Artifact Report

Chapter 314 Brianna: The Old Death and the New

Brianna almost doubted whether she had actually been rescued and was still in the black box.

Otherwise, how come her mind and body seem to be drifting apart piece by piece?
Brianna, however, was no longer afraid.

Her feet seemed to be walking on mist, leading her forward; it was as if she were floating, as if she were swimming, but it didn't feel like she was walking.

Her hearing had deteriorated significantly, but she could still hear, though everything in the world seemed distant and boundless.

She vaguely felt that Fu Tailan was walking beside her, or perhaps on the other side of the world.

Was it that cigarette in his hand? From where did it come from, so thick and hazy, billowing smoke?
In the vast, white world, it seemed as if only the two of them were there, silently walking forward step by step.

Shensi, high above the clouds, whispered: Go, he is behind the first door.

Go, go kill him.

She had no weapons, no disguise. She was unarmed, and her father would show her no mercy.

If she were to truly die here again tonight, aside from the lingering, unfulfilled longing and resentment she still felt when thinking of Morandall, she would seem to have no regrets.

But she won't die, will she?
Walking beside her is the future.

Brianna raised her hand and slowly pressed the switch on the security door—Dad hadn't locked it.

The door slid open automatically to one side of the wall; the two of them simultaneously stepped aside, each standing behind the wall, revealing a room that was wide open but invisible to both.

Vesilai's heavy breathing burst out of the door, floating in the vast white mist.

"What exactly do you want?"

He seemed unable to understand no matter how hard he tried. "Do you want a false goal? Do you want to win the game? Aren't you all smart people? Why don't you do what smart people do?"

He finished speaking, but no one answered him; silence fell over both the room and the surroundings.

There was no way to explain it to him; perhaps it was because I didn't understand it myself.

“Dad,” Brianna asked softly after a few seconds, “what’s in your room?”

As she spoke, she gently unbuttoned her shirt. When she was woken by the phone, she hadn't had time to get fully dressed, so she just threw on a shirt while naked.

Fu Tailan glanced at her.

A man's body does have its advantages.

She took off her shirt and remembered that this thin, flat body had nothing to do with Vesile.

It is not good?

"Dad, I want to go in."

Before she finished speaking, she raised her hand and flicked it—the shirt fluttered and flew into the room through the doorway.

At that moment, all remained silent; no bullets or gunfire erupted from the room. Vessilé had no gun training and disliked handling guns himself; besides, how could a gun compare to the power of a decoy?

The shirt suddenly froze in mid-air.

It seemed to hesitate for a moment, one sleeve gripping the air, hanging in mid-air, as if realizing it could stop and withdraw.

But that illusion that we could perhaps return to the past was immediately shattered.

The shirt seemed to be stuffed into a vacuum bag, and someone activated the air pump; the air was rapidly drawn out, and the shirt was flattened, twisted, and compressed, eventually squeezing into a small, unrecognizable piece that fell to the ground.

Brianna glanced down at the small piece of shirt on the ground, realizing it had been in her hand for less than a second.

Fu Tailan clicked her tongue: "That's ruthless."

“Shut up,” she said.

Fu Tailan chuckled softly.

Wei Xilai was panting, seemingly quite exhausted; after seeing the shirt on the ground, he said nothing, perhaps because he knew that saying anything would be pointless.

Both father and daughter had bared their fangs.

Brianna thought to herself, "It's a pity that the thick white fog only exists in my mind. Otherwise, Vesile wouldn't be able to see anything at all."

Ah, wait.

She glanced at Fu Tailan; the boy, sensing her gaze, also looked up.

Brianna remained silent, looked at him, raised her hand as if pressing a lighter, and then pointed to herself.

Can I borrow your lighter?

Fu Tailan nodded, but then paused.

He thought for a moment, then pulled two things from his pocket: a lighter and a wallet. He calmly emptied the wallet first—Brianana understood.

Fu Tailan tossed her empty wallet across the doorway.

For a moment, the wallet also froze in mid-air, then began to be squeezed and shrunken—in the next instant of its deformation, the lighter that followed flew smoothly through the air and landed in Brianna's hand. So that's how it is.

Is the illusion in Vesile's hand something that is activated on "command"?
Just like firing a gun, he must see the target and pull the trigger to create a vacuum around the target; his illusion cannot create a force field that would make anything that enters the force field suffer.

That's why he attacked the empty wallet, but he didn't react in time and missed the lighter that followed.

It seems that Vesilai may not even have realized that he had just missed a lighter.

This is much more convenient.

Brianna smiled.

She tried twice, and finally set fire to a chair she had dragged from the hall.

The chair was made of velvet and stuffed with thick sponge; if a spark were caught, a raging fire would quickly replace order.

The chair was hidden behind the wall with her, out of Vesilé's sight; unless he left the room, he could not create a vacuum around the chair to extinguish the fire.

Brianna watched it burn silently; the white smoke and thick fog in her mind finally climbed up from the world—just like her, things that shouldn't exist, things that are unwelcome, still didn't miss any opportunity to climb into this world.

The smoke grew thicker and more choking. The safe room wasn't large, and soon everything in sight turned into the same white expanse as in her mind.

Fu Tai Lan coughed, and had already covered her mouth and nose with the hem of her clothes.

Brianna unbuckled her belt and wrapped it around her hand; the heavy metal buckle hung down her wrist like the head of a sleeping snake.

"What are you doing!" Vesilé shouted angrily, coughing as she spoke. "Are you trying to burn me alive? Do you think there's no fire suppression system in the safety room?"

Brianna squinted as she heard the smoke alarm on the ceiling beep, a strange, shrill sound—but the heat and smoke from a burning chair were not enough to activate the fire sprinklers.

Seeing that the time was right, she grabbed the scorching hot chair leg, flung the chair into the house.

The burning, leaping flames seemed to glide through the white waves, stirring up the air and smoke before being swallowed up by the thick smoke—Briana crouched down, and almost simultaneously, she and the chair pounced into the room, one on each side.

Behind him, Fu Tailan seemed to be taken aback.

Her eyes remained fixed on the flickering flames; through the billowing smoke, she could vaguely make out a familiar figure.

Dad, I'm here.

She saw the vague figure's hunched back as it coughed;
She saw the flames suddenly disappear into the smoke;
She noticed he reacted a moment too late and quickly turned around to face her.

Brianna raised her arm, and the belt snapped back to life, whipping through the air with a sharp screech as it struck the figure—the sound of the metal head hitting flesh made her heart clench, as if a natural biological law had suddenly struck, almost bringing tears to her eyes.

As Vesilai cried out in pain, something slipped from her hand and fell to the ground with a thud.

Brianna felt as if she had lived her whole life in smoke.

She, too, couldn't see anything clearly, yet she managed to step forward in time and kick away the illusion on the ground that she had never seen.

Vesil's meaningless shouts sounded distant amidst the blaring sirens.

"Stop—don't you want to stop spreading rumors—"

From the thick white smoke, another sentence rolled out: "I'm your father!"

Brianna punched him in the chest and abdomen, interrupting Vesilé's scream once again, and he rolled to the ground.

I'm sorry, does it hurt a lot?
She shouldn't have seen it clearly, but she did. The short stun gun he'd tucked into his waistband.

At that moment, Brianna suddenly learned about the future.

Fu Tailan had entered at some point and stood at a distance, quietly watching her and her father. He covered his mouth and nose, but his eyes shone brightly through the smoke.

She bent down and snatched the baton away.

Vesile turned around, seemingly trying to get a good look at Brianna, and urged her to think carefully—what was she doing? Was she really going to lay a hand on her own father? He hadn't abused her, had he? Why did it have to come to this?

"Think of your mother, if she knew this from beyond the grave—"

When Brianna opened her mouth, she realized that her throat was sore and hoarse from the smoke. The words she wanted to say remained unspoken; she couldn't say goodbye.

Dad, the future is already set, and history cannot be changed.

Dad, we won't meet in hell.

You and I will forever be in two completely different hells, gazing at each other from afar.

The stun gun was pressed against Vesile's chest, and she pressed the switch.

Fu Tailan suddenly burst into laughter at that moment. His voice was distorted by the burning sensation, sounding almost like a cry of relief and surrender.

Brianna had never been in so much pain.

Brianna had never been so happy.

(End of this chapter)