Hunter of Mysterious Creature

"You—" Chen Hongjuan's eyes widened, and then she lunged forward, shouting angrily, "I've worked my fingers to the bone raising you! How did I raise such an ungrateful wretch like you?! All these years, who fed you, who clothed you, who provided for you! Now you want to turn your back on me! Ha! Dream on! What's the use of these papers?! I gave birth to you, and you'll always be my son. Sever ties? No way in hell, no matter who says it!!"

Chen Hongjuan tried to make a scene, but two field operatives had already rushed forward to pin her to the ground. She could only pound the ground while cursing them in an unspeakably vile dialect.

Thankfully, Sun Hang couldn't understand most of those obscure Shuzhou dialect curses.

As for the ones he could understand, frankly, they didn't hurt him much.

"Let her go." Sun Hang said to the two operatives, "Be careful, she might file a complaint later, could affect your career."

The two field operatives exchanged glances but did not let go.

"I said let go. We don't want rumors going around that the Field Operations Department of the Celestial City Mysterious Creature Research Institute bullies unarmed women." Sun Hang insisted.

Only then did the two operatives release her. As soon as they did, Chen Hongjuan scrambled up from the ground and rushed towards Sun Hang.

"Give me back my son!"

But just half a meter from Sun Hang, she suddenly stopped in her tracks, then fell to the ground, her face pale.

Sun Hang's jaw split open, the fissure extending to his neck as thousands of white hyphae emerged from it like sea anemone tentacles in the water.

In an instant, the hyphae disappeared, and Sun Hang's face returned to normal. He smiled at the terrified Chen Hongjuan and asked, "How was it, impressive?"

"Mon... Monster?!" Chen Hongjuan stammered with a trembling voice, "You're a monster!"

"I'm an infected, not a monster." Sun Hang said seriously, "Though you're not entirely wrong; infected aren't much different from monsters."

Sun Hang wanted to say more, but Wang Xiyi gently tugged at him from behind, whispering, "Better to keep a low profile... Using an infected's abilities to scare civilians will have worse consequences than the Field Department's violent enforcement."

"Alright." Sun Hang nodded, turning to leave.

Just then, he suddenly sensed the presence of a mysterious creature!

The source of this presence was none other than Chen Hongjuan, sitting on the ground!

Its intensity was growing at a geometric rate. Sun Hang turned back to see the shadow previously attached to Chen Hongjuan had already expanded enough to envelop the entire area.

The detectors on the field operatives' belts used to identify mysterious creature memes began to beep urgently. One operative, sensing something amiss, instinctively reached out to Chen Hongjuan.

"Get back!" Sun Hang shouted immediately.

But his warning was a second too late. A red light flashed, and the arm of the operative fell to the ground, the severed flesh boiling like it was cooked, gushing out a mass of dark red foam.

"It's you! You must be the one who tricked my son into signing this damned paper! You deserve to die! You all deserve to die!" Chen Hongjuan slowly raised her head. Her face was completely distorted, with her skin bubbling under the heat, covering her original features.

"A mysterious creature! It's a mysterious creature!" At first stunned, someone in the crowd shouted out.

Panic ensued among the bystanders.

"Ye Jiu! You lead the evacuation! Xiyi, take the injured operative for treatment... I'll handle this."

"What did you just call me?" Wang Xiyi was momentarily stunned, "You'll be okay handling this, right? The aura she is emitting is quite strong."

"If I can't handle this, I might as well smash my head into a block of tofu and die." Sun Hang said, "Can't afford the embarrassment."

"Alright." Wang Xiyi didn't waste words and flashed to the side of the injured field operative, lifting him into the air.

Chen Hongjuan's hatred seemed fixated on Sun Hang, not pursuing the operatives, but hobbling and stumbling towards Sun Hang.

"Bang!"

Before Sun Hang could act, a gunshot rang out beside him.

Ling Xiao gripped tightly the gun Sun Hang had given him, firing at the creature Chen Hongjuan had become.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Three shots, all accurately hitting Chen Hongjuan, making her stagger backward. But the bullets didn't prove fatal; instead, her presence grew even stronger.

"It's grievance rage." Sun Hang murmured.

"What?" Ling Xiao instinctively asked.

"The more you attack her, the stronger her grievance rage becomes, and this emotion is likely the reason she turned into a creature." Sun Hang explained.

Though he couldn't quite fathom why an ordinary person would suddenly transform into a creature, it was evidently intimately tied to the emotional shadow he previously observed clinging to Chen Hongjuan.

"What should I do then?" Ling Xiao asked.

"You won't be needed here." Sun Hang said, "Go with that guy in armor to disperse the crowd."

"Okay." Ling Xiao didn't hesitate and immediately ran after Ye Jiu.

Chen Hongjuan didn't glance at her son, her gaze fixed solely on Sun Hang—despite her eyes being covered in blood blisters, Sun Hang could still feel the intense, almost tangible, gaze filled with rage and resentment.

"Kill you... I want to kill you..." Chen Hongjuan repeated, each word spilling deformed blood and the stench of an unknown fluid from her mouth, pooling beneath her.

She had forgotten her son, her promised generous benefits, and the severance papers; all her obsessions had transformed into a single target of hate: Sun Hang. Her sole fixation was to tear Sun Hang apart... possibly into eighty pieces.

This kind of fixation reminded Sun Hang of the eerie infant and the vengeful spirit in Longyan Temple... Are human obsessions and emotions, in essence, the same as the memes of mysterious creatures?

Chen Hongjuan took another step, and one of her arms suddenly melted, forming a long, blood-red whip that lashed towards Sun Hang's head!

With a flash of silver light, the whip was sliced into pieces, while Chen Hongjuan herself was blown away, slamming onto the door of an off-road vehicle, leaving a dent.

Sun Hang wanted to continue observing her condition, but he surprisingly found that after Chen Hongjuan fully turned into a creature, the shadow representing negative emotions had disappeared; the only thing he could sense was the constantly "proliferating" mysterious creature memes on Chen Hongjuan.

"Has it disappeared because it became a concrete meme...?" Sun Hang pondered, manipulating the Liquid Metal Flying Blades to slice the aggressive appendages growing from Chen Hongjuan into thin slices... he did not wish to kill her outright but intended to contain her... As someone who had not possessed any meme prior and transformed under the public eye, Chen Hongjuan had too much worthy of study.

"Sun Hang..." Ye Jiu's voice suddenly came through the earpiece, "Could Chen Hongjuan have been infected by you?"

"Don't talk nonsense." Wang Xiyi's voice immediately cut in, "Sun Hang didn't even touch her, how could it be him? If anything, you might be the first to get infected!"

"I... I just said it casually... This is freaking bizarre, how could an ordinary person suddenly transform into a creature? Wasn't there supposed to be a transition period even after infection?"