Artifact Report

Chapter 427 Chess - A Different Kind of Rain
Shortly after sitting down face-to-face with Mai Minghe for the first time, Chai Si realized that there was a subtle, unusual sense of "difference" about her, like a feather sticking up from the back of someone's collar—not a big deal, not excessive, but impossible to ignore.

He played games occasionally when he was young, especially when World of Warcraft was popular.

Mak Ming-ho's behavior always reminded him of a character in a game: that soul that orchestrated and manipulated the appearance of "young Mak Ming-ho," roaming the world with great enthusiasm and tireless energy.

“You’ve recovered to your peak condition, and you’re only…not even thirty? You have several more decades on your body.” He asked then, “Why get involved with the Nest? You can do whatever you want.”

Mai Minghe hesitated, then swallowed back a sentence.

After a couple of seconds, she suddenly smiled: "You might not believe it, but this is what I want to do."

Chai Si raised one eyebrow.

“The lair is dangerous, strange, and sometimes disgusting,” Mai Minghe said, but he sighed with almost satisfied satisfaction. “But if I had to choose ten more times, I would still want to be a hunter. Because only in the lair can I see a wonderful world that I would never have the chance to see in my entire life.”

Chai Si's first reaction was to cut off all emotions and not let himself be affected by those words.

But tonight—perhaps at the most inopportune time—Chai Si remembered Mai Minghe and her words.

He had never seen anything like it in his entire life, but now he had finally seen it... Chai Si sat on the ground, looked up, and stared blankly at the night sky.

Mak Ming River, is this the nest you'll never forget after seeing it?

Is this the lair where countless hunters have been summoned time and time again, only to never emerge again?

Is this the world my mother saw before she died?
Or perhaps, all of this was just an illusion created by Damian using deception to inflict pain and despair upon him?
No, that's not right, it's not an illusion—at the very least, with the "click-clack" of the wheels and the springs deep within the earth, the ground is rising steadily and slowly, and that is definitely not an illusion.

Chais glanced around and found that everyone present, except Damian, was maintaining their balance while looking back and forth between the sky and the ground, their faces filled with confusion and fear—he himself probably had the same expression on his face.
Only Damian, as if he had just performed a successful magic trick, seemed to have his black hole-like eyes faintly glowing when he smiled.

He raised one hand, making a loose fist, as if he were winding up an invisible machine; with each turn of the "handle," the parking lot floor rose a little, and in no time, the underground parking lot completely disappeared.

Everyone returned to the surface; the "underground parking lot" was gone.

"I've got it??? I can edit and modify this human world at a physical level, isn't that amazing?"

Damian clapped his hands with a laugh and said, "Of course, it alone cannot bring the nest into the world—"

He raised one index finger towards the sky.

Like a band conductor, like a scene director; at that moment, not only Chai Si, but everyone once again cast their gaze into the night sky.

"Then what about the nests you see in the sky now?"

As expected... it really wasn't an illusion.

It wasn't because of Damian, but rather an almost animalistic instinct—

A mirror image of Blackmore City was projected from high above.

High-rise buildings, streets, roads, streetlights... seem to grow out of the sky and be placed upside down on the earth.

The exhausted and weakened rain clouds drifted slowly and languidly across the sky above the streets of another Blackmore City, passing by the windows of tall buildings, like a sorrowful face hanging from a lamppost.

The white zebra crossing clattered and skipped across a small patch of dark night sky.

A humanoid shadowy figure pushed open the door of a shop on the street. Sensing something was wrong, it hurriedly looked up. It looked down at the world from above, and after a few seconds, it suddenly waved its hands vigorously, as if overjoyed.

"There is no doubt that the nest is in the night sky above. The nest can come from all directions."

"The world, already fraught with problems due to the machinations of you game-dominating players, is already on the verge of collapse... Once it's fully saturated with the original liquid, the holes that have been created in the world will never be able to be repaired."

“You might ask, why go to all the trouble of carving a hole in the human world? Because I found a person with extraordinary talent. Now, using her physical characteristics, I have firmly sewn the nest to the human world. The connection is now complete, and with just a little effort, we can easily pull a part of the nest in—watch closely.”

Chai Si gasped sharply, a dark, throbbing pain shooting through his lower back and abdomen.

Damian's hand, which had just been raised but not yet pulled down, froze in mid-air as he glanced at him.

"Oh? What's on Chai Si's mind?"

Chai Si pressed his hand tightly against his injury, trying to keep his breathing steady, and said in a low voice, "You... what is your connection with the 'Illusion Report'?"

Damian maintained a forced smile, staring intently at him.

“What we contestants did… was all done under the influence of the ‘Hypothesis Report,’ and now it seems that every single thing we did was paving the way for your return to the world.”

Once it's out in the open, it's all too obvious. "In the 'Nest Domination Game' that happened in 1960, there was no 'Illusion Report' feature at all. The 'Illusion Report' seemed to be there to help players obtain target artifacts, but it was actually entirely to... bring you back." He took a breath and said, "'Nest Domination Game' isn't something you can control, but you conveniently added the 'Illusion Report' to the game... right?"

“No,” Damian laughed. “This year’s new game already has a new rule called ‘Avatar Reports.’ I was just responsible for writing and sending its content.”

His white hand slowly crept into the darkness, like a strangely shaped snake.

“Brother Chai, I noticed a detail. You said twice that the ‘illusion report’ was to bring me back… but you refused to admit that it also brought the nest into the human world.”

Chai Si involuntarily raised his gaze as he followed his hand.

"You still won't admit it when you see 'Black Moore City' above your head?"

Damian stretched his arm out into the night sky.

He spread his five fingers wide, reaching out to grasp the night sky as if he had caught something, hooking and pulling at it with his fingers, slowly twisting his palm.

Chai Si followed his hand and saw that what it corresponded to was a building hanging upside down in the sky.

The building was not tall and did not occupy a large area; it seemed to be an old building left over from a century ago. But as Damian's hand gradually tightened, the building was like a piece of bread that had been twisted and turned, with its texture twisted ring by ring.

Chai Si lowered his gaze again and looked at the corresponding place in the human world beneath that building.

He no longer cared about the injury in his waist and abdomen.

As Damian suddenly pulled downwards and Lou rapidly transformed into a blur, Chai Si also shouted angrily at the three Kai family hunters: "Run!"

At the same time, Sha Xue and Qi Baili started running wildly. Qi Baili also pushed another hunter's shoulder. An entire building crashed down, crushing the row of Kai family cars. The earth trembled and shook in pain. Bricks, stones, and ash rose up, and for a moment, the sky and earth were submerged in a cloud of dust.

Despite the excruciating pain, Chai Si covered his mouth and nose tightly with one hand and squinted his eyes; through the dust and smoke, the red brick building looked like an ice cream cone that had been knocked over by a child, lying crookedly on the ground.

"Shaxue——"

As soon as he opened his mouth, smoke and dust filled his nostrils, making him want to cough. But he dared not cough, fearing that any violent tremor would kill him from coughing. "Cough, cough..."

Damian clicked his tongue in displeasure.

This tiny sound gave Chai Si a sudden glimmer of hope—only then did he finally see someone struggling to their feet amidst the flying bricks and dust.

The three barely escaped being crushed by the building, but all of them were injured to varying degrees, and they staggered forward unsteadily. Before they even reached Chai Si's side, Damian laughed: "Were you stunned by the shock? Didn't I tell you not to go over there?"

“Our car…” Kaironan said blankly.

He wasn't genuinely heartbroken about the car—it was more like, in the face of incomprehensible shock, he subconsciously could only say unimportant things.

"Changing the human world physically, changing the nest physically, it's all possible..." Damian laughed. "It's just a function of ??? Once you become the ultimate winner of the game, it's just a very ordinary part of the ruler's abilities."

Shiba and Sayuki exchanged a glance.

The distance has been reduced by half, but it's still not enough.

Sayuki wasn't stupid; Chai Si could guess which healing illusion she had chosen. But even if she had chosen the most suitable one, she couldn't act rashly under Damian's watchful eye.

"Ah, but if it's just a change at the physical level, that's a bit boring, isn't it?"

Damian raised the hand that Chais wished he could cut off again.

He had done so much, yet Chai Si hadn't even seen what ??? looked like.

"A building in the lair fell into the human world. To be honest, there's nothing strange about that."

Damian made a gesture as if he were about to knock on a door. Without raising his head, he gently tapped the night sky with his knuckles.

Even though there was an unknown distance between the upside-down nest city in the sky and the corresponding human city on the ground, Chais still felt that Damian seemed to have really knocked on the nest.

He simply didn't know what spot Damian was knocking on.

The next second, this doubt no longer mattered at all.

Because mixed in with the raindrops, what falls from the sky into the world are the rules of the nest.

(End of this chapter)