Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 344 - 16: Blessings

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Surrendered Area, ??? Region, "Maoyun Town".

"So, can you take me to see the town mayor?" Sun Hang asked the two young girls, "I have a few small questions I’d like the mayor to answer."

"No." One of the girls shook her head, "The mayor is not in town."

"Then where is he?"

"He is everywhere," the other girl replied, "The mayor saved this town, but he also cursed everyone here. He spared everyone from the tragedy of death, but only death was spared."

"Only death was spared, what does that mean?" Sun Hang asked, puzzled.

"You will go through everything required before death, but death will never come," the girl said.

Sun Hang inexplicably felt a sharp pain in his teeth.

Suddenly, he understood the "curse" they were talking about.

For example, suppose someone was hacked to death with a knife, then in this town, even if he was chopped into pieces, he still wouldn’t die—he might faint from the pain, but when he woke up, his body would remain a heap of broken flesh.

The pain is temporary; when the flesh rots, and the nerves die, the excruciating pain will gradually fade...

But what’s coming will be something even more terrifying than pain.

The cursed will have to watch as their body rots, as maggots bore in and out of their flesh, as their body turns into pus, mixed with dirt and excrement... but they just won’t die...

Perhaps their eyes lose normal function early on, they can’t see, hear, smell, or feel, losing all that makes them human, leaving only one thing behind: being alive.

This curse, just thinking about it makes one’s blood run cold.

The so-called "immortality" is the most malicious curse, rather than a blessing.

As for the threat of death the residents of Maoyun Town face... that would be starvation.

Sun Hang seemed to understand the strange sights he had witnessed along the way... the residents of Maoyun Town turned into immortal monsters, but as a price, they would always endure the torment of hunger.

"How should this eerie entity be categorized?" Sun Hang muttered to himself, "Is it a rule-type or a phenomenon-type? It seems that environment-type can’t be ruled out either... no, it shouldn’t belong to environment-type, environment-type entities have area restrictions; if the town’s residents wanted to be free, they could just leave Maoyun Town..."

"Then I’ll just ask you directly." Sun Hang looked at the two young girls, "Where in town can you use money to buy food?"

"The granary."

"Where is the granary?"

"You walk along this street, straight ahead until the end, that’s the granary."

"Alright, thank you." After speaking, Sun Hang pulled out his phone, "To thank you, let me take a picture of you."

He deliberately spoke slowly, and while the two girls hadn’t yet turned their gaze away, he quickly opened the phone’s camera function and aimed the lens at them.

He saw two emaciated bodies with oversized heads, beneath which were distorted, twisted torsos. Only the swollen belly looked as if it were ten months pregnant, while the thin limbs resembled dry branches, giving the impression that a slight touch would make them snap.

When they turned their gaze over, the image in the lens instantly returned to normal, what Sun Hang saw through the lens now matched what he saw with his naked eye—two chubby little girls, dressed in washed-out cotton clothes, with goat-horn braids so common from that era, and faces devoid of expression with eyes that had no whites, staring intently at Sun Hang.

"You saw it, right?" one of the girls asked.

"Did you find it scary?" the other girl asked again.

"Uh..." Sun Hang scratched his head awkwardly, knowing that pretending to be oblivious wouldn’t work anymore, he decided to face it head on, "From a normal person’s point of view, you do look quite like monsters, but among humanity, there are bound to be folks who have a taste for this sort of thing. As for me... I actually find your girl forms a tad more terrifying... there’s something called the ’Uncanny Valley effect,’ have you heard of it?"

The so-called Uncanny Valley effect refers to when something looks increasingly human, yet it causes unease and fear; however, when it becomes completely identical to humans, that terror and unease suddenly disappear—in many horror works, old hands like dolls, puppets, even mummies and zombies, all more or less exploit this ’Uncanny Valley effect.’"

Just last month, Sun Hang had a similar dream—in his dream, he roamed naked through an empty mall, with no counters, no exits or entrances, no elevators for vertical travel, and all he could see were numerous spotlights and a variety of fashion-clad mannequins beneath them."

Sun Hang wandered back and forth between mannequins, quickly noticing that each time he completed a loop, the positions of the mannequins subtly changed, as those clumsily crafted, eerily grinning faces faced different directions. Yet whenever Sun Hang turned his head, he felt his scalp become the center of numerous stares."

As for how Sun Hang escaped this nightmare, that’s a tale less suited for the ears of the innocent...