...
When Sun Hang awoke from unconsciousness, the chilling pain had disappeared without a trace, as if it had never been there.
"Was it... a nightmare?" Sun Hang sat up from the sofa, looking down.
The metal nameplate warmed by his palm emitted a gentle golden glow. He tried lightly scratching it with his fingernail, and a mark instantly appeared on the surface.
Stainless steel isn't this soft, nor this heavy... This metal nameplate seemed to have truly transformed from stainless steel to gold.
"This... this can't be possible, right?" Sun Hang's breathing grew slightly heavy.
Clearly, this miracle of "turning steel into gold" was his ability... But more evidently, this power had nothing to do with Taotie.
It couldn't be that the Taotie avatar first devoured a mysterious creature with this ability and then infected itself, could it?
Aside from having considerable side effects, this power could be described as a BUG. With such a power, could Taotie really devour it?
Sun Hang recalled what the lab coat-wearing trainer said during the investigation bureau's induction training... If this unknown mysterious creature needed classification, it would most likely fall under "Class A·Rule Type Mysterious Creatures."
Class A mysterious creatures completely surpass all other types... because they are the "rule" itself.
"Wait... so, the change in the hospital's lighting color earlier wasn't a coincidence?" Sun Hang was suddenly shocked. Could his ability not be "turning steel into gold," but rather "wishing something into reality"?
He decided to conduct an experiment.
He stared at the half-eaten apple on the coffee table, its edges yellowed and oxidized, desperately trying to recall the feeling of that surging pain, silently chanting in his mind: "Float... make it float."
The apple didn't budge, and that pain didn't arise.
Only the vacuum cleaner robot quietly slid beneath the coffee table, emitting a slight mechanical sound as it avoided Sun Hang's feet, as if mocking his fanciful imagination.
"It seems it doesn't work exactly as I thought..."
Sun Hang glanced at the oxidized part of the apple, as if suddenly remembering something, and abruptly looked up at the clock on the opposite wall.
It was five minutes to seven in the evening, meaning he had been unconscious for almost exactly two hours.
Sun Hang immediately raised his arm and rolled up his sleeve.
The wristband on his wrist was functioning normally, with no piercing alarm sounds, nor any red warning lights flashing inside.
"Strange... has the wristband not detected any anomalies?"
On the way here, Yang Qi had briefly explained the wristband's functionality to Sun Hang — when his heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, or other indicators showed severe abnormalities, the wristband would sound an alarm while immediately transmitting the anomaly data to the Anomaly Investigation Bureau and the Mysterious Creature Research Institute.
If the wristband had monitored him being unconscious on the sofa for two hours, the bureau and the institute's people would have burst in by now... but nothing had happened.
"Could this ability even deceive the wristband?" Sun Hang mused, "Or perhaps, to the wristband, I was merely 'sleeping' on the sofa for two hours?"
Sun Hang went to the bathroom, washed his face with cold water, then returned to the living room and turned on the TV.
The evening news was playing on TV. The camera switched, showing a line of sheriffs standing stiffly in front of four white tombstones, with a middle-aged woman in a black dress standing sorrowfully a bit farther away.
The subtitle below read "Four sheriffs who tragically perished in the Celestial City Bloody Mary incident were buried today at the southern cemetery, with representatives from the Xiazhou Federal Council, the Celestial City Management Committee, the Celestial City Public Security Bureau and the Anomaly Investigation Bureau leaders laying wreaths."
"A cenotaph, huh..." Sun Hang remembered clearly, under Wang Xiyi's huge fireball, the blood pool's entire plasma was evaporated, and the corpses of Mr. Huang, the intern sheriff, and the sheriff dragged into the blood pool later were likely reduced to ashes... Only the sheriff who died outside in the blood mist could have a relatively intact body.
Sun Hang glanced at the woman in the black dress again... By her age, she should be Mr. Huang's widow...
Wait a minute?!
Sun Hang rubbed his eyes vigorously because he noticed that the woman on the screen suddenly aged dramatically... Her previously straight posture became stooped, and her skin, full of liver spots, sagged along her cheeks, with her cloudy eyes deeply sunken and the appearance of many previously nonexistent wrinkles on her face.
Not only her, but the sheriffs in the picture also exhibited signs of "aging"... In no time, they turned from men in their prime to elderly men, with their hair beneath wide-brimmed hats turned entirely white.
And in the next second, everything returned to normal.
Just as Sun Hang was intensely staring at the screen, the phone on the dining table suddenly rang.
It was a call from Yang Qi.
"Sun Hang, we have an emergency!" Yang Qi's tone was extremely anxious, "There's an exceptionally rare anomaly at the southern cemetery! In less than three hours, the entire cemetery area reverted to its undeveloped state from decades ago! And the most critical part is that the Bloody Mary incident's fallen sheriff's funeral and wreath-laying ceremony were happening during the anomaly... everyone at the funeral, including those high-ranking leaders, have vanished!!"
"Southern cemetery? Wreath-laying ceremony? Missing?" Sun Hang turned to look at the TV screen again, "But I can see them..."
"What did you say?!"
"I said, I can see them, those missing people." Sun Hang replied.
"What??! Where did you see them? How did you see them?!" Yang Qi's voice on the phone was quite excited.
"On TV, during the 7 o'clock evening news." Sun Hang replied truthfully.
"That's impossible!! Due to the anomaly, the evening news has canceled the funeral report! It's absolutely impossible!!"
"Then I'll take a picture for you."
After saying this, Sun Hang aimed his phone's camera at the TV screen... However, through the camera, the TV image was just a snowy static display.
Sun Hang suddenly realized that throughout the news segment, there hadn't been any sound — he initially thought it was because he hadn't turned the speakers on.
"Something's not right. I can't capture the TV picture... Or to put it another way, this picture can only be seen with my eyes. You should know, I wouldn't lie to you about this."
"I'm coming to your place immediately!" Yang Qi said decisively.
...
Soon, the sound of the armored SUV's engine could be heard from the villa entrance.
As soon as Sun Hang opened the door, Yang Qi rushed in, immediately directing her gaze toward the TV in the living room.
The news program had ended, and now some irrelevant content was being shown, with the sound restored to normal.
"What did you just... see on the TV?" Yang Qi caught her breath and asked Sun Hang.
Sun Hang didn't conceal anything and recounted everything as it happened.
After hearing Sun Hang's account, Yang Qi couldn't help but furrow her brows: "If the anomaly in the southern cemetery was caused by a mysterious creature, this creature is... quite tricky. Based on my personal judgment, this creature's ability is most likely related to 'time manipulation.'"
"Time manipulation?"
"I initially thought it was a 'Class G' 'Environment Type' mysterious creature... But now it seems, it is at least a 'Class B·Phenomenon Type' mysterious creature, and possibly even a 'Class A·Rule Type' mysterious creature." Yang Qi's voice carried a hint of tremor.
It was both fear and excitement.
"Then why can I see those things that weren't broadcast... or even recorded?"
"Because you are infected with the Deceit Virus, sometimes there's a strange resonance between the infected and the mysterious creatures... But we still haven't understood the reasons and forms for this resonance." Yang Qi sighed, then added, "This mission might have to be carried out by you."
"Why me?" Sun Hang was a little stunned, "Isn't Wang Xiyi the ace Hunter of Celestial City?"
"She is in very poor condition right now and cannot enter the beastization state again in the short term. Moreover, Class A and Class B mysterious creatures cannot be eliminated purely by force." Yang Qi paused, then continued, "Most importantly, she didn't resonate with the mysterious creature causing the anomaly in the southern cemetery, but you did."