"Alright, I'll arrange it immediately." The man on the other end of the communication, who called himself the person in charge, didn't hesitate or even question the reason behind the request and agreed right away.

After the call ended, Ye Jiu stabbed the Wolf-tooth Spear into the ground, sat down heavily, and stared blankly at the spherical mysterious entity in the sky. After a few seconds, he suddenly muttered, "That Hunter from the heavenly city... do you think the Shadowless Lamp would really work on this thing?"

"I don't know." Sun Hang replied straightforwardly, "But whether it works or not, you have to try to find out."

"Makes sense, you have to try to know." Ye Jiu nodded, followed by a bout of intense coughing.

"Time to move." Sun Hang glanced at the edge of the rooftop, "The shadow of this thing will soon spread here. From what we've seen with the affected buildings, if a person is swallowed by this shadow, in less than a few seconds, they'd age to death. You don't want to experience that, do you?"

"Let's go..." Ye Jiu struggled to stand up with the help of the Wolf-tooth Spear, but when he reached the edge of the rooftop, he stopped.

"I can't use the Deceitful Equipment's ability right now. If I just jump down like this..."

"A million." Sun Hang raised a finger.

"What?"

"Give me a million, and I'll take you to a safe place," Sun Hang said.

"A Mysterious Creature Hunter shouldn't lack money, right?"

"Two million, ask again, and it'll double."

"Deal."

The white mycelium wrapped around Ye Jiu and his armor in an instant, cocooning him like a mummy before he had a chance to utter a word asking Sun Hang to leave him a gap to breathe. Then he felt a tremendous force from the mycelium, followed by a whirlwind of weightlessness.

"Thud!!"

Ye Jiu was slammed heavily onto the ground, and the mycelium peeled away from him.

As he dizzyingly got up from the ground, he was shocked to find himself flung nearly three hundred meters away from his original position—but the Hunter who had extorted two million from him seconds ago was still standing in the same spot, unmoving.

"Hey—aren't you coming over?" Ye Jiu shouted loudly at Sun Hang after catching his breath.

Sun Hang ignored him.

Sun Hang stared intently at the shadow already reaching his feet.

He wanted to conduct an experiment, a somewhat risky one.

Sun Hang took a step forward, stepping into the shadow.

"That Hunter—are you fucking crazy?!" Ye Jiu was still shouting from afar, "Get over here! Do you want to die?!"

Sun Hang stepped down.

In an instant, a void appeared within the shadow, just like the blood mist he had desperately avoided in the abandoned amusement park's basement.

"..." Sun Hang looked at the shadows 'bypassing' his feet and fell silent.

From a distance, Ye Jiu was completely dumbfounded, staring blankly at the "blank area" under Sun Hang's feet. His expression shifted several times within a second before settling into a mix of astonishment and confusion.

"I need this Hunter's information... what exactly is his ability?" After hesitating for a moment, Ye Jiu pressed a seemingly inconspicuous button on the side of his communicator and whispered.

"What do you mean the files are confidential? Even my clearance isn't enough?" Ye Jiu frowned, "But his ability is too suspicious! When did such a freak appear in this border city? As far as I know, the only one with any capability in the entire Shuzhou Region is 'Night Slayer'... Is this person really a legally registered Mysterious Creature Hunter?"

"His Hunter status is perfectly legal." The person on the other end of the headset said to Ye Jiu, "Old Jiu, to be honest with you, his file was sent directly to Dubhe Tower by the director of the heavenly city's research institute, bypassing all first and second-level review processes. You know what that means, right?"

"Direct to Dubhe?" Ye Jiu's eye twitched suddenly, "The entity infecting him... is the serial number in single digits?"

"It's the only possibility, Old Jiu. Take my advice, you'd better not provoke this person."

"I didn't provoke him..."

"I know your bad temper, don't I?" The person on the other end interrupted Ye Jiu, "He's very dangerous, both to humans and mysterious entities. Keep your distance from him, but don't show excessive alienation or fear either... You know what to do, right?"

"Big bro, could you tell me, what exactly is the entity infecting this guy..." Ye Jiu asked, "There shouldn't be any recent incursion records for single-digit serial entities, right?"

"It's true that there hasn't been any activity from single-digit serial entities, but just over a month ago, a clone of Bing Jiu·Taotie attacked a small town in the Shuzhou border area... Yet according to the report, the Taotie clone disappeared after causing only minor damage. Judging by his registration time, it's likely he was infected during this attack incident."

"Taotie? You're saying the entity infecting him is Taotie?" Ye Jiu's eyes widened, "But... wasn't Taotie's memetic effect never infectious?"

"Mysterious entities constantly change. Don't apply past experiences." The other person said seriously, "It's possible Taotie changed during the period it went unobserved by humans, or perhaps he just happens to be the exception."

"Taotie..." Ye Jiu murmured as he looked towards Sun Hang in the distance, "Is Taotie's ability... devouring?"

While Ye Jiu was engaged in a private communication, Sun Hang was already walking step by step deeper into the shadow. Wherever he went, the shadow receded, only to immediately gather behind him.

It felt as if Sun Hang was a walking human-shaped light source—except the light he emitted could only extend half a meter around him.

The sound of helicopter rotor blades spinning approached from afar. Sun Hang looked up towards the source of the sound and saw dozens of military helicopters of different models carrying massive lighting devices flying this way.

Besides the helicopters, there were also thousands of drones—not only military drones but all nearby civilian drones had been urgently requisitioned, even low-end toy drones. Each drone was equipped with lighting equipment of varying sizes based on its load capacity, and under specially written program control, they formed a triangular lighting array, slowly approaching the spherical mysterious entity in the sky.

Now and then, a few drones in this lighting array malfunctioned and fell from the sky—but it didn't matter. The requisitioned drones far exceeded the required number. This was an "oversaturated lighting array" several times the minimum standard, and as long as the drone loss rate was controlled within 40%, the "Shadowless Lamp" plan could proceed as normal.

"They move pretty fast." Sun Hang glanced at his wristband. From the moment Ye Jiu proposed the plan to this point when the lighting array was initially in place, the entire process had taken only seven and a half minutes.

This is the efficiency needed to combat mysterious entities.

Sun Hang stood still in the middle of the street, looking up into the sky, quietly waiting for the moment the "Shadowless Lamp Array" would be illuminated.

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