Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 13 Assessment
"During this period of time, we have been observing you. Your performance can be described as 'excellent'." The woman said, "But these are just superficial. Whether your deep mental state is stable or not still needs to go through a series of special assessments. Only if you meet the standards in the assessments can we grant you the status of 'Weird Hunter'."

"What is the assessment method? What do I need to do?" Sun Hang asked.

"You'll find out if you follow them to the assessment and test room." The woman stretched out her finger and tapped the holographic screen floating in front of her. A passage immediately appeared on the wall on one side of the room, and four people wearing full sets of heavy protective clothing walked in.

They quickly helped Sun Hang put on the "test suit" - this so-called test suit, in addition to a pair of pure white shorts, only had a large white cloth with three holes dug in it. Sun Hang only needed to put his arms and head through the three holes to put on the suit.

"Are you planning to dissect me?" Sun Hang looked at the test suit with some suspicion and asked.

"Don't worry about that. The entire assessment process won't cause you any harm." The woman shook her head. "You don't even need to draw blood."

……

After Sun Hang followed the four people and left, the woman turned to look at the old man sitting in the wheelchair and asked in a low voice: "Teacher, there is one thing... I don't know if I should ask."

"Go ahead." The old man raised his head and looked at his student, and a kind look finally appeared on his face.

"I have always wondered, did the strange virus that 0420 was infected with really come from Taotie?"

"What's the point of doubt?"

"Taotie, as a very special singular individual among Type C weirdos, has the most notable characteristic of devouring all living things it touches, but never releasing weird viruses to the outside world. If other weirdos release viruses with their own 'memes' to infect and assimilate things they come into contact with, then Taotie does the opposite - it only devours the carriers of those 'memes' and embeds these 'fragments' into its own 'memes'. It is precisely because of this characteristic that at academic conferences every year, someone would suggest changing the code name of Taotie to 'Pixiu', which symbolizes 'only taking in and not giving out'..."

"You suspect that he was infected by a monster, not Taotie?" the old man interrupted the student and asked.

"Yes, teacher." The woman nodded. "So far, there have been a total of 314 attacks by strange creatures, including the clones, directly or indirectly caused by Taotie. In these 314 attacks, there has never been an infected person. Even if other strange creatures appear in the incident, they will be devoured by Taotie. It is for this reason that after confirming that the attacking strange creature is a Taotie clone, the rescue team will skip the routine infection verification process..."

"Because people infected by the Weird Virus will become the highest priority prey in the eyes of the Taotie. So they subconsciously believe that there will be no infected people among the survivors." The middle-aged man said, "The people in charge of the rescue operation have been punished. I promise that such a thing will not happen again in the future."

"But..." The woman wanted to say something else, but the old man sitting in the wheelchair raised his hand to stop her.

"Whether it's the infection process, the detected 'meme' sequence, or the abnormalities it showed when in contact with the weird creature, they all match up with 'Taotie'... Yang Qi, you've made a very serious mistake: never use past experience to make judgments about weird creatures."

"Teacher..." The woman was stunned for a moment, a look of shame appearing on her face.

"Sometimes, you can't even believe what you see with your own eyes, so how can you believe what is recorded in documents?" the old man said slowly.

"Teacher, I know I was wrong." The woman lowered her head.

"Remember, if an investigator or hunter makes a mistake, the worst result is mission failure. But if we make a mistake, it will lead to catastrophic consequences."

……

...Sun Hang was taken to another room filled with sophisticated instruments that were obviously worth a lot of money. The staff asked him to lie down on the large operating chair in the middle of the room, and then they attached hundreds of electrodes to Sun Hang's body.

After applying the electrodes, two staff members worked together to push a camera in front of the operating chair. The bracket holding the camera was pulled out, and the glass lens with a rainbow luster was pointed straight over, less than two centimeters away from the tip of Sun Hang's nose.

After fixing the bracket, the staff left the room and the lights in the room went out one after another, leaving only a beam of light coming down from the ceiling, covering Sun Hang.

"Test template, standard, test content, custom 01, test subject number, 0420." An emotionless electronic synthesized voice came from the loudspeaker next to the camera. "Please don't be nervous. Try to keep your emotions stable and your breathing steady. Before the test begins, you will have plenty of time to relax as much as possible."

"If I'm nervous, will it affect the test results?"

"will not."

"Let's start now. I'm quite relaxed." Sun Hang said, lying on the operating chair, staring at the camera that was close to him.

"During the test, part of a long poem will be played. All you need to do is repeat the verses in the interval between each sentence. In addition, there will be some random questions between the verses. You don't need to answer these questions, just repeat the verses." The electronic synthesized voice continued.

"Then how can I tell which sentence is the poem and which sentence is the question you raised?"

"All poems are declarative sentences, and all random questions are interrogative sentences, which are easy to distinguish. If you accidentally repeat the content of the question, it will not affect the content of the test." said the electronic synthesized voice.

"Row."

"Testing begins."

After a burst of meaningless white noise, the brightness of the light covering Sun Hang began to increase, and the surroundings of the room appeared even darker in contrast.

The indicator lights on those devices that were originally flashing went out at the same time. Sun Hang felt like he was floating in the deep and boundless space, and the sense of the edge of the space gradually became blurred.

"The blood-black nothingness begins to weave a network," the electronic synthesized sound no longer seems to come from the ears, but from the distant dark space, empty and ethereal.

“The blood-black nothingness began to weave a web,” Sun Hang recounted.

"Are you afraid of the dark? Have you ever imagined yourself in an environment with no light at all?"

According to the test requirements, Sun Hang did not answer this question.

"The cells are connected to each other,"

"The cells are connected to each other," Sun Hang repeated.

(End of this chapter)