Artifact Report

Chapter 341 Mai Minghe - Guarantee with the experience of three hunters

At five in the morning, the streets of Blackmore City were as clear as an emergency express line. When the group sped to Little Italy and carried the half-dead Evan upstairs, the clinic doors were tightly shut, and there wasn't even a single person to open the door for them.

"You've arrived already?"

Dr. Nate answered the phone, his words mumbled, but his surprise was clear: "Put the person on the bed in the examination room first, I'll be right there, I'm brushing my teeth."

"But the door is locked..." Hai Luwei said with difficulty into the phone, her back pressed against Evan, who looked like a corpse.

“Wait a minute,” said Dr. Nate, his mouth full of toothpaste foam.

There was a rustling sound on the other end of the phone, his footsteps and movements; the three waited for a while, and then the clinic door suddenly clicked open.

Mai Minghe found the switch and pressed it. A large area of ​​darkness hurriedly escaped into the wall, and the pale, harsh light, filled with the smell of dust, illuminated this not-so-spacious clinic.

There was only one consultation room, and the door was unlocked.

The group placed Evan on the bed where Mai Minghe had once sat. He lost his balance and slipped, falling with a thud. All three of them involuntarily frowned.

In literary works, when describing the dead, it is sometimes written that "he looked as if he were fast asleep"—this statement is completely untenable in the present day.

Evan's head was tilted to one side, half his face buried in the pillow, lying in the thick, fishy smell of dead seafood.

How should I describe the feeling I get from this scene?
It's clearly a person, but it gives the impression of a dense, bumpy layer that grows on the bottom of a ship that hasn't been cleaned for years. You can't tell if it's algae, small seafood, or a large patch of barnacles—it always makes you feel that if you reach out to clean it and then pull your hand back, you'll get something slippery and swirling on your hand.

When Mai Minghe came to his senses, he realized that he had been holding his breath the whole time, as if he subconsciously didn't want to breathe the same air as Evan.

She felt a pang of shame; this young man had already suffered enough...

“Let’s go outside and wait,” Sea Reed suggested in a low voice.

Amy immediately agreed, turned around, and started walking towards the door: "Okay, go outside and wait. Mak Ming-ho?"

Mai Minghe held her breath and carefully placed her hand under Evan's nose, feeling for a while—she was genuinely afraid that the young man would be exhausted and die from the ordeal after being pulled ashore.

...and breathing.

Even if it looks like it's been dead for a long time, that's just an appearance; looking so miserable, maybe...maybe it was soaked in water.

She resisted the urge to wipe her hands clean on her pants, nodded, and said, "Come on, I'll go out with you."

As soon as Mak Ming-ho stepped out the door, Amy Kwan closed it behind him.

No one spoke up to discuss it, but without prior agreement, they all chose the chair furthest away in the corridor—Hai Luwei couldn't beat Ai Meili to it and sat down awkwardly in the chair closest to the examination room.

When Dr. Nate walked in dressed casually, carrying a cup of black coffee, he was taken aback.

What are you all doing crammed together here?

The three looked at each other, realizing that none of them could offer a plausible reason.

You can't exactly tell a doctor, "The person you're going to treat makes me feel disgusted," can you?

"You didn't bring me a dead body, did you?" Dr. Nate slammed his coffee cup on the table, spilling some coffee. He wiped his hand, his face full of annoyance. "If it's a dead body, get it out of here right now. Don't cause me this kind of trouble!"

“He’s not dead, really,” Mak Ming-ho quickly explained. “I just checked his breathing, and he’s still breathing, quite steadily.”

Dr. Nate was finally persuaded and pushed open the door to the examination room with a suspicious look on his face.

"It stinks, it smells like the sea," he muttered as he went inside and closed the door again.

Mai Minghe breathed a sigh of relief, his heart finally at ease—as long as the doctor examined him and the person could be saved, that was all that mattered.

None of the three spoke, unsure of what to say; after two minutes, Amy spoke first.

"I don't need to keep waiting here, do I?" she said. "Actually, you saved that person yourself this time. I didn't help much, so it doesn't count as repaying a debt—"

Before she could finish speaking, a loud thud suddenly echoed in the examination room—it seemed as if a chair had fallen to the ground.

Dr. Nate mumbled something, the sound rising and then abruptly stopping.

Through the door, I couldn't quite hear what he shouted.

Mak Ming Ho was the first to stand up.

She looked towards the examination room and called out from the end of the corridor, "Dr. Nate?"

The examination room was quiet; no one answered.

She turned her head and met two faces that were both alert and confused.

“Dr. Nate?” Mai Minghe walked towards the examination room, but was stopped by Amy Li after taking only one step.

"Where's your fork?" she asked softly.

...You can't carry a fork with you everywhere you go.

Mai Minghe glanced back at the examination room.

What could possibly go wrong? There was basically only Dr. Nate in the room... He probably just accidentally knocked something over.

In the brief moment she was lost in thought, Hai Luwei had already grabbed the coffee cup that Dr. Nate had left behind, turned it around, and poured it all into a potted plant in the corner—he shoved the cup into Mai Minghe's hand and said, "Weapon."

Her weapons were becoming increasingly harmless. "Dr. Nate, are you alright? There was such a loud noise just now, what happened?" She held up her cup and walked towards the door of the examination room, with Amy following closely beside her like a bodyguard.

No one answered from inside, but then there was another muffled thud—this time it was impossible to tell what it was—slamming heavily against the door; the door frame trembled slightly from the impact, and a patch of dust fell from the wall.

This is a real problem.

Mak Ming-ho gripped the cup tightly and strode to the door; she was about to grab the doorknob when the door opened by itself—from the half-open crack, Dr. Nate's face, neck, and chest slowly peeked out… and then stopped.

She glanced down and saw a chair overturned on the floor behind the door.

"Dr. Nate, are you alright? What was that sound?"

“It’s nothing,” Dr. Nate replied, looking at her. “I moved him by myself without a nurse’s help, and I lost my balance and knocked over the chair.”

Mai Minghe looked at him, his gaze darting back and forth several times, unable to pinpoint the source of that strange feeling in his heart.

"Did it overturn twice?"

“The second time, I tripped over a chair and bumped into the door,” Dr. Nate said without blinking. “What else could have happened?”

Mai Minghe really couldn't think of anything else that could happen.

“Then…then please continue,” she had no choice but to say, “Is his injury serious? Can he be saved?”

She hoped Dr. Nate would say a few more words—even though she couldn't help feeling uncomfortable whenever he opened his mouth.

But Dr. Nate's face and body were clean and without any marks, and he looked exactly the same as before. Mai Minghe really couldn't find the source of this feeling.

"He won't die. After I give him first aid today, you can take him home and let him recover slowly."

That's it? That looks like an injury that would require hospitalization... No, wait, if Evan goes home to recover, there's no one to take care of him.

Moreover, whose house is he going to? He doesn't even have a key or a driver's license on him. Where does he live?

“Isn’t it you who’s here?” Dr. Nate looked directly at McMurray and said, his lips moving slightly, “Aren’t you friends with him?”

Mai Minghe was stunned.

The mission point in "The Imitation Report" does indeed require her to rescue Evan and "help his life get back on track"... Perhaps simply getting him out of the water isn't enough; she also needs to take care of Evan until he recovers his health before she can get the prompt for the next mission point.

"Alright, let's talk about it later, the patient is waiting."

With that, Dr. Nate slammed the door shut; the wind blew against Mai Minghe's nose, and all he could see was the gray and white of the door panel again.

The three of them sat down again in the chairs furthest from the examination room. This time, the silence seemed to be compressed and layered, becoming much heavier.

“Um…” Mak Ming Ho spoke first.

She stopped again and thought for a moment.

“I had heard before in the nest that the Central Bay area is connected to the nest.”

Her words came out of nowhere, clearly catching the two of them off guard.

Recalling the conversation between the couple at the Black Heart restaurant, Mak Ming-ho said, "It seems that some of the things that sink from here will fall into the nest. But the reverse doesn't apply, right? Things from the nest shouldn't float up from the central bay, right?"

The remaining portion of the nest information in her mind did not include the central bay.

The two women's expressions turned serious. As expected of hunters, she didn't need to spell things out.

“Suppose that person falls into the water from here and into the nest, it’s the same as dying in the nest.” Amy said, hands clasped in her pockets, “The inhabitants he gives birth to cannot enter the world, not from anywhere.”

However, it seems that Chai Si's mother was—

Just as a thought crossed Mai Minghe's mind, the sea reeds spoke.

“You’re being too definitive,” said Sea Reed, her face drooping. “I’ve heard that a very, very small number of people seem to have a way to enter the human world.”

"have you seen?"

"There are many things I haven't seen, but I've never even seen air."

Amy closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if trying to calm herself down.

"First of all, it's an urban legend in the hunter community; no one has ever seen any inhabitants enter the human world. Secondly, even if they did, the chances are extremely small. Most importantly, you all know what the inhabitants are like. They are unrestrained, do whatever they want, and say whatever they want, so they can't be kept in the dark at all. Even if they wanted to pretend to be human, they wouldn't be able to do it convincingly, and they wouldn't be able to keep it up for long."

“That’s true,” the sea reed muttered.

All three of them had looked closely at Evan; he was disgusting, largely because of his miserable and ugly appearance, and his strong, fishy stench—anyone who saw a car accident scene would feel disgusted and uncomfortable.

No matter how they looked at Evan, he had absolutely no connection with the residents.

Apart from Ma Minghe, they were all experienced hunters; even if there were the slightest abnormality, several hunters wouldn't have carried him all the way to the clinic.

Mai Minghe thought for a while.

“Whatever it is… I have to take him home.” She said softly. “If he’s a person, he needs a place to recover, and I have to take good care of him. If he really is… then I’m the one who rescued him, and I have a responsibility.”

(End of this chapter)