CHAPTER 56: CHAPTER 56: THE THREE MONKEYS

In the past, whenever Sun Hang tried to recall those memories, his brain would feel like it was splitting with pain. But this time, he didn’t know whether the cold had numbed his pain nerves, or the crystal ball had helped him "skip" some kind of "protection mechanism," the pain unexpectedly didn’t appear at all.

This allowed Sun Hang to almost... recklessly...

"Ka—"

In a daze, the layer of membrane disappeared without a trace, and Sun Hang’s consciousness seemed to arrive in an independent space where his entire view was white. Besides feeling the solid ground beneath his feet, there was no sense of a boundary above or around him.

About ten steps away from him were three statues that were neither metal, stone, nor wood.

These were three monkeys squatting on plum blossom posts, one covering its eyes with its hands, another covering its ears, and the last one covering its mouth.

"What are these things?"

Sun Hang scrutinized the three monkey statues, filled with doubt.

He didn’t sense any threat from these three monkey statues, nor did he feel they could be treated as food.

Are they not anomalous objects?

If they’re not anomalous objects, why would they appear in front of him?

Could it be a situation similar to "resonance"?

The different actions of these three monkeys, could they be hinting at something?

"Covering eyes, ears, and mouth..."

These actions involuntarily reminded Sun Hang of a very old Confucian anecdote.

Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t speak.

Is this a warning not to explore those sealed memories?

"Warning you, my foot." Suddenly annoyed, Sun Hang quickly walked forward and reached out toward the first monkey statue.

The texture of the statue was strange, feeling like a real monkey, except it lacked temperature and was much harder than a biological limb.

It’s like the body of an animal made into a specimen.

Sun Hang began to exert force under his hand, prying open the hands covering the monkey statue’s eyes bit by bit.

But just as the monkey’s hands slightly deformed and loosened, a strong light suddenly shot from between its fingers. Everything that came into contact with this light, including Sun Hang, instantly melted, merging into a bright chaos.

"Ka— Ka ka—"

The illusion vanished, and Sun Hang returned to reality, but the nearby "ka ka" sound didn’t stop. He opened his eyes to find that the source of the sound was the Christmas crystal ball beneath his palm.

A crack appeared on the surface of the crystal ball, as hard as a diamond, followed by a second, third...

These cracks rapidly spread like a web, quickly covering the entire sphere. The next second, the crystal ball shattered entirely, the liquid and snowflake fragments inside spilling onto the tray, flowing everywhere.

"Broken, broken?" Standing beside him, Yang Lian’s pupils slightly contracted.

"No longer detecting 1992’s memetic frequency... The reaction has completely disappeared..." The researcher responsible for transporting the crystal ball murmured, "How... could this happen..."

Although Sun Hang wasn’t very clear about those academic terms, he understood the meaning of the words— the disappearance of the meme meant this anomalous object had been completely destroyed. The remaining fragments were no different from a shattered ordinary crystal ball.

Sun Hang lifted his foot and crushed the glass shard near his foot with the sole of his shoe. With a faintly grating sound, when Sun Hang lifted his foot, the glass shard had turned into a pile of white debris.

"I shouldn’t have to pay for this thing, right?" Sun Hang asked.

"No... you don’t." The researcher was still in a dazed state, "This... this should count as an accident, you don’t need to bear responsibility..."

"Could it be backlash?" Another researcher fell into thought, "Although the physical strength of 1992 isn’t low, according to the ranking of anomalous objects’ strengths, it obviously can’t make the list... Or because it intervened in the resonance between Hunter and the anomalous object causing the time anomaly, it suffered intense backlash?"

Although anomalous objects don’t have absolute strengths and weaknesses, when different anomalous objects meet, a clear suppression and being suppressed relationship appears— just like the "Taotie" meme in Sun Hang’s body, when encountering "Tai Sui," it showed almost one-sided dominance.

"Are you alright?" Wang Xiyi patted Sun Hang’s shoulder, frowning.

"I’m fine." Sun Hang shook his head.

"Did you see what time it showed on the Financial Center Building?" Just as Sun Hang finished speaking, the Colonel waiting beside them quickly chimed in, "We can’t wait indefinitely, there must be a clear time point."

"Three fifteen." Sun Hang said, "This afternoon, at three fifteen."

...

After confirming the time of the anomaly, the tense atmosphere in the base was somewhat relaxed. The soldiers began to methodically build new blockades, expanding the original 200*200 radius blockaded area nearly fourfold. Meanwhile, the new batch of boxed meals made by the mess crew was distributed to everyone in the base— including the "kidnappers" led by Ye Xuan in the command room and the 188 people in the blockaded area.

No matter what was going to happen next, stomachs still needed to be filled.

Sun Hang was too lazy to find tables or chairs, so he just sat down on the steps at the front door of the command tower, opening the lid of his boxed meal—not to mention, the Federal Air Force’s meals were still quite good. Even though the ground staff’s meal standard was slightly less than that of the pilots, it was still lavishly configured with four meat and three vegetables, no wonder other military branches were always envious, saying the Air Force was the superior.

"Doesn’t it feel like every meal you eat is one less?" Wang Xiyi sat beside Sun Hang with her boxed meal, "Do you think, in the past, those death-row prisoners eating their last meal could still taste the food?"

"Technically, every meal a person eats is one less." Sun Hang picked up a chopstick full of stir-fried beef, looking at the cilantro and chili nestled between the slices, and sighed, "Do you dislike cilantro?"

"No particular feeling." Wang Xiyi shook her head and took a bite of her meal.

"Then it’s yours." Sun Hang gave her the chopstick of beef and transferred all the stir-fried beef from his boxed meal, including the other dishes that had touched the cilantro, into Wang Xiyi’s lunchbox, "The smell makes me want to vomit, should have taken one without cilantro earlier."

"On the trolley where you took the boxed meals from, each one has this dish." Wang Xiyi said while chewing, "It looks like you have many choices, but in fact, whatever you choose, the result is the same."