茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

But now, Xiang Kun clearly knew that the information he received was likely the “memory” of the “mutated parasite” he had consumed.

However, these “memories” were not composed of visual, auditory and other information familiar to humans like the memories of Guo Tianxiang or the Giant Owl, but rather a special kind of sensory information that is hard to describe with words.

In fact, when he consumed the “mutated spider” in the Qinling Uninhabited Area, the memory information that Xiang Kun received was also quite distinctive. But those memories, although unique, were still within basic understanding, allowing him to immediately judge what he was seeing.

Yet, the memory information from the “mutated parasite” was completely different from the normal sensory information.

This was no surprise, after all, based on its appearance, the “mutated parasite” did not have eyes.

What’s more, it was clear that its perception of the outside world did not directly share the host’s visual and auditory sensory information, but rather it had its own unique processing mechanism.

More importantly, Xiang Kun found some features in this information that were similar to the cognitive information perceived under the “super sensory state”.

Of course, these perceived pieces of information were much less complex than those understood in the “super sensory state”, and were much easier for him to process, in his opinion.

This inference also raised Xiang Kun’s expectation of what he would gain from consuming the “mutated parasite”.

Although the “mutated parasite” unexpectedly died, much of its experimental and research value had now transferred to Xiang Kun.

Just as Xiang Kun was preparing to close his eyes to carefully examine his sensory abilities, his phone vibrated. It was a message from Xia Libing.

After finishing the “Dream in a Dream” guiding on Fan Jiading, Xia Libing had already woken up from her dream and discussed the next plan of action with Xiang Kun.

Xiang Kun knew very well that on the night when he was supposed to act, to deal with the host and the “mutated parasite”, Old Xia wouldn’t be able to sleep – no matter how tired she was.

Maybe all this time, Old Xia had been considering which equipment would be needed to research and experiment once he brought back the “mutated parasite”. She might have already thought about the manner and process of the experiment.

Old Xia sent a panda spacing-out emoji via WeChat, very Xia-like, asking him how it was going, and indicating that she hadn’t slept and was waiting for the results.

Xiang Kun sighed and sent her the video he had just shot.

The video recorded the whole process from when the “mutated parasite” broke open his arm to try to host itself, until the bug crawled out of his arm on its own, lay in his palm, and slowly died.

After a while, it was clear that Old Xia had watched the video, and she sent a panda-with-question-marks-over-its-head emoji.

Then came a message: “It’s dead?”

Xiang Kun responded with an emoji of two-pointing-hand-gestures touching each other, while nodding.

Then, after a full half minute, the message from Old Xia arrived. She asked, “Did you eat it?”

Xiang Kun replied with the same pointing-finger-gesture but a nodding emoji.

This time, nearly three minutes later, just when Xiang Kun was holding back from calling her, Old Xia’s new reply came:

“What did it taste like?”

Upon seeing this reply, Xiang Kun was somewhat bewildered, because he thought of the time when he was passing Star City to treat the Little Fatty Girl to dinner on his way back from the Qinling Uninhabited Area. When he told her about killing and eating the monster, she asked the same question:

“Does it taste good?”

Despite the huge differences from age to personality to thinking styles, Old Xia and Little Fatty Girl didn’t differ much in certain areas. The mental synapses of these two food lovers are strikingly similar.

No wonder they could even merge in the Dreamland.

Citong City, Zihuan Mountain.

The sun was gradually rising from the east, its warm light swiftly covering the forest, and chirping of birds echoed all over. One could clearly sense the arrival of spring.

In a GL8 business vehicle speeding along the Winding Mountain Road were Mijoe, Zhou Rui, Gao Shu, all of whom woke up early, and Ye Chong, who had arrived at Citong last night. They were yawning while looking at all sorts of information and videos on the tablet and having a quiet discussion.

They got a message from Dr. Fang yesterday that there were traces of movement of the “Giant Raptor” they spotted on Wushu Mountain inside Zihuan Mountain city in Citong. She sent Ye Chong over to Citong with the information and equipment overnight. Hence, the four of them arrived at Zihuan Mountain for an investigation early in the morning.

Honestly speaking, Mijoe still felt a bit… surreal watching the video used to determine the appearance of the “Giant Raptor” even after watching it several times last night.

It was a depiction of a large bird engulfed in flames soaring across the sky. The processed video allowed her to clearly make out the figure of the bird, as if you were watching a fake video, a gaming graphic, or a movie special effect.

If the “Fire Bird” from this video was indeed the “Giant Raptor”, how did it turn out this way?

By combining this with the footage of the small-scale, high-intensity thunderstorm on Zihuan Mountain, taken on the same night as when the “Fire Bird” video was recorded, Mijoe and the rest were even more puzzled — was it possible that the “Giant Raptor” caught fire because of the thunderstorm? Did it get hit by lightning?

Mijoe suddenly remembered something, she turned to Ye Chong, who was sitting at the back, and asked: “These video records happened in the early hours of February 14, and the videos should’ve been circulated online on February 14 as well. Why was it only now that we were allowed to investigate Zihuan Mountain?”

Ye Chong shrugged, spread his hands and replied: “I don’t know either. I just got the documents yesterday noon, and not long after I gave them to Dr. Fang, she asked me to come to Citong to meet you guys and move into the mountains.”

Mijoe frowned slightly: “Xiao Ye, did the Information Collection Department give these video materials directly to you after analyzing them or did Mr. Liang send the videos to you?”

Ye Chong was stunned for a moment, then he replied: “The Information Department handed them directly to me, uh… but they must have shown it to Mr. Liang before giving it to me. Maybe Mr. Liang didn’t give feedback immediately, so they only forwarded it to me yesterday.”

Mijoe nodded thoughtfully.

Zhou Rui curiously said: “If this bird were actually on fire… it should be severely injured or even dead?”

“The judgment we obtained is that the ‘Giant Raptor’ did not die,” Ye Chong said.

“But… it’s been so many days since then, even if we find something, we will be behind, right? It will be very difficult to track down the ‘Giant Raptor’ based on this, right? Do you think Mr. Liang mainly wants us to investigate and analyze the changes in the bird during this period? I always feel that Mr. Liang doesn’t seem to want to catch that bird very much? If he really wanted us to catch the bird, shouldn’t it be more than just us four?” Zhou Rui asked again.

No one in the car answered his question. Or, to be more precise, Mijoe, the only one capable of answering these questions, was lost in thought, staring out of the car window at the lush woods, and no one knew what she was thinking.

They obviously couldn’t drive directly to the area of investigation. They had to leave the car on the roadside and walk for quite a distance before they arrived at the place that was lashed by the thunderstorm in the video they had seen earlier.

Although four or five days had passed, from the traces of lightning strikes, they could still feel the terror of the thunderstorm that night.

It would be very hard to imagine, if the fire on the “Giant Raptor” had something to do with that thunderstorm, how it survived or even flew away.

While they were taking out the portable equipment for sample collection and field testing, two “passersby” surprisingly walked up to them in this remote area, far from any scenic spots and without any flat roads to walk in.

Stranger still, these two “passersby” actually came and questioned them voluntarily?