Artifact Report

Chapter 31 Jin Xueli - All the previous chapters have disappeared

The two lines of memory are like adjacent rivers, their clods melting and gradually merging. The river surface reflects each other's splashes, making it difficult to distinguish between memory and reality.

Jin Xueli fell to the ground, and above her sight was the belly of a huge candle.

She couldn't remember what had caused her to fall: was it her left shoulder that was severed, or her throat that was ripped open?
All she knew was that she seemed to be losing a lot of blood.

After suffering such severe trauma, although the body system has not yet gone into shock, consciousness is already on the verge of collapse.

"I thought about it again, and I still think that you are the resident."

My own voice echoed from a few steps away, my breath heavy. "Somehow, I don't think you're lying. Maybe it's because I know myself. You said you didn't have the information about 'resident replication time limit' in your mind, and I believe you. But you overlooked one thing, did you know?"

Jin Xueli heard it, but it seemed like there was something blocking her from understanding, making it difficult for her to understand.

She half-opened her eyes, looking at the candle not far away, and a transparent lake slowly formed on her body, as if the blood lake below her was just its reflection.

Perhaps this kind of death is appropriate; watching yourself in another time and space in the past living and acting unconsciously, and then slowly deciding when to close your eyes.

"When you got in the taxi, you, like me, gave away a memory. The memory you gave away was probably the message about 'resident copying has a time limit,' which is why you thought you didn't know. This made it easy for you to seize on my words, using them as a loophole, as proof that you were the real culprit..."

Even the dying Jin Xueli understood the last sentence.

"So you are the resident," the other self concluded.

If I were a resident, I wouldn't die here.

Jin Xueli wanted to say this, but only a gurgling sound came from her throat. Her injured left shoulder seemed to have become a dark abyss, and her mind and consciousness were rapidly draining away from it. When she struggled to turn her head slightly to the left, she didn't even dare to look at her shoulder.

In the bloody vision, another "Jin Xueli" was bending down to pick up a fire axe.

The axe, stained with her flesh and broken bones, had penetrated too deeply into the flesh and bones, and the resident had not been able to catch it, so it fell to the ground.

Jin Xueli vaguely remembered that after being hit by the axe, she seemed to stumble forward a few steps - at that time, the fact that her shoulder was cut off was still far away and had not yet been accepted by her brain; she was still thinking about walking to the correct candle position.

So when she couldn't hold on any longer and finally collapsed to the ground, most of her body fell under the candle.

"...resident," she whispered, looking at the silhouette bending over and picking up the axe, "I'm not."

"what."

The resident didn't look up, weighing the axe, and only uttered a single syllable.

"Pants..." Every word she said was almost ethereal and phantom, not even breath. "The car... was taken away."

She is truly worthy of being called another "Jin Xueli", as if she is talking to herself; a few words that others cannot understand make her stunned, but she will react quickly.

"Are you trying to say that the memory that was taken away from you in the car was actually your experience of buying pants?"

To express its absurdity, it deliberately laughed and said, "Are you dying and out of your mind? This is a nest, and the hopscotch part is even more bizarre and dangerous. After fighting me, when you got in the taxi and paid the fare, the first thing that popped into your mind was where to buy—"

It stopped talking before it could finish.

If this resident had not been copied into Jin Xueli, it would not have wasted even half a second on this ridiculous statement. It would have walked over and swung the axe to end her life.

But precisely because it had completely turned into a "Golden Snow Pear", it suddenly stopped and stood there with the axe in hand - after two seconds, it looked down at its pants.

It made a little sound through its nose, as if it had been woken by an unpleasant phone call early in the morning.

It is said that understanding oneself is the most difficult thing in the world; but if a person has lived for twenty-eight years, unless he is muddle-headed, numb or stupid, he will have some self-knowledge.

There is one thing about Jin Xueli that makes her very similar to a puppy under one year old - a pigeon flying by will make it turn its head, and a slight noise in the distance will make it prick up its ears; the same is true for Jin Xueli.

A neon sign with a missing leg, or the white feathers of a bird flapping its wings, would catch her attention and briefly draw her mind away.

One of the rules for riding a car is to lower your head and hang it between the driver's seat and the passenger seat.

What happens when she follows this one rule?
Jin Xueli will find that part of her field of vision is her own thighs and pants.

“What you mean is… you lowered your head, saw the pants, and couldn’t help but recall the experience of buying them, and this memory was taken away by the driver?” The resident stood there, muttering.

Jin Xueli moaned halfway in her throat in response.

"Ridiculous," the resident said, not moving for a moment. "Impossible."

Even though it had made up its mind to kill Jin Xueli regardless of who was real or fake, it still couldn't help but think - perhaps this was a part of Jin Xueli's personality at work, or perhaps this was human nature, but it was copied by it.

While it was lost in thought, Jin Xueli had already seen the history in the candlelight not far away. The tiny girl was instructing the doorman, "...If there's anyone suspicious, don't let them ring my doorbell..."

She remembered that it was the day before she received the wreath.

The candle wax wrapped around that day was suspended above her lower abdomen... The next day, when she entered the nest, it should be right next to it, right?
Jin Xueli closed her eyes and imagined her right hand was a mole, quietly crawling in search of its target. Only by pretending it wasn't part of her rapidly hypothermic body could she reluctantly move it, groping for the next switch on the fire trough.

The left half of my body was filled with cold wind, while the right half of my body felt slightly warmed up, like an illusion.

The residents must not be able to discover your actions - otherwise, it will immediately know what you want to do.

The fire had just started and the candle had not yet completely melted, but the resident had already come back to his senses, let out a breath, and spoke.

"Look at me, I almost got confused by your words. I can't tell the difference between true and false, these confusing things, and I don't need to tell them apart. As I said before, if I kill you, there will be no problem."

Being able to delay it for a few seconds was already a difficult thing, but it was far from enough; Jin Xueli struggled to resist the dizziness, gathered her scattered consciousness, and searched for the next excuse in her foggy brain.

She had to say something to distract the residents - fortunately, she was not someone who was easily distracted; this shortcoming had now become something that could save her life.

"Can't..." Two words floated from her lips, like dust disturbed by the breath.

The resident, holding a fire axe that was still dripping with blood, walked towards her and asked, "Can't what?"

Jin Xueli's mind was like a dying fire; on the verge of losing consciousness, she groggily uttered her innermost thoughts: "...You can't kill me."

The resident laughed, squatted down, reached under the candle, and grabbed her ankle. "Why can't I kill you?"

I don’t know if it was its hand or this sentence that sparked a few bright sparks in Jin Xueli’s mind.

She looked at the large piece of white wax on her body, which swayed and melted, and gradually drooped, as if it wanted to reach down and close her eyes to stop her suffering.

"I will die... to prove that you are..."

The hand holding her ankle paused.

The resident sneered outside the candle and said, "You mean, because residents can't die, then if you die, it proves that I am the resident?"

I never thought that the only confidant in my life who can understand me without saying a word is a resident of my nest who is a copy of myself.

Jin Xueli narrowed her eyes, her gaze tremblingly resting on the candle wax; a dark shadow finally appeared faintly in the candle wax, but it was not enough, she wanted to see herself tonight as soon as possible.

"I understood it the last time I killed you. You're a resident, but you don't consider yourself one. You believe wholeheartedly that you're 'Jin Xueli'. Even the moments of self-doubt in your heart serve as evidence of your conviction.

"If we were to ask who is more convinced between us, it would be you, okay?

"If I inflict a fatal wound on you, assuming you firmly believe you're the real person, you'll die from it. Haven't you heard of that experiment? They blindfolded a man and tricked him into thinking he was about to be burned with fire. After artificially inducing pain, burn marks actually appeared on his arm.

"That's the power of psychology. The principle that allowed me to kill you is exactly the same as this experiment."

"Jin Xueli" said as he dragged her; but he couldn't drag her with one hand, so he put down the fire axe and used both hands - Jin Xueli slid on the floor like a piece of heavy dead meat.

In the candlelight, a tiny Jin Xueli had just emerged from a door. She was walking down Colorado Boulevard, her steps still a little unsteady from the alcohol, and she didn't realize that a human figure had quietly followed her.

It’s just a little bit longer, and we’ll be seeing hopscotch soon.

The thought of struggling made a bright red light flicker in the dying fire in her mind; Jin Xueli didn't know where she got the strength from, but when she slid out again, she raised her hand and pushed it into the candle wax.

She had just watched the residents operate the candle tears and already knew how to adjust the time schedule. Perhaps God couldn't bear to see her trapped in this desperate situation, and in Jin Xueli's near-death struggle, she unexpectedly adjusted the time schedule to just the right time. Through the candle tears came the words she had cursed the residents before getting in the taxi: "Get away!"

As the sound was heard, the hands loosened and his feet fell to the ground with a thud.

"What did you do?" The resident reacted quickly. "You want to prevent 'Golden Snow Pear' from being copied by the 'residents'? You will disappear. You are the resident!"

It seemed as if it was about to pounce on me.

Jin Xueli's right hand seemed like an empty bag of flesh and skin, without muscles, blood, or strength; but she still gritted her teeth and pushed the little Jin Xueli into the car - her huge fingers became a partition, separating the little Jin Xueli from hopscotch.

Before Jin Xueli finally lost consciousness, she vaguely saw that the little Jin Xueli in the candle wax was not copied.

The "vulture" resident in the candle tears did not become another herself.

In other words... the history of "being copied by residents" has been changed and erased, and it never happened at all.

Soon, only one Jin Xueli will open her eyes in the basement gallery of the Museum of Modern Art.

Only when she reviewed the memory lines in her mind did she know which Jin Xueli was the resident and which Jin Xueli was herself.

　My flight was delayed again today, which wasted a whole day of my time. I got home at nearly nine o'clock in the evening, and I only just finished writing the update... I'm sorry to have kept you all waiting for so long.

　　Actually, there are many things I can share, but it’s too late today and I’m so sleepy, I’ll talk about it next time

　　Because Jin Xueli changed history, the content of the first seven or eight chapters disappeared, which is equivalent to never happening. Really, if you don't believe me, go and see it.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)