Artifact Report

Chapter 263 Mai Minghe 2019
"...Who are the Kai family hunters who entered the lair this time?"

Mai Minghe turned around and heard the same answers from her trapped temporary companions as she remembered: "Tianxi, Qibaili, and Shaxue."

She lowered her head and threw the same question to Tianxi again. The latter sighed and shouted upstairs in a tone of "Why isn't it over yet?" "It's me, Chibaili, Connie."

Li Sidan took a deep breath.

Robert immediately rushed forward, blocking the crack with his back, and whispered, "...Did he get hit? Or was it that Shaxue who got hit?"

If there was a carefully set trap in a nest outside, it seemed that there should not be such obvious discrepancies, and it should not be said so casually - it seems more reasonable that Tianxi himself had problems with his cognition.

"Yes, that's probably it," Suo Beihua raised her eyes, as if she had suddenly understood. With a gloomy face, she said, "Something happened to Tianxi and the others."

"He's already in trouble, who's going to get us out?" Li Sidan said in a low voice. If he wasn't afraid that Tianxi would hear him, he would probably have shouted.

"I'll ask him a few more questions," Suo Beihua raised her chin, motioning Robert to move away from the crack, and said, "Try to find out what happened to them—"

She added, "Maybe it will help us get out."

Ai Meili said, "Just ask."

While Su Beihua was shouting and the others were listening quietly, Mai Minghe didn't know why his thoughts drifted in another direction - to be precise, they drifted to his head.

Tianxi had just said something that had lingered in her mind. She couldn't tell whether it was reassuring or unsettling—"From the inside, it looks like an infinitely extending stairwell, but from the outside, it's only about ten meters high."

...Why didn’t I think more about it just now?
Looking down from their current height, they were probably on the second floor, less than ten meters from the ground; when talking, they didn't even need to shout particularly loudly, just raising their voices a little would be enough.

If the warehouse appears only a dozen meters high from the outside, then if Mai Minghe were to climb all the way up, ten floors before digging a hole, how far would he be from the ground? What if he climbed fifty floors, or five hundred?
Is the place where the head is exposed always either on the second floor or the third floor?
Whether it was the second or third floor, they were all at a height that could be climbed down smoothly...so her confusion came back to that question: What was the point of infinite floors?
What does the answer to this question have to do with the moves made by Tianxi and his group?
"It took us nearly an hour to get through and into the stairwell."

Mai Minghe unconsciously put his thoughts into words and said, "So, even if Chi Baili and... Chi Baili and Connie are familiar with the checkpoints in the building, it would take them at least thirty minutes to enter the stairwell. This guess shouldn't be too much, right?"

Even though her voice was low and Su Beihua was shouting downstairs, Ai Meili next to her still heard it; Li Sidan turned his whole body like an antenna and turned towards her.

"Hmm?" Ai Meili urged her to continue with a nasal sound.

"...Do you have any more cement blocks?" Mai Minghe said as he picked up the iron railing at his feet. "I plan to go up one floor and dig another hole. Do you want to help?"

"I don't really feel like moving." Ai Meili spoke slowly. After a few seconds, she added, "...I'm tired."

...Tired?
Mai Minghe looked at her - but he could see nothing but a huge nut shell.

"Why? You're not worried about this cave, are you?" Li Sidan said with a smile, "Why don't you just go down a few floors? Maybe the hole you can dig is closer to the ground, and you can get out without a rope."

Mai Minghe was a little unsure whether he was joking.

Going up or down made no essential difference to her—she was full of questions and had no answers anyway—but she still chose to go upstairs.

"Hey!"

Suo Beihua suddenly turned around and screamed, stopping Mai Minghe in his tracks. She turned around and found Suo Beihua staring at her with a bright gaze. "Where are you going?"

Mai Minghe raised his arm, motioning her to look at the cement block he was holding. "I'm going upstairs to dig another hole."

"why?"

Mai Minghe couldn't answer, so he asked, "Why not?"

Suo Beihua thought about it for a few seconds.

"The floors seem to spit us out randomly. I'm worried that once you leave, you'll be like a shuffled card, inserted into who knows which random floor by the stairwell. If you get separated from the infinite floors, you might never be able to reunite until you die."

She hadn't thought of this risk...

"Wait a minute," Suo Beihua said, seeming to worry she might turn around and disappear without a trace. "Let me ask Tianxi a few more questions, and then we'll go up with you. It'll be faster if everyone helps you break the hole, right?" Robert had no objection—but Mai Minghe couldn't help but think that perhaps he'd rather move around. Sitting in one place all the time, without exerting any effort, wouldn't keep the spring going.

Li Sidan muttered to himself for a long time, without objecting, and still said a lot; in contrast, Ai Meili said nothing and did not move.

Suo Beihua descended several dozen centimeters and turned her face back toward the crack. She hesitated for a moment, as if unsure what to ask. Her string of questions hadn't yielded much meaningful information.

She exchanged a glance with Li Sidan, then, as if trying to make conversation, called downstairs, "...Tianxi, what time is it now?"

Tianxi's sigh drifted up two floors.

"Four eleven in the afternoon," he said, looking at his watch. "You didn't go in before three. Anything else? By the way, today is November 24th, Sunday."

The stairwell was silent for two seconds.

"No, it's not Sunday." Su Beihua said, "What are you talking about? You remembered it wrong... Look at your phone. Today is Tuesday."

Tianxi sighed again.

He seemed to take the advice and actually pulled out his phone. After a second or two, Tianxi shouted, "That's right. I'm looking at it. The screen clearly shows: November 2019, 11, Sunday."

...2019?
Several people looked at each other, and for a moment the only sound in the stairwell was the breathing of the people.

"Is he kidding?" Li Sidan murmured.

"I'm going to dig a hole," Mai Minghe suddenly made up his mind and turned to go upstairs. "If you want to catch up, hurry up."

Suo Beihua stood up from the snake's tail, hurriedly said "I'm coming", and then swam up the stairs, which was faster than Mai Minghe's feet.

Li Sidan and Robert also went upstairs one after another, and Ai Meili came up at the end. It was not until everyone had smashed shallow holes in the wall that she slowly showed her head on the corner platform.

"……tired,"

When Mai Minghe found time to ask her, Ai Meili still gave the same answer: "It feels heavy."

With the experience from the last time, they chiseled the wall even faster this time. After a while, they had managed to create a crack in the thick wall so that people could see out.

Suo Beihua was the first to pounce and put one eye on the crack; after looking for a few seconds, she swam away without a sound, giving her place to the next person.

Mai Minghe quickly understood that Suo Beihua didn't say anything not because everything was normal outside and there was nothing to say.

When people are in great confusion, sometimes they don’t even know what questions to ask - at least, that was the case with Mai Minghe for half a minute.

Their height from the ground did not change, as if they had not gone upstairs at all; outside was still the same road, and the same Tianxi was standing there.

It was just that Tianxi was standing downstairs, leaning against the wall, looking up and shouting; at this moment, Tianxi was standing far away next to the gate, across the street, dozens of meters away, with his hands in his trouser pockets, not even looking upstairs, as if he had forgotten about the hunter interview upstairs.

...His braid changed direction.

"I think we need to go up one more level and dig another hole." Su Beihua said in a hoarse voice.

This time, even Li Sidan seemed speechless. Amid the sound of the spring winding tighter and tighter, the men went up to the first floor again and, repeating the same method, created another crack.

On the same street, Tianxi, Qi Baili and Shaxue were standing together, discussing something in a low voice; Mai Minghe couldn't hear clearly, but Li Sidan could hear it clearly.

His antenna extended long from the crack, swaying in the air. After a moment, he turned his head and reported:

"...They said there were only ten minutes left before the interview failed, so how come no one showed up?"

　My editor asked me to write a sequel to Wild Deer, because it seems that Wild Deer is going to be published (I don’t know the details yet), and I plan to include the sequel in the book. But in my current state...ahhhh my body and mind are both dead, can I write it well?
　　
　
(End of this chapter)