CHAPTER 45: CHAPTER 45: SECOND RESONANCE

"Well, I think Researcher Song Yarong’s suggestion just now is actually quite valuable," Sun Hang said unhurriedly.

"What suggestion?" Mente was taken aback, evidently not catching the meaning of Sun Hang’s words.

A mass of white mycelium suddenly appeared, forming into the shape of a fist, punching through the safety glass of the temporary containment chamber, setting off alarms throughout the chamber.

"Could you please turn off the alarm? It’s a bit noisy," Sun Hang said to Song Yarong.

"...Okay." Although Song Yarong also didn’t understand Sun Hang’s intent, she turned off the alarm in the temporary containment room.

In the next moment, the alien long knife suspended in the containment room melted into liquid out of thin air and flowed through the hole blasted open by the mycelium. Under the shocked gaze of Mente, the liquid metal rapidly covered Sun Hang’s skin and then seeped through his pores.

Immediately after, Sun Hang’s whole body floated off the ground as if he were an astronaut training in a zero-gravity simulator.

"Is this... even possible?" Mente muttered, his face as if he’d seen a ghost.

"It’s possible, just a bit uncomfortable," Sun Hang said, standing with both feet on the ground, drawing the liquid metal out of his body, once again forming it into the shape of an alien long knife.

"This thing, 2E796, can actually maintain a liquid state at room temperature? That’s amazing! According to the test results, the metal’s atomic structure hasn’t changed, but its properties... no, that’s not right. I shouldn’t view these anomalies with the eyes of conventional things..." Song Yarong’s prosthetic eye emitted a blue laser continuously scanning over the alien long knife. "How... how did you manage this?!"

"I don’t know either..."

Sun Hang hadn’t finished speaking when he suddenly felt a current pass through his head, and almost instinctively, he walked towards the door, pushing aside Mente standing there.

"Sorry, something urgent came up, excuse me for a moment."

Sun Hang rushed into the elevator in quick strides, pressing the button for the top floor of the research institute.

He didn’t know what he was doing, just vaguely felt that something had appeared on the rooftop, something he had to see.

The research institute’s elevator was fast, bringing Sun Hang to the 35th floor in just over ten seconds, and he quickly stepped out, finding the door leading to the rooftop.

He pushed open the door, and what greeted him was a thick fog so dense it seemed tangible. Looking out, the entire Celestial City was shrouded in a white "sea of clouds," the concrete jungle covered with a layer of lead-gray filter.

An indescribable oppressive feeling spread, the suffocating clouds looming so low they seemed within reach, the heavy, stagnant air like a giant amber encasing the whole city.

Sun Hang couldn’t feel any wind. Though standing on the 35th floor rooftop, he couldn’t feel the flow of air at all... The scene before him looked like a frozen black-and-white silent film, filled with something unsettling and irrational.

He vaguely remembered dreaming about such a scene, almost identical to what he saw now.

Clouds, city, rooftop, no wind.

He was sure these were his own memories, not fragments of those jumbled and chaotic ones.

Sun Hang leaned his hands on the rooftop railing, breathing heavily... though unsure if it was an illusion or what, he felt the oxygen level in the air was so low it was barely sufficient to sustain his vital signs...

But when his gaze fell on his wristband screen, he discovered that the data shown—heart rate, pulse, or blood oxygen saturation—were all at perfectly normal levels, indicating all the discomfort he felt... was purely psychological.

"What’s going on?" Sun Hang supported the weight of his upper body with his arms, head buried deep in his chest, trying to recall, but the familiar sharp pain made his whole body tremble involuntarily.

The sound of an electric wheelchair rolling over the floor came from behind, and Sun Hang turned around to find that the old man in the wheelchair, whom Yang Qi referred to as "teacher," had somehow also made his way up to the rooftop.

Sun Hang knew this guy was the director of the institute, the most authoritative figure in the study of anomalies in Celestial City, bar none.

"Indeed, you’ve resonated with that thing once more," the director said, looking at Sun Hang calmly.

"Resonance?" Sun Hang was startled, lifting his head to find the sky was unexpectedly clear, with a pleasant cool breeze sweeping over the rooftop, the air filled with the light fragrance of bougainvillea and jacaranda in bloom.

All the previous moments... were they illusions, or was it a simple psychological manipulation at play?

"Just now, we received news that the blood moon has disappeared," the director said.

"The blood moon has disappeared?"

"Not only the blood moon, but the entire anomalous region... and everyone on a rescue mission within it," the director continued.

"What do you mean?"

"Everything is back to normal. The displaced space has returned to its original position, the southern city cemetery has reappeared in its place, along with those missing people," the director explained. "Of the 213 initially missing persons, except for 27 who left the cemetery zone and couldn’t return in time, the others have all been found."

"But those who went to find them vanished with that anomalous region... Yang Qi was among them, right." Sun Hang pulled out his phone, and unsurprisingly, Yang Qi, who was communicating with him not long ago, now had an avatar greyed out, indicating ’offline’.

"Yes, including Yang Qi, a total of 1,755 search and rescue personnel disappeared," the director nodded.

"The anomalous region should appear again, right? As long as they haven’t left that area, there’s a chance they can return to this time and space... Can I understand it this way?" Sun Hang asked.

"Uncertain," the director shook his head. "When studying anomalies, you can summarize some ’patterns,’ but never rely too heavily on ’patterns’... They might return, or they might never appear again. It’s preliminarily determined that the cause of the spatio-temporal anomaly is an unknown ’phenomenon-type’ anomaly."

The director coughed gently twice, continuing, "Over a thousand types of phenomenon-type anomalies have already been discovered, some lasting decades or even centuries, while others are fleeting, disappearing from this world before even being observed by humans. We can only infer their existence from the traces they leave behind... I cannot be certain whether the anomaly causing this spatio-temporal disruption will appear again, nor can I confirm if those missing will ever return."

"Then what’s going on with the ’resonance’ between me and that thing?"

"The fact that you resonate with ’it’ suggests your memetic frequency aligns with ’it’ in some ways, making you more sensitive to its presence compared to ordinary people," the director said. "By the way, there’s another matter. With Yang Qi’s disappearance, your direct superior’s position has become vacant. Although Song Yarong, a second-class researcher at the institute, wanted to apply for this position, I’ve decided to reject her application after comprehensive consideration."

"So who are you planning on getting to replace Yang Qi?"

"Yang Lian, an executor from the Celestial City Anomaly Investigation Bureau," the director controlled his electric wheelchair to turn, "she’ll be seconded to the institute to take over her sister’s work."