower, otherwise, the Xiazhou Federation would not drop a nuclear bomb." Sun Hang argued.

As he spoke, the No. 001 strange body had torn the strange creature into pieces.

Sun Hang walked up to check some of the remains of the strange creature. He found that the strange creature was left with only a shriveled skin bag, and the organs, flesh and even bones in the body had all turned into tentacles - the surface of these tentacles was covered with tiny holes. If you squeezed them gently, a corrosive liquid with a strong fishy smell would seep out. Sun Hang just touched it and a layer of skin was burned off the front of his finger.

"It doesn't seem to be infected." Sun Hang whispered.

"Not infected?" Wang Xiyi was a little confused, "But these field operators... they clearly turned into monsters?"

"I mean, these monsters parasitized their bodies and turned their bodies into nutrients... There is a kind of medicinal material called 'cordyceps sinensis', have you heard of it?" Sun Hang stood up and shook off the corrosive liquid on his hands. The next second, his bloody fingers returned to their original state.

"Moreover," Sun Hang continued, "I just found a piece of torn human skin. Although this piece of skin is stained with a lot of tentacle monster memes, it actually has no signs of infection."

"You mean, those tentacle monsters drilled into their bodies, ate up his bones and flesh, used these substances as nutrients... and retained the outermost skin as camouflage... But this camouflage is too poor, a soft and boneless humanoid creature... Normal people can tell that this is a monster at a glance, right?" Wang Xiyi said.

"But it's hard to tell after wearing the heavy protective suit and powered exoskeleton." Sun Hang looked up at Zhong Ling on the back of "Gagantel", "You said, if Zhong Ling's skin is full of these tentacles, can you tell whether she is human or not just by appearance?"

"Why do you use me as an example?" Zhong Ling protested in a low voice.

"Then if you get closer, can't you feel the breath of the monster?" Wang Xiyi said puzzledly, "Although my perception ability is not as good as yours, at such a close distance, I can also 'smell' the unpleasant 'stench' emanating from them."

Sun Hang pointed to the fragments of protective suits that had been washed away by the mud in the distance, "But these field operators can't tell the difference. The memetic fluctuations of the monster can be detected everywhere in this area. The instruments can't tell whether the person in front of you is a human or a monster. In addition, the weather is bad and the visibility is extremely low. The mud flowing everywhere on the ground will greatly hinder people's actions, which makes the seemingly weird movements of the occupied skin become 'reasonable'...

Sun Hang continued, "I guess that there must be some unlucky guy who was attacked by this tentacle monster at the beginning. After being parasitized, the monster controlled his skin and ran back to the observation post, and then parasitized more people. The number of people in the first few observation posts was not large. They were suddenly attacked by their "companions" and had no chance to send the message out."

"Then should we send this message back?" Zhong Ling asked.

"Send it, but I suggest adding a disclaimer at the end. This is just my guess based on the existing information and may not be accurate. If the command center misjudges something because of this, it has nothing to do with me." Sun Hang instantly activated the magic card called "Non-stick Pan" and took away all his responsibility.

"I think your guess is almost the same as the truth." Wang Xiyi said, "In that case, we have completed most of the first goal of "investigating the reasons for the loss of contact with several observation posts". Next, we just need to figure out the source of these tentacle monsters."

"No need." Sun Hang suddenly said.

"Ah? What do you mean by unnecessary?" Wang Xiyi was a little confused for a while.

"I mean, it's unnecessary to explore the source of these tentacle monsters." Sun Hang explained, "Except for being somewhat deceptive in certain circumstances, their combat effectiveness is not strong. Even if they are not hunters, ordinary people equipped with modern weapons can easily deal with these monsters... We have only one goal for this trip, that is, to get the meme sample of Chimera No. 17."

"But, there should be a connection between these monsters and Chimera No. 17, right?" Zhong Ling hesitated.

"Is it important?" Sun Hang asked back, "As long as we can get the meme sample, what is the significance of the connection between these tentacle monsters and Chimera No. 17 for the next combat operation... The reason why Yang Qi asked us to investigate the reason for the loss of contact with the observation post is that we are worried that Chimera No. 17 has undergone some unknown changes. Now that we know that these weak monsters are causing trouble, it means that the previous worries are completely unnecessary."

After saying this, Sun Hang suddenly narrowed his eyes.

He took a deep breath and made a "silence" gesture to Wang Xiyi and Zhong Ling.

"Sorry, I take back what I said just now." Sun Hang suddenly said in a very low voice, "In addition to the tentacle monster, there seems to be something else here."