CHAPTER 57: CHAPTER 57: ENTRUSTING MY LIFE

"In the end, the result is the same..." Sun Hang stuffed a piece of chicken into his mouth. "You always give me this particularly pessimistic and negative vibe, and it seems like there’s a slight tendency towards self-destruction as well."

"If you only had a few months left to live, you’d be the same," Wang Xiyi said flatly.

"Isn’t there any way to extend your life?"

"There is, but the cost is I’d completely become a mysterious creature," Wang Xiyi said. "And that would be worse than just dying."

"I’ve always been curious, which kind of mysterious creature’s meme are you infected with?"

"Type C-15 ’Black Dragon,’" Wang Xiyi answered swiftly. "To call it a dragon is an overstatement; it’s just a mutated giant lizard."

"What about the actual ’Black Dragon’?"

"It’s dead." Wang Xiyi took another bite of rice. "It resided on an unnamed island in the Western Pacific Ocean. The Federation carried out a saturation nuclear strike on the island, wiping it and the island itself off the face of the Earth."

"An unnamed island?" Sun Hang paused slightly. "So it... never came to the Xiazhou Continent?"

"You’re asking how I got infected, right?" Wang Xiyi said. "I’m a man-made infected individual, and there are actually many people like me."

"Man-made?"

"The Black Dragon had a strong vitality. Though the nuclear weapons with tens of megatons of explosive power killed it, at the blast site, the Federation’s scientists still found some remnants with the Deceit Virus memes and life reactions. They brought these remnants back to the lab and, after more than a decade, successfully cultivated a ’Black Dragon’ ’embryo,’" Wang Xiyi glanced around, and after confirming no one was paying attention to them, he spoke to Sun Hang in a low voice.

"That’s quite a crazy plan." By now, Sun Hang had pretty much guessed the true aim of these scientists.

"Only infected mysterious creature hunters can combat mysterious creatures, but ’naturally born’ infected individuals are not only few in number, their transformation rate is extremely low, and the abilities obtained are very unstable... Therefore, the plan to mass-produce ’Mysterious Creature Hunters’ was proposed and quickly received approval from the Federation’s top brass."

"They extracted the Black Dragon’s meme from the embryo and, after processing, implanted it into human bodies... After a series of experiments, they found that if the receptor was a human embryo, the genes would quickly assimilate with the mysterious creature. But in the case of adults, they would die from various complications, with the highest mortality rate caused by ’cytokine storm.’ Thus, children aged six to ten became the best receptors because their human cells are fully differentiated, but their immune systems are not yet mature, making them ideal for merging with mysterious creature memes."

"What’s the success rate of the fusion experiment?" Sun Hang asked.

"As far as I know, it’s two percent," Wang Xiyi said. "Out of the fifty children in my batch, only I survived."

"Surviving is really no easy feat." Sun Hang single-handedly opened a can of orange juice and handed it to Wang Xiyi. "Cheers to you."

The two clinked their cans and drank deeply.

Just then, a ground crew member walked by with a German Shepherd, and Sun Hang threw a piece of meat from his lunch box, but the dog only glanced at him and didn’t even bother to sniff the meat.

"See that? Meat with the smell of cilantro, even dogs won’t eat it," Sun Hang said, curling his lip and tilting his head towards Wang Xiyi.

"That’s a military dog. Military dogs only eat food given to them by their handlers. It has nothing to do with cilantro," Wang Xiyi said.

"Oh, is that so?" Sun Hang scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

"The mysterious creature that infected you... it’s ’Taotie’, right?" Wang Xiyi suddenly asked.

"That bald guy in the wheelchair told you?"

"No, I guessed," Wang Xiyi said. "Because when I get close to you, my heart starts to tremble with unease. Instinct tells me you’re a very dangerous predator... And in recent incidents, the only one with a sequence number before the Black Dragon is ’Taotie’."

"...Feels like I got tricked by you somehow." Sun Hang swallowed the last bite of rice and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"In your eyes, I’m really no different from ’food’, am I?" Wang Xiyi turned her head and looked deeply at Sun Hang.

Sun Hang really wanted to say, "You saw through me," but after some thought, he swallowed the words back down.

Seeing you as a colleague while you see others as food... It does sound a bit over the top.

"It’s okay, I don’t mind." Seeing that Sun Hang wasn’t responding, Wang Xiyi continued. "In fact, I want to ask a favor from you."

"I can probably guess what you want to ask of me."

"Yes," Wang Xiyi nodded. "When that day comes, I want you to eat me."

"Is this... a lifetime commitment?" Sun Hang smirked.

"If you think it is, then it is," Wang Xiyi said with an indifferent face.

"So, when the time comes, how well-done do you want to be?" Sun Hang suddenly felt that he might have a knack for telling dark jokes.

"Whatever you prefer." Wang Xiyi stood up. "Whether you want to steam or braise me, I don’t mind."

"Enough joking, let’s deal with future matters in the future." Sun Hang tossed the empty lunch box back onto the cart. "Instead, why not think about how to handle the mutation that’s about to happen."

"How do you plan to handle it?" Wang Xiyi countered, "My gut tells me you just plan to gather these people together and then do nothing."

"Is women’s intuition always this accurate?" Sun Hang showed a surprised expression.

"Because my thoughts are similar to yours," Wang Xiyi said softly, looking at the people lining up to receive lunch boxes over at the temporary barracks.

"I’ve never thought about saving these people." Sun Hang paused, then continued, "They’ve all been marked by that mysterious creature and have become ’sunk costs,’ and what we should do is cut our losses in time, preventing the harms of time-space anomalies from spreading further."

"Your method isn’t wrong, but your words are very dangerous." Wang Xiyi lowered her voice even further. "As a Hunter, you shouldn’t say such things... Didn’t Yang Qi mention this during your job assessment?"

"To maintain so-called ’humanity’?" Sun Hang grinned. "I have no right to decide these hundred and eighty or so people’s deaths, nor can I send more to their deaths to save them... It’s like there’s a fork in the tracks, with one person tied to one and five to the other, and a runaway trolley is speeding towards them, and I’m just someone passing by with a plunger in hand."