Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 57 Entrusted for Life
"The final result is the same..." Sun Hang picked up a piece of chicken and stuffed it into his mouth. "You always give me a very pessimistic and negative attitude, and it seems that you even have a slight tendency to self-destruction."

"If you only have a few months left, the same goes for you." Wang Xiyi said lightly.

"Is there no way to prolong life?"

"Yes, but the price is that I will completely turn into a weird creature." Wang Xiyi said, "It would be better to die."

"I've always been curious, what kind of weird meme did you get infected with?"

"C15 Black Dragon." Wang Xiyi answered straightforwardly, "It's called a dragon, but it's actually just a mutated giant lizard."

"What about the real Black Dragon?"

"Dead." Wang Xiyi took another bite of rice. "Its habitat was on an unknown island in the western Pacific Ocean. The Federation carried out a saturation nuclear strike on the island, wiping it and the island out of this world."

"An unknown island?" Sun Hang was slightly startled. "Then it... has never been to Xiazhou Continent?"

"You want to ask me how I got infected?" Wang Xiyi said, "I was artificially infected. There are actually many people like me."

"Artificially made?"

"The black dragon has strong vitality. Although a nuclear weapon with a yield of tens of millions of tons killed it, the federal scientists still found some residues with strange virus memes and life reactions at the explosion site. They brought these residues back to the laboratory and spent more than ten years to successfully cultivate a 'black dragon's' embryo." Wang Xiyi looked around, and after making sure that no one was paying attention to them, she whispered to Sun Hang.

"It's a pretty crazy plan." At this point, Sun Hang had almost guessed the real purpose of this group of scientists.

"Only the Monster Hunters who are infected can fight against the monsters. However, the number of naturally born infected is small, and the conversion rate is extremely low. The abilities they gain are also very unstable... Therefore, the plan to mass-produce Monster Hunters was proposed, and it was quickly approved by the top leaders of the Federation."

"They extracted the black dragon meme from the embryo, processed it, and then implanted it into the human body... After a series of experiments, they found that if the recipient was a human embryo, the genes would be quickly assimilated by the weird, while adults would die from various complications, among which the highest mortality rate was the 'cytokine storm'. Therefore, the age group of six to ten years old became the best recipient, because human cells at this age have been fully differentiated, but the immune system has not yet matured, which is the most suitable stage for integrating the weird meme."

"What is the success rate of the fusion experiment?" Sun Hang asked.

"As far as I know, it's 2 percent," Wang Xiyi said. "I was the only one who survived out of the 50 children in my batch."

"Life is not easy." Sun Hang opened a can of orange juice with one hand and handed it to Wang Xiyi, "Here's to you."

The two men clinked their cans together, then tilted their heads back and drank.

At this time, a ground staff member walked by with a German Shepherd. Sun Hang picked up a piece of meat from the lunch box and threw it to him, but the German Shepherd just turned his head and looked at him without even sniffing the meat.

"See? Even dogs won't eat meat that's tainted with the smell of coriander." Sun Hang curled his lips and said to Wang Xiyi with his head tilted.

"This is a military dog. Military dogs will only eat the food fed by their breeders. It has nothing to do with coriander," said Wang Xiyi.

"Oh, is that so?" Sun Hang scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

"The weird creature that infected you... is Taotie, right?" Wang Xiyi suddenly asked. "Did the old bald guy in the wheelchair tell you?"

"No, I guessed." Wang Xiyi said, "Because when I get close to you, my heart becomes trembling and uneasy. My instinct tells me that you are a very dangerous predator... and among the recent attacks, the only one whose serial number ranks before the black dragon is 'Taotie'."

"...I always feel like you're trying to trick me." Sun Hang swallowed the last mouthful of rice and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"In your eyes, I'm actually no different from 'food', right?" Wang Xiyi turned her head and looked at Sun Hang deeply.

Sun Hang actually wanted to say "You found out", but after thinking about it, he swallowed the words.

Others treat you as a colleague, and you treat them as food...it sounds a bit too much.

"It's okay. I don't care." Seeing that Sun Hang didn't answer, Wang Xiyi continued, "I would like to ask you a favor."

"I can probably guess what you want from me."

"Yes," Wang Xiyi nodded, "When that day comes, please eat me."

"Does this count as... a lifelong commitment?" Sun Hang curled the corners of his mouth.

"If you think it is, then it is." Wang Xiyi said indifferently.

"Then how well-done do you want yourself to be cooked by then?" Sun Hang suddenly felt that he seemed to have a talent for telling jokes from hell.

"It's up to you." Wang Xiyi stood up. "You can steam it or braise it. I have no objection."

"Okay, no more jokes, let's talk about the future later." Sun Hang threw the empty lunch box back onto the cart, "It's better to think about how to deal with it after the change happens."

"How are you going to deal with this?" Wang Xiyi asked back, "My intuition tells me that you are just going to gather these people together and then do nothing."

"Is your intuition so accurate?" Sun Hang looked surprised.

"Because I have the same idea as you." Wang Xiyi glanced at the people who were queuing up to receive lunch boxes in the temporary barracks in the distance and whispered.

"I never thought about saving these people." Sun Hang paused, then continued, "They have all been marked by the strange creature and have become 'sunk costs'. What we should do is to stop the loss in time and not let the harm of the space-time anomaly expand further."

"You did the right thing, but your words are dangerous." Wang Xiyi lowered her voice, "As a hunter, you shouldn't say such things... Yang Qi should have mentioned this to you during the job assessment, right?"

"To maintain the so-called 'humanity'?" Sun Hang grinned. "I am not qualified to let these 180 people die, nor can I let more people die to save them... It's like a forked railway track with one person and five people tied to each other, and an out-of-control tram is approaching at high speed, and I just happened to pass by holding a toilet plunger."

(End of this chapter)