Hunter of Mysterious Creature

Chapter 682 5: Not a Stray Bullet (2)

The instant noodles hadn't softened because the remaining water in the kettle was no longer hot—somehow, this thought naturally popped into Sun Hang's mind.

"I should go downstairs to get a kettle of hot water. Now they charge eighty cents for a kettle of hot water... so greedy."

"I'm almost out of money, need to find a way to switch jobs."

"The urgent task is to get an identity card... it doesn't matter if the photo or age on the ID card matches... at least with an ID card, I can find a decent job... and not just eat instant noodles every day."

A jumble of random thoughts flooded into Sun Hang's mind, giving him a shiver of awareness.

This perspective didn't seem to belong to someone else; it was himself—Sun Hang before he lost his memory!

"So, I used to live in an attic like this?"

Before Sun Hang could recall more details, a scream suddenly erupted outside the attic, followed by piercing sirens and various shouts.

An explosion echoed from afar, mingled with what seemed like the sound of collapsing buildings.

"Bang!!"

Gunshots rang out, and chaotic footsteps clattered below. Someone burst through the door, rushing out urgently.

Then came the sound of flesh being torn apart—though Sun Hang didn't witness the person who ran out being torn to pieces, he was certain it was the sound of a beast's claws ripping through flesh and bone.

Sun Hang stood up—the memory of him wanting to open that window covered with newspaper surfaced, but before he reached the bed, the small twenty-centimeter-square window and the surrounding wooden wall were shattered, as a bizarre giant beast crashed through the attic walls, knocking Sun Hang to the ground.

This giant beast had the head of a goat, the body of a bison, primate limbs, and its entire body was covered with cyan fur. A tail full of scales swiped lightly, clearing everything behind it—the garbage bags, mattress, and broken fan were smashed to pieces. Half a metal fan blade flew towards him with a "whirr," embedding itself into the wooden floor less than two inches from Sun Hang's head with a "thunk."

The beast's head just lifted, but on its chest was another more terrifying beast face, glaring fiercely at the subdued Sun Hang—this beast face had a maw almost as wide as the giant beast's body, with lips and teeth lined with remnants of blood and flesh.

This beast could unequivocally be classified as a Chimera, though Sun Hang, this guy had an officially assigned scientific name—"Taotie Doppelganger."

"So this is what a Taotie looks like."

This thought flashed through Sun Hang's mind, and then the giant maw on the Taotie doppelganger's chest bit off Sun Hang's neck.

Death is a peculiar sensation, especially feeling life force slowly drain from the mutilated body, as the surroundings grow darker and colder, yet the blood spurting from the neck is scalding, dripping onto Sun Hang's skin, feeling as if molten lava seared down, causing the dying body to violently convulse.

A blast of air, heavy with the stench of blood, filled Sun Hang's chest. He felt as if his body were dissolving—the shapeless flesh crawled up the Taotie doppelganger's body like some mollusk, gradually seeping into its fur.

Sun Hang then noticed that the beast face on Taotie's chest, fierce as it seemed, bore an expression of fear in its eyes.

It was afraid, it had been afraid from the start… Yet it did not flee from Sun Hang, instead allowing Sun Hang's flesh to merge into its body.

The roles of hunter and prey seemed reversed; it didn't feel like it was preying on Sun Hang but willingly offering itself for Sun Hang to "consume."

Sun Hang's vision began to distort; he realized his head was also dissolving into that writhing mass of flesh, slowly crawling onto the Taotie and creeping through its fur.

Sun Hang did not know how much time passed. When his consciousness cleared from the daze, the Taotie doppelganger had disappeared, and the attic, missing an entire wall, became more open than ever, giving an unobstructed view of the heavily damaged street.

The whole street appeared to have been bombarded, with nearly a third of the houses reduced to rubble. Human corpses were scattered everywhere, and crimson blood seeped through the cracks in the cement road.

Sun Hang, bewildered, moved his limbs. He surveyed the attic but found no trace of the Taotie doppelganger, not even bloodstains—despite distinctly remembering the Taotie doppelganger biting off his neck, spraying his blood everywhere.

Yet the wooden floor beneath bore no marks besides the stubborn stains accumulated over the years. If the wall facing the street hadn't completely disappeared, Sun Hang might have thought it was all just a nightmare.

"Phew... so this is what it looked like when the Taotie doppelganger attacked the human residential area that day..." Sun Hang once asked Yang Qi for the case file on this incident, but the accompanying visual material only showed the aftermath clean-up; there were no surveillance recordings of the attack process.

"Four minutes before the Taotie doppelganger appeared, the street's surveillance system went down, and it didn't resume until two hours after the Taotie doppelganger's presence was completely gone. Technicians checked multiple times but couldn't find the cause of the malfunction." These were Yang Qi's exact words.

The street in front of him looked very similar to the one in the video materials Sun Hang had seen... but the destruction of buildings in that street was more severe... at least half of the houses were destroyed.

Wait a minute... does this imply the attack isn't over?

Sun Hang wanted to hide in the attic to observe a bit longer, but he was just a first-person observer now, unable to control the main viewpoint's actions or make any "extra" moves.

Sun Hang climbed down the attic along the remaining half flight of stairs—the first floor of the house hadn't suffered significant damage, the Taotie doppelganger seemed to have leaped directly from the opposite rooftop, crashing into the attic.

The first-floor entrance was wide open, with a mass of mangled flesh at the door; the shoe lying nearby was somewhat familiar to Sun Hang—the landlord boasted just yesterday that his son brought this high-end brand from Chunming City, a pair of shoes costing four months of Sun Hang's rent.

The shoe quality seemed questionable; the upper and sole were separating, the opening resembling a gaping mouth silently facing the nearby pile of flesh.

"Your son might have bought a fake." Sun Hang whispered to himself, "Or maybe you were bragging."

Sun Hang stepped onto the street, intending to check if any neighbors survived, only for several soot-covered sheriffs to emerge from behind a collapsed ruin.

These sheriffs, upon seeing Sun Hang, did not display the expected look of finding a survivor but showed expressions of extreme fear. One sheriff immediately drew his gun and fired at Sun Hang!

Sun Hang felt as if the side of his head had been punched hard. A massive impact flipped him onto his back, and his vision plunged into darkness.

Damn, turns out it wasn't a stray bullet.