Artifact Report

Chapter 268 Mai Minghe's Hometown in a Flash
...Is it really up there?
Every breath that Mai Minghe sucked into his mouth felt like sucking wet cement. No matter how hard he tried, it seemed like the air couldn't flow into his body.

She couldn't even count how many floors she had run up since she was trapped; it felt like a fire was burning in her lungs, and the air she managed to force into them only made the fire more intense and painful.

Mai Minghe didn't want to think about whether it was because she climbed too many floors or because her mouth and nose, which she used for breathing, were gradually turning into mirrors.

"How much longer?"

Suo Beihua was panting heavily, and each word was a sharp hiss, more like a snake than a human. "Is it up there?"

After leading several people on the run for so long and being almost attacked several times, Mai Minghe found it difficult to say the four words "I don't know".

After so long, had she missed that layer long ago? What if her guess was wrong?
What if the floor she appeared on was removed and randomly inserted somewhere else?
The more he ran, the less confident Mai Minghe became.

"I, I ran down from upstairs," she said, enduring the pain that felt like it was being poured into her body like kerosene. "If I keep running up... I should be able to get back to the floor I came from."

"How did you recognize it?" Robert asked from the side. "Do you know how many cardboard bullets I wasted by running all the way here so casually?"

He had asked this question several times, and this time Mai Minghe felt it would be difficult to get away with it.

After passing through Li Sidan's death floor, they encountered several life-threatening situations in less than ten minutes. If Mai Minghe had not insisted that she was absolutely sure that she could bring everyone back to the floor where she came in, and that everyone must go together, Robert would probably not have opened fire to repel the enemy for others.

She pushed Ai Meili, who was wrapped by the snake's tail, upwards with both hands and took a deep breath again.

"It has something to do with my mirror..."

It wasn't a complete lie, but it was just her guess.

"what relationship?"

...My mirror is probably the result of tampering by the nest.

This thought weighed heavily on her stomach.

For a long time, Mai Minghe wondered if he had made the same mistake as suspecting someone of stealing his axe - once a person forms a preconception in his mind, everything looks like evidence, even irrelevant details appear suspicious.

But she couldn't refute herself, nor could she ignore the initial crucial evidence.

Her mirror… rather than reflecting a particular characteristic of Mai Minghe, it provided a “function” for the nest. Her transformation was fundamentally different from that of others.

The nest didn't even bother to hide this.

From the very beginning, before the physical transformation began to become a reality, his own mirror had already provided a mirror corridor for "Jones" and "Transparent Face", right?
"Jones" can hide in the corridor; "Transparent Face" can rush out of the corridor.

"Hey!" Robert suddenly shouted and grabbed her arm. "Are you sure? Are you scared out of your wits?"

Mai Minghe stumbled and hurriedly grabbed the steps above him, finally standing firm and not rolling down the stairs because of the pull.

"Let go of your hand,"

Even though Mai Minghe had a good temper, he couldn't help but shake his arms vigorously. "I said, I——"

She felt a sudden pain behind her eyeball and bent down, the second half of her sentence turning into a groan.

"What's wrong with you?" Suo Beihua turned around from the corner platform and asked, "Are you injured?"

Mai Minghe was speechless.

She staggered down a few steps, and when Robert was about to follow, she waved her hand and squeezed out a word through her teeth: "No...you don't have to move. The floor I came in is just above...Su Beihua, just go up one more flight of stairs and it's there."

Except for Ai Meili who stood motionless, the other two looked up - the floor upstairs was no different from any other floor.

"How on earth did you know that?"

How to answer this?
If she were to tell the truth, at this moment, a translucent human face had just emerged from deep behind her eyeballs, imprinted on her retina, hovering, waiting for the opportunity to burst out from her face...

Robert would really think she was crazy, right?
In fact, she should have thought of it earlier: she kept running down the stairs and avoiding the transparent face, which meant that it could not catch up and was "fixed" in one place, which was the floor where Mai Minghe was initially trapped in the "Finding Jones" level - in other words, the reality she and everyone else came from.

In this sense, the "transparent face" becomes a signpost.

As long as you find it, you will find the floor you originally entered.

Now this has been verified, but Mai Minghe is not happy.

To her, this stairwell was a dead end with no way out; she could no longer tell whether it was a nest design or a coincidence.

So what if I find the floor I came from?
She couldn't get up at all.

The translucent face was still some distance away from her, and could not impact her retina and facial bones as it did last time.

But as long as Mai Minghe went up, she would return to the same situation as last time - even though there were two flights of stairs between them, when she occasionally turned her eyes, there was always a faint shadow floating in her peripheral vision, as if there was an lingering impurity in her eye, waiting for her approach.

And after she almost escaped and bumped back, the translucent face seemed to attack more fiercely and was even more unwilling to let her go. Just now, it only hit her from the depths of her eyeball, and Mai Minghe's vision went black for several seconds.

"What's wrong? You're just panting and not talking?"

Robert lost patience without waiting for her answer, and suddenly turned and strode upstairs, shouting, "This floor, right?"

Suobeihua became alert and asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Don't you want to go out?" Robert smiled. "She said that behind this wall is our reality, right? Then tear down this wall and see what's behind it."

His whole body is driven by a spring, and when the spring is wound up, he can use his brain. Robert seemed to have thought of what to do long ago - when Mai Minghe carefully leaned his head upstairs, he saw him standing on the stairs, raising a cardboard gun towards the opposite wall.

He pressed his finger and released the trigger.

The cement-gray walls were quiet and looked unchanged.

Robert walked up step by step, put one hand on the wall and pushed hard.

The wall, which had taken five people's strength and half a day to smash down repeatedly before a crack appeared, suddenly lost its weight at that moment and almost smoothly separated from both sides, revealing the internal gap of the thick cardboard - it fell backwards from the stairwell, opening up an entire piece of sky.

Daylight and fresh cool air poured into the stairwell, and Mai Minghe shivered.

Robert looked around for a moment; from where he stood, he couldn't see what was outside the wall.

He went down the stairs again.

"Are you sure that this level is the reality we encountered when we came here?" Robert asked.

"...Yes." He looked around and his eyes suddenly stopped on Ai Meili.

Mai Minghe's heart sank.

"I told you to go out first, but you probably won't do it, right?" Robert said, "Let's drop Aimee downstairs and see what's going on, then we can go out. How about that?"

He actually had no intention of listening to everyone's opinions - as soon as he finished speaking, he opened his arms, hugged Ai Meili around the waist, and with a strong force, dragged her up a step.

"Wait," Mai Minghe was shocked, "Are you planning to throw her off the third floor?"

"This thick shell won't break even if you fall down. It's basically designed for this." Robert glanced at her and continued to drag Aimeili. "If not her, who else should I throw? Are you willing to go down first?"

"No, no, wait a minute." Mai Minghe tried desperately to organize his thoughts. "When I came in, I came from the inside of the third floor. After you demolished the wall, it led to the outside of the building..."

"Didn't you say the floor is correct? As long as the floor is correct, it's the same reality. What does it matter if it's inside or outside the building?"

Suo Beihua was standing in a corner of the platform, frowning deeply; probably because she was worried about the cardboard gun, her face looked ugly, but she did not try to stop it.

"Let her go,"

In a hurry, Mai Minghe took a few steps up the stairs. However, before she could reach the corner platform, the translucent human face was like a huge aquatic creature suddenly emerging from the bottom of the sea, instantly swallowing up her vision. Even though she knew that she couldn't get rid of it by turning her head, she still subconsciously turned her head hard and suppressed a half-scream of pain.

We were all mentally prepared, but the second impact did not come.

…The translucent face suddenly stopped.

It hovers behind the retina, like floaters forming a human face, imprinted on the eyeball, motionless.

Mai Minghe panted and blinked.

Suo Beihua followed her gaze and turned towards her. "What's wrong with you?"

Mai Minghe raised her hand and touched her face - she had not closed the "door" since she opened it last time.

She was now standing halfway up the stairs, looking up, which meant... Su Beihua's face was reflected in the mirror behind the door.

It turned out to be the case.

"Did you see it?" Mai Minghe said hoarsely, "... Did you see her? Why didn't you move?"

Holding Aimeili, Robert stopped and glanced at her suspiciously: "What? Are you talking to me?"

Mai Minghe shook his head. "No, but wait a few minutes."

Without giving Robert a chance to respond, she looked up at Suo Beihua and said, "Today is November 11th."

"...Yeah, so what's wrong?"

"On the evening of November 11, I met Chase Munroe at the Backlight Room."

Mai Minghe gauged her reaction and whispered, "He seemed a little ill at the time, but he was still in good enough shape to have a gunfight in the alley. I'm afraid the whole bar knows about this. The interview was yesterday, November 11rd. For some reason, Chai Si wasn't at Kai's house, and he wasn't in charge of the interview. We entered the lair at ten o'clock this morning."

"What exactly do you want to say?" Su Beihua raised one eyebrow.

"You said you wanted to sneak into Kai's house and investigate Chai Si's whereabouts." Mai Minghe took a breath and said, "...Why?"

"I don't understand you."

"To us outsiders, Chai Si was only missing on the 23rd. He might have been asleep at home. After all, aren't his movements clear? There's no need to break into Kai's house to find out what he did on the 22nd. There's no need to take such a big risk just for yesterday's absence, right?"

Suo Beihua didn't say anything, just looked at her steadily.

Those eyes, as green as a snake's tail, seemed to have a sharp, knife-like edge even in their gaze.

Robert looked from one to the other, and seemed utterly bewildered.

"You told me you were trying to find out about him because you knew—and you thought I knew—that something was wrong with him."

Mai Minghe sighed softly.

"You said you wanted to go undercover in the Kai family... That's a pretty clever explanation, because it would explain why you were so familiar with Tianxi and even remembered the direction of his braid. After all, he's a Kai family member and one of your 'targets,' so a little familiarity is understandable. Of course, it's not the most reasonable explanation, but it's enough to get by."

The translucent face in the field of vision was still floating in the air, and seemed to be staring at Su Beihua.

I don’t know if it’s an illusion, but Mai Minghe always seems to feel that the expression on that face seems... a little confused and flustered, as if he doesn’t know what to do.

It was as if he only had a vague impression of Suobeihua; it was as if many years had passed and he saw a town flashing by outside the window of the train, and for a moment he couldn't recognize it, wondering if it was his childhood hometown.

"Of course you don't know the intelligence our family holds. We have our own reasons."

Suo Beihua shook her head and suddenly smiled. "The blank day you cited isn't the reason I got in. The word 'movement' encompasses so many possibilities. You can't assume I just want to know Chai Si's location based on that one word. Maybe they have some plans I'd like to know the inside story of?"

Mai Minghe had a strange feeling.

...Rather than denying it, it would be more accurate to say that she wanted to hear what Mai Minghe would say next.

"That's right, this alone isn't enough to prove anything." Mai Minghe held up two fingers and said, "But I've discovered two more points."

"Oh?"

"First, you once said that this infinite floor is filled with countless second floors and countless third floors. But the Kai family never told us that this building only has three floors. From the outside, it's over ten meters tall, far exceeding the height of a typical third floor—this is what one of the Tianxi people told us—a building over ten meters tall, why do you assume it only has a second and third floor, but no fourth?"

Suo Beihua paused. "What about the second one?"

"...Two, Chai Si just recognized you."

Suo Beihua was startled for a moment—the next second, her expression suddenly changed, and her voice became tense: "What do you mean?"

"You're a hunter from the Kai family, right?"

Mai Minghe asked softly.

　Writing is like falling into a river.

　　I was actually in a very bad state today, feeling groggy, so I thought I’d write something short and post it early so I could get some rest.

　　But once a person falls into a turbulent river, he or she will be swept away by the waves without any resistance. You will just go wherever the waves carry you, and you can get ashore when the waves slow down... I finally got ashore and saw four thousand words!
　　Life is half as short as it used to be.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)