Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 177 Shepherd

Sun Hang rubbed his wet hair with a picked-up bed sheet and walked out of the bathroom. The fisherman who was facing him was holding a bottle and looking happy.

"Look, look! What a treasure I found!"

"What treasure?" Yano poked his head out from a dormitory next door.

"A bottle of vodka!" the fisherman said, shaking the bottle in his hand. "It's a special military version!"

"Vodka from over a hundred years ago... can it still be drunk?" Sun Hang looked at the bottle in his hand with some suspicion. Although the bottle of vodka had not been opened, there was less than half of the liquid left in the bottle. The color was not as clear as the common distilled liquor. Instead, it had a turbid texture, and some suspicious white sediment appeared at the bottom of the bottle.

"Who would be willing to drink this stuff? It's a hot treasure in the collector's market. One bottle is gone after it's opened." The fisherman said, "An antique wine like this that's well preserved can be sold for at least 70,000 or 80,000 yuan if brought back to the mainland. If you're lucky enough to come across an auction, it could be sold for over 100,000 yuan!"

"Then you better hold it carefully and don't drop it on the ground." Sun Hang joked, "If it drops, it will be like throwing 100,000 yuan into the water."

However, what Sun Hang did not expect was that as soon as he finished saying this, the fisherman tore open the tin seal on the bottle and pulled out the cork.

"Hey, aren't you planning to take it back and sell it for money?" Yano asked puzzledly.

"What's the use of taking it with me? Whether I can walk out alive is another matter. I've lived a frugal life for half my life. It should be okay for me to splurge a little at the end!" The fisherman closed his eyes, put the bottle mouth to his nose and took a deep sniff.

"Ahem... this smell is too strong, isn't it? Sour and spicy? It's like rotten hot pot base..." The fisherman raised the bottle speechlessly, looking at the turbid liquid swaying inside. "I watched a TV show before, where a group of rich people and wine tasters opened a bottle of whiskey from more than 80 years ago. Everyone tasted a small glass. Tsk, those wine tasters were almost praising the wine to the sky... I really wonder if there's something wrong with their taste buds."

"If a pile of shit is worth one million, then the smell of this pile of shit is not called a smell, but a unique flavor." Sun Hang shrugged and said, "Although in my opinion, people who spend one million to buy shit probably have some problems with their brains."

"Are you still drinking?" Yano asked with a smile.

“No more drinking…” The fisherman waved his hand. “I’m afraid if I take a sip, I’ll become that idiot who eats shit.”

The three searched the dormitory again - what made them feel a little strange was that not only was there no trace of fighting in this dormitory, but there was not even the messy scene of an emergency evacuation.

Except for a few people with sloppy living habits, the quilts on most beds are neatly folded, and daily necessities are placed in the right places - spare clothes are neatly hung in the closet, suitcases are stacked under the beds or on top of the cabinets, and even the doors of several dormitories are locked.

If you ignore the thick layer of dust on the furniture and the floor, as well as the traces of time left on various objects, this dormitory building looks completely like it is deserted during working hours, and it doesn't look like a "serious accident" that would cause the entire nameless island to be abandoned.

Sun Hang tried to recall the "memory fragments" of the day of the accident, but his head was empty... He could only see those peaceful and tranquil daily scenes, but as for the memories of the day of the accident, he could not recall them at all.

It seems that the owner of these memories had already left the Nameless Island before the accident. "It seems that there is nothing valuable left." The fisherman pushed the last drawer closed. "I did find a lot of letters, but many of them were intended to be sent to relatives. They never seem to bring documents related to research back to the dormitory."

"There are quite a few books in the dormitory, but they are all popular novels or classical masterpieces. The only ones that have something to do with academics are probably books like Hegel's "Logic" and Lyell's "Principles of Geology", which have nothing to do with the study of strange things." Yano put down the heavy book in his hand that was as heavy as a brick, and sighed.

"This place is cleaner than my face after I took a shit." The fisherman muttered, "Are these researchers not introverted at all? Don't they take the unfinished work back to the dormitory to continue working on it during the day?"

"What kind of nonsense is this metaphor? Do you shit with your face?" Sun Hang looked at him and said speechlessly.

"Damn it, my brain is going crazy. What I wanted to say is that I got up this morning, took a shit and washed my face... Forget it, let's not talk about this nonsense and keep going. Since we can't find what we want here, the lab can't be so clean, right?" The fisherman pressed the letters from home, whose senders and recipients were long dead, under the quilt and turned to walk out of the dormitory.

……

After leaving the dormitory, the three continued to move forward along the red fingerprint light. There were several similar dormitory buildings along the way, but they just took a quick glance and left... All the dormitory buildings were the same, and there was very little valuable information.

"I suddenly remembered a topic I studied before." Yano suddenly said while walking.

"What topic?" the fisherman asked curiously.

"It's a strange creature recorded in European folklore, or maybe two kinds of it." Yano said, "Have you ever heard of a shepherd who plays the flute?"

The fisherman and Sun Hang both shook their heads.

"According to the description in the story, this shepherd is most likely a vengeful spirit or some other type of monster, and the flute in his hand is most likely an artifact-type monster..." Yano said.

"And then?" the fisherman asked.

"In the story, the shepherd usually appears at midnight, when most people are asleep. He will play a strange tune outside the village, but adults cannot hear this tune. Only the children in the village can hear it. The children who hear the tune will get up from their beds like sleepwalkers and follow the sound of the tune to the outside of the village... and the shepherd will take these children away like he is taking a flock of sheep... As for where these children ended up and what they experienced, the story does not mention it."

"It sounds like a cult children's story." Sun Hang said, "So what you mean is that there may be a 'shepherd' on the nameless island who has gathered all the people on the island together using some special means?"

"Yes." Yano nodded.

(End of this chapter)