Artifact Report

Chapter 277: Chai Si: Someone I Will Never Kill
"What did you see?" Damian asked.

Chai Si narrowed his eyes and didn't answer for a moment. His throat was so sticky that it felt like there was a ball of glue stuck in it.

He wasn't sure if he was seeing things; the lights in the room were dimmed, and there was another mass of thick, rolling, floating darkness...

I thought I saw a figure, but when I looked closer, all I could see was a black mist floating like a brushstroke. I waited for a few seconds, but nothing unusual happened.

Don't people often see faces in the grain of wood or through clouds and mist? What's that phenomenon called?

Pareidolia.

Chai Si subconsciously used the term "pareidolia" to comfort himself, but at the same time he also said: "...Where is your phone?"

"On the bedside table."

As Damian spoke, he couldn't help but glance back at the darkness. He leaned over and stared at it intently, as if he too didn't trust his own eyes.

"Don't move," Chai Si instructed, "I'll go get my phone."

The Kai family mansion has three floors. The two children's rooms are on the top floor, and Uncle Kai and Aunt Hai's master bedroom is on the second floor.

It was impossible for the call to pass through the corridor, game room, living room, indoor garden...across hundreds of square meters and reach the master bedroom door; and he couldn't run down by himself and leave Damian alone.

The fastest way was to call Uncle Kai, but even though the phone was in the same room as Damian, it was more than ten meters away from them. His brother's "bedside table" was actually a row of low bookshelves built along the wall, extending outward to form a platform, which happened to be at the other end of the room.

As Chai Si walked towards the bed, he turned his head to stare at the darkness.

Why didn't they just remove the cloth and close the passage?
The thirteen-year-old Chai Si had thought of this method.

If the passage had been closed that night, would the events that followed have happened? Would Damian still have died in the end?
Which kind of life can Chai Si endure more? Repaying kindness with enmity, bearing the guilt of killing his brother for the rest of his life, but still being able to live as Uncle Kai's only son?

Or, compared with Damian, will he become an incompetent and useless person with no way out, suffocating in Uncle Kai's disappointment, gradually losing his parents, and losing the qualification to step into the Kai family's door?
Chai Si didn't know.

He only knew one thing, that he did not remove the cloth and close the passage because of a very common human weakness - just like when you know that the scene of a car accident is tragic, you still can't help but look back when passing by; even though you know that the bottom of your shoes is disgusting after stepping on a bug to death, you still lift your foot to take a look.

He wanted to know what was in that darkness and whether he was seeing things.

You can get the phone by going around Damian's bed - just as Chase hurried to the end of the bed, Damian suddenly screamed.

"who are you?"

Chai Si turned around and his mind went blank.

Looking from the end of the bed, the darkness was mostly blocked by the wooden fortress, and he could not see anything.

He had no idea who Damian was talking to, but he didn't need to guess.

It was like someone had removed a floor that he had no idea was there, and he was falling straight through himself—the Inhabitants. The Inhabitants were coming.

The residents are coming in.

"Don't talk to it...get out now," Chai Si found his voice shaking, "get out, close the door, and let me deal with it."

Damian didn't seem to hear.

He was still looking at the darkness, his eyes faintly shining, his feet not moving.

There was a heavy table lamp on Damian's bedside table, the same one as in his own room. Let Damian escape first - use the table lamp to block it - call Uncle Kai -

Several chaotic thoughts rolled up like a typhoon, and his steps were temporarily blocked: because his body seemed to be divided into two halves, one half wanted to push the disobedient Damian out of the room, and the other half wanted to grab the mobile phone and the desk lamp.

The storm suddenly stopped in the next second.

"Hello," a female voice said, "I'm Chase's mother."

……what?

What did it just say?
The moonlight seeps through the curtains, holding your breath.

Among a thousand choices, Chai Si made the worst one.

He didn't grab his phone, he didn't grab the lamp, he didn't yell at Damian to run away from the room again—no, that wasn't right. At that moment, he had no choice but to walk towards the source of the sound.

"You are his brother, right?"

The voice that he hadn't heard in eight years, the voice he thought he would never hear again, was softly speaking to Damian.

Chai Si hoped that he would never be able to walk past it, so that he could listen to that voice forever.

This bedroom suddenly became the most frightening and most hopeful place in the world.

Damian scoffed, his laughter trembling with obvious nervousness and excitement.

"What? You're a resident, right? His mother died a long time ago."

This was true, he was not wrong, but Chai Si hated him again.

“Yes, I am a resident.”

The woman's voice whispered, "I'm not his real mother. I'm a resident created after his mother died... She has many memories and emotions, all of which are preserved in my mind. Where's Chase? Wasn't he here just now? I really want to see him... Would he like to see me?"

Damian nodded in Chase's direction. "He's here." Chase hadn't wanted to recall the scenes of the past seventeen years, but now he had to recall them over and over again, to revisit them, to recapture this part of his memory, this part of himself.

He stood not far from Damian, watching Daisy Monroe slowly emerge from the darkness.

At first it was half a pale face.

The eyes of that face fell on Chase, and a smile emerged from the darkness, like the face of a dead body gradually rising from the bottom of the lake.

Next came her upper body, waist and legs, and then a foot - a bare foot, which landed silently on the floor of Damian's bedroom.

She had one foot in the world and one foot in the nest, with tears in her eyes.

Daisy Monroe trembled and said to Chase, "...you have grown up."

mom.

He didn't know when he started crying, he didn't realize it at all; it was only when he tried to speak that he found he couldn't breathe, he sobbed and his words were broken and incoherent.

Damian placed a hand on his shoulder, soothingly.

Even many years later, when Chase recalled this action, he felt that it was mature beyond his age - as if Damian knew that his time was short and limited, and he had not much time left, so he wanted to grow up as much as possible.

"why?"

Chase stared at her, blood rushing to his face and burning his skin. "You're not my mother—are you?"

Daisy Monroe shook her head, her face looking sad.

"I'm not. I wish I were," she sighed. "You are the son she left behind, and I am the resident she left behind... But when I look at you, it's like she looks at you. I always feel like I am her, and you are my son."

She clearly denied it, but at that moment, Chai Si was filled with a strange hope, almost as if he had been redeemed.

It turns out he still has a mother.

"You, you're the one my mom left behind..." He was a little short of oxygen as he tried to understand. "How did you find me?"

"I've been looking for you since I died," Daisy Monroe said with a smile. "For the past few years, I've been watching you from my lair... I'm so glad to be able to come in and talk to you tonight."

Damian suddenly asked, "How can you use my access? Chase can't use it."

"I don't know either," Daisy Monroe said with a touch of sadness. "Actually, I'm not completely capable either. You see, I can only step one foot in."

She pointed to the ground.

When the two children lowered their heads to look at the bare feet together, Chai Si suddenly realized clearly that the other party's bright and burning eyes were still glued to their heads, full of expectation -

He is not a stupid man.

No matter how strong the emotional impact was, his mind was still struggling to function.

Even at the age of thirteen, Chase understood that the residents left behind by Daisy Monroe were expecting them to ask the next question: "How can we let you in completely?"

…Mom wants to come in.

He slowly raised his head and stood frozen in place.

The indescribable, inexpressible, and even unknown source of terror seemed to have temporarily frozen his body functions.

It’s obviously mom who’s coming in, so there’s nothing to be afraid of…right?
Some of the residents are harmless.

Chase stood there like a fool, letting the conversation between his mother and Damian echo around him. In his numb mind, he belatedly recalled a few questions.

Didn't my mother die in the human world? Why did the inhabitants appear?

Even if she produced residents...then the residents should be in the Los Angeles nest, why would they come out of the Blackmore City nest?
"Then how do we get you in?" Damian asked.

No, don't ask her, just let her stand there and look at him, Chai Si prayed.

He couldn't put his thoughts into words.

"As long as you keep the passage open, I can come in little by little. Just now I couldn't even stick my head in, but now half of my body is in..."

Mom looked at Damian, her face gleaming with the same admiration and pride that only Uncle Kai and Aunt Hai would have when looking at him. "You're truly amazing. You were able to open such a special passage."

Damian feigned indifference and shrugged. "I don't want access yet."

He thought for a moment and asked, "Why do you want to come in? And how do I know you won't kill us all after you come in?"

Daisy Monroe shook her head again.

A few minutes ago, Chase thought that Damian had opened an unprecedented passage, which was the ultimate cruelty that God could imagine. Now he knows he was wrong.

"We all want to enter the human world. This is where we came from... Who wouldn't want to come and see it? Besides, why would I kill you? You're the only person in the entire world that no inhabitant would ever harm."

Damian laughed in surprise, "Why?"

"Because the path is in you." Daisy Monroe looked at him softly and said, "Even if I kill Chase, I won't kill you."

(End of this chapter)