Artifact Report

Chapter 332 Jin Xueli - Taking the Initiative

Business is pretty good tonight, with customers coming in one after another, but this new customer is a bit rude.

Jin Xueli struggled for a moment, but couldn't break free.

She had no choice but to hold onto the vest and turn back to the woman, saying, "Do you want to buy something? The vest isn't for sale."

The woman braced herself with one hand on the ground, which should have allowed her to lift her entire upper body, but instead, her waist continued to sag from mid-air to the ground, disappearing around the gas station.

In the shadows, she couldn't see the other person's face clearly.

“Take it off,” the woman repeated, each word hard and heavy, as if she wanted to carve a hole in her body with her voice.

"I said, this isn't—"

"I won't buy it,"

The woman immediately interrupted her, her back teeth clenched tightly as she spoke, as if she wanted to bite Jin Xueli's words off in one gulp. "I want you to take it off. Wearing a vest doesn't make you a shop assistant, are you stupid?"

What's going on tonight? This is the second resident to call her stupid.

"I'm the shop assistant,"

Jin Xueli thought the other person was the idiot. "I wear a vest precisely because I'm a shop assistant. It's not that I become a shop assistant because I wear a vest—how could you get that cause and effect backwards?"

The woman remained silent in the shadows for a few seconds, seemingly savoring the answer.

“Come here,” she finally spoke.

“No,” Kim Seol-ri wasn’t really stupid. “Let go.”

The vest was really well-made. When the woman suddenly pulled hard, Jin Xueli was pulled to the ground, but the vest didn't even make a sound of a stitch coming undone—not because she was unsteady, but because the other woman was too strong; if it were Godzilla, it would probably have been pulled off balance.

"what are you doing?"

Jin Xueli fell down next to a gas pump, clutching a water bottle in one hand and her vest in the other. Her shoulder ached from the impact, and she was flustered and clumsy, but also a little scared.

Her weapon was still in her backpack inside the store; at this moment, she was unarmed and completely powerless to resist.

Perhaps to hide her guilty conscience, she raised her head and raised her voice eight octaves: "Why do you insist on me using a pseudonym—wait, what?"

The woman was right next to Jin Xueli; if she were still breathing, Jin Xueli could even hear her breathing.

When their eyes met, the woman involuntarily trembled and shrank back—Jin Xueli hadn't moved at all, but it felt as if someone had slapped her in the face.

Was she afraid of her? Jin Xueli was stunned.

The woman steadied herself, straightened her neck, and coldly stared at her from the shadows, her lips, voice, and emotions all twisted together: "What are you looking at?"

"Ah," Kim Seol-ri snapped out of her daze, clutching her vest tightly to her chest. "It's nothing... It's brighter here, that's why I saw you... I just didn't expect you to be so pretty."

The woman fell silent again—this time, the silence lasted even longer.

"……what?"

Of course, this kind of "good looks" is not quite the same as the standards of the world: for example, the healthy and moisturized skin and the bright and shiny eyes that humans admire, women naturally do not have at all.

“Even though you’ve been dead for a while,” Kim Seol-ri said sincerely, “you’ve developed a different kind of beauty. It’s like… well, like a Corpse Bride, have you seen them? I originally thought that since you were a resident, you’d probably look like an English teacher, not very good-looking. I never expected—”

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

The woman suddenly roared, "Are you mocking me? You think you can take whatever you want? You know nothing, yet you think you can mock me?"

Kim Seol-ri felt a moment of suffocation—it was the first time she had fallen so close to a resident, not only without being attacked, but also overwhelmed by a torrent of emotions. It was as if the rain clouds in the summer night sky, shrouded in heavy thunder and lightning, had suddenly transformed into a downpour and a tsunami, crashing straight into her soul.

I want it so badly, I long for it so much. Why me? Why you? Why must I lose everything?

I long to go home, I long to go home, but I have no home left in this world.
She is the closest place to home, the only place I am familiar with, and the only place I want to go.

"Wait, wait a minute,"

Jin Xueli coughed and twisted her body, trying to roll away from the other woman's silent, emotional roar—but the woman still held onto the corner of her vest tightly, and she couldn't break free unless she took it off.

Between taking it off and making her own excuse, she hesitated for a moment, then shouted, "I wasn't mocking you!"

The woman's mouth stretched into a black hole, and a surging sound poured out. Such a pale, small face could simultaneously contain a pair of eyes like a deep abyss and a mouth.

"Um," Kim Seol-ri stammered, looking at her, "I...I didn't mean that. I know that once you become a resident, you'll definitely—"

"I haven't become a resident! I'm not a resident, no, no, no resident, you're the resident!"

“Okay, okay… What I mean is, even if you’re different from before, you’re still beautiful in a different way.” Kim Seol-ri stared at her for a few seconds and whispered, “…Don’t cry.”

"I didn't cry, I didn't cry, I didn't cry, did I?"

Jin Xueli had originally intended to get her some tissues; but after hearing this, she could only nod and say, "I'm sorry, I misread it."

She watched as that twisted, deep-set mouth slowly shrank, and that face, almost melted by anger, regret, and resentment, gradually cooled and solidified again.

Like snow and ice forming white on the dark mountain peaks; like rain clouds that have released lightning, pressing heavily on the dark blue night sky.

It's like a venomous snake with slippery scales and a bright green color, silently slithering through the branches and leaves. Once it suddenly stops moving, it's as if it had never moved at all.

"The reason you think I look good now is because you're about to become a resident." She looked at Kim Seol-ri with a gloomy gaze. "Do you even remember that you weren't originally a resident?"

Jin Xueli was stunned.

Was she originally... was she originally a hunter?

But isn't that obvious? Every resident of the lair originally came from the hunters.

However… she remembered that just half an hour ago, she was a hunter who desperately wanted to obtain the original liquid…

Huh? Half an hour and I've already crossed into another stage of life?

No, she doesn't seem to have fully become a resident yet; if we had to define her, she's still in her "cocoon," still in a transitional period.

"I wore a disguise to fool the English teacher... do you remember?"

Oh, I think so... So she wasn't hired after all?

The woman whispered from the shadows, "Why did we need to lie through? Remember? Answer me."

Jin Xueli frowned, gradually recalling the body of the store clerk lying in the convenience store restroom.

"Because...because I was afraid it would think I killed the clerk...no, that's not right either. At that time, I was still a human being, and being blocked by it was bad enough..."

The gas station was buried deep in the cold night; Jin Xueli could only hear her own breathing and voice. The woman lying on the ground opposite her was like a sculpture filled with silence, completely still.

She heard a click from the door lock of the convenience store.

A door was pushed open.

(End of this chapter)