Hunter of Mysterious Creature

Chapter 705 - 16: Vertical Dock_2

If you want to go from Tianji Palace to Ziwei Palace and Taiwei Palace, the Floating Car can just fly upward, but to reach the underground Zodiac and Houtu layers, aside from the spiraling ring roads that descend into the earth, there's only the vertical port.

Of course, that's for ordinary people—many institutions or companies have their own exclusive elevators, the most famous being the "Jade Pillar" of Dubhe Tower, though these channels are not open to the public, or they charge extremely high fees.

The Floating Car entered a vertical port that resembled a three-dimensional parking lot. Sun Hang took a ticket at the smart gate at the entrance and followed the holographic signal lights to park in the space with the matching number.

Accompanied by the sound of heavy machinery, the parking space slowly descended into the "waiting hall" of the vertical port.

In this waiting hall, hundreds of cars and Floating Cars were parked all around, with a small projector installed above each parking space projecting images onto the windshields.

These images were mostly advertisements, occasionally interspersed with weather forecasts and today's news, while a countdown was constantly ticking in the upper right corner of the screen.

The vertical port's intervals are twelve minutes, meaning every twelve minutes a batch of vehicles is sent to the Zodiac layer—Sun Hang was quite lucky; when he parked the car, only three minutes and seven seconds were left on the countdown for this batch.

To prevent accidents, entrances to the vertical port's lifting platforms are sealed three minutes before activation, with isolation barriers rising around the parking spaces… if Sun Hang had been seven seconds later, he would have had to wait a full fifteen minutes.

No accidents occurred along the way, and Xue Yue, who was initially quite nervous, gradually let down her guard. She knelt on the rear seat, her cheek pressed against the car window, curiously observing the surroundings—she had never ridden a Floating Car before, and naturally had not been inside a vertical port.

"This space is much larger than the public elevators for people…" Xue Yue murmured.

According to the signage on the walls, this vertical port can transport up to 150 large vehicles and 600 small vehicles at one time—the building on the surface is merely a crane to move vehicles onto the lift platform, while the lift platform below occupies more than ten times the area above ground.

With a slight tremor, the massive platform began to descend, and the screen projected on the car window showed a stark red warning: "Lift platform in operation. For your safety and security, please turn off the engine, apply the handbrake, and do not open the doors or windows, nor exit the vehicle or extend any part of your body outside."

At that moment, Sun Hang seemed to hear some heavy panting. He turned his head toward the sound and saw the adjacent Floating Car shaking slightly—the noise from the lifting platform drowned out the car's movements, and anyone glancing over might mistake it for vibrations caused by the platform.

The Floating Car's windows were tinted, making it difficult to see inside under dim lighting, but the condensation covering the car windows indicated to Sun Hang what was happening inside, prompting him to remark, "Such intense play?"

The gap between parking spaces was less than two meters, and with heat-sensing vision activated, Sun Hang could clearly see two overlapping bright blocks inside the car.

"Things are getting worse, things are getting worse…"

"What are they doing?" Noticing Sun Hang's prolonged stare, Xue Yue also detected something wrong with the adjacent car and asked him quietly.

"Kids shouldn't ask," Sun Hang gestured for her to hush.

In the next moment, a hand with long fingernails suddenly slapped against the inner side of that car's window, then slowly slid down.

The condensation was dragged into five long streaks—if it were blood instead of condensation, it would resemble many scenes in zombie movies.

Xue Yue's face visibly paled, obviously frightened by the hand, and she muttered, "She…she seems to need help…"

"The best way to help them is not to disturb them," Sun Hang said.

"No…" Xue Yue shook her head, "I can see…inside that car…black fog…so thick!"

"Black fog? So thick?"

Sun Hang was slightly stunned, instinctively wiping his eyes.

Indeed, as Xue Yue said, dense black fog that nearly solidified enveloped the entire Floating Car. From this angle, the car itself was almost invisible, appearing only as a menacing, undulating mass of black fog lurking in the adjacent parking space, like a horror monster about to break free…

"No way?" Sun Hang scratched his head in perplexity. "Why would there be an explosion of negative emotions doing such a thing? Even if it's forced, it shouldn't cause such intense negative emotions…"

If negative emotions could be quantified, this mass of negative emotions would outweigh those of several hundred people combined on Yong'an Street… Normally, this level of negative emotions would have triggered a mysterious event already.

But Sun Hang didn't sense any trace of entity meme from the side.

"Don't move recklessly." Sun Hang instructed Xue Yue, "Let me see what's going on."

Sun Hang didn't get out of the car; he instead extended his consciousness tendrils, stealthily probing into the black fog.

In an instant, a torrent of information surged into Sun Hang's mind, the impact as powerful as the tidal waves of memories he endured after devouring Taotie's memetic fragments—these fragments were pieced together by the thoughts of over a hundred individuals.

The information suggested there shouldn't be just two people in that car, but rather hundreds.

A fourth-dimensional space within the car?!

This could explain why the black fog was so dense—two people's negative emotions, no matter how intense, could never reach this level, but the combined negative emotions of hundreds could be "plausible."

"Something's not right… Could there really be hundreds of people in the car?"

Sun Hang didn't bother with propriety and directly directed a fungal filament to burrow through the other vehicle's chassis, sprouting an eye-like organ at its end.

There were indeed only two people inside, a man and a woman, doing exactly what Sun Hang had surmised.

Only at this moment did their facial expressions appear disturbingly unnatural.

But perhaps it's more accurate to say there were no expressions at all, their eyes blank, with only their bodies mechanically performing repetitive actions.

"Are these two even human?" Sun Hang was filled with doubt.

One certainty was apparent: whether they were human or not, they certainly weren't entities.

With no trace of entity aura detected at such close range, the possibility of them being entities was practically zero.

"Mom, do you know there's something called a modified container?" Anna's voice suddenly echoed in Sun Hang's ear.

"Modified container? What is it?"

"Just what you're seeing now, these two 'things'."