Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 666 - 182: Family Compound (Part 2)

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 game scene—visible but inaccessible.

Sun Hang pondered for a moment 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 metal, 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 numerous 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 smeared 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 Nameless Island Research Institute staff, such treatment 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 same way.

The furniture was identical, the layout was the same, even the quantity and stacking method 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 programmer designed a game scene using the same 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 Nameless 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 overwhelmed 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 same, 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 same reason."

"Chimera 17 hasn't been to the Nameless Island Research Institute, so in its memory, the research institute is just a vague outline."

"Similarly, it hasn't been to anyone else's home, so it doesn't know what the interiors of homes 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 home?"

No one answered his question.

But the consciousness in Sun Hang's mind gave him a definite response—he guessed correctly.

Chimera 17 wasn't born in the Nameless 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 someone 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 apartment, 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 meters.

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 same 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 seemed to be asking Chimera 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 Nameless 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 Nameless Island Research Institute.

Could it be that the person who once lived here... was not Chimera 17, but himself?

Was he once a researcher at the Nameless Island Research Institute? Was he the one who "cultivated" Anna and secretly brought Chimera 17 out of the institute?

Was he the culprit?

Sun Hang recalled the memories of those Angsa hunters; what the Nameless Island Research Institute studied at that time seemed to be a human embryo—an embryo infected with primary-grade memes.

Could it be that he took that embryo out?

Or was Anna that embryo, and Chimera 17... Anna's clone?

So Anna and Chimera 17 were essentially twins?

Why did he have to get entangled with them? Anna and Chimera 17 both explicitly mentioned that their lives seemed 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 time span is too large, making many "reasonable" guesses unreasonable.

Even Sun Hang is extremely 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 memes from that embryo into his own body back then?

Using himself as an experimental sample to seek the most real and detailed experimental data, indeed like something the madmen at Dubhe Tower could do...

"Was I a madman before?"