"Got it, so this guy is planning to evolve in order to take out?" Sun Hang nodded, "Doesn't this secondary transformation have any cost? Can you just beco stronger whenever you want? If that's the case, I might as well squat in the deep mountains for a hundred years, set a powerful imaginary enemy for myself every day, and go for secondary, tertiary, quaternary... to a few hundred, a few thousand degrees of transformation. Wouldn't I be invincible then?"
"Of course there's a cost! The secondary transformation is very risky for supernatural entities. The higher the enhancent level, the greater the probability of failure... Like I said, Blood Mary, for example, iterates in a seed-like manner and absorbs the living sacrifices offered by those human followers, thus evolving the ability to be unafraid of flas... I also said, Chen Hongjuan just showed signs of secondary transformation, but she's still far from truly undergoing it."
"You could have said she's still far off earlier... I thought she was going to transform on the spot. Almost made a little nervous." Sun Hang glanced at Chen Hongjuan, who was still struggling on the rack. The adjustable base of the rack was clanging as it shook, but the locks clasping her limbs were still as iron, making it impossible to break free with brute force.
"You don't look nervous at all."
"By the way, that day, was Mr. Wang considered a secondary transformation?" Sun Hang suddenly asked.
"Probably not... The concept of secondary transformation only applies to those entities that have completely transford. It doesn't apply to the infected... Night Slayer's situation can only be described as a tic adjustnt at most."
"Oh..." Sun Hang nodded, a flash of silver light from his fingertips instantly cut all the locks restraining Chen Hongjuan!
"What are you doing?!" Yang Qi shouted imdiately.
Once the restraints were removed, Chen Hongjuan didn't hesitate for a mont, directly lunging at Sun Hang... However, before she could even touch Sun Hang, she was kicked back, crashing heavily onto the rack that had previously confined her.
"Weird..." Sun Hang held his chin, scrutinizing Chen Hongjuan, murmuring.
"What's weird? And hurry up and lock it back! Don't ss around!"
"I rember back at the camp, it had the ability to alter its limbs," Sun Hang said. "It turned one of its arms into a long whip to attack , then all sorts of aggressive organs grew on its body... Those organs should have been sliced up by now. I recall you packed over ten big bags with those sliced pieces... So why has it lost that ability now?"
Yang Qi was slightly taken aback and fell into silence.
Liquid nitrogen was very effective on Chen Hongjuan. Once she was placed in the Eternal Freeze Coffin, she stopped moving... But now she's been thawed for more than an hour. In theory, that ability should have returned to her by now.
With that being the case, just relying on those physical locks on the confinent device wouldn't be enough to hold her... unless liquid nitrogen was continuously sprayed on her.
"Not just that, her strength seems to be much weaker than when she first transford."
Chen Hongjuan lunged again, only to be kicked back by Sun Hang once more.
"Don't move it yet! Let look up the previous records... I rember the data should have been recorded when we first contained it. Comparing them should reveal the problem..."
"No need to go through that trouble..." Sun Hang muttered to himself, stepping forward and pinning Chen Hongjuan to the ground. Two fungal threads erged like tentacles from his back, piercing into Chen Hongjuan's brain.
Sun Hang instantly identified the problem... Chen Hongjuan's internal seed to be largely missing.
"Sun Hang, I found the problem!" Yang Qi's voice rang out simultaneously, "The length of the tic fragnts is incorrect! Compared to the records just now, every fragnt unit of Chen Hongjuan's is at least one-third shorter now! Her is showing severe signs of depletion!"
A third?
Sun Hang couldn't help but chuckle internally.
It seems the precision of human civilization's detection equipnt still isn't up to par...
The fragnt that was shortened by a third was just the apparent layer that the equipnt could detect, while beneath this apparent layer, Chen Hongjuan's internal had almost been completely hollowed out!
What was left in the lab, bluntly speaking, was just an empty shell!
Sun Hang began to receive the information carried in the absorbed , and so fuzzy images started flooding his mind.
These images seed to be the mories after Chen Hongjuan was placed in the Eternal Freeze Coffin, blurred, abstract, intermittent... even ti seed to beco extrely chaotic.
Yet within these fuzzy images, Sun Hang managed to capture a few fras of crucial information.
That was a pale figure, flickering across the fras.
Soon, a huge sense of fear enveloped him... This emotion stemd from Chen Hongjuan's panic about her own demise... aning that during that period, sothing nearly claid her life.
"Looks like soone beat to it." Sun Hang sighed, pulling out from those fuzzy mory fragnts.
The pale figure was very likely the ghostly Anna wandering around Tianfu City.
At an unknown ti, she had snuck into the research facility's underground containnt zone, "ingesting" most of the s within Chen Hongjuan, leaving the struggling empty shell here...
No wonder when Sun Hang first encountered Chen Hongjuan, he felt sothing was off.
The real Chen Hongjuan had long beco a nourishnt for Anna.
"So she didn't strike Chen Hongjuan that night, planning to wait until she fully transford before having her al?" Sun Hang muttered to himself.
Compared to human's negative emotions, the transford of these entities clearly serves as a better delicacy.
But how did Anna foresee that Chen Hongjuan would beco an entity?
At that ti, Sun Hang hadn't even announced the plan to recruit refugees or designated the Sixth Settlent Camp as a pilot area.
If I hadn't co to the Sixth Settlent Camp for recruitnt, if I hadn't had an impulsive conversation with Ling Xiao and learned about his family situation, severing his parental ties with Chen Hongjuan... then none of this would have happened.
Perhaps Chen Hongjuan and Ling Xiao would have continued living in the refugee camp; or maybe, Ling Xiao would have been taken into the training base, and Chen Hongjuan, by virtue of being a guardian and direct relative, could enjoy the generous welfare benefits alone...
In any case, it was unlikely for Chen Hongjuan to transform in a short period.
So why did Anna keep her?
Was she hoping Chen Hongjuan would transform during an argunt with her neighbors?
Or could it be that Anna... had the ability to foresee the future?
Sun Hang couldn't help but recall the words Anna said to him when her "physical body died."
"This is not goodbye forever, in the river of ti, we shall et again."
At first, Sun Hang thought it was just a line Anna created to maintain her enigmatic persona, more for show than for substance...
But it turned out that they did et again, with only a few days separating the last farewell.
And after this encounter, Anna would occasionally make her presence felt in front of Sun Hang, lingering like an obsessive and eerie ghostly woman.
So, what exactly does "the river of ti" in this context refer to?
Does it imply Anna has the ability to traverse different tilines at will?
Is that how she can foresee the future?
Or does it an that at different points in ti, there exist countless different versions of Anna?
The Anna from the previous second died, yet the Anna of the next second is still alive?
If ti is compared to a river, Sun Hang picking up a stone nad Anna as he wades in the river... only to reach further down the river, stretch out his hand, and find an identical stone... is that what it ans?
So what form does this Anna he just saw outside the operating room's window take?
A projection? Or a physical entity?
"Great, now my scalp is itching, and I'm about to sprout so brains..."
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