Artifact Report

Chapter 269: Mai Minghe: Between the Nest and the Human World
"Are you from Kai's family?"

As soon as Mai Minghe finished speaking, Robert reacted the most.

He pushed Ai Meili to the wall, took two steps to Suo Beihua, and asked, "Is what she said true? Do you know about this stairwell? Since you are from the same family, can you contact the people outside? Ask them to let me out!"

Suo Beihua closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"It was an accident in the stairwell, and I can't contact them. Now we have to rely on ourselves to find a way out - but before that, there is one thing I must understand."

She had obviously suppressed her anger, and for the sake of the cardboard gun, she reluctantly explained a few words to Robert. As soon as she finished speaking, all her attention immediately turned back to Mai Minghe: "What do you mean by Brother Chai recognized me?"

This title... means she admits it?

Mai Minghe rubbed his face vigorously several times.

When she closed her eyes briefly, the translucent face still floated behind her eyeballs; in the darkness, it looked a little clearer than before.

After guessing who he was, I looked at the face that seemed to be molded from the folds of space, and I felt strange: the facial features were so distinct, why didn’t I realize it was Chai Si at first?

"Don't rush out of my face yet...my face is right on my neck, you can't get away."

Mai Minghe whispered, not sure if he could hear. "You might as well listen to what we have to say first."

Suo Beihua's eyes flashed. "Who are you talking to?"

Before answering, Mai Minghe collapsed on the steps - she was so tired.

All of this, in the final analysis, was because she wanted to resist the ultimate law that governs all living things and wanted something that emperors and generals in human history could not obtain no matter how hard they tried.

Compared with such a greedy and huge goal, perhaps the sufferings I am going through now are nothing.

…and it might not even be enough.

As Mai Minghe sat there, she counted seven or eight different kinds of pain in her body. But compared to the pain at the end of her life, the pain now seemed vibrant and seemed worth cherishing.

"I thought I escaped in time yesterday, but now it seems that you have discovered that I was the one who sneaked into the mansion?"

Suo Beihua nodded.

"To be precise, we weren't sure it was you. We don't have any cameras inside the mansion, only surveillance cameras at the entrances and exits, and you just happened to be out of range. We've narrowed our suspects down to the people who came for the interview that day, and you're the most likely suspect because you've been the only one to return to the mansion."

No wonder I didn't hold her down as soon as we met today...

"There's nothing in the Kai family mansion except a few stationed hunters, some weapons and furniture. After much deliberation, we believe that your biggest target for sneaking into the mansion should be only one - Brother Chai Si."

Suo Beihua's expression remained calm the entire time, except when she mentioned Chai Si, her voice became like a sword suddenly unsheathed, revealing a thin, cool, and sharp edge.

...nothing?

Didn’t the Kai family keep the fake image in the mansion?

What about her lipstick?

"The appearance of the stairwell was truly unexpected. Originally, I was supposed to be your 'contemporary', entering Kai's residence with you, monitoring your movements and discovering your intentions."

Suo Beihua took a deep breath and smiled.

"But now, this has saved me a lot of trouble. Tell me, what is your purpose in looking for Brother Chai Si? How do you know him - how much do you know about his current condition?"

Robert opened his eyes wide, knowing that this matter had nothing to do with him, but he still couldn't help but listen.

Suo Beihua looked up at the wall he had just demolished.

"If you think you still have room to refuse cooperation, then I assure you that the person thrown down the building as a guinea pig will definitely not be Ai Meili."

Mai Minghe waved her hands - the other party's hostility was simply natural, but she was still not used to it; she was not famous, had no money, and had never been hated in her life.

"If I tell the truth, will you believe it?"

"You might as well try saying it first."

For a moment, Mai Minghe didn't know where to begin. The information about the floating nest, the scene she'd witnessed at Kai's house, the game of domination, her analysis and speculation... everything that could be said and couldn't be said, the certainties and uncertainties, all mixed together. She pondered for a moment before finally deciding to take a risk.

"I sneaked into Kai's house not because of Chai Si, but it does have something to do with him."

She sat on the steps, looking at the entire sky exposed above the building, and said, "By accident, he took away a false image that was very important to me. I went into Kai's house just to retrieve my things-"

Suo Beihua uttered a "ha," clearly not believing it at all. Before she could say anything, Mai Minghe interrupted, "It was only just now that I suddenly realized what kind of situation Chai Si is in."

After closing his eyes, the translucent face in the darkness seemed to raise its head slightly when he heard the words, as if a little surprised.

...Does he know what condition he's in now? "Do you know what 'nest dissociation disorder' is?" Mai Minghe asked.

"of course."

"Then do you know where the 'nest dissociation disorder' goes when it develops to a serious level?"

Suo Beihua seemed to have chewed over this sentence twice, but still didn't understand what she meant. "That's a mental symptom. You won't go anywhere—"

Mai Minghe shook his head.

"No, when it develops to a serious level, the hunter's body will also begin to show dissociative symptoms. This doesn't mean that the human body will be torn apart... What I mean is that the boundary between the flesh and reality will begin to blur. Hmm, let me think of an analogy that will help you understand."

She tilted her head, thought for a moment, and said, "Take a watercolor painting, for example. When it's dry and normal, the watercolor is clearly present on the paper, right? Our bodies are like the watercolor, and the paper is the world we live in. Under normal circumstances, we all live clearly and completely in this world.

“But when dissociative disorder becomes severe, or when there’s some kind of attack on someone’s humanity, it’s like someone has splashed water on a watercolor, and we as human beings begin to become unstable.

"...the watercolor begins to dissolve again, its edges blurring, and it gradually seeps into the paper. If you place another sheet of paper underneath the watercolor painting, you'll see that some of the color seeps through the paper and onto the white paper below. Our bodies, like watercolor, dissolve and blur, and some of them seep into the world, into another place."

This analogy is not completely accurate, but it is the most appropriate analogy that Mai Minghe can come up with.

Once the watercolor penetrates the paper, the lost pigment cannot be recovered; but a person's "nest dissociation disorder" can still be recovered, and the body can become clear and stable again.

Suo Beihua still didn't believe it, but she cooperated: "Where did it seep into?"

"...'The Black Abyss'."

Mai Minghe explained, "I gave it this name myself. Whether it actually has a name, the Nest Message—I mean, I don't know. It's a pitch-black space, with no direction or matter, like a maze with no exit, separating the human world from the nest.

"The hunter's 'passage' is like a wormhole, bypassing the barrier of the Abyss, allowing people to enter the nest from the human world. The residents of the nest have no passage, and they can't bypass the Abyss, so they can't enter the human world."

The translucent face suddenly turned, as if it had touched a nerve, causing Mai Minghe to feel a slight pain - for some reason, Chai Si seemed to have reacted to her last words.

"The black abyss you mentioned...a dark space..." Su Beihua started, her lips trembled a few times, and then she stopped, as if she didn't know what the second half of the sentence should be.

"You should have seen it."

Mai Minghe glanced at her and said, "I've seen it, too. But when I saw it, I had no idea what it was... Because from the outside, it was just a human-shaped black hole, standing in the air, bottomless."

Suo Beihua took a sharp breath of cold air.

At that time, Mai Minghe was trapped in a corner on the third floor of the Kai family mansion, attacked from both sides, and had no way out.

When the door behind him was suddenly opened by someone from inside the room for some unknown reason, Mai Minghe had no choice but to immediately slip into the room that was originally locked with a combination lock.

In the center of the room stood a human-shaped black hole, motionless.

"I realized then that the carpet in the center of the room was a tongue-shaped artifact, so I didn't dare get close. I stuck to the corner of the wall and inched my way under the window. From there, I climbed onto the balcony downstairs and escaped. The whole time, I didn't dare look at that human-shaped black hole any more, nor did I dare not look away from it."

She was always afraid that if she turned her head, the human-shaped black hole would be standing behind her, so she couldn't help but take a quick glance.

It was when Mai Minghe climbed out of the window and took a last look into the room that she suddenly realized that there had been another person in the room.

Looking from three directions in the room, the person was invisible; only after climbing out of the window could a figure on one side be barely seen, because the person happened to be blocked by the human-shaped black hole.

No, it’s wrong to say “block”.

She couldn't tell who that person was.

In that fleeting glimpse, Mai Minghe only had the impression that it was a man, seemingly tall. The humanoid black hole was about 1.7 meters tall, but the man had to bend down to get most of his upper body inside.

It plunged into the black hole and then disappeared.

From the time Mai Minghe entered the room until she escaped through the window, for several minutes, the half-disappeared man was unaware of her, frozen in place, as if he had slipped through the fingers of the world.

She couldn't tell who the man was, but she could guess; but she still didn't know where his missing upper body had gone.

It was not until Mai Minghe saw the broken "Emergency Exit Sign", the deep darkness that Li Sidan was dragged into, and the information about the nest that was instilled into his mind, that he finally floated up reluctantly - Mai Minghe suddenly realized that the tall man who might be Chai Si had also disappeared in the "Black Abyss".

But why did a crack suddenly appear in the "reality" in Kai's room, revealing the black abyss?

Suo Beihua suddenly lowered her head and wiped her nose hard.

"Brother Chai... that humanoid black hole you saw isn't a black hole. She's a human, and she has a name." She closed her eyes and said, "Her name is Han Liuyue."

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(End of this chapter)