Artifact Report

Chapter 17: Chase: The Hunted Hunter
Ivan is either a genius or a fool.

No, Chai Si thought, maybe he was a mixture of the two; it was said that when a fool has a flash of inspiration, even smart people will be defeated.

"Are you trying to commit suicide? Don't take me with you!" Huang Li panicked, forgetting to be polite to his superiors. He shouted, "This isn't a lair, this is the human world! Driving like that has consequences. If you hit someone, you could go to jail—didn't you hear the sirens behind us?"

Just a few minutes after breaking a series of traffic rules, he heard sirens.

The sound of sirens was like several swirling knife tips, cutting the sky behind him one by one; sometimes it became farther and farther away, making Chai Si think that he had shaken off the previous police car, but it would soon get closer again because new police cars coming from other directions joined the chase.

But the police cars never stopped him because they couldn't cross the road from the sidewalk like Chai Si, drive against the flow through the red light, and then rush out of the intersection as if there was no one there.

Along the way, he didn't know how many pedestrians he saw rushing to the side of the road and dodging in panic, nor how many times he heard the sharp sound of tires rubbing against the ground when braking.

Wherever the car went, there was chaos, running, honking and screaming; what was a miracle was that when Chai Si finally got back on the road and sped away, he only knocked a rearview mirror crooked and dented a headlight, without causing an irreparable serious accident.

"Hold on tight," he said, looking at the large field of red and blue flashing police lights behind him, "I'm going to speed up."

"More? You—"

Before Huang Li could finish his words, he was pushed back into the chair by the inertia of the car's sudden acceleration.

Chai Si turned the steering wheel, swerving around the car in front and then swerving diagonally in front of it, drawing several angry honks. "I just asked you to search for the results. Did you keep driving?"

Huang Li sighed and pushed his lavender hair back from his eyes.

"I'm driving," she said, holding her phone up to Chase's peripheral vision. Sure enough, a map app interface lit up on the screen. "Well, I'm not the one in the driver's seat anyway. Where are we going?"

"Blue Blue Community College," Chase replied briefly, whizzing past the two cars again.

"……Why?"

"Where you felt the artifact flash by just now, I saw the D line's Fullington Station subway station sign. Blue Blue Community College is the D line's terminus in this direction."

The royal carp digested this information and blinked several times.

"Wait, are you saying you suspect the bodyguard hid the artifact at the Blue Blue Community College subway station?"

"No," Chase replied, "I suspect he hid the artifact on the subway."

Huang Li's jaw dropped, and after two seconds, it retracted. "Subway? The Blackmore City subway? Are you—he—is he mentally ill?"

I always feel that what she was about to say was something like "Are you okay?"

The subway in Heymore is world-famous, but not because it is busy and crowded.

In addition to ordinary travelers such as those going to work or traveling, there are always people on the bus recruiting disciples for cults, selling fake newspapers, announcing the death of a living public figure, warning that the end of the world is coming, and people changing clothes in public to beg for money... The bus is always filled with all kinds of strange characters.

It is often said that to see whether a person is a true Blackmore, just see if he can sit on the subway all the way to the end without any emotion.

Anyone who wants to hide something would not first think of hiding it in a place like this.

What's more, now that the subway has left, how can Ivan get his things back?
"There are many things I don't understand." Huang Li pondered and asked, "On his way into Blackmore City, Ivan stopped the car, entered the subway station, and quickly came out. This is easy to understand, as he had the time to do so. But how did you know he hid the things on the subway?"

"You said the artifact 'flashed by,' right? If your perception method is as reliable as you claim, then it means that when you perceived it, it was at the edge of your perception range, moving forward at high speed, and it left your perception range a moment later.

"That is, before you began to perceive it, it had already been moving at a certain speed within your perception range for a period of time. That's why it was able to reach the edge of your perception range at the moment you began to perceive it, and finally 'flash by'."

Her perception range is so large that pedestrians, bicycles, and even cars traveling at the speed limit in the city will not be able to escape her perception range for a while if their speed is not fast enough.

According to the information that has been pieced together, Ivan has not contacted anyone so far; and what is it that can continue to travel at high speed in the urban area without being restricted by road conditions, and bring the artifact out of the perception range of the royal carp?
When Chase's eyes fell on the "D" sign, he remembered: the Fullington subway station was right next to it.

When they searched everywhere in vain, a subway was seen rumbling towards the distance, carrying a false image, deep in the ground beneath their feet.

Neither of them considered the possibility that another artifact might appear along Ivan's path. "Possibility" and "probability" are two different concepts. Even if more hunters tirelessly tried to bring artifacts into the human world, the number of artifacts in the world would still be very small.

Huang Li looked back at the police cars swarming the road behind him, resigned to his fate, and gripped the overhead armrest tightly. "No wonder you were jaywalking, even speeding against the flow... You're racing against the subway, so a simple shortcut might not be enough. But this is a bit scary. It would be ironic if I died in a car accident instead of in the lair."

Chai Si didn't respond. He just glanced at the time and said, "It was about 10:03 when you detected the artifact."

He has an obsessive-compulsive habit. No matter what time it is, he must know it to the minute.

After more than twenty years of this habit, his biological clock was now almost accurate even without checking the clock. Before he even looked at the time, he knew it was 10:13; he had already been speeding along, surrounded by police cars, for nearly ten minutes.

Countless red lights awaited him ahead. Each one presented a choice: Stop and be caught by a police car? Run out and be struck in two by an oncoming car? He needed to figure out a plan—how to carve a deserted path through the bustling Blackmore City?
Chai Si asked, "How many minutes does the D Line subway run now?"

Huang Li glanced at the map app on her phone. "Seven minutes," she replied.

"Look at your navigation. How many minutes until the next train leaves Fullington Station? How long will it take to reach the terminal?"

"The next bus leaves in two minutes, and it takes thirty-five minutes to reach the terminal."

Huang Li finally understood what was going on, his eyes gradually brightening. "Ah, the train with the fake image will arrive at the terminal at 10:36! We just need to get to the platform before 36 minutes."

Someone who can treat "entering the nest to hunt" as a profession rather than the last hobby before death will naturally not be too slow to react.

10:15时发下一班车，那么上一班和上上一班分别就是10：08和10:01时发车的。皇鲤在10:03开始检测时，01分发车的地铁正好快要开出她的检测范围了；等它从富灵顿站开到终点站，正好是10:36。

"But I have another question," Huang Li frowned, "How do you know that the subway is heading towards the Blue Blue Community College station, and not the other way around?"

"I don't know," Chase said.

Huang Li turned his head and stared at him.

"I only know one thing," Chase explained to his own hunters, being more patient than with others. "When you get off at Fullington Station, the underground platform you reach goes to the Blue Blue Community College station. The underground platform on the second floor goes in the opposite direction."

"Oh," Huang Li relaxed his brows and nodded. "You're betting the bodyguard got on the nearest subway directly. Yeah, that's right. He only took thirteen minutes longer than the GPS predicted. Taking into account the time spent stopping, getting off, and waiting for the train, that means he didn't spend much time at the station. He made it a quick decision."

Ivan only needed to ride one stop - after he hid his disguise and got off at the next stop, he didn't even have to wait for the train, he could just rush across the platform to catch the subway going in the opposite direction.

"But you know any subway station has two platforms?" Huang Li sighed. "You were born in Blackmore City, right? It looks so familiar."

Chai Si didn't answer, but only ordered: "Call the police."

Huang Li blinked twice more and couldn't help but look back at the police cars behind him. One of them was very close, its circling and flashing lights casting a blue-red hue on the rear window.

“We don’t have a shortage of police officers,” she reminded.

"Don't waste time." Chase didn't slow down at all, continuing to drive towards the intersection ahead of him. "Call the police, tell them you're in a speeding car, and have them block off the area from Columbia Avenue, East 106th Street to Cherry Street within ten minutes."

"You're the boss anyway," she muttered, opening the dial-up page.

Huang Li had just pressed three numbers when his eyes suddenly pulled away from the screen: on the road to their right, a large truck had just crossed the intersection and was rumbling towards them, about to smash the black Mercedes in half.

"car--"

Instead of stopping the car, Chai Si accelerated, pressing the accelerator to the floor. The car engine roared almost desperately and rushed straight forward at a life-threatening speed.

Huang Li's involuntary screams echoed throughout the car, and were drowned out by the loud bang of the rear end of the car - even though only a corner of the rear end was scraped, the entire car was hit hard and tilted, almost spinning and stopping sideways in the middle of the intersection.

A pair of large hands turned the steering wheel firmly, and amid the trembling symphony of metal and engine, the car left the intersection in time and drove into the road ahead; the truck behind it braked suddenly and stopped diagonally on the road. The cars that braked one after another and rear-ended each other were suddenly stuck in a long steel dragon, blocking the pursuing police car at the other end.

"I joined the Hunter family because I wanted more security," Huang Li recovered from his shock and couldn't help shouting, "I didn't come to work to risk my life! This isn't a lair—"

"911," a female voice asked from under the seat amid the clamor and chaos. "What's your emergency?"

"Hurry up," Chai Si continued to step on the accelerator and snapped his fingers in front of Huang Li. "I don't think we'll be so lucky at the next intersection."

"Hello, hello!" Huang Li hurriedly picked up the phone and said, "I'm in the car that was running rampant in the Blue District!"

She quickly told Chai Si what he had asked, paused, looked at him, and replied, "...You asked who I was? Well, he kidnapped me and put me in his car. He forced me to make this call at gunpoint. He said that if the road wasn't closed... well, he would throw a bomb into the traffic."

Chai Si glanced at her and smiled, his white teeth flashing.

"I want to say it's a pleasure working with you," he whispered after Huang Li hung up the phone, "but our cooperation has only just begun."

　My saved drafts will be gone after tomorrow.
　　And I have been very busy these days, and haven't had time to see who the new ones are. The number of additional chapters is still 7. Oh, it will still be 7 as long as I don't look at it... No, I mean, I will definitely write the additional chapters well.

　　Today is packed with things to do. I'm going to Qidian in the morning, doing some work in the afternoon, and there's an unexpected event in the evening that I have to go to... I didn't expect this event to happen. There are only jeans, sneakers and T-shirts in my suitcase, so they may not let me in - hey, if they don't let me in, I can just come back and write. You see, I'm such a busy person.

　　PS: The prices are killing me... Especially my friends in Shanghai, how do you even survive? I'm dumbfounded by the prices. I circled back and forth in front of a bottle of mouthwash four times, as if I were proposing to it. The clerk looked at me before I finally made up my mind to buy it. Isn't a small bottle of mouthwash less than ten yuan? How can you drink mouthwash in Shanghai for beauty and health?!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)