These anomalies vanished in an instant, and Sun Hang hesitated only for a moment before his consciousness returned beneath the blood moon.
The shadows close by quickly faded before his eyes, until they completely disappeared.
"What happened?" Yang Qi stepped forward and asked urgently.
"These shadows seem to be human reflections," Sun Hang answered truthfully. "When I touched them, I saw the entire process of a person from youth to old age, and then to death."
"...Resonance?" Yang Qi was taken aback for a moment, her eyes suddenly lighting up.
"I'm not sure." Sun Hang recalled, although those images lasted shorter than the blink of an eye, he clearly remembered the person wearing a dark blue suit during middle age.
In the news footage seen earlier, several leaders and officials attending the flower offering ceremony wore suits of similar color and style.
Could this silhouette be one of the missing officials?
As Sun Hang tried to observe the place where the shadows disappeared once more, a strong fragrance suddenly drifted from behind.
He turned around and saw Wang Xiyi squatting on the ground at some point, her arms tightly hugging her chest, with a pained expression as if enduring some agony.
Tiny black scales had already emerged from beneath her skin at her neck, gleaming with metallic luster.
"Night Slayer?!" Yang Qi also noticed Wang Xiyi's change and called out quietly, "When did you last inject the suppressant?!"
Sun Hang looked up at the increasingly vivid blood moon in the sky, without speaking, and rushed to Wang Xiyi's side.
He resisted the urge to pin her to the ground, grabbed her arm, and forcefully dragged her beyond the boundary.
The blood moon in the sky turned into a normal moon, and the scales on Wang Xiyi's neck stopped protruding.
She held the suppressant syringe in her hand, but her fingers were so stiff that she couldn't inject herself.
"Help... me... inject…" Wang Xiyi gasped heavily.
Sun Hang forcefully pried open her fingers, took the syringe, removed the protective cover, and directly jabbed the needle into her upper arm.
The compressed air glass bulb at the end of the disposable syringe shattered, and the clear solution was instantly pushed into Wang Xiyi's body.
After about ten seconds, Wang Xiyi's stiff body became flexible again and she limply sat on the ground.
Sun Hang glanced at the empty syringe in his hand, which still carried a nauseating "cilantro smell," shook his head disdainfully, and stuffed it into his outer pocket.
Yang Qi crouched down beside Wang Xiyi and slightly unzipped the collar of her clothes.
The protruding dense scales had all shrunk back, and the neck, wrists, and other parts reverted to their original smooth, fair skin, making Yang Qi breathe a sigh of relief.
"Is it caused by the blood moon?" Sun Hang asked.
"Most likely… The influence of the blood moon is like radiation; the higher the intensity, the faster the mutation speed and greater the mutation degree of the affected organisms," Yang Qi sighed. "From now on, until the blood moon disappears, neither you nor Night Slayer can enter the aberrant area again."
"Are you planning to defy orders?" Sun Hang chuckled. "Those people have decided to 'at any cost' this time."
"Because they're all fools… If their 'orders' lead to Night Slayer losing control, not only will the rescue mission suffer, but half of Tianfu City will be in trouble!" Yang Qi said angrily. "Besides, the rescue mission hasn't stopped; I'm still here… You should take Night Slayer back to the institute and tell the teacher everything that happened here. It's not urgent to return until the blood moon disappears the next day."
After speaking, Yang Qi tossed the off-road vehicle keys to Sun Hang.
Sun Hang didn't refuse, he directly unhooked the gun from his body and shoved it at the bewildered 0401.
"Ah… wh-what does this mean?" 0401 stuttered, asking.
For some reason, after receiving the gun he longed for, his sense of crisis suddenly surged.
"Although there are no infected nearby, you never know what you'll encounter on the way to meet up with the main forces. You can't always hide behind women, right?" Sun Hang said.
"…" 0401's lips moved slightly, but in the end didn't speak.
"Hurry and go," Yang Qi urged. "The suppressant has only temporarily stabilized Night Slayer's condition; she's still in a danger period. You must take her back to the research institute as soon as possible! Don't worry about me here!"
0401 and Sun Hang lifted Wang Xiyi into the car together, and Sun Hang sat in the driver's seat. He looked at the two left in place in the rearview mirror, then started the car.
...
On the way back, reports of various teams being attacked sporadically came through the vehicle's communication device—not only the wolves, but all biological entities in the aberrant area began to mutate: abandoned stray cats and dogs, snakes lurking among the grass, even mice and insects at the bottom of the food chain emerged from the ground and started attacking everyone entering this region.
Yang Qi and 0401 naturally encountered attacks from these mutated creatures, but fortunately two teams just completed the merge and timely came to support. Except for 0401 stumbling and scraping his knee during dodging, no personnel losses occurred.
However, other teams weren't as lucky—by the time Sun Hang reached the institute, a rough estimate was that the death toll had surpassed twenty, with the injured numbering in the hundreds.
The impact caused by this blood moon far exceeded everyone's calculations.
...
A dozen staff members waiting at the institute's entrance took over Wang Xiyi, carried her into a "metal coffin" exuding cold air, and hurriedly left, leaving Sun Hang standing alone on the institute's main steps.
"The director needs to perform surgery on Night Slayer immediately, and Yang Qi has already reported the specific situation of the operation area," a staff member told Sun Hang before leaving, "You can freely standby for the next sixteen hours."
"What about after sixteen hours?" Sun Hang asked.
"You should ask your direct superior, not me." The staff member left after throwing this remark.
The entire institute was in a state of frantic operation, and the few field personnel had all been dispatched to the southern cemetery while Wang Xiyi's sudden situation forced those resting to be dragged out of bed—the faces of this group in white lab coats almost all hung with heavy dark circles and resentment from forced overtime.
Sun Hang sat on the large steps at the institute's entrance, and at this time, a familiar hunger feeling surged from his stomach again.
He also wasn't sure whether this hunger came from the woman who had just been carried inside or from the fact that he hadn't eaten in a long while.
The sky had already brightened with dawn, and Sun Hang took out his phone to glance at it, showing the time as 4:45 AM.
The last time he ate seemed to be in the evening, nibbling on an apple at "home."