Fear of food

Chapter 82 Are there other people in the house?

Looking at the familiar gate of the residential compound, Chen Qi was filled with mixed emotions.

Three days ago, at the same time and in the same place, he fled in a disheveled state, filled with anger and fear.

But now that he's back, his mindset is completely different.

No longer afraid, even a little expectant.

However, when Chen Qi and his teammates opened their front door, they were slightly taken aback.

The scene was a mess: the shoe cabinet in the entryway was broken, shoes were scattered all over the floor, the walls were covered in scratches, and the wallpaper was torn to shreds...

These are clearly the damage caused by the mother's struggle with the Nightmare Eater within her body for control of her body.

Everything seemed to be frozen on the night Chen Qi escaped.

Chen Qi strode into the house, turned on the lights, and searched each room, but he couldn't find his mother.

To my surprise, I came up empty-handed!
However, the mother has become a parasite, and her whereabouts cannot be judged using conventional logic.

Who knows, somewhere in the city, his mother is probably searching for her son right now.

After searching the house for a while without finding any useful clues, Coffee suggested, "Let's go to the property management office and check the security footage."

So a group of people went to the property management's monitoring room.

At this moment, the security guard on night duty was fast asleep, slumped over his desk. He was clearly quite agitated after being woken up, but when he saw that Chen Qi and his group outnumbered him, he immediately calmed down.

They readily complied by retrieving surveillance footage from the two elevators in Chen Qi's building.

Chen Qi rewound the surveillance footage to the early morning of three days prior, shortly after he fled his home.

The surveillance footage shows that shortly after Chen Qi left the elevator, Dr. Zhao, wearing a white coat, entered the elevator.

A few moments later, Dr. Zhao and Chen Qi's mother left together in the elevator...

However... to Chen Qi's surprise, there was actually another person in the elevator!

She was a little girl, probably not even ten years old, wearing a school uniform, carrying a backpack, and with two braids. She looked very cute.

The little girl entered the elevator with Chen Qi's mother and Dr. Zhao, and they also exited the elevator together. During the process, Dr. Zhao patted the girl's head.

Chen Qi's eyes widened. This girl didn't come with Dr. Zhao; judging from her appearance, she came from his house!

Were there other people at his house that night?

Chen Qi carefully recalled that his family had three bedrooms. That day, he went into his parents' master bedroom and returned to his own room, but he didn't go to the remaining guest bedroom.

That room is only used occasionally when guests come to the house; it's usually empty.

That night, the guest room door did seem to be closed.

So it seems the little girl was in the guest room that day.

"Judging from her clothes and age, she should be a primary school student. Is she a student in my mom's class?"

Chen Qi's mother is a primary school teacher, but it is generally unlikely that she would bring the children from her class home to stay overnight.

However, his mother was clearly not in her "normal" state at that time.

Chen Qi and his team quickly scrolled through the elevator surveillance footage and discovered that after that, Chen Qi's mother's image did not appear in the surveillance footage of either elevator again.

"Has he never come back since he left that night?"

Chen Qi then asked the security guards to retrieve the surveillance footage from inside the community. The last shot of the mother was when she was getting into the hospital ambulance with the little girl and Dr. Zhao.

As the group left the monitoring room, Chen Qi remained frowning, never expecting that his mother had disappeared.

This disrupted his plans.

Only by feeding her wild food before she is completely parasitized can her consciousness be temporarily awakened.

Once the parasitism is complete, wild food will probably become useless.

As an ordinary person, Chen Qi's mother wouldn't need much time to complete the entire parasitic process.

"Biscuit, what are your plans?" Swill asked. "Should we find a different test subject?"

Zhui Feng said, "Although I really want to sign my brother up, he has already been completely parasitized."

Coffee didn't say anything, just gently shook her head.

Big Pancake said, "My dad might still be saved, but he was torn apart by my Big Pancake (dog) last time, so he probably hasn't come back to life yet."

Chen Qi, who had been deep in thought with his head down, suddenly said, "What do you think about using Dr. Zhao as a test subject?"

Zhui Feng and the others were taken aback: "It's possible. He doesn't seem to be completely parasitized, so he meets the requirements."

The chat logs between Mrs. Wu and Dr. Zhao show that Mrs. Wu was still supervising Dr. Zhao's meals until recently, indicating that Dr. Zhao was at least not completely parasitized.

Chen Qi made this decision after careful consideration.

First of all, his mother left home with Dr. Zhao, so Dr. Zhao likely knew where his mother was and also knew about the little girl's situation.

Secondly, it's for that lost memory!

To find out if everything the Nightmare Eater said is true or false, the only way is to retrieve that memory.

The Nightmare Eater claims that he has merged that memory with his own. If he is not lying, then even if Chen Qi eats the high-grade wild food from Jinghai Medical College, he will not be able to find that memory.

This created a vicious cycle. So he had no choice but to settle for Dr. Zhao.

After all, it was Dr. Zhao who sent him to Jinghai Medical College, so he should know something!
Therefore, after considering all factors, Dr. Zhao is the most cost-effective test subject.

After Chen Qi expressed his thoughts, his teammates all expressed their understanding.

"Do you know Dr. Zhao's address?" Zhui Feng asked.

Chen Qi nodded. He had previously obtained Madam Wu's phone, which contained detailed delivery addresses on the food delivery and online shopping apps.

Coffee was as efficient as ever, saying, "Shall we go now?"

Just as Chen Qi was about to agree, a sudden wave of dizziness hit him, and he swayed as if about to fall.

Zhui Feng and Gan Shui, who were standing nearby, quickly helped him up.

"what happened to you?"

Why do you look so pale all of a sudden?

Chen Qi took a few breaths and, after a moment, weakly said, "The Nightmare Eater has revived inside me!"

He had experienced this familiar feeling of weakness once before, while in the illusion.

He felt the same way when the Nightmare Eater revived after he killed it for the first time.

"As expected, it won't be that easy to get rid of that guy..."

Coffee shook his head and said, "You should go back and rest first. We can deal with Dr. Zhao tomorrow."

Chen Qi's teammates helped him into the car. On the way, Chen Qi ate two more servings of wild food, which helped him recover from his weakness.

However, his mental weakness did not diminish, and he remained listless.

Afterwards, Chen Qi lay down in the car to rest, but his teammates were not idle.

They first went to the pancake shop and removed the security camera from it.

Then he went to the rental house where Zhui Feng had previously lived, installed the camera, and left Xia Huiyun's syringe in the rental house.

This will allow us to observe whether Xia Huiyun can track down the syringe...

By this time, it was almost dawn, and everyone was somewhat tired. Instead of going home, they all went to Coffee's villa to rest.

Several people lay sprawled out on the soft sofa in the coffee shop.

Although Chen Qi was mentally exhausted, his mind was still restless, and he couldn't help but keep thinking about things.

Thinking about his experience in the hallucination tonight, about his mother's disappearance, about the identity of the little girl in the elevator...

After a moment, he spoke up: "Tell me, is everything I've experienced tonight an illusion or real?"

Xu An'an rarely spoke up, saying, "Our school's labs aren't that big, and they're not connected to any other rooms."

Big Pancake also said, "The dogs went into the lab, but they didn't see any corpses."

"I know that. All the signs indicate that I entered an illusion, but the people I injured in the illusion were indeed injured in reality!"

"Moreover, many things can be found in reality."

Zhui Feng suddenly realized, "I understand. It's similar to mushroom poisoning. When I was poisoned by mushrooms before, I saw frogs and dogs come to help me, and Doraemon took out a syringe from his pocket to give me an injection. They were actually nurses and doctors."

"In other words, some hallucinations have a real counterpart, while others are just figments of your imagination."

Chen Qi shook his head: "It's not that simple. Those parasites weren't in the lab at the time, so why were they injured by me?"

"Besides, if they were all in the lab, I should be the one who got into trouble, right?"

Coffee speculated, "It feels like this illusion is built on the basis of reality and has an invisible connection with reality, so when you do something in the illusion, reality will also be affected accordingly."

Chen Qi nodded: "That's the only explanation for now. However, I don't know if the delivery room and morgue I saw in the illusion actually exist there, or if they are some kind of symbol..."

"The delivery room is the resurrection point for parasites, while the morgue stores humanity."

"The latter is easier to explain, since human nature is something that cannot be seen or touched, but surely the resurrection point should have a corresponding real-world location?"

"Unless the parasites can grow flesh and blood and resurrect themselves from the illusion..."

Coffee then took out his phone and said, "Of course, there's another possibility: the patient, the morgue, the delivery room—it's all your hallucination. None of it exists. Everything you see there is meaningless."

"It's also very simple to verify this..."

Coffee scrolls through her phone, looking at the autobiographical accounts of Chen Qi that she had previously recorded.

“You mentioned before that you had a conversation with a ‘patient’ who identified herself as Du Yuxuan, a freshman at Jinghai Normal University. We can investigate her.”

"If such a person truly exists, it would explain a lot."

Chen Qi said, "Then let's also keep an eye on the butcher. He was killed by me and two officials in the delivery room. Let's see if that will affect his resurrection."

"Also, let's try contacting the official channels through the group admin to verify if the two people I saw are indeed their people."

Coffee nodded, stood up and said, "You all go and rest. I'll take care of these things."

"Especially you, Biscuit, get some rest. We'll be giving Dr. Zhao some food therapy tonight."

Everyone looked exhausted, except for Coffee, who was full of energy, like a perpetual motion machine.

(End of this chapter)