Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 334 - 11: Hair
Just as Sun Hang was planning to step forward to investigate, a shrill scream suddenly came from the main house behind him.
"Give me back my son's life!"
"Huh? What the hell?"
Sun Hang turned his head and saw a "woman" with disheveled hair rushing out from the main house.
"She" was wearing a dirty, tattered burlap robe that wrapped around her entire body except for her head, which was also covered by long, filthy black hair that dragged to the ground, completely obscuring the "woman's" face.
However, from the outline of the robe, it was clear that the "woman's" figure was emaciated, with almost no difference between the chest and the back. With no sight of her hands, feet, or face, Sun Hang couldn't be sure if she was facing him or had her back turned to him.
"Are you cosplaying as Sadako?" Sun Hang asked, "Is there a well in this courtyard?"
"Give me back my son's life!"
The other person shouted in a sharp, piercing voice, and immediately, a massive amount of hair surged out from beneath her robe, wildly entangling Sun Hang.
Caught off guard, Sun Hang's left wrist was instantly ensnared by the black hair—these strands felt sticky and greasy, yet oddly sharp, cutting into his skin the moment they wrapped around his wrist and sinking deep into the flesh.
However, what puzzled Sun Hang was that the wound on his wrist didn't hurt; instead, it transmitted an itch that made his scalp tingle.
"Poison?"
Without thinking further, Sun Hang drew his knife and cut off the hair, shaking his wrist forcefully to fling the strands embedded in his flesh to the ground.
"Give me back my son's life!" The Sadako cosplayer wasn't deterred and summoned even more hair to attack Sun Hang, forcing him to turn and move behind the shadow wall, slashing away with his knife at the advancing strands.
"The thing in the wall, is that your son?" Sun Hang shouted.
"Give me back my son's life!"
"He was the one who started it with me."
"Give me back my son's life!"
"Do you only know how to say this one damn sentence?"
"Give me back my son's life!"
Seeing the endless tide of hair advancing toward him, Sun Hang felt an irritation rise within. After cutting through a clump of hair that was winding toward his neck, he decided not to dodge any longer and directly drew his gun, aiming at "Sadako's" head.
"Alright, alright, I'm a kind-hearted person and can't bear to see such tragic events... I'll just reunite you with your son, then."
With that, Sun Hang pulled the trigger.
The deafening sound of the gunshot echoed through the courtyard, and Sadako's head exploded on impact, causing the entire person to fall straight backward, the frenzied hair halting and dropping to the ground.
Seeing the opponent taken down, Sun Hang couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.
It seemed this eerie creature could be reasoned with—through "physical" reasoning.
He walked up, used his knife tip to piece open the robe wrapped around "Sadako," yet instead of a headless corpse, there was just a large mass of dirty black hair, nothing else.
"Too bad, I wanted to evaluate the figure..."
Dazedly, Sun Hang suddenly felt an itch at the wound on his left wrist; he instinctively reached to scratch it, only to find a handful of blood-stained hair.
He looked down at his wrist; the hair was "growing" out from the wound, quickly swelling it open.
Still, Sun Hang felt no pain at all, as if the arm didn't belong to him.
"Give me back my son's life!" The shrill voice rang out again, but this time, it was inside Sun Hang's head.
"Oh, damn, has it entered my body now?" Sun Hang grasped his knife with the other hand and directly cut open the wound on his left wrist, carving away all the flesh that was growing hair... Luckily, the entire arm lacked sensation, so this crude operation was fairly smooth. As the hairy pieces were progressively removed, the woman's scream gradually faded from Sun Hang's mind.
"Phew... finally quiet." Sun Hang took out his portable medical kit, stuffed the gap left by the excised flesh with alcohol cotton, then bandaged the wound—had the pain sensation been present, removing the "infected" flesh would have been enough to make Sun Hang wince in pain, let alone stuffing the wound with alcohol cotton for disinfection.
"I guess a doctor performing surgery with anesthesia on a patient feels something like this?"
After bandaging, Sun Hang flexed his left arm, and aside from the lack of pain, strength, and dexterity were unaffected by the injury, even the tactile sense remained intact.
"It seems it's not a toxin..."
Sun Hang rubbed the thumb of his left hand back and forth on the pads of his other fingers; the tactile feedback was quite real and with no delay at all... this didn't feel like any toxin that could numb pain.
During a comprehensive examination at the lab, Sun Hang had undergone a test for neural toxin tolerance—the researchers injected a minuscule amount of substance extracted from snake venom into the dermal layer of one of his fingers. In just a few seconds, the whole finger would swell and lose sensation, akin to being anesthetized.
But now, Sun Hang only lacked the sensation of "pain."
