Artifact Report

Chapter 272 Mai Minghe: The Most Terrifying Sinking

Suo Beihua is a person who thinks very practically.

As Mai Minghe stood there in a daze, her mind blank, unsure of what to do next, she suddenly began to question the crowd of people in the stairwell: "Where did you get out from? I didn't hear you going up or down the stairs. Were you hiding in the cement the whole time? How did you get here? How did you get around?"

On the dense and undulating forest of people, there are many flesh-colored faces that look like real people.

After a few seconds, a face that seemed to be formed by the melting of Suo Beihua's face answered: "It doesn't matter. Come on, when you become one of us..."

"Either kill me or stop talking nonsense." Suo Beihua interrupted the other melted version of Suo Beihua and said coldly: "Why are you just standing there and not doing anything?"

"They're trying to force us to jump out,"

The thought came to him suddenly, blurting out—as if his mind had only just begun to process the words after he had spoken them. "They've blocked our escape routes up and down the stairs, leaving only this one opening behind us. They probably want us to jump from the building like Robert did."

Having said that, she subconsciously glanced downstairs.

There was still no sign of Robert; at the base of the first-floor wall was an untended green belt overgrown with tall weeds.

"We must never do what they want us to do," Suo Beihua said in a low voice, but in the silence, her anxiety and boredom were still clear.

...Why does it seem quieter than before?

Where's Robert's clockwork?

Mai Minghe raised his head and his eyes met Suo Beihua's. Before either of them could ask any questions, there was a sudden rustling sound downstairs, and a figure walked out from the weeds.

From their high position, they could only see the top of the man's head and shoulders, but there was no doubt it was Robert.

He was breathing heavily, moaning intermittently, lowering his head and pressing his hands on his hips; after turning a few times, he stood up again.

In Robert's hand, there was a spring that was shiny with hand oil.

Although they knew that there were countless unknown things standing behind them, neither Mai Minghe nor Su Beihua could look away for a moment - if they were forced to jump off the building in the end, what they saw at this moment might very well be their own future.

Who can resist looking at their future?

What happened to Robert?
He was unaware of the gazes from upstairs, and his chest rose and fell more and more violently; even Mai Minghe, who was on the third floor, could see that his rib cage was expanding higher and higher, as if he was trying hard to train himself into a pigeon chest.

Robert brushed aside the hair at the back of his head with one hand, held the spring in his right hand, and inserted the end of it little by little into the back of his head as if it was taking great care of him.

Suo Beihua took a breath.

Just as the two were about to turn their eyes away, the chest that seemed to be able to ignore the sternum and expand infinitely suddenly split open - it swelled high in the air, and for a moment, it was like a pregnant belly undergoing a caesarean section.

From the silky cut, a flesh-colored shadow was sliding, squeezing, and crawling out of Robert's chest little by little.

It was a huge piece of meat, almost as thick as a human body. One end of it fell to the ground, and the other end remained in Robert's chest.

As the two of them seemed to be frozen in shock and confusion, it kept crawling outwards like a flesh-colored worm, crawling farther and farther, longer and longer. It crawled for several minutes, and when it was dozens of meters away, it finally completely broke away from Robert's body.

At the end of the strip of flesh near the chest, there were several wrinkles embedded in it, vaguely forming a human face - like Robert.

It looked up at the sky; the wrinkles of its skin looked like eyes, meeting Mai Minghe's gaze. Below that, another wrinkle suddenly deepened, as if forming a smile.

Robert's body still stood there.

He looked at the thick strip of meat coming out of his chest, unmoved, turned around and walked in the other direction.

One man and one piece of meat, they walked back to back, farther and farther away, and soon disappeared from downstairs and merged into the nest.

"...He became a resident?" Suo Beihua said dryly, "No, should I say, Robert gave birth to two residents?"

Mai Minghe turned his head towards her, but saw a face with three rows of nostrils on his shoulder, which had stretched between the two of them at some point.

There were no facial features, only three rows of black holes embedded in the skin of her face, as if they could still look at her.

"Did you see that? Don't jump off the building."

From the bottom row of holes, a small voice came out from two black holes at the same time, as if they were a pair of round black hair speakers for its use.

"What do you mean we're going to force you to jump? That's so ungrateful. If you jump, you'll become residents. See? It's so scary, so scary."

"...You are being a bit like a crow saying a pig is black."

Mai Minghe slowly took a step back, leaning his back against the wall. "If we don't go downstairs, how can we... 'live happily' in the stairwell?"

"It's easy. Just follow us. Walk among us, be embraced and carried by our warmth. Walk down the stairs with us, step by step, down, down, down, down, down, down... All fear will disappear in the concrete. Peace, tranquility, stability..."

Suo Beihua seemed unwilling to listen, so she interrupted and asked Mai Minghe, "You can't really stay and go with them, so why are you asking this?"

"The nest gives us two paths," Mai Minghe whispered, "...both of which lead to dead ends."

Could it be that the opposition has become so powerful that they can completely change the rules of the nest in order to eliminate her and not give her any chance of survival?

Then why not just kill her right away?
"You're wrong. To me, both are dead ends."

Suo Beihua snorted and said, "If I stay in the stairwell, I'll die. But if I jump out, Robert's fate will be my future. He was swallowed by his transformed state, so I might be unlucky too. But you don't have to worry, haven't you returned to your original state?"

As she spoke, she gestured at her own snake tail and Mai Minghe's head and face.

Mai Minghe was stunned, and a flash of lightning seemed to pass through his mind, which was shrouded in dark clouds, and a faint light appeared.

"Wait, that's not right. What you said makes me..." She stared downstairs and murmured, "Let me think about it."

"Think quickly," Suo Beihua's voice sounded like a scream muffled by a pillow. "We're running out of time." Mai Minghe raised his head and understood.

She and the three-row nostril stared at each other for a few seconds.

Behind it, countless faces were walking up and down the stairs, moving closer to the two of them step by step.

If I were surrounded by them and pushed by them as I started walking downstairs, wouldn't I gradually become one of them as I walked?
really……

Whether it was the appearance of these "people" or their relentless pressure at this moment, it seemed that they were all trying to force Mai Minghe to jump off the building.

At first glance, Robert's fate seemed to be intended to tell them that there was also a dead end downstairs; but in fact, wasn't it a hint to Mai Minghe, telling her that she had returned to her original state, so it didn't matter if she jumped down?
In this way, the nest seemed to be using various means, threats and inducements to force Mai Minghe to jump off the building.

"…What do you mean?"

By the time Suo Beihua heard these words, she was completely blocked by the crowd. "Are you like me, unable to jump off the building?"

She was probably like Mai Minghe, clinging tightly to the edge of the wall to avoid being pushed down the stairs; countless weird faces around her were showing the same eagerness.

"No," Mai Minghe said loudly, "I'm afraid our only way to survive is to jump down from here."

"what are you saying?"

"We definitely won't do anything the Nest wants to force us to do, right?" Mai Minghe said quickly, "Then if it forces us to walk the path to the living, won't we actively avoid it?"

"Then it's possible that it could have foreseen your thoughts and deliberately pushed you to your death."

"Yes, but you forgot that this is the floor where Chai Si appeared. So the world outside this floor should be the reality we came from. If you think this is not enough and want to seek further evidence - don't you have a transmitter on you? The Kai family hunters can find it by following the signal, right?"

Suo Beihua paused. "You mean..."

"Throw it out," said Mai Minghe.

Suo Beihua said nothing; but soon, a small black transmitter was thrown out of the wall.

"Next, let's wait as long as possible," Mai Minghe said, looking at the faces around him, "to see if the Kai family hunters will follow the transmitter and appear outside the building."

It is not easy to wait for the Kai family hunter to show up in the crowd.

Although the force was not strong, there were several hands pulling at Mai Minghe's arms, trying to pull her away from the wall and into the crowd.

After a few pulls, when Mai Minghe didn't move, they tried to grab him again; each time, they used a little more force than the last.

Someone was lying on the ground, whispering to her ankles, telling them not to stand there any longer, to come over, because there were many things that her ankles liked waiting for them - it sounded ridiculous until Mai Minghe suddenly felt her right foot twitch, as if she was really going to take a step forward. She broke out in a cold sweat and quickly stood firmly on her feet.

Suo Beihua suddenly shouted in a low voice, "Don't touch me." After a few rustling sounds, a "person" suddenly tilted his body and fell from the broken wall. The "person" fell into the grass, as if swallowed by the earth, and no trace was left.

"...gone."

Across the many smiling faces, Suo Beihua said loudly, "That guy disappeared after falling down. Even so, do you still say we should jump down?"

Mai Minghe took a deep breath.

"...Yes. Robert never thought about his condition. I think it was natural to him, something he was accustomed to, encouraged explicitly or implicitly by his physiology, culture, and society. It seemed as if satisfying it was the world's natural responsibility. He never thought about examining it, understanding it, or transcending it."

She had long lost sight of Aimee, but she still glanced at where she was.

"Transfiguration seems to target our desires and weaknesses. If I want to jump down from here without following in Robert's footsteps, I can only think of one way."

Resist deformation.

She called out, "Aimee Lee, can you still hear me?"

After a long while, a faint "hmm" was heard from behind countless limbs, faces, and hands.

That child seemed to hate being "weak".

She wrapped herself in a thick shell, refused to lend a helping hand to others, and never expected help from others, as if this was the definition of a strong person.

...Mai Minghe's fear was even greater than hers.

“If we give in to our desires and fears, we will become trapped deeper and deeper in this deformed state and unable to extricate ourselves.

"I don't know if I can resist the influence of the nest simply by changing myself... But I think it's worth a try no matter what the time is."

Mai Minghe reached out and gently touched his face.

What she was about to do was more risky and required more courage than breaking into a nest or walking headfirst into a trap. Her fear and reluctance almost overwhelmed her at the mere thought of it.

“…Since it’s my idea, let me go first.

"I haven't returned to my original state. This young body is my transformation because it is not my original state.

"My biggest fear in this world is losing this young body; my greatest desire is to hold on to it tightly."

She didn't know why she wanted to cry or why her voice was trembling.

"I feel like a prisoner on death row, briefly brought back to life by a precious illusion. Because I'm already eighty-six years old. Believe me... what I want most is to immerse myself in this illusory youth forever."

　Oh my god, the Mai Minghe plot is finally finished. I'm surprised that this part took so long to write...

　　
　
(End of this chapter)