Trickster Hunter

Chapter 308 Inner World

"Hello? Hello?" Jiang Yu adjusted the angle of the earphones and tried pressing the side button of the earphones a few times.

However, there was silence in the communication channel.

She couldn't help but feel a little scared.

With a "bang", Ling Xiao climbed out of the ventilation duct and landed on the ground.

"Ling Xiao... I, my communication equipment seems to be broken." Jiang Yu hurriedly said to Ling Xiao, "Can you still contact the team leader and the others now?"

"Your equipment is not broken, it's just that the communication has been cut off." Ling Xiao said calmly.

He took out the small car-shaped drone from behind. The red indicator light symbolizing "signal loss" on the drone's butt was flashing rhythmically.

Generally speaking, for exploration operations such as pipelines and tombs, the standard equipment should be snake-shaped wired drones. However, the 67th field team received the task in a hurry and had no time to return to the research institute to re-select equipment. You can only rush to the destination with what you have on hand.

"What should we do?" Jiang Yu asked eagerly, "Should we go back the way we came?"

Ling Xiao raised his head and glanced at the ventilation duct on the ceiling, and shook his head: "I don't think we can... 'return the same way'."

Jiang Yu was a little confused: "What does this mean?"

"Do you remember that both the team leader and Yin Xiang said that the communication within Factory 105 has always been smooth, but no one answered the phone?" Ling Xiao said.

"Yeah...but, but our radio communication is..." Jiang Yu's word order was a bit confusing, just like her brain now.

"There is a phone hanging over there. You can try to see if you can make a call." Ling Xiao pointed to the door of the entertainment room. On the right side of the door frame, there was a red wall-mounted phone with a base on it. The power indicator light and line indicator light are still on.

"This should be... the internal phone number in the factory, right?" Jiang Yu muttered, "There's no way to call out, right?"

"I asked the team leader that the internal phone line in Factory No. 105 is actually connected to the external communication network. It just has a 'switchboard' as a gateway. All external communications must go through that 'switchboard'. The researcher should be at the Keep calling the switchboard of Factory No. 105... Even if you can't get through, the 'switchboard' is still busy. "

Jiang Yu moved to the door and picked up the phone.

However, there was silence in the receiver, not even the beeps that should have been heard.

"The phone...is broken?" Jiang Yu repeated the action of putting the phone back on the base and then picking it up again, but nothing changed.

"Do you know the other world?" Ling Xiao suddenly asked.

Jiang Yu shook his head blankly.

"I used to like reading comics. In many comics with the theme of monsters, the existence of an 'inner world' will be mentioned." Ling Xiao said, "Under the influence of the power of monsters, a space is separated into There are two parts, the outer world and the inner world. These two parts overlap with each other but are independent of each other. There are also channels connecting each other..."

"What you want to say is...parallel space?"

"Although it doesn't mean the same thing, it's not much different." Ling Xiao said, "While crawling in the ventilation duct, I felt a strange feeling for a moment, as if we had passed through a layer of Something has come to another world..."

"Why don't I feel anything?" Jiang Yu asked in shock, "Ling Xiao, are you trying to scare me?"

"Sun Hang or Yang Qi, have they told you about me?" Ling Xiao asked, "About the fact that I don't have any emotions."

"No..." Jiang Yu shook his head, "You don't have any emotions? Although I think you seem to be very indifferent on weekdays and never show any expression on your face... But I just think that is caused by your personality. of……"

"No, I'm not like this originally." Ling Xiao said, "During a special contact with a strange thing, all my human emotions were pulled away, including joy, anger, sorrow, joy, and various desires... …But after losing these emotions, I found that when I was extremely calm, my five senses would become extremely sharp, especially for changes in time and space. I could also make some changes even if they were very subtle. aware."

"You...are you really not an infected person?"

"The Institute of Creatures has given me a comprehensive and detailed examination, and I have not been infected by memes." Ling Xiao replied, "I think that this ability may be the human body's response to itself after losing all emotions. A kind of compensation? Of course, this is just my guess. "

If Sun Hang were here, he must have realized the key point - apart from allowing people to remain absolutely calm at all times, losing emotions cannot give humans any special abilities, especially the ability to perceive time and space... ...Even among infected people, this type of ability is very rare.

Then there is only one possibility in front of you.

Ling Xiao, like Zhong Ling, is also the kind of human superpower who is not infected by the monster meme but has gained special abilities.

It's a pity that neither Ling Xiao nor Jiang Yu knows the existence of "superpowers"... Faced with his "special ability", Ling Xiao can only attribute it to the body's "self-compensation" .

"So what you mean is... we are now in the inner world of Factory 105?" Jiang Yu carefully confirmed with Ling Xiao.

Ling Xiao nodded: "I'm not sure how big the inner world is, but as a 'copy' of the outer world, the inner world must have boundaries. As long as we find the boundaries, we will have a way to leave."

"Since we were able to enter this 'inner world' from the ventilation duct just now, if we retreat along the original path, can't we return to the 'outer world'?" Jiang Yu asked.

"The passage connecting the inner world and the outer world is constantly changing." Ling Xiao shook his head. "The entrance and exit were in the ventilation duct just now, but it's not anymore."

"Is this change... also mentioned in those comic books?"

"No, I felt it." Ling Xiao closed his eyes and took a deep breath slowly. "I can feel that space is like air or water. They flow slowly and disorderly around me... It is dynamic and constantly changing, but in our conventional senses, it has always maintained a relatively stable state."

"What are conventional senses?" Jiang Yu asked. "I remember we came in at the same time... Why do you know so much more than me?"

"What you see with your eyes, smell with your nose, hear with your ears, and touch with your body." Ling Xiao said, "These are conventional senses."

To be precise, there should be five normal senses for humans, but neither Ling Xiao nor Jiang Yu would lick the things around them with their tongues, so he did not mention the sense of taste.

"I'll lead the way next. You follow me." Ling Xiao said as he walked to the door and held the door handle of the entertainment room. "My ability to perceive space may come in handy... If the world at the door is the outer world, I'll tell you."

"Behind the door, the outer world?" Jiang Yu said, "It can't be that the scope of the inner world is limited to this entertainment room, right?"

"I don't know." Ling Xiao said and turned the door handle.

The two of them walked as lightly as possible to the suspended corridor outside.

"How is it? Are we... going back?" Jiang Yu whispered.

But due to the empty structure inside the factory, even though her voice was very light, there was still a faint echo coming from the opposite side.

Ling Xiao shook his head.

Jiang Yu looked down and saw several huge glass covers upside down on the ground below - the glass covers were the dust-free workshops for producing FL09 reagents. Various equipment that she couldn't name was neatly placed inside the glass cover. The empty conveyor belts were still running, and the engine of the large exhaust fan next to it kept making a buzzing sound.

"I thought... the workers disappeared because they were all locked in the inner world, so no one could be seen outside... but there's no one here either." Jiang Yu muttered softly.

"The inner world may not have only one layer, it's possible... there's someone down there." Ling Xiao suddenly said.

"Where?!"

"The fourth dust-free workshop from the left!"

"There's really someone!"

It was a woman in a black leather jacket, with her head lowered, and her long dark red hair fell to her knees - her whole body was hung by iron chains on a mechanical beam about five or six meters above the ground, and many parts of her body were pierced by iron chains. Not only was her leather jacket covered with blood, but there was also a large pool of blood just below her body.

Ling Xiao and Jiang Yu immediately ran towards the stairs.

"She... is she still alive?" Jiang Yu asked as he ran.

"I don't know."

"Why was she hung up by the chains... it looked like some kind of torture." Jiang Yu said again, "Could it be that the monster that invaded Factory 105 did this?"

"I don't know." Ling Xiao's answer was still so straightforward.

"She has red hair... Could she be the missing hunter 'Red-haired Witch'?"

"I haven't seen the 'Red-haired Witch'."

Jiang Yu ran a few steps along the stairs and suddenly realized that he was no longer the same person he used to be. He immediately jumped and jumped down from the height of four floors, and then landed steadily on the ground.

"Jump down, I'll catch you!" Jiang Yu shouted to Ling Xiao.

Ling Xiao did not hesitate, and immediately imitated Jiang Yu, climbed over the guardrail, and jumped down from the suspended corridor.

Jiang Yu hugged Ling Xiao who was falling from a height, and the muscles and bones in his body suddenly made a creeping sound that made people's scalps numb, and then eliminated the impact force of Ling Xiao falling from a height without a trace.

"Quick!" Jiang Yu put Ling Xiao down and continued to run towards the dust-free workshop.

The door of the dust-free workshop was locked, but at this time, the two of them didn't care about the rules of not destroying the internal facilities of the factory. Jiang Yu directly pulled out the hunting knife and cut the combination lock with one knife. The second knife directly penetrated the lock and cut off the lock tongue stuck in the glass wall, and then pushed the door open.

However, the closer the two were to the hanging red-haired woman, the more they felt bad in their hearts - the whole body of the red-haired woman had drooped down, and the blood at the wound pierced by the iron chain had turned dark brown and hardened into lumps... What frustrated Jiang Yu the most was that she couldn't feel the other person's breathing and heartbeat at all, and there was not even any meme fluctuations of the infected person.

"She is a hunter of strange things." Jiang Yu stopped five meters away from the red-haired woman.

She saw that the other party was wearing a hunter bracelet exactly like hers on her left wrist.

"It seems that she should be the missing red-haired witch." Compared with Jiang Yu's body transformed by the Tai Sui meme, Ling Xiao, who ran all the way, was still a little out of breath. "She found the strange thing, but was killed by the strange thing."

"Will the strange thing be nearby now?" Jiang Yu looked around nervously, one hand already on the folded short bow.

"Not necessarily, judging from the bloodstains, she has been hanging here for a while." Ling Xiao walked forward and reached out to touch the bloodstains just below the red-haired witch.

The blood had completely clotted, and the surface became smooth and hard.

"She has only been in Factory 105 for less than an hour, right? Why would her blood..."

"The speed of time in the inner world is not synchronized with the outer world." Ling Xiao said, "From our point of view, she has been missing for less than an hour, but in the inner world, she may have been hanging for several days..."

"Then what should we do with her body?" Jiang Yu asked.

Unconsciously, she has regarded this boy who is younger than her cousin as her backbone.

"Don't worry, let's check the surroundings, maybe we can find other missing people."

Just when Ling Xiao turned around, a voice came from above: "Don't go yet! Put me down first!"

Jiang Yu was startled instantly, and Ling Xiao turned around slowly, looked up at the eyes that appeared from the gap in the red hair, and asked: "Are you not dead?"

"I almost died, but fortunately I have the ability to pretend to be dead." The other party said, "I heard a noise just now, and I thought that thing came back again, so I went into a state of suspended animation directly... I didn't expect it to be a colleague."

The red-haired witch glanced at Looking at the bracelet on Jiang Yu's wrist, she continued, "How did you two get in? So many days have passed. Has the 'Pesticide Plan' completely failed?"

"So many days?" Ling Xiao and Jiang Yu looked at each other, and the former asked, "How many days have you been hanging here?"

"I don't remember clearly... but from my personal feeling, it must be at least seven or eight days." The red-haired witch said, "I once thought that the Federation had given up on me... By the way, can you let me go?"

"From the perspective of people outside, you have only been missing for less than an hour." Ling Xiao said.

"Less than an hour? Outside?" The red-haired witch was stunned.