This is probably the only "abnormal" place he has discovered in this small world.
He really wanted to rush directly to the research institute to see what was going on, but a voice deep in his mind told him that, here, the "research institute" simply doesn't exist.
The blurred building outlines are like textures in a ga scene—visible but inaccessible.
Sun Hang pondered for a mont and returned to the sixth floor from the rooftop.
The building goes up to only the sixth floor—the seventh is the rooftop.
Sun Hang held the door handle of Room 601 and gently twisted it.
The door was locked.
Liquid tal, like a small snake, slipped through the door gap, silently cutting the latch. Sun Hang gently twisted the door handle, and the door opened.
The furnishings inside the room also conveyed a sense of the bygone era—wicker woven sofas and chairs, a bookcase with glass cabinet doors stuffed with nurous paperbacks, a 14-inch black-and-white television covered by a tassel-edged towel, a wall-mounted hot water kettle cabinet in the kitchen neatly lined with several kettles wrapped in woven bamboo covers.
The divider between the dining room and kitchen was an aluminum sliding door, with sared glass panes hard to clean of oil and smoke. A glass tray was placed in the center of the dining table, holding seven or eight apples and two bananas, the spaces filled with hard candies wrapped in colorful wrappers.
This family's living standard surpassed 95% of the households from that era, but considering they were the families of the Naless Island Research Institute staff, such treatnt wasn't unwarranted.
Sun Hang did not rashly enter the interior; he silently noted everything he saw.
He wanted to verify a hypothesis.
Sun Hang turned around and opened Room 602 in the sa way.
The furniture was identical, the layout was the sa, even the quantity and stacking thod of apples in the tray, along with the positions of the hard candies, had not changed.
Without a word, Sun Hang silently descended to the fifth floor and opened Rooms 501 and 502.
Next were Rooms 401 and 402.
...
Every unit in this building has identical interiors, as if a lazy programr designed a ga scene using the sa indoor template.
Why is it like this?
Sun Hang walked into the living room of Room 102, picked an apple from the dining table, and took a bite.
The apple wasn't very fresh, but it hadn't shriveled from dehydration—there was no place to grow apples on Naless Island, these fruits were brought in from outside, making this apple a "luxury item" considering the historical context.
Sun Hang picked a candy, peeled the wrapper, and put the fruit-flavored hard candy in his mouth.
The candy was lemon-flavored, but the sweetness completely overwheld the sourness, making the apple he just tasted seem bland. Sun Hang sucked on the candy, backing up to the sofa against the wall, and slowly sat down.
"All residents look the sa, not out of laziness, but because there's only one type of material, right?" Sun Hang asked himself.
"The research institute appears like a texture for the sa reason."
"Chira 17 hasn't been to the Naless Island Research Institute, so in its mory, the research institute is just a vague outline."
"Similarly, it hasn't been to anyone else's ho, so it doesn't know what the interiors of hos in this neighborhood look like."
"And here... is the place you used to live, right?" Sun Hang looked up at the fluorescent tube on the ceiling and asked, "Is this... your ho?"
No one answered his question.
But the consciousness in Sun Hang's mind gave him a definite response—he guessed correctly.
Chira 17 wasn't born in the Naless Island Research Institute; it was born in this "family compound."
"It's so absurd..."
Sun Hang tilted his head back, resting against the sofa, and muttered quietly, "Did soone secretly take the research results out of the institute and raise you here?"
A sea breeze blew through, causing the sheer curtain to flutter.
Sun Hang got up and went to the television, turning it on.
Televisions of that era didn't have remote controls, so changing channels required turning the large knob on the television.
The room had electricity, but no signal; no matter how Sun Hang twisted the knob, the screen displayed only static.
The television speaker emitted a crackling electrical noise, echoing the wind sounds outside.
Sun Hang suddenly felt lonely.
He kept walking inside; it was a two-bedroom apartnt, with the dining room serving as the living room. Besides the kitchen, toilet, and balcony, there were only two small rooms of less than ten square ters.
One room was used as a study, but the books on the shelf were sparse, and the pen holder on the desk had fallen, with two black fountain pens rolling on the floor.
The study's window was open, and the sa sheer curtain from the living room was swaying in the wind—it was evident that the curtain was the culprit for the pen holder's fall.
The other room was a bedroom with only a single bed, sparsely outfitted with white bedding—a plain sheet, duvet cover, and pillowcase. Besides that, there was nothing else in the bedroom.
"You live alone?" Sun Hang seed to be asking Chira 17, yet it was a self-dialogue.
Sun Hang went to the bedside and pressed the sheet with his hand.
Very hard, the sheet below was just a bed board with nothing padded in between—given the temperature on Naless Island, sleeping on such a bed would be quite cold at night.
Sun Hang, like an impolite guest, lay down, looking up at the light bulb hanging from the ceiling... He suddenly felt a very familiar sensation.
Identical to the inexplicable familiarity he once felt with the interior of the Naless Island Research Institute.
Could it be that the person who once lived here... was not Chira 17, but himself?
Was he once a researcher at the Naless Island Research Institute? Was he the one who "cultivated" Anna and secretly brought Chira 17 out of the institute?
Was he the culprit?
Sun Hang recalled the mories of those Angsa hunters; what the Naless Island Research Institute studied at that ti seed to be a human embryo—an embryo infected with primary-grade s.
Could it be that he took that embryo out?
Or was Anna that embryo, and Chira 17... Anna's clone?
So Anna and Chira 17 were essentially twins?
Why did he have to get entangled with them? Anna and Chira 17 both explicitly ntioned that their lives seed to be bound together with his. If he was just an "ordinary" researcher...
Nonsense, if he were an ordinary researcher, it would be over a hundred years now, he would have died long ago!
These things here aren't thirty or forty years ago, but over a hundred years!
The ti span is too large, making many "reasonable" guesses unreasonable.
Even Sun Hang is extrely uncertain about whether he himself is still human.
Humans certainly can't live over a hundred years, at least non-infected ones can't.
Could it be that... he injected the primary-grade s from that embryo into his own body back then?
Using himself as an experintal sample to seek the most real and detailed experintal data, indeed like sothing the madn at Dubhe Tower could do...
"Was I a madman before?"
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