Artifact Report

Chapter 281: Chai Si Swimming Towards the Skylight
He could feel that he was about to walk out of the abyss.

Chai Si slowly stroked his hands in the darkness.

Hard joints, slightly protruding veins, and a faint pulse under the wrist... Gently pushing up his sleeve, he felt several long scars extending from the forearm all the way to the hand.

...are all back.

He is about to go home.

"Later, I told you not to waste your energy. You're one of the 99% of humans who don't have access... No matter how hard you try, you can't get into the nest. I'll always remember the look on your face."

Uncle Kai's voice was getting closer, although Chai Si still couldn't see the light source or the exit.

"How old were you then? You were a junior, right? You were already able to take charge of the family pie."

By then, Chai Si had already accepted his good fortune.

He must have somehow sucked up other people's good luck: he used his mother's disappearance in the car accident to get a minor fracture; and through her death, he squeezed into a comfortable upper-class life; in Damian's place, he never had to go into the lair and take risks for the rest of his life.

In this case, there is no need to worry about anything.

He could throw his life into the world without restraint and see how big a storm it would stir up.

Before he was twenty years old, Chai Si began to participate in the operation of the family faction.

He lived in a body of only twenty years old, as if he was wearing a set of stolen clothes that did not belong to him, and sometimes he would even be surprised at how young he looked in the mirror.

But when others saw him, they just thought he was a young man who got lucky.

Seizing power and influence from the older generation of hunters from the Kaironan era was another experience - Uncle Kai knew it very clearly, and when he talked about it, he even added many details that Chai Si was not aware of at the time - Chai Si was very adept at this kind of struggle.

It might not be accurate to say it was easy; looking back on that experience now, it felt like weeding the yard.

It's time-consuming and laborious, but you have to do it. Sometimes you have to put in some thought, that's all.

Since he turned thirteen, there were very few things in the world that could make him panic, anxious, or at a loss; there were also very few bottom lines and principles that he could not break.

When a person is as hard, sharp, and indifferent as a broken rock, he becomes a nightmare enemy.

"I used to be hesitant about your approach... but I thought there was no harm in letting you give it a try. Time has proven that you've found a path that not everyone can take."

In just a few years, the Kai family hunters were replaced by a new group of blood, and their style became sharper and tougher.

While the Hunter families were transforming into modern companies and adopting the contract system, the Kai family went the other way and quickly became the other extreme:
Starting with selecting core hunters and taking himself as the leader, Chai Si gradually created a group of hyenas - they were absolute and loyal companions to each other. When they joined together to attack, there was no prey in the world that they dared not or could not tear apart.

For this, he had to find the right kind of people.

Background, experience, personality... He must reach deep into a person's life, smell the other person's scent, bite open the other person's shell; in this way, he can find the hyenas scattered in the world one by one.

It turns out he seems to have a natural talent for it.

The core hunters of the Kai family act in a style as ferocious and fierce as gangsters, but unlike gangsters, they do not blatantly violate the laws of the human world. When other hunters consider efficiency and performance, the hunters of the Kai family can spend more than thirty days and send out waves of hunters to enter the nest and the human world, tracking and biting, just because a member of the Kai family was harmed by a certain family while in a trap.

Once the reputation of "don't offend anyone but the Kai family" was established, it was like giving an old knife a new blade, cutting into the hunter world and carving out an invisible territory for the Kai family.

Chai Si has no connections, so he has to be more ruthless, sharper, and more decisive than others. All his life, he will probably have to rely on luck and ruthlessness to make up for his incompetence.

"Sometimes you even scare me."

Uncle Kai's voice and Chai Si's footsteps paused together.

"You are my only remaining son. I am old. I probably can't bear to go through the same thing again... and you seem willing to trade your life for anything. Important or unimportant, information, clues, artifacts, missions... the life of one of your men."

Han June.

As Chai Si gradually returned to his original self, his memories of Han Liuyue came back one by one.

How can I find her back after I get out?
If I use Uncle Kai's method, repeatedly calling out to the darkness, telling her stories, helping her remember who she is... will it be enough to bring her back to her senses?

Chai Si stopped and looked back at the vast darkness.

His thoughts stopped, and his mind was gripped by a brief blank.

…Behind the darkness, deep in the darkness, there is someone.

It seemed like someone was standing behind me, and I didn't know how long they had been standing there.

When Chai Si looked again, he could see nothing and feel nothing.

Was I seeing things? Was that old woman following me the whole time?

"Chai Si," Uncle Kai was whispering in the distance, "It's time to come back."... I know, Uncle Kai.

Chai Si turned his head, followed the direction of the sound, and started walking again.

After walking in the darkness for an unknown amount of time, Uncle Kai's next words didn't seem to be directed at him. "So, will he be able to hear it? Several days have passed. Is it still too late?"

Kaironan's voice was dry and hoarse, as if he had been talking for too long without stopping.

Another female voice replied, "I don't know... I'll wait with you."

That voice sounded familiar, as if I had heard it not long ago...

It is the Mai Ming River.

Wasn't she just in the lair, escaping the trap with Suo Beihua? How did she end up next to Uncle Kai?

How much further had the world progressed while he was distracted?
Chai Si quickened his pace, letting waves of darkness flow through his body and hit him, like a person about to drown in the dark seabed, struggling to swim towards the skylight - he didn't know how many chances of rebirth he would have in his life, he thought, probably don't need to worry about running out of opportunities.

After all, he has always had excellent luck.

At first, it was the light that suddenly lit up in his eyes; at that moment, he suddenly understood the fear of a newborn baby being thrown into a strange world.

He was about to escape from the darkness of ignorance and memory.

Mom, I'm going to fall into that world again.

Then, a large hand squeezed him so tightly that it hurt; someone gasped softly. There were footsteps, colors, and the air took on warmth and scent—and someone called out softly, "My son."

The ceiling tilted and slid down overhead, and the floor rose to greet his body - when Chase realized that he was falling backwards, a hand supported his back.

He fell into Uncle Kai's arms again.

The last time was when he was five years old; this time, he was already tall and strong, and even Uncle Kai couldn't hold him steady. He was knocked down by him and staggered. Finally, he had to half-lift and half-support him and let him sit on the ground.

Chai Si blinked and was stunned for a while.

He lowered his head and found that he was still wearing the same clothes; in front of him was still the same human-shaped black hole.

"Get up," Uncle Kai said.

Chai Si propped himself up and got up from the ground. As he stood up, he found that his knees were almost giving up and breaking. For a moment, he thought his legs would break in half backwards like a building collapsing.

There was an empty chair nearby, and he stumbled into it, realizing belatedly that this was the chair Uncle Kai had been sitting on when he called him.

"You're back," Mai Minghe said softly, bending down beside him and asking, "How do you feel?"

She seemed to have finally controlled herself and didn't put a hand on Chai Si's forehead to take his temperature.

Chai Si stared at her in a daze, then his gaze turned to Uncle Kai.

Now was not the time, he knew; he had so many questions, like how long he had been gone, how Uncle Kai would know how to call him back, or whether Han Liuyue could be saved in the same way...

Each of these questions was more important and urgent than the one on the tip of his tongue; what's more, Mai Minghe was also present - even if she might be the reason for his rescue, she was still an outsider after all.

But Chai Si still asked.

From a very young age, from the moment he saw his mother walking towards the apartment building from a distance, he knew that he was not a calm and intelligent person.

"Uncle Kai...when you saved me, my mother...was she already dead?"

Five-year-old Chai Si, like a lingering ghost, hides in a thirty-year-old body. He looks at Uncle Kai tremblingly through his eyes that have seen too much blood.

He always had a memory of his mother entrusting him to Uncle Kai; but when Uncle Kai recounted the past, he said that Daisy Monroe was already dead at that time.

"Yes," Kilronan said gravely. "She was already dead when I resisted the inhabitants."

It turned out that Chase Monroe was just lying across from his mother, looking at her, imagining what she would say to comfort him.

Mom didn't hand him over to Uncle Kai... She was too late, she didn't have the chance.

But does that matter?

Chai Si slowly bent down, not knowing for whom or why, and cried silently; he pressed his palms against his face, tears streaming down his palms, and his breathing was trapped in his heart.

He is back to this world.

Perhaps his whole life was spent in owing one life after another to Kaironan.

(End of this chapter)