51 Weird Oceanarium (VIII)
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A team of demon hunters certainly didn't need the help of cleaners. Without Chu Ling, even with only four people left, it would be enough to handle a Class B contaminated area.
They have completed one-third of this mission. Zhu Ning has purified one of the pollution sources, and the cleaning team is already collecting the contaminated spores. Once they have dealt with the mechanical jellyfish aquarium, the mission will be over.
Tang Ke was very efficient and did not waste time reuniting the team. After making sure that everyone else was fine, he led the team into the mechanical jellyfish museum.
They have an obligation to finish quickly; the longer cleaners remain in the contaminated area, the more dangerous it is.
Chu Ling just sent a message saying that she is willing to lead a team to the director's office to look for clues. It is a good thing to have help, which will help them figure out what happened in the Mechanical Jellyfish Museum.
Tang Ke told her to be careful. The polluted area outside had been purified. With Chu Ling and Zhu Ning in their team, he was not too worried about any danger outside the jellyfish aquarium.
There were even more corpses in the jellyfish pavilion, floating upside down in the water, their bodies covered in blood. They were all tourists who did not have time to escape.
Prometheus broadcasts: [A total of 278 tourist bodies have been detected.]
Tang Ke frowned. There were too many of them. Even though they were all very experienced demon hunters, it was hard for them not to react when they heard about so many victims.
Including those in the Mermaid Pavilion and the others they had seen along the way, the death toll in this polluted area was more than five or six hundred.
The jellyfish house looked pretty much like what was shown at the end of the video, with the glass wall cracked and a few mechanical jellyfish stranded inside.
The mechanical jellyfish lost their vitality once they left the water source. Their mechanical tentacles were shriveled and they lay at the bottom of the pool, twitching slightly. There were only dozens of mechanical jellyfish in the pool at most, but there were at least hundreds or thousands in the video. Since they were not inside the glass wall, they were most likely in the accumulated water, which had already reached above people's thighs.
"This place is really creepy." Cao Wei couldn't help but speak.
Team member Liu Zhiwei: "Me too, I always feel like someone is watching me from behind."
Team member Yang Shu was walking behind them, making sure there was no one behind them. "Yes, I'm watching you. Are you mentally polluted?"
"Go away," Cao Wei said, "I'm not that weak."
It’s not Li Nianchuan.
Tang Ke: "Finish your work quickly and get out quickly. Be careful."
They had stumbled in the Mermaid Pavilion before, and they wouldn't suffer a second loss. The three remaining witchers spread out in a well-trained manner, always keeping an eye out for underwater dangers, while they began searching the Jellyfish Pavilion.
"Captain," someone reported after about two minutes, "Come and take a look."
Yang Shu turned over a corpse. It was a male corpse with a fist-sized hole in his chest. It seemed that something had once lived in the place where his heart would be. Now his chest was empty, and both the parasite and his heart had disappeared.
The witcher had seen tourists escaping while waiting to enter. Some of them suddenly collapsed as soon as they reached the gate, with a mechanical tentacle wriggling wildly in their chest, and were finally shot dead by staff outside the venue.
They should be mechanical jellyfish. They cannot survive long after leaving the water source. For them, human blood is also a source of water.
After the glass wall collapsed, some dried jellyfish tried desperately to drill into people's bodies and suck blood to fuel their own operations.
"I found the commentator." Cao Wei reported from the other side.
He turned the body over and found it was indeed the tour guide. He was wearing the aquarium uniform, a blue suit, a red tie, and a small headset on his ear.
The clothes were soaked with water, so the body looked extremely bloated, as if it had swelled three times its size. The narrator still had the expression of disbelief before death, and he also had a hole in his chest.
"Is this the cause of their death?" Cao Wei asked.
Before they came, they watched the surveillance video and saw that due to the high water pressure and the sudden collapse of the glass wall, some tourists would be drowned or crushed to death.
Especially the commentator who did not escape at the last moment in the surveillance video, but from this perspective, it is difficult to determine the real cause of death.
Tang Ke was silent for a moment, "Look for that little girl's family."
The whereabouts of the little girl and her family were not captured at the end of the video. The little girl was very strange, and the clue to solving the source of the pollution should lie with the three of them.
The three demon hunters were very efficient and immediately went to look for someone.
Tang Ke approached the glass wall of the mechanical jellyfish museum. The few remaining jellyfish inside looked docile and harmless. Just as described in the brochure, they were friendly to humans and non-aggressive.
If you hadn't watched the video, it would be hard to imagine that they finally overturned the glass wall. This contaminated area is a bit weird.
Tang Ke has been on many missions and has entered Class A contaminated areas more than a dozen times. This time it was just a Class B mission, so he shouldn't feel weird.
But after years of experience, his sixth sense kept urging him to leave immediately, and his demon hunter instinct made him not want to stay here for long. The other team members seemed to feel the same way, and they were all a little nervous for the first time.
Suddenly, Tang Ke narrowed his eyes and saw a black object floating in the water. It was a professional camera.
The photography needs of ordinary people can be met with a secondary computer, and only a few people with high demands will buy professional cameras.
In this era, cameras have to compete with sub-computers. The products are very inward-looking, made very small, and waterproof, drop-proof and fire-proof.
The slogan of many camera companies is that even if the world ends and the last human being becomes extinct, their cameras can still record the last moment of humanity and can be preserved for decades, which can completely leave clues for alien civilizations.
This advertisement was a bit exaggerated, and he just laughed it off when he saw it.
Tang Ke fished the camera out of the water, and it was actually intact and usable just as the advertiser had advertised. After turning on the camera, it would usually display the last photo you took.
Sure enough, this was the camera of the little girl's father. As soon as it was opened, the little girl's innocent smiling face was revealed. She was wearing a bright red dress and was standing on the glass wall looking at the jellyfish.
The little girl's name is Lin Xiaofeng.
Lin Xiaofeng is actually quite good-looking, and in this age of artificial beauty, she can be considered exceptional. If she really has a natural face, she could definitely become a minor star.
Tang Ke asked: "What class of citizens are they?"
Prometheus: [A second-class citizen, Lin Xiaofeng is the descendant of an artificial human.]
After the disaster, the population dropped sharply. Many artificial humans retained their ability to reproduce, but their descendants can only be second-class citizens and cannot enjoy the treatment of natural humans.
Tang Ke began to look at the photos left in the camera. The camera did not record the last moment. The last photo he took was of the little girl stepping back with a look of fear on her face. After that, the little girl was taken away by her mother. Her father Lin Tianqi's photography skills were not very good, and he relied purely on quantity to win.
You may be able to capture a good-looking one by taking hundreds of photos, and then go back to process this one.
So after looking at more than a dozen photos, Tang Ke, a straight man, couldn't see any difference between the photos. After looking at them for a long time, he suspected that he was seeing things.
The photos all show little girls standing innocently behind a glass wall with jellyfish behind them. Some of the photos even look blurry.
There was not much time left, so Tang Ke browsed quickly.
Suddenly, he stopped and the screen stopped at a certain photo. It was still the same old content: a little girl and a jellyfish, touching each other through the glass wall.
At this time, the little girl attracted a group of mechanical jellyfish, at least hundreds of them, and took a panoramic photo. The whole photo looked very spectacular, and it would be no problem to be on the cover of the magazine "Wonderful Nature and Humanity".
Tang Ke paused the picture, then zoomed in again and again. With the development of technology, the camera will not even distort when zooming in. Professional cameras can restore every insignificant detail.
As the photo is enlarged, the little girl's proportion in the photo becomes larger and larger, from a full-body photo at the beginning, to half-body, and then to just her head.
The light in the aquarium is complex, and the glass walls reflect light. Beneath the little girl's hand, within the glass wall, there is a blurry human face.
Tang Ke continued to enlarge the photo. He was not mistaken. It was a human face, but it was very blurry, like a transparent person with a human shadow showing under special light.
Whose reflection is it?
The glass walls of the aquarium reflect human shadows. These may be tourists, or they may be optical distortions. They just look like human figures.
Tang Ke didn't dare to jump to conclusion and re-examined the photo.
He flipped through the photos quickly, and when the photos were flipped through too quickly, an "animation" effect would be formed. This was how early cartoons were made. Many people would draw little people in the lower right corner of their textbooks when they were bored in class, a kind of ancient comic strip.
Tang Ke turned on the zoom mode and quickly flipped through the photos. This time, the shadow in the photo was moving. It wasn't Tang Ke's illusion, nor was it the reflection of a tourist. It was a person.
He hid in a transparent glass wall, with countless jellyfish floating behind him. The jellyfish were not attracted by Lin Xiaofeng, but by this person?
At the beginning, he was five meters away from Lin Xiaofeng, seemingly observing Lin Xiaofeng, and found this little girl very interesting.
He took a look, and then out of mercy wanted to show some "miracle" to let the little girl enjoy some glory that she would never have in her life.
Then he got closer and closer to the glass wall, closer and closer...
Finally, his hand was pressed against the glass wall, and his hand overlapped with Lin Xiaofeng's hand!
The mechanical jellyfish were attracted to him, one, two, three, and later dozens of them, countless mechanical jellyfish swarmed over him.
Tourists exclaimed: "It's so spectacular and beautiful."
“It was worth it this time.”
“So cute, so healing.”
Is it cute? Is it healing? The transparent figure within the glass wall smiled, a smile from a higher-level life form, as if mocking a lower-level life form.
More mechanical jellyfish swarmed over, the mollusks pressed against the glass wall, and the man also moved closer to the glass wall, looking at the little girl through the glass wall. They were only ten centimeters apart, and it looked like they were face to face.
Finally, Lin Xiaofeng saw his shadow in the flowing water.
A face suddenly appeared in front of her!
That's why Lin Xiaofeng suddenly stepped back as if she saw a monster. She was not scared by the mechanical jellyfish, but by the people inside it.
There's a person in this aquarium, a transparent person! He's looking at himself!
He reached out his hand from inside the glass wall and it was he who pushed it down.
Such a thick wall bears tons of pressure. If you don't use weapons, the force required to simply push it down is also tons.
Tang Ke couldn't think of anyone else who could do this, except for a high-level psychic. A psychic who could knock down a glass wall was at the aquarium. Where was he now? Was he still there?
Tang Ke suddenly felt a chill on his back. This man was transparent, which meant that even if he was right behind him, Tang Ke would be unaware of it.
Right behind him...? He seemed to understand where the discomfort of entering the jellyfish aquarium came from.
Bang!
There was a muffled sound from behind.
…
Bang!
Zhu Ning shot and broke the keyhole of the director's office. Li Nianchuan was stunned: "Are you too rough?"
If there was no one there, Zhu Ning could use the master key to open the door. With so many people watching, Zhu Ning had no choice but to look back at him and ask, "Can you find the key?"
Li Nianchuan: "..."
He had nothing to say.
Xu Meng had a headache. She felt like a kindergarten teacher taking a group of children out for an adventure, and things were a little out of control.
With Chu Ling's help, and since they all wanted to go to the director's office, everyone moved very quickly and efficiently when containing the contaminated spores. It only took fifteen minutes to contain them all.
Fifteen minutes later they went to the director's office. After the contaminated area was purified, it became an ordinary aquarium. Although it was a ruined aquarium, they found the way.
The director's office was just above the exhibition hall, and they passed by several intact exhibition halls as they walked over.
There are many creatures on display that Zhu Ning has never seen before. They have followed Fang Ying's orders and preserved the scientific value of these creatures as much as possible.
Zhu Ning: "Come in."
She opened the door to the director's office, and Chu Ling led the way in. She and Zhu Ning had already formed a tacit understanding. One would lead the way, the other would cover the rear, protecting Xu Meng and Li Nianchuan in the middle.
After Chu Ling went in, Li Nianchuan and Xu Meng followed. Zhu Ning wanted to follow, but she suddenly stopped.
There it was again, those eyes, someone was looking at her from behind.
He had this kind of look when he met a mermaid before. It looked very much like an illusion, but Zhu Ning knew that it was not an illusion.
Zhu Ning looked back and saw that the corridor was empty. This was the staff area and there was not even a body on the ground.
What was watching her? Was there another creature here? Could she not see it?
"What are you doing?" Li Nianchuan asked, "Why don't you come in?"
Zhu Ning: "I feel like there's someone behind me."
"Is there someone?" Li Nianchuan stuck his head out and glanced at the corridor. "Where did they come from?"
He trusted Zhu Ning very much. When they were in the sewer, Zhu Ning quickly realized that there was a fishman. He firmly believed that Zhu Ning could feel something that he could not see.
Zhu Ning glanced at the corridor again. The gaze suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing behind. Hiding? Or was it really an illusion?
Ever since Prometheus entered her mind, the system seemed to be broken and its presence was very weak.
Previously, when Zhu Ning entered a polluted area and was polluted, his mental value would decrease.
This time something was very wrong. Even though she was beaten so badly in the Mermaid Pavilion, the system said nothing and didn't even show that there was anything wrong with her health.
The system is broken? Does the danger prediction still work?
Zhu Ning had long thought that there would be a day when she would lose the protection of the system, but she didn't expect it to come so soon.
Zhu Ning tilted his head and said, "Go in first."
The most important thing was to get out of the contaminated area as soon as possible. She didn't want to stay here for even a minute longer. After Li Nianchuan went in, Zhu Ning followed him in.
The first thing Zhu Ning did when she came in was to find out where the oxygen tank was. She had been trapped underwater before, and what she needed most was an oxygen tank, so she had to be prepared this time.
There's a whole row of oxygen cylinders right at the entrance, and it seems the director is quite afraid of death. The director's office is very luxuriously decorated, and you can tell at first glance that it's the office of a wealthy person.
The floor of the director's office is transparent, and marine life swims just below his office.
At first glance, the large office desk seems to be "floating" on the seabed. This is not an office desk, it is the throne of the overlord of the ocean. It is simply luxurious.
On one wall are hung various certificates of honor and photos of cooperation activities. The curator Bao Ruiming has gray hair, but in the photos he looks like an amiable old man.
As Li Nianchuan said, if you look at the news alone, the curator is simply a kind-hearted person.
"Found it!" Li Nianchuan shouted, "The mermaid's file."
Li Nianchuan, as excited as if he were on an adventure, held up a folder. There was a whole row of documents on the bookshelf at his desk, and Li Nianchuan pulled it out from there.
Zhu Ning responded: "Really? What's inside?"
Li Nianchuan opened the document, looked at it for a minute, and then said disappointedly: "It's all nonsense."
According to the information, mermaids are simple and harmless animals who like humans very much.
Zhu Ning didn't feel anything. After all, if she was a bad guy, she wouldn't have written down her crime plan and put it on the bookshelf.
Xu Meng: "Here's the purchase order."
Files can be falsified, but purchase orders cannot be falsified. Once something is falsified, the Finance Department will be in great trouble.
Chu Ling came over to take a look, but couldn't make out what it was. "I don't understand."
They were all fish and shrimps, which should have been purchased specially to feed the fish. As an outsider, Chu Ling did not recognize the names of many species of fish.
Xu Meng: "Wait."
She found the monthly purchase orders for the aquarium for the past year, made a horizontal comparison, and analyzed them for about three minutes.
"In the past six months, they have purchased a lot of raw meat, an extra 30 tons every month."
Thirty tons more every month?
Zhu Ning frowned. She stopped and looked at the information with Xu Meng. Every day the aquarium staff would count the creatures in the aquarium.
We haven't purchased any new exhibit animals in the past six months, but we've increased our feed purchases. What are they feeding? What new species have been introduced?
Did the creatures they were feeding grow in appetite? Or... was something reproducing? Where were these creatures kept?
Mechanical jellyfish cannot eat so much food. They are so small and have low reproduction ability. This food is too much for them.
Suppose it is not a mechanical jellyfish, but another kind of creature that Zhu Ning does not know.
Such a group of things would consume an additional 30 tons of food every month, 30 tons in the first month, 60 tons in the second month, and 90 tons in the third month. It would be difficult for them to avoid being discovered.
It seems that the curator keeps them somewhere and is not afraid of being discovered. Is there a secret venue in the aquarium?
It shouldn't be that exaggerated.
The source of pollution in the mermaid aquarium and the mechanical jellyfish aquarium should be similar. The mermaids have been locked up in glass walls as performing creatures for a long time, and they have some kind of "resentment".
So what's with this creature? Are they trapped too?
Why is the pollution outbreak happening now? Zhu Ning's question is, why that little girl? What's so special about that little girl?
"What did you find?" Li Nianchuan asked.
Zhu Ning: "Don't talk to me first."
She needed to confirm her thoughts, so Zhu Ning opened Lin Xiaofeng's social media again. This time, she looked at the account of "Baby Xiaofeng" carefully.
Judging from the information presented, the Lin family is harmonious, the parents are loving, and Lin Xiaofeng is the little princess that everyone envies.
Lin Xiaofeng is really very beautiful. Although she may not seem so exaggerated in the wasteland world, she is extremely beautiful in Zhu Ning's eyes.
Zhu Ning paused and suddenly asked Prometheus: "Has she had plastic surgery?"
It's not that Zhu Ning is biased. According to the information, Lin Xiaofeng's parents look very ordinary, and they are both artificial humans. There is no such thing as genetic mutation for artificial humans. Their genes are fixedly coded. With all due respect to her, Lin Xiaofeng's parents cannot give birth to such a good-looking baby.
Prometheus: [Searching for Lin Xiaofeng's medical information.]
In the wasteland world, humans are transparent in front of artificial intelligence, and it has the legal right to access the medical network.
[No records of Lin Xiaofeng's plastic surgery were found.]
Cosmetic surgery for minors is federally prohibited.
The clue is broken? Zhu Ning asked again: "Can you find any suspicious transfer records of his parents?"
After about thirty seconds, Prometheus said, "There are five suspicious transfer records from an encrypted account. We are cracking the account password. Successfully decrypted..."
[The account is named Guang Linmin, who primarily sells genetic drugs and has been listed as a Level 1 wanted criminal by the Security Bureau.]
Zhu Ning's head buzzed. Lin Xiaofeng's parents have been buying genetic drugs?
Zhu Ning closed his eyes. The technology in the wasteland world was a hundred times more advanced than that in Zhu Ning's world. It turned out that even if technology advanced, the world would not get better.
Zhu Ning asked, "Where does the main ingredient of cosmetic surgery gene drugs come from?"
[Mermaid.] The answer was unsurprising. Mermaid genes were the raw material for making cosmetic drugs.
Zhu Ning paused for a moment and asked, "When did they first buy it?"
【Five years ago.】Prometheus said.
Lin Xiaofeng herself is only ten years old, which means that she started injecting genetic drugs when she was five years old.
Her father, Lin Tianqi, is an adventure blogger, but the account's profits are very average and he can only make ends meet. After having a daughter, the family expenses increased.
He even felt at one point that his wife and daughter were hindering his career development. If it weren't for this money-eating beast, his career could have been taken to a higher level and would never be like this now.
One day, Lin Tianqi suddenly realized a problem. He couldn't do it, but his daughter could. He began to concentrate on managing his daughter's social media account.
Because federal law prohibits it, he buys genetic drugs on the black market.
"There are many kinds of genetic drugs. To put it simply, you can change whatever you don't like, to make it more beautiful or whiter..." Doctor Fu's words echoed in Zhu Ning's ears.
They dislike their daughter.
I didn't like my nose, so I changed it.
I didn't like the way my eyes looked, so I changed them.
I didn't like my chin, so I changed it.
But the aesthetic trends change every year: one year, large double eyelids are popular, the next year, small double eyelids are popular. Lin Xiaofeng is like an immovable sculpture, her parents wielding chisels, altering her facial features at will.
Zhu Ning felt a little numb. Lin Xiaofeng received her first genetic drug injection when she was five years old. She could already remember things when she was five years old. She remembered what she looked like before, but she could not decide what she would look like in the future.
She looked in the mirror every day and saw that she was becoming more and more beautiful, but also more and more unfamiliar, and her appearance was not even fixed.
Because Lin Tianqi has always been following the trend, and the trend will change. She is trying very hard to catch up with the trend, as if she is chasing a wave that she can never catch up with.
But his parents were still not satisfied, and Lin Xiaofeng's account was still not popular. No matter how hard Lin Tianqi tried, Lin Xiaofeng's account could not be operated.
"What's wrong with you?" Lin Tianqi shouted, "Smile! Be innocent! Don't be like a nagging woman!"
"Do you know how much money I spent on you? I gave you everything I had!"
"You have such good conditions, why don't you smile?"
Her mother watched worriedly, and she kept hesitating, wanting to say something but unable to. Lin Xiaofeng was locked in her room, practicing her smile in front of the mirror over and over again.
She had to have a perfect smile so her father would be satisfied. She had to be innocent and harmless, like a mechanical jellyfish.
The jellyfish in the mechanical aquarium were of the same kind as her. They were all man-made creatures, created simply to be harmless and trapped in transparent glass walls for people to watch forever.
Flashes flashed, and countless people in front of them showed expressions of amazement and happiness.
Lin Xiaofeng thought of herself as another mechanical jellyfish, but the other jellyfish lived in the aquarium, while she was a mechanical jellyfish that lived on land and was separated from her own tribe.
She seemed to have found her position, became more obedient to her parents' arrangements, and practiced that smile more diligently.
Be innocent, be harmless, be healing, be naive.
Lin Xiaofeng's smile has even become a muscle memory. As long as her father's shutter sounds, she can adjust her expression in a second.
The father will show an even more satisfied expression, the mother will breathe a sigh of relief, as if a stone has been lifted off her shoulders, and the people around will exclaim, "What a lovely little girl."
“It’s so heartwarming and healing.”
She looked in the mirror, but she only saw a beautiful face; she couldn't find herself.
The compliments from people around her were not compliments to her, and when they looked over, they were not looking at her, but at her face. Her soul was gradually becoming transparent, trapped behind this beautiful face, like a mermaid trapped behind a glass wall.
Zhu Ning seemed to empathize with Lin Xiaofeng and was forced to experience Lin Xiaofeng's joys, sorrows, anger and happiness. This may be the reason for the formation of the Class B pollution area.
Zhu Ning was just about to share the clue with others when his bracelet suddenly vibrated and a crackling sound came from the channel. On the other side of the channel was another team, and there was a loud bang, as if they were fighting with some creature.
"Enemy!" The communication channel was unstable, and the shouts were mixed with the sound of electricity. Cao Wei shouted: "The enemy is transparent!"
As expected of a demon hunter, the message he delivered was very concise and accurate. Li Nianchuan hadn't reacted yet. What was transparent?
Zhu Ning immediately understood that the gaze she felt before was not an illusion. There really was someone here watching her, but she just couldn't see it.
The sudden increase of 30 tons of feed should be fed to these transparent creatures. They are kept in the mechanical jellyfish museum in a dignified manner. Normally, no one can find them because their appearance is transparent.
The amount of feed they are fed is so huge that the energy required by ordinary organisms is equal to the energy they can exert. Eating so much means that the invisible man is very powerful.
Chu Ling and Xu Meng both understood. Chu Ling was a combatant and immediately entered combat mode.
"Tang Ke and the others are in danger." Zhu Ning said loudly. If the invisible man is still in the jellyfish museum, it means that the thing they are dealing with is difficult to control.
Not only Tang Ke and his team are in danger, Zhu Ning is also in danger. The enemy is transparent and they have no idea of their exact location!
The author has something to say:
Thank you very much for watering me. I have 2,000 nutrient solution. I merged the chapters I added today so that you can look better.
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