Assessment

"Over this period, we have been observing you continuously. Your performance could be described as 'excellent,'" the woman said. "But these are merely surface appearances. Whether your deeper mental state is stable still needs to be assessed through a series of specialized tests. Only if you meet the standards during the assessment can we grant you the status of Anomaly Hunter."

"What kind of assessment is it? What do I need to do?" Sun Hang asked.

"You'll find out once you follow them to the room specially designated for assessment testing." The woman reached out and tapped the floating holographic screen before her. A passage immediately appeared in one wall of the room, and four people clad in full heavy protective gear walked in.

They quickly helped Sun Hang change into "test clothes"—these so-called test clothes consisted of nothing but a pair of pure white boxer shorts and a large white sheet with three holes cut into it. All Sun Hang had to do was stick his arms and head through the holes, and he was dressed.

"Are you planning to dissect me?" Sun Hang examined the test clothes suspiciously and asked.

"You can rest assured about that. The entire assessment process will not cause you any harm." The woman shook her head. "You won't even need to have blood drawn."

After Sun Hang followed the four people out, the woman turned to the old man in the wheelchair and asked softly, "Teacher, there's something... I don't know whether I should ask."

"Go ahead." The old man raised his head to look at his student, and at last, a trace of kindness appeared on his face.

"I've always been puzzled. Did the Anomalization Virus infecting 0420 really come from Taotie?"

"What is it that puzzles you?"

"Taotie, as an exceptionally unusual singular entity among Type C Anomalies, is most notable for devouring every living thing it comes into contact with. Yet it has never released the Anomalization Virus into the outside world. If other Anomalies release viruses carrying their own 'memes' to infect and assimilate things that come into contact with them, then Taotie does the opposite—it only devours the carriers of those 'memes' and embeds those 'fragments' into its own 'meme.' It is precisely because of this characteristic that every annual academic conference has people proposing that Taotie's codename should be changed to Pixiu, symbolizing 'all in, no out'..."

"You suspect that the Anomaly that infected him was not Taotie?" the old man interrupted his student and asked.

"Yes, Teacher." The woman nodded. "So far, including its clones, there have been a total of three hundred and fourteen Anomaly attack incidents directly or indirectly caused by Taotie. Across those three hundred and fourteen incidents, there has never been an infected person. Even if other Anomalies appeared during an incident, they would be devoured completely by Taotie. It was for this reason that, after confirming the attacking Anomaly was a Taotie Clone, the rescue team skipped the routine infection screening process..."

"Because people infected by the Anomalization Virus become Taotie's highest-priority prey. So they subconsciously assumed that there could not possibly be an infected person among the survivors," the middle-aged man said. "The people responsible for the rescue operation have already been disciplined. I guarantee this will never happen again."

"But..." The woman wanted to say more, but the old man in the wheelchair raised a hand to stop her.

"Whether it is the progression of his infection, the detected 'meme' sequence, or the abnormalities he displayed when coming into contact with Anomalies, all of it matches Taotie... Yang Qi, you have already made a very serious mistake: never judge Anomalies based on past experience."

"T-Teacher..." The woman froze for a moment, shame appearing on her face.

"Sometimes, you cannot necessarily trust even what you see with your own eyes. How can you trust things recorded in documents?" the old man said slowly.

"Teacher, I understand my mistake." The woman lowered her head.

"Remember, if investigators or hunters make mistakes, the worst outcome is merely mission failure. But if we make mistakes, the consequences will be catastrophic."

Sun Hang was brought to another room filled with precision instruments that were obviously extremely expensive. The staff had him lie down on a large surgical chair in the center of the room, then attached hundreds of electrode pads to his body.

After attaching the electrodes, two staff members pushed a camera in front of the surgical chair. The stand supporting it was extended, and its glass lens, shimmering with rainbow hues, was thrust straight toward him, stopping less than two centimeters from the tip of Sun Hang's nose.

After securing the stand, the staff left the room. The lights went out one after another, leaving only a beam from the ceiling to envelop Sun Hang.

"Testing template, standard, testing content, custom 01. Test subject number, 0420." An emotionless synthesized voice emerged from the speaker beside the camera. "Please do not be nervous. Keep your emotions and breathing as steady as possible. Before the test begins, you will have ample time to relax to the greatest extent possible."

"Will being nervous affect the test results?"

"No."

"Then let's begin now. I'm pretty relaxed." Sun Hang lay back in the surgical chair, staring at the lens inches away from him.

"During the test, excerpts from a certain long poem will be played. Your task is simply to repeat each line during the pauses between them. In addition, random questions will be inserted between the lines. You do not need to answer those questions; you only need to repeat the lines of poetry," the synthesized voice continued.

"Then how am I supposed to tell which sentences are lines of poetry and which ones are your questions?"

"All lines of poetry are declarative sentences, while all random questions are interrogative sentences. They are easy to distinguish. If you accidentally repeat the content of a question, it will not affect the test." The synthesized voice said.

"Fine."

"The test begins."

After a burst of meaningless white noise, the beam of light enveloping Sun Hang began to grow brighter, while the surroundings of the room appeared even darker by contrast.

The indicator lights that had been flashing continuously on the equipment all went out in unison. Sun Hang felt as if he were floating in the deep, boundless void of space, and his sense of the boundaries around him gradually blurred.

"Blood-black nothingness begins to weave a net," the synthesized voice seemed no longer to come from beside his ears, but from that distant dark space, empty and ethereal.

"Blood-black nothingness begins to weave a net," Sun Hang repeated.

"Are you afraid of the dark? Have you ever imagined yourself in an environment completely without light?"

Following the test requirements, Sun Hang did not answer the question.

"Cells connect, then connect again,"

"Cells connect, then connect again," Sun Hang repeated.