Artifact Report

Chapter 13 Mai Minghe: The Law of Development of Things
"We have experienced life and death together. I saved you, and you saved me."

The red-haired man was covered from head to toe under a white sheet, and his voice was muffled when he spoke.

In the room filled with the smell of disinfectant, the old incandescent lamp began to buzz as soon as it was turned on; Mai Minghe opened his eyes, but could only see the white cloth covering his face, and his vision was dim and hazy.

"For this reason, I won't try to steal your artifact for now. But if I encounter other hunters under my command and they want to attack you, I will definitely not stop them. After all, this is our mission. My men risked their lives to enter the lair. I have no right to ask them to give up."

"...That's easy to say."

Mai Minghe spoke from beneath the white sheets, a hot, wet breath trapped between the fabric. "Why are we storing bodies in the morgue?"

A few minutes ago, the two of them felt that they were far enough away from the residents underground, so they jumped off the bed and ran away, wishing they could get as far away from the ward as possible and completely get rid of the residents.

But as Mai Minghe ran, he glanced back hastily. In the distance, he saw a dark shadow flash by the ward door. It seemed that a resident was chasing them out. The red-haired man also realized that something was wrong and shouted in a low voice: "Running away is not an option. We must hide. Follow me!"

The tall and thin patient was three or four meters long and could stretch its body. If it was the one chasing them, the two of them would definitely not be able to escape.

However, Mai Minghe did not expect that the red-haired man led her into the stairwell, and after rushing down to the B1 floor, he pushed open a door with the word "Mortuary" written on it as if he was familiar with the place.

Seeing her hesitation, he turned around and glared at her: "Come on, what are you standing there for? Do you want to be caught up by the residents?"

Having said that, who would be so eager to go in after seeing the word "morgue"?
However, seeing her only living companion in this ghost place striding in, Mai Minghe seemed to have no choice but to go in.

As soon as she walked in, she couldn't help shivering; the temperature in the morgue was at least three or four degrees lower than outside.

"Find an empty bed," the red-haired man turned on the morgue light, pulled back the white sheet from a bed, and lay down on it. "Like me, cover yourself from head to toe, and don't move. Don't worry about it if it's already occupied. It'll be fine."

Mai Minghe stared at the morgue bed in the corner of the room - the white sheet on the bed rose and fell, forming the outline of a human body; the lights in the room flickered from time to time, and she couldn't see whether the other person was breathing or not, let alone whether it was a person, a corpse, or a resident.

Anyway, the corpse heard them come in and didn't explode to greet the two of them, which was probably a good thing.

"That..." She pointed at the morgue bed and said only two words when the red-haired man quickly laid her down and covered her up, urging her from under the white sheet, "Hurry up."

In the huge morgue, in a blink of an eye, only Mai Minghe was left standing alive, and two bodies covered with white cloth.

When she crawled onto the morgue bed, she was a little dazed: an eighty-six-year-old old lady first entered the hospital ward and then entered the hospital morgue, which was very consistent with the law of development of things.

Tonight's experience was like a metaphor; she wasn't smart enough to figure out what it was specifically.

The red-haired man sighed from under the white sheet.

"People who first come into the nest are troublesome. They don't know anything." He lowered his voice and said, "One of my least favorite parts of the job is training the newcomers in the team."

"I don't want to lie in the morgue either," Mai Minghe replied. "As long as you're alive, you can't avoid doing things you don't like."

Including pretending to be dead.

"Don't be upset, the morgue is the 'door of life' for this hospital. Sounds illogical, doesn't it? How can a place where the dead are kept be the door of life?"

Mai Minghe immediately said "hmm".

"There are countless locations in the nest, each with its own unique terrain, dangers, and opportunities. St. Louis Hospital is a place that our family is relatively familiar with. This is my third time here. In St. Louis Hospital—"

"Wait, is this St. Louis Hospital?" Mai Minghe couldn't help but interrupt. "Didn't you say this was a nest? St. Louis Hospital isn't far from my home, right?"

She had been to St. Louis Hospital several times before, but had never seen these monsters.

"No, you're talking about St. Louis Hospital in Blackmore City; we're currently at St. Louis Hospital in the nest.

"The nest is not in the human world at all."

The red-haired man was silent for a few seconds, as if he wanted these words to truly sink into Mai Minghe's mind.

"Perhaps a crack has appeared in the universe, and the shadow cast by Blackmore City within the crack has transformed into this nest full of danger and strangeness, a strange world that only a few can enter. You can also find the place names in Blackmore City in the nest, but they are basically twisted and dark versions."

As if afraid of her interruption, the red-haired man continued, "In short, we found that when people in St. Louis Hospital encountered danger that they could not get rid of—for example, we were targeted by the residents—then the morgue was a place to 'reset.'"

"Reset?" Mai Minghe tried hard to digest what he said. If he couldn't digest it, he would remember it firmly in his mind.

She had trouble understanding the language of young people; smart phones—no, smartphones—took her a while to figure out.

"Yes, to put it simply, if you go to the morgue, cover your face, and lie there for a while, you'll be 'dead' in the eyes of St. Louis Hospital. The people the residents were chasing are dead, so they naturally stop chasing them. When you walk out again, you're a brand new, living person, and nothing will chase you anymore. It sounds ridiculous at first, but on closer inspection, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Anyone who enters the hospital morgue will, of course, be quickly forgotten by the hospital."

"It's the same in life," Mai Minghe murmured. "It's not just the hospital that's forgotten you."

"That's why I brought you here," the red-haired man concluded. "Be content. If you were a hunter from another clan, I would never have brought you here so easily."

"why?"

"People who work together are enemies."

Mai Minghe began to understand. These people called themselves hunters, and within them, there seemed to be many different clans. They didn't know if the other clans knew the morgue was a reset point, and if they didn't, they certainly didn't want to reveal this valuable information.

"But why did you come to the lair...?"

"Sister," the red-haired man laughed, "touch the artifact on your belly and think about why. The effects of an artifact are countless, from increasing your IQ by five points to changing your destiny. It's all possible, even fulfilling humanity's most impossible fantasies. But artifacts only exist in the lair. In Blackmoor City, there are many political and business celebrities willing to pay a high price for them. Where there is demand, there is supply. We are all led into the lair by the principles of economics." After a pause, he said, "That's why we are called artifact hunters."

Phantom Hunter...

In Blackmore City, where he had lived his entire life, there was actually a group of people chasing and trading such fantastical and dreamlike things...

Now, I accidentally broke into the world outside the world and gained a second life.

Mai Minghe lay on the morgue bed, his heart pounding.

She was surprised that she was not afraid at this moment and did not want to run back home; instead, she felt like a child who accidentally walked into an amusement park in the middle of the night - the night was another realm, and the outline of the amusement park in the night was strange and terrifying, but also irresistibly vast and wonderful.

The lair... In the dark and shadowy night, it was a paradise where she could ride on the rotating blood horse and rush to the wonderland.

"I never thought...that I would end up in a place like this," she whispered.

Compared to tonight, my entire life seemed to have suddenly dried up and faded.

"You didn't know the nest existed before, so that's understandable. Without the guidance of a senior, it's not uncommon for someone to accidentally open a passage and enter the nest by sheer luck—"

"Pathway?" Mai Minghe seized on the word and nearly jumped out of bed. "I bumped into the TV screen and fell into the ward. Could that be my 'pathway'?"

The red-haired man pondered and said "hmm".

"So that's how you got in... You've never bumped into a TV screen before, have you?"

Of course, no one would bump into the TV for no reason.

"Each hunter's path is different." The red-haired man laughed and said, "Among all humans, only 1% are born with a path that allows them to enter the nest. The conditions of each path vary, and most are quite strange and tricky. Therefore, among this 1%, countless people have lived their entire lives without ever opening their own path, let alone knowing that the nest exists..."

Isn't she? Eighty-six years, until the thief broke into the house -

Mai Minghe shuddered.

...By the way, that thief is also a Phantom Hunter.

"Some people have a fairly common way in," the red-haired man continued. "I heard someone could enter the lair just by sitting in a bathtub filled with water. Of course, his luck wasn't very good. Think about it, it's his first time in the bath, he must be young, naked, and without anything - what hope is there of returning alive from the lair?

"Finding access is even trickier, like flushing a toilet while standing, opening doors in abandoned buildings... and so on. The conditions for opening access alone are so tricky that they can screen out a large number of people. Not to mention, there's another important condition for entering the lair."

"What conditions?"

"Access roads can only be opened in large cities with a population of over ten million. We don't know the specific reasons, but..."

The red-haired man whispered, "It's generally believed among hunters that nests are a byproduct of human society's development to a certain scale. Therefore, the most densely populated areas are where nests connect."

Mai Minghe lay quietly for a while.

Every word he just said was like a piece of a puzzle, gradually piecing together a deep world that she had never imagined in her mind; she really wanted to reach out and touch her forehead, the place that was swollen by the TV screen, to make sure that she was not dreaming.

"alright,"

There was a rustling of fabric not far away, as if the red-haired person had lifted the white cloth and sat up. "It's almost time. The reset should be complete. If you want to preserve your illusion, it's best not to be seen by my companions."

This guy is quite humane.

"Are you planning to hand over the fake image on my body to Weisilai?" Mai Minghe asked.

"Yes, he hired us," the red-haired man said, startled, turning around. "You even know this?"

"He's dead, so there's no way to buy this fake image anymore." Mai Minghe recalled the endless news on TV the past two days and asked, "Haven't you heard about it yet? When did you enter the lair?"

The red-head looked at her suspiciously, then looked away.

Obviously, she wasn't believed.

The fake image that Vesile wanted happened to fall into her hands, and she immediately said that Vesile was dead and the fake image was no longer needed... It was too coincidental and convenient, no wonder he didn't believe it.

"Ha, he won't die. Those artifacts he has are so powerful—" The red-haired man rubbed his nose and stopped talking. "Whether he's dead or alive, I said I won't try to take you. I advise you to return to Blackmoor City as soon as possible."

"How should I respond?"

Although the nest is both terrifying and fascinating, in order to preserve the illusion, it is best for Mai Minghe to leave now.

"Oh, really..." The red-haired man slumped his shoulders, a little listless. "I'll take you to the exit. But let's make it clear, if the hunters sent by my family see us, I'll have to join them in taking the artifact away from you."

　Hello friends, what you are seeing now is another message from heaven. Now that I have ascended the throne, how can this not be considered a message from heaven?

　　There are only power struggles every day, sometimes ascending to the throne and sometimes stepping down.

　　I have a question in my mind (sorry, not a child): I've heard readers mention that Qidian now prioritizes follow-up data. What is this? As the name suggests, is it the number of people following updates? What happens if it's not enough? How much is enough? If I publish my own, would that count?... Writing this article makes me nervous.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)