Artifact Report

Chapter 362 Fu Tailan: Absolutely Must Not Be Killed or Shift the Blame East

"How did you do it?"

The person speaking was not at all reserved and was almost touching Fu Tailan's face.

This is a face that can only be described as having "all the facial features present"—it's not easy to find any other distinguishing features beyond that.

From a distance, it's nothing special; it's just an unrecognizable face. But up close, as a human being and as part of Fu Tai Lan, one can't help but want to shoot that face.

Luckily, I didn't bring a gun.

After all, getting up close to a vulture that hasn't deformed and has maintained its original appearance is a very rare experience for hunters: "Fu Tai Lan" realized for the first time that all the parts on a vulture's face are in a blurry, movable state.

Take this vulture for example. When it turns its head to the left, its eyelashes swim one by one to the right. When they reach the end of its eye, they burrow into its skin, from under its eyelid, close to its eyeball, and then swim one by one to the inner corner of its eye, where they emerge and rearrange themselves.

When he opens his mouth to speak, it's even more unsettling to look closely: when his upper and lower lips touch, part of his upper or lower lip gets stuck to the other side; sometimes when he opens his mouth, a few stubbles pop out from the corners of his mouth; sometimes when he closes his mouth, his philtrum suddenly sinks down, hanging long on his face.

As if it were a human instinct, Fu Tailan wanted to shoot, wanted to pick up a hammer, and smash that face into a pile of rubble, wishing she could never see it again.

...Huh? That's strange?

I am a vulture, I shouldn't think—

Before the thought could even fully form, it was interrupted by the vulture.

"That's remarkable. You know you're a vulture, yet you genuinely believe you are this human being. How did you resolve that contradiction?"

The vulture that had been speaking stood back up, and with two steps between them now, a rush of air filled the gap, allowing Fu Tailan to breathe again. He then realized that he had been holding his breath the whole time.

He glanced back.

How many vultures are there here? There must be at least several dozen, right?

Could it be that all the vultures in the nest have gathered here?

Before the vulture transformed, it had no hair; at a glance, there was only a large patch of blurry, yellowish-brown human faces, like mushrooms, stuck on equally blurry, yellowish-brown bodies.

“Last time, one of our companions was able to maintain his human form while preserving his vulture-like self-awareness because he was trapped in a coffin with his human counterpart after entering the human world. But you—”

The vulture shook its head, its facial skin, feathers, and eyeballs flaring more violently with each movement. It urged again, "Speak up! How was this conflict resolved?"

Fu Tailan breathed a sigh of relief.

He instinctively had a feeling that he should not dwell on that thought any longer; talking to the vulture was precisely the way to distract himself.

"Do you need my method? Can you use it?" he said, looking around at the vultures near and far.

"What are you saying? Of course it's useful,"

Another vulture chuckled, its voice exactly the same as the first, as if they were both just clay waiting to be shaped, thick and sticky, indistinguishable in texture and gender. "Who wouldn't want to remember who they are? To feel like a human on one hand and a vulture on the other, wow, that gives you so much room to maneuver. We can play with both sides of the human nest as we please."

The vultures have changed so much since then!

Fu Tailan dismissed the thought.

What's going on? This remark is a bit strange, isn't it? It's almost as if he wasn't a vulture before.

He walked through the nest, and every resident who saw him recognized him as a vulture. When he finally met his first fellow vulture, the latter called out and summoned more vultures, who also recognized him.

Is it because I'm too active as a member of the Fu Tai Lan faction? Why do I seem to be starting to doubt myself?
That said, when he first returned to the nest, he didn't even try to call for his companions.

He's clearly a vulture—

“Wow, for a moment just now, you were completely human,” a vulture exclaimed. “I almost couldn’t resist imitating you and then killing you…”

“See?” said the first vulture. Only its position allowed Fu Tailan to distinguish it from the other vultures. “There’s another reason, which is that we’ve evolved now. We no longer want to swarm together and all become the same target—what a waste! It’s meaningless.”

Countless vultures around them nodded, and the blurry, yellowish-brown human face rippled up and down, making one dizzy just looking at it.

"So if we maintain our self-awareness, then after transformation, when we meet our fellow human beings, we can recognize each other at a glance, just like we recognize you."

"You recognize it?" a vulture nearby suddenly said. "I don't recognize it. I had a vague feeling about it just now, but the more I look at it now, the less I can recognize it."

The answer, "Me too," immediately rang out from the earthen-yellow human figures.

If just one vulture says, "Try killing him once—"

I won't die. I'm a vulture, I'm a vulture. It's just that after turning into Fu Tai Lan, I thought I was human, so I might die for a while, but I should come back to life. In short, I absolutely cannot let them kill me. Try it! I absolutely cannot be killed! What's going on? What's going on? Don't think about it anymore.
Just like realizing you're about to crash into a concrete pillar while driving, Fu Tailan twisted the steering wheel in her mind with all her might, forcibly turning her thoughts onto another path under the gaze of the vulture.

He waved his hand and even chuckled.

“That’s not surprising.” Fu Tailan listened to her own voice, which seemed to show no signs of trembling. “It’s not like doing a math problem. Consciousness is fluid; it’s impossible to divide it into fifty-fifty parts precisely and then not change at all.”

The first vulture nodded, then paused, staring at him, before slowly nodding a second time.

"So how did you do it? You just won't tell me." It seemed to be losing patience.

Fu Tailan suddenly had a thought.

Wait, could it be this...?
After completing his experiments in the Black Abyss, one thought remained clearly etched in his mind: upon entering the lair, the first thing he needed to do was find the vulture. Since he still remembered this thought, it must have been very important, which is why Fu Tailan never let it slip away, repeatedly retrieving the fragments.

"Why it matters" was lost in the Abyss. Was it an accident, or something else? He didn't know.

He initially thought it was because he hadn't seen his fellow countrymen in a long time and needed to communicate with them—but—

“It’s not that I’m unwilling to tell you, it’s because my method… has no possibility of being repeated within the nest.”

Fu Tailan said slowly, "I can bring one of you and personally teach you how to achieve this state. Then you can spread the word yourselves. Otherwise, I'll be too tired, and I'm too lazy to teach each of you step by step."

"This kind of lazy and slack attitude is really something humans do..." the vultures murmured in admiration.

“Then I’ll do it,” the first vulture said immediately.

“No problem,” Fu Tailan said. “Let me explain my method to you first.”

Fu Tailan didn't know how the vultures formed a hierarchical order, or even whether there was such an order at all among them.

The vultures who were talking suddenly stopped and slowly turned to him.

I know nothing about vultures because I had to give up some of my knowledge and memories after becoming Fu Tailan.

After all, retaining only one sense of self is already extremely difficult; if I were to retain all the vulture memories as well, my sense of self as Fu Tailan would be severely impacted.

That's exactly what happened.
The vultures stared at him for a while, then finally turned away, seemingly losing interest. Once they reached a consensus, the vultures dispersed quickly, and soon only Fu Tailan and the first vulture remained.

“I’ve heard of the Black Abyss Belt you mentioned,” the vulture said. “But as for how to enter the Black Abyss Belt from the nest, I really don’t know… Hmm, I can ask the other residents.”

When competing for the same thing, residents can fight tooth and nail and stop at nothing; but as soon as the reason for the competition disappears, they hardly hold any grudges against each other. The resident who just tore off half of your face will kindly tell you that hunters often fall at the next intersection, reminding you not to miss the opportunity.

Being a resident isn't so bad, Fu Tailan thought to herself.

The vulture uttered a short string of syllables that a human throat or tongue cannot pronounce.

The syllables are twisted and rolled together; it is clearly a name.

As soon as it landed in the air, the old lady squatting on the road in front of it immediately turned her head away.

The elderly woman covered her mouth tightly with both hands, as if trying to suppress a laugh with her hands and push her teeth into the black holes on her face.

Although she was smiling, the old lady seemed to be in a very bad mood.

"What are you killing? What are you doing? Why are you killing me? You can't kill me, am I killing someone? You don't know that Mai Ming killed He and ran away? I'm going to kill her, she killed her, she killed. It's so hateful. Why are you killing me? Why won't you just honestly accept your fate? Why are you killing me? Huh? Black Abyss?"

Remarkably, even as it continued to screech, it managed to clearly hear the vulture's question. The old woman, a resident, paused for a moment, seemingly calming down a bit. "What do you want with Black Abyss? Are you going in?"

Was she talking about Mak Ming Ho? It's a pity, it's another time I can't go visit her.

Fu Tailan nodded as she thought about it, when suddenly a flash of inspiration struck her—"Oh right, the player who dominates the game, Chess Monroe, is currently inside the Black Abyss."

Shouldn't we be able to redirect the old lady's murderous intent towards Chai Si?

It specifically named Mai Minghe to kill her, simply because she participated in the game of domination. Wouldn't it be better to kill Chai Si instead?
"Oh."

The old woman covered her mouth, squatted on the ground, and suddenly her eyes narrowed, as if a knife had cut through her wrinkled skin, and a chilling white light shone from the dark cut.

"Oh. Oh oh. Oh oh oh oh oh oh!!!"

...Not bad, it seems promising.

“But we can’t get in,” it said next, which disappointed Fu Tailan and the other two vultures. “It’s one thing for you, this half-human, half-vulture thing, to fall back into the nest. But getting in from the nest is another matter entirely. We can’t get in from the nest.”

"Why?" Fu Tailan asked.

"You threw away all the information about the Nest after you became human? And you still need to ask? What's the Black Abyss Belt for? Isn't it to separate the human world from the Nest?"

The old woman snorted coldly from under her palm and said, "The world is just so unfair. Hunters can enter their lair from the human world, and you can enter from the Black Abyss, but the reverse isn't possible. We face obstacles at every turn when we try to go to the human world. Only a few lucky ones manage to get in, and even they don't live long. In that respect, you vultures are quite lucky—oh no, time's running out! I can't talk to you anymore! Cheese, Cheese, Cheese, Monroe, I'm going to find you, find you, find you, kill, kill, kill!"

It almost sang as it remained crouched on the ground, its legs paddling rapidly forward, and disappeared from the street corner in the blink of an eye.

The vulture turned its head towards Fu Tailan. "How did you get into the Black Abyss?"

Fu Tailan thought about it.

"As we were chatting earlier, the vulture that entered the human world once before chose to retain a part of its body during its later transformation—"

“Buttocks,” the first vulture volunteered.

“…Yes, yes.” Fu Tailan rubbed her nose and said, “That’s why it can maintain its human form. But because it’s not fully transformed, it doesn’t feel like it is the hunter being imitated, right?”

"Yes, what do you want to say?"

“You need to transform and come with me into the human world.” Fu Tailan smiled at it and said, “But don’t transform completely. That way, you’ll remember that you’re coming with me to retrieve something from the Black Abyss…”

(End of this chapter)