"They don't seem like the survey team... no, they don't even seem like normal people." Yang Qi furrowed her brows, "Night Slayer, can you sense any life signs from them?"
"No, if I shut off my vision, they don't exist in my perception." Wang Xiyi shook her head.
"Tsk, not even energy bodies..." Yang Qi's brows furrowed tighter.
"Could they be ghosts?" 0401 drew in a sharp breath, "Now this is really freaky..."
"The 'ghosts' you speak of, if they actually exist, should be classified as 'Type-X' anomalies, commonly known as 'spiritual' or 'energy-type'... but these figures don't have any energy signatures at all..." Yang Qi shook her head gently, "That means... they might really just be 'shadows'."
"Let's take a closer look." Wang Xiyi said.
"N-no, let's not..." 0401 said with a timid expression, "I think we should observe from a distance first?"
"I agree." Sun Hang nodded.
"Right, getting too close is just too dangerous..."
Before 0401 could finish speaking, Sun Hang interrupted him, "I mean, I agree with Night Slayer's suggestion."
"Huh?" 0401 paused, shrinking back into the rear seat.
"You're afraid of ghosts?" Wang Xiyi glanced at him, asking.
"Not... not afraid, it's just these shadows... they give me the creeps." 0401 replied.
"Shadows themselves aren't scary." Sun Hang said.
Sun Hang realized he seemed to have a new ability to detect anomalies or infected - that was his 'appetite.'
Those mutated wild wolves under the influence of the Blood Moon, to Sun Hang, were at best 'edible, but not palatable.'
If Bloody Rose was a delicious dessert, then Wang Xiyi was a top-notch gourmet dish... as for those wild wolves, they were like the tiny meat on a mosquito's leg.
And those shadows in the distance gave Sun Hang the first impression of being 'inedible.'
According to the research institute, as long as they were anomalies, they would certainly contain something called a 'meme' (or concept), the Deceit Virus infects other things by copying and transmitting the meme from anomalies to other things.
And the anomaly 'Taotie' with the serial number 'Type-C9' feeds on these memes.
Sun Hang couldn't detect the presence of memes on these shadows.
Therefore, they weren't anomalies, nor were they infected by the Deceit Virus.
"If you're scared, you can stay in the car." Wang Xiyi opened the car door and jumped out first.
Sun Hang and Yang Qi also got out of the car.
"Wait, wait for me!" Seeing the three of them all get out, 0401 hurriedly climbed out.
"Weren't you scared of those shadows?" Yang Qi glanced at him, curious.
"Being alone in the car is scarier..." 0401 muttered, "You don't know that in horror movies, the character left alone is always the first to die..."
"That sounds somewhat reasonable." Yang Qi surprisingly didn't refute, "At least, following us, we won't just watch you get devoured by anomalies."
Once Wang Xiyi got out, she walked straight towards those figures.
She stopped a few steps away from the swaying figures.
"They do seem like shadows." Wang Xiyi picked up a rock from the ground and tossed it towards the figures.
The stone passed through them without any obstruction, falling to the ground and bouncing a short distance further.
Sun Hang also approached.
He found that the figures were just human-shaped shadows slightly darker than the surrounding environment, hovering above the ground. They swayed slightly as if there was an unobservable vertical water surface in the air, and these shadows were reflections projected onto this surface.
As the surface undulated, so did the shadows.
"Preparing for direct contact experiment." Wang Xiyi turned back to give Yang Qi a glance, "Keep a record."
"Be careful... hmm." Yang Qi, having opened his portable camera, let out a small hmm.
"These shadows can't be filmed?" Sun Hang had already guessed the answer. When he looked over, sure enough, the screen only showed Wang Xiyi standing there, with no trace of the nearby figures.
"Just like the 'nonexistent' scenes you see on TV." Yang Qi nodded slightly, "They can only be observed with the naked eye, and can't be recorded by optical imaging equipment."
"Lucky for us, perhaps this is the key to breaking through." Sun Hang nodded.
Wang Xiyi retrieved two syringes from the small pouch tied to her leg, one was enhanced serum taken from Sun Hang and the other was the Beastification Inhibitor with a strong 'cilantro smell.'
She gripped both syringes between the fingers of her right hand and extended her left hand slowly towards the figure.
Yang Qi and 0401 held their breaths, focusing intently on Wang Xiyi's action.
Like the stone before, Wang Xiyi's left hand passed right through the figure without anything happening.
"Can't feel anything at all." Wang Xiyi said.
"Try stirring it up a bit." Yang Qi exhaled deeply, saying.
Wang Xiyi gently stirred her right hand, but the shadow didn't change, not even its swaying frequency was altered.
She withdrew her hand and shook her head at Yang Qi.
"Let me try." Sun Hang stepped forward, "Since these shadows resemble the images on TV, perhaps they might react to me."
"That's right, since you're the one who resonates." Yang Qi nodded.
Sun Hang took a deep breath, mimicking Wang Xiyi's action, clenching his fingers into a blade shape, and thrust towards the chest area of a shadow.
At the moment his fingertip touched the shadow, Sun Hang seemed to sense time pausing briefly.
Then he found the lights and shadows around him rapidly changing at a speed imperceptible to human senses. Light and dark shifted constantly as if recording thousands of days and nights compressed into seconds.
Sun Hang was startled to find the figure he touched faintly revealed human features—in those brief, rapid changes of light and dark, he quickly transformed from a young man into a potbellied middle-aged man, then an elderly man with white hair... until he became a bare skeleton.