Hunter of Mysterious Creature

Those who cannot withstand the backlash of memes are destined to be the "defective products" eliminated by this world.

They worship power, worship strange entities, and propagate the theory of the survival of the fittest on the Internet...

But when some of their opinion leaders were arrested and exiled to the Surrendered Area, these people showed no joy of their wishes being realized; instead, they appeared extremely fearful and desperate... as if they had completely forgotten their own theory of "harmonious coexistence with strange entities."

For these people, Sun Hang's comment was only four words.

"Clowns jumping around."

Sun Hang stopped walking and paused in front of a mural.

Compared to those abstract-lined ancient murals, this mural's painting technique was closer to modern oil paintings—depicting a pitch-black fog, where people scattered and ran within, and hundreds of meters above the ground, vaguely, bizarre-looking giants could be seen slowly moving within the dense fog.

"A mural of the Cthulhu Mythos?"

The Cthulhu Mythos is not one of those time-honored classical myths but originates from the writings of a writer from the Hezhong States more than a hundred years ago.

At that time, the war between humans and strange entities had already reached a fever pitch, and the writer's work was initially unpopular; many people thought it was merely a literary recreation of the real-world events happening. But as his readership grew, people quickly realized the things described in his work were far more horrifying than the strange entities in the real world.

In his works, those "gods" are unobservable, incomprehensible, and unknowable. They are not personified deities like Zeus, the Heavenly Emperor, or Yahweh, but more like a part of this world; they are the masters of the cosmic rules, or rather, they are the rules themselves.

These deities will not actively take action against humans, but for humans, merely knowing about the knowledge related to them is enough to bring about deadly disasters.

Some people scoff at this, thinking it's just the author pulling tricks, while others have become loyal fans of this writer, and many literary works based on the Cthulhu Mythos have emerged.

In the writer's works, there exists a fictional character named "Abdullah Al-Hassad," who compiled a book called the "Book of the Dead" in the Yellow Calendar year 3427. Cthulhu Mythos enthusiasts refer to this book as "a mythological classic recording the truth of the world," containing a vast record of deities and monsters, with detailed and meticulous descriptions of these beings...

Initially, even the enthusiasts of the Cthulhu Mythos knew these things were just the writer's inventions... Enthusiasts studied these things merely as a pastime or for literary creation purposes...

The mythological stories passed down for thousands or even tens of thousands of years might truly mention existing deities, but the deities and monsters in novels written just over a hundred years ago must be entirely fictional... At worst, they are fictional creations based on real-world strange entities used as a blueprint.

Yet no one expected that, after the writer's death, the monsters mentioned in the "Book of the Dead" actually appeared.

Apart from the "Book of the Dead," these monsters had no records of appearing in history, not even a trace in mythological stories or historical texts from various countries... The only clue was those "Cthulhu Mythos novels" that were created only within the past ten years.

These "literary works" quickly garnered attention from various nations, who established lavish expert teams to specialize in the study of these works...

Experts quickly discovered a hair-raising fact—the monsters mentioned in the "Book of the Dead" completely matched the images in eyewitness reports of some newly discovered strange entities, not just in form but even in habits and abilities as well... If the plot of those novels were stripped away, retaining only descriptions of the monsters, these literary works would almost be precise archives of strange entities!

This discovery quickly shocked the world.

Enthusiasts of the Cthulhu Mythos went mad, starting to refer to the "Book of the Dead" as the "Book of Prophecy," and the writer as a "Prophet"... A group of literary enthusiasts initially gathered purely out of interest, gradually formed into religiously tinted organizations...

Ironically, many cults or mysterious organizations worshipping old gods also existed in the writer's novels... From a certain angle, he not only predicted the appearance of strange entities but also foresaw changes occurring in human society.

Though such changes are insignificant compared to those strange entities.

Scholars studying strange entities believe that the Arabic scholar named "Abdullah Al-Hassad" in the novel is not a fictional character but truly existed in history... He collected information related to strange entities and compiled it into the "Book of the Dead"—this "Book of the Dead" might also be real, and the author from the Hezhong States perhaps knew about the content of this little-known mystical work through some special channels.

And now, those ancient strange entities once recorded in the "Book of the Dead" have reappeared in the sight of human civilization.

Unfortunately, the writer passed away in the Yellow Calendar year 4634 due to cancer... Regarding the truth of the "Book of the Dead," no one in this world can provide an accurate answer anymore.

Underneath the mural with the dense fog, two lines of text were written in cursive Latin—Sun Hang didn't understand Latin, but upon seeing these two lines of text, he instinctively read them aloud in Chinese.

"That which is dead may eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die."

He had never read any Cthulhu novels, yet he clearly remembered that this phrase originated from the "Book of the Dead," revered by Cthulhu Mythos enthusiasts as the "Bible."

It is said that the original "Book of the Dead" was written in an obscure script from the Arab Region, later translated into Greek and Latin, with various versions of its translation existing, but the original manuscript has long been elusive—even some claim that when the original "Book of the Dead" emerges, it will be the end of the world.

But for some reason... Sun Hang always felt that people seemed to have gotten the order wrong.

Why must it be that the strange entities recorded in the "Book of the Dead" reappear in the world? Why couldn't the strange entities have decided to appear before the world as the monsters described in the "Book of the Dead" after reading it themselves?

Perhaps the writer, frustrated in life, transformed into a Spirit Body after death, or merged with a powerful strange entity, creating those monsters that appeared in his writings like creating a novel?

By that time, over two-thirds of the Hezhong States' territory had fallen, and his grave in "Rhode Island" was within the Surrendered Area...

If some powerful existence absorbed his consciousness, this might not be impossible...

Sun Hang continued forward, and the next mural depicted a scene that didn't seem like content from mythological stories.

It was a group of people in white coats, surrounding an operating table, performing strange dances, while on the operating table, a petite girl was tightly bound with straps, unable to move.

[P.S. This chapter is 4000 words, merging two chapters into one.]