Artifact Report

Chapter 18 Mai Minghe: The Fourth Person

The exit of St. Louis Hospital (Nest Version), according to Red Hair, is in the guard booth outside the hospital building.

You have to go up to the first floor, through the hall, and out the door... Along the way, you not only have to avoid the residents, but also your red-haired companion; if there is no one to lead the way, it will be a tricky problem.

Mai Minghe was very grateful.

"Young man, what's your name?"

She laid the white sheet out again—a habit she'd maintained for seventy or eighty years, even when getting off the morgue bed, she'd make sure it was spread out straight—and sighed, "What a pity, we don't even know each other in Blackmore City. Otherwise, I would have knitted you a sweater. Look, you're not dressed enough today. It's November, and you're still wearing short sleeves."

The redhead looked at her as if she was the biggest weirdo in the lair.

"...You're not my aunt." He muttered after a long while, "My name is Jonah. But I advise you to remain anonymous after you go back, so that our faction won't find you."

She had countless questions that she wished she could ask Jonah in a safe environment, but he was right: none of them mattered as much as the illusion.

Sooner or later, she will be able to find out the truth about the nest bit by bit.

"Let's go," Jonah said. "Even though we've reset, it's safer not to go back the way we came."

As the two of them left, Mai Minghe turned off the lights. In the split second before the lights went out, the body covered in white cloth in the corner of the morgue flashed past his vision once again—then, it was swallowed up by the darkness of the room.

The door of the morgue was very heavy. If no one pushed against it, it would close automatically with a loud bang behind him.

Mai Minghe followed Jonah and turned to the other end of the corridor. For some reason, he felt a little dazed and uneasy.

She kept thinking about the silent silhouette under the white cloth in the morgue, and felt that it was like a real corpse: it didn't respond when Jonah turned on the light, didn't respond when they talked, and didn't respond even more when he left.

"Does the morgue also store actual corpses?" Mai Minghe asked. "When I think about the possibility of us lying next to a dead body, I get a little scared..."

"Hmm?" Jonah replied smoothly, "Just now? Dead body?"

After swallowing back the words that were about to come out of his mouth, Mai Minghe raised his eyes and looked at his back.

Jonah's red hair was cut very short. From the neat hairline at the back of his head, there was a light orange fuzz that had not been shaved clean, floating on his neck like a mist.

Her mind was in turmoil for a moment, and she could hardly tell what she was thinking. She said vaguely, "Yes...just now."

Jonah was quiet for a second or two.

Amidst the sound of footsteps, he said, "I don't know. Maybe someone would do that. It's a morgue, after all."

Mai Minghe said "hmm" to indicate that he heard it.

She turned around and saw a straight corridor behind her, leading to the stairs she had just come down.

If she turned around and ran from here, she wouldn't be able to change direction. It would be difficult to shake off the pursuit if she ran in a straight line... No, no, maybe she didn't need to run?
Maybe she was overthinking it?

Yes, no rush, sort it out first, Mai Minghe said to himself.

1. The morgue is a place of "reset". People go in and lie down, pretending to be dead. After lying there for a long time, the residents of the hospital will forget about them.

2. Before they entered, there was already a person lying in the morgue - at least a human figure;
3. After coming out, Jonah apparently forgot that there was a person lying in the morgue.

Goose bumps appeared on Mai Minghe's thigh skin, and every pore felt cold.

If we extrapolate from these three known items, we can only draw one conclusion: Jonah is a resident.

But this conclusion was absurd. He was clearly a living person with flesh and blood, and he had saved Mai Minghe. She might have missed something, and she needed to think about it again.

Jonah walked very fast. Mai Minghe followed him for a while, then climbed out of the stairs at the other end of the hospital and entered the first floor, which was not far from the emergency room.

The hospital corridors and waiting rooms were brightly lit, but there was no one in the nurses' station.

Aside from being completely empty, this place was completely identical to the real human world. There was even a paper cup on the table at the nurse's station, but no one was drinking from it—as if this was a place suddenly abandoned by humanity after the apocalypse.

There were several consulting rooms in the corridor where they were. Some of their doors were tightly closed, while others were half open, revealing a line of impenetrable darkness.

Along the way, there was no sound except for the footsteps and breathing of the two men. Jonah had found a good route and did not encounter any residents, avoiding all dangers.

"There's always something in the emergency room," Jonah crouched behind a wall, quietly poked his head out, looked around for a moment, and said to Mai Minghe, "We must remain absolutely silent when we go there."

Mai Minghe nodded, but a thought popped into his mind.

...When playing the role of a dead body, don't you have to remain quiet?

She really didn't understand the nest or the "life gate", but according to common sense, she felt that when a person pretended to be a corpse, they shouldn't be talking and laughing, interacting with each other like they did just now.

Shouldn't a dead body be like a person lying in a corner...no matter what happens, it stays motionless and silent?

What if the person in the corner is the hunter who is truly "resetting"...

Did I really reset successfully?
Mai Minghe looked down at his fingertips.

She had a way to verify whether Jonah was a resident or a living person. After thinking about it carefully, she actually had one. Although she had just smeared most of the blood on the slender patient, there was still a line of blood deep in the nail crevices, and she hadn't wiped it away completely.

Mai Minghe used her other fingernail to pick up a bit of the black and red stain and pinched it between her fingers. When Jonah stood up and whispered "Let's go," she immediately reached out, grabbed his arm, and shouted, "Wait."

Fortunately, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt; the black and red blood on her fingers smeared smoothly onto Jonah's skin.

The tumbling and struggling of the slender patient did not happen at all.

"What's wrong?" Jonah half-bent over and retreated behind the wall. "Did you find anything?"

Apart from his face being a little pale - but who could have a rosy complexion in such a life-threatening situation? Mai Minghe suspected that his face looked even uglier - he looked normal, without any pain or itch, and he didn't even notice that there was round head's blood on his arm.

It seemed that he was not a resident, and Mai Minghe secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

There might be other explanations for what happened in the morgue, although she couldn't think of it at the moment - but she is not God, how could she be so perfect and plan everything out?
From now on, be more careful and pay attention.

"Please speak."

"Well... I think so," Mai Minghe was stared at and had to find an excuse, so he stammered, "Wouldn't it be dangerous if we go out from here? We should find some weapons before going out."

Jonah frowned and thought for a moment. "We don't have much time. Who knows how long this corridor will be safe? As long as we're quick and reach the exit before danger gets close, weapons aren't necessary."

It had been just an excuse, but after hearing what he said, Mai Minghe felt it was necessary to find a weapon. In life, no matter what you do, it's always helpful to be prepared. It's normal for a child as young as Jonah to be full of confidence, but she couldn't just let him be too arrogant.

"This way, when I pass by the nurses' station, I can stop by and look around, so I won't waste time."

To leave the building, she had to pass through the nurses' station; if she entered from one end of the station and came out from the other, she only needed to take a few glances.

Jonah was reluctant, but he didn't object.

"Then I'll go in with you," he said, raising his chin in a gesture. "If there's nothing strange in the nurses' station, it's safer than walking outside. There's shelter."

Having made up their minds, the two of them immediately crouched down, tiptoed, and came out from behind the wall.

They glanced left and right as they hurried toward the nurses' station, like two hurried beetles, their four legs rustling across the floor and disappearing behind the partition of the nurses' station.

The nurse guide station was rectangular, with two entrances facing each other. Mai Minghe was always afraid that if she looked up, she would see another face at the opposite entrance; so she nervously glanced over every few seconds to feel at ease.

On the side facing the lobby, there were three nurses' stations, equipped with computers, work chairs, telephones, and some miscellaneous items such as form folders - if she hadn't just experienced it, she would have found it hard to believe that this was not the real St. Louis Hospital.

Why are there phones and computers in the lair? Who brought these things in?
The letters on the keyboard were worn white, as if someone had really typed on it frequently; a small pot of cactus, not sure whether it was real or fake, sat in the corner of the table, looking gray.

For a moment, she almost forgot her goal. With the wonderful feeling of a TV viewer seeing the filming base for the first time, even the most ordinary and boring duty roster and ballpoint pen seemed to have a layer of novelty, worthy of her further observation - unfortunately, she did not see anything that could be used as a weapon.

Just as Mai Minghe reached out to listen for a dial tone on the phone, Jonah immediately stopped her.

"Don't touch anything that has any communication potential," he warned in a low voice. "You never know what it might bring."

He was probably traumatized by the last time she pressed the call bell four times in a row, and his face was full of "Why don't you learn your lesson?"

Mai Minghe withdrew his hand and thought for a few seconds.

"There's nothing here," Jonah half-crouched behind the workbench, so that no one could be seen inside from outside the nurses' station. He pointed to the entrance on the other side and said in a low voice, "Let's go. Don't delay."

"it is good."

When Jonah crouched down and walked to the entrance, he suddenly stopped and looked back at Mai Minghe. "What are you just standing there for? Hurry up."

Mai Minghe pulled out a work chair; the sound of four rollers rolling broke the quiet air and stopped in front of her.

She half-bent over, her hands resting on the back of her work chair, looking at the face opposite her.

Jonah looked no older than thirty, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he'd just begun his journey as an adult. His eyes were a little red, his lips were dry, and there was a faint veil of sweat on his body—very human.

She didn't know what the truth was, but she couldn't help but feel sad. Like a reflex, she felt sad for such a young child and for the mother who raised him bit by bit.

"Go ahead," Mai Minghe said hoarsely, "I won't go with you."

Jonah frowned and stared at her as if he thought she was talking nonsense.

But after two seconds, he relaxed his eyebrows.

"...What did you find out?" He wasn't afraid of being seen anymore. He stood up beside the nurses' station entrance and gave Mai Minghe a naive smile. "Tell me about it too."

"It doesn't count if you remove the slender patient who was already in the room,"

Mai Minghe whispered, "After I rang the bell four times, a nurse came, a pair of hands under the bed, and the underground resident controlling the round head... That's a total of three 'people disguised as nurses.' The fourth one to enter the room was you."

　To be honest, I thought that after I finished posting the parts about Mai Minghe and Jin Xueli, someone would definitely discover the foreshadowing of the "fourth person" and the "exit", but no one did (in Jin Xueli's part, it was said that the way back to Blackmoor City would also be through the passage), so I win this time, and those who leave comments now don't count!

　　I guess it’s all thanks to the grandmas for letting me win. After all, things have been very difficult for me recently. I’ve been running around and feeling anxious and angry every day... Well, I won’t talk about the annoying things.

　　I have no more drafts. From tomorrow on, I will rely on this old face to tell you stories (bushi). When I open the artifact report page, I see oh, folk art, miscellaneous talk, crosstalk (not)
　　First, they tricked people into joining with novels. When they ran out of manuscripts, they performed the ballet "Swan Lake" and used it to pay off their debts to their grandmothers. Is this a new type of fraud?
　　
　
(End of this chapter)