Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 605 - 152: Mr. Xu_2

After complete transformation, infected individuals who can still maintain the self-awareness belonging to humans—Mr. Xu had never heard of such a case.

Even though some humanoid anomalies retain the ability to think, their way of thinking has become quite different from humans, and the main influencing factor of this thinking is their memories from when they were "alive."

Or rather, their obsessions.

After complete transformation, the obsessions from when they were alive become amplified manifold... Some people's obsessions are various desires, others have obsessions of unfulfilled regrets from their human life, while some are dominated by hatred...

Mr. Xu once saw a female infected individual who, after complete transformation, turned into an immensely large womb—from the conversations among researchers, it was learned that this female infected had a miscarriage due to memetic infection during her first pregnancy, and never conceived again afterward.

The reason was simple. After she became infected, her husband chose to divorce her... Although her appearance didn't seem much different from humans while her infection process was still stable, for ordinary people, it was hard to lie beside an infected person who might turn into an anomaly the next day.

This infected individual didn't have any special abilities and belonged to the rather special category of "latent infected." A "latent infected" person is someone who has been infected with the anomaly meme but hasn't gained any abilities or traits brought by the meme... Of course, it can't be ruled out that the person has indeed acquired some ability, but neither she nor anyone else has identified what that ability is.

Latent infected individuals are unfortunate but simultaneously fortunate—they have paid the price of infection, yet didn't gain any abilities beyond ordinary humans. However, from another perspective, the infection process for latent infected individuals is much more stable than those with strong abilities.

Latent infected individuals can often maintain a stable state for dozens of years. In fact, their "expected lifespan" isn't much different from that of normal humans.

But this female infected succumbed to complete transformation on her thirtieth birthday... and the reason for this was her choice to commit suicide.

She slit her veins with a can pull-tab while lying in a water-filled bathtub. Although the monitoring system detected the anomaly immediately and rescue personnel delivered her to the emergency room before the blood loss reached a lethal level, researchers found that at the instant she slit her veins, her infection process began to soar and swiftly broke through the safety threshold.

When the infected host abandons the will to live, the meme within her naturally seeks every means possible to restore the host's life due to "survival instinct"—and their method is to transform the host entirely from an infected into an anomaly.

This sentence was uttered by a young intern, who was then met with a senior's rebuttal—"Meme is not a microorganism or something like cells; it doesn't have a survival instinct. It's likely that the suicide behavior of the infected triggered some special mechanism or disrupted some internal balance, leading to the loss of control of the infection process."

But Mr. Xu still recorded what the intern said.

His intuition told him the intern was right... Those memes were indeed afraid of their host's death and thus turned the host into an anomaly.

The transformation process of the female infected was quite tranquil. Her body curled up inside the container, with limbs and torso gradually merging, eventually becoming a massive mass of flesh. Subsequently, this mass began differentiation and development, absorbing nutrients provided by researchers with frenzy, and its volume grew day by day...

Until one day, an independent organ resembling a human womb appeared in the laboratory, and within this womb, an inherently defective human fetus gradually took shape. Through the nearly transparent membrane surface of the giant womb, dozens of cord-like structures resembling "umbilical cords" could be seen connecting the fetus to the inner wall of the giant womb.

As for the fate of this anomaly, Mr. Xu was not aware—when the defective fetus inside the anomaly reached its nineteenth day of development, another higher-level research group took over the observation project and replaced all security personnel with the inside staff of Dubhe Tower.

Mr. Xu's security mission was thus completed.

"It's impossible for humans turned into anomalies to retain full, lucid self-awareness... but I'm incredibly lucid now, even more so than before I set off the explosives." Mr. Xu muttered to himself, "Not only that, but my memory is quite intact... and very independent."

Upon discovering that he had merged part of Wang Zheng's body, Mr. Xu initially thought he'd acquire another personality or some memory fragments in his mind, but it turned out that Wang Zheng had merely contributed body parts to Mr. Xu, and did not participate in thought processes.

"Obsession... Humans transformed should all harbor obsessions..." Mr. Xu felt like he caught onto something crucial, becoming quite excited for a moment, but that excitement soon waned.

Because he realized he seemed not to have any intense obsessions.

Mr. Xu became a formal investigator at twenty-two, having worked for the Anomaly Investigation Bureau in Chunming City for a full twenty-five years, now forty-seven years old... Due to the special nature of his work, he didn't marry nor have children; his methods of self-relief, aside from using his hands, were solely the chance encounters with young ladies in bars.

Investigators need to sign lots of confidentiality agreements, except their identity is not a secret, and those thrill-seeking girls were happy to experience a night with someone like Mr. Xu—Mr. Xu only needed to tell some half-truth, half-fiction adventure stories at the bar, and admirers of strong adventurers and explorers would flock to him. Not to mention, among those in their forties, Mr. Xu was among the most outstanding in terms of temperament, physique, and physical fitness.

Mr. Xu had no great pursuits in life; his reason for becoming an investigator was merely for the high pay and excellent benefits.

He had a moderately sized house in Chunming City, a car of decent performance and grade, liked drinking but never binged, never smoked, and had no bad habits other than hanging out in bars during leisure times.

His parents passed away early, with little contact among relatives and friends... Apart from work, Mr. Xu wasn't fond of socializing personally with others, nor had he ever added the WeChat of those girls he spent nights with.

Colleagues said Mr. Xu lived carefree, but only Mr. Xu felt that, as an investigator, this was the most correct attitude toward life.

"Do I really have obsessions?"

Mr. Xu thought and pondered; his only obsession seemed to be "survival."

In numerous brushes with death, it was this thought that carried him to the end... Although Mr. Xu attributed it to luck, if he had chosen to give up during dire situations, his name might have long appeared on the list of those who died in service.

"Is it survival obsession... that made me end up like this?" Mr. Xu found himself amused by the irony.

"Did survival obsession transform me into a resurrected anomaly? And the obsession to maintain human self made me retain complete self-awareness and memory?"

Mr. Xu raised his head and glanced at Chimera 17, almost within reach.

"Or is it all thanks to it?"