Artifact Report

Chapter 429 Chess: Father-Son Relationship and Power Exercise

"Chai Si!"

When Kaironan let out a furious roar, it was too late.

Four bullets in quick succession slashed four sharp wounds in the rainy night, instantly embedding themselves deep into the body, making several muffled thuds as they pierced the flesh.

Chai Si's body was almost lifted into the air, as if he were about to ride the kinetic energy of the bullet and soar into the sky—but the next second, his body crashed heavily back onto the concrete ground, water splashing up and shattering the light and shadow.

The SUV didn't slow down for a moment. After all four bullets left the chamber and hit the target, the car sped away, suddenly turned, and disappeared around the street corner.

"Chai Si!"

Kaironan strode forward and squatted down beside Chai Si. He opened his slightly cloudy eyes wide, reached out to feel Chai Si's pulse, and suddenly turned away.

"what happened?"

He demanded, though no one present could answer him, or was willing to answer him. "Was there a rule broken in that car? Why would they attack Chase? Damian, do you have any help—"

"You don't know the reason either?"

Damian strode up and looked down at Chess Monroe's body for a few seconds. "I also want to ask you, why did they suddenly kill him?"

"I'm semi-retired now, and the family business is all handled by Chai Si... never mind that, do you have anything that can save people?"

"How could I possibly have something to save lives?"

Damian paused here, turned around, and shouted at Heper, who was not far away, "Shut up!"

Hepburn covered her mouth with both hands, barely managing to suppress a scream, but she was still trembling with terror. It wasn't the first time she had seen a dead person, but it was the first time she had witnessed someone—someone she knew very well—being killed right before her eyes.

“I’ve never seen you scream like this even when I’m dead,” Damian complained. “You can’t even hear what you’re saying.”

Kaironan stood up abruptly from beside Chase; he seemed a little unsteady on his feet and instinctively grabbed Damian's shoulder.

Damian lowered his eyelids and glanced at his father's hand.

Kaironan realized what was happening, pulled his hand back, and said with forced composure, "Your thing... isn't it supposed to be able to change the real world? If you used it on Chess..."

"No matter what kind of illusion, what kind of inhabitants, or even the rulers who have won the game of domination, there is one thing they can never do. The most absolute and solid rule in this world."

Damian looked at Kaironan, grinned, revealing a row of overly white, densely packed teeth that filled his mouth completely. "...That is, 'the dead cannot be brought back to life.'"

He looked at Chai Si and added, "If he is indeed dead."

Kaironan closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He squatted down again and gently checked Chai Si's breath.

“He won’t die,” Keronan said, his voice almost pleading. “He won’t die. He can’t die.”

Something seemed to have changed. Although his facial features remained perfectly still, Damian's dark, hollow eyes seemed to bulge out of his face and slowly peer into Caronan's mind.

"...Oh?" He seemed to be suppressing some emotion and laughed, "What a deep father-son bond. If Brother Chai is alive today, knowing how heartbroken and fortunate you are, he must be very comforted."

“Let’s wait…” Kaironan said softly, without looking up at his son. “Don’t you want to wait and see? You’ve always been a smart boy. Do you really believe he’s dead?”

Damian did not speak.

“He…he wasn’t shot dead?” Haiper asked in a trembling voice.

But neither her husband nor her son responded; for a moment, only silence remained on the concrete ground of what used to be an underground parking lot.

Five or six minutes later, when the rain had gradually stopped falling, Chai Si's corpse on the ground suddenly took a soft breath.

Correspondingly, Kaironan let out a deep breath and relaxed his shoulders.

Damian maintained a smile that seemed to be permanently etched on his face.

"W-what happened?" Haiper asked. "He's alive? I don't understand..."

"It's an illusion,"

Kaironan answered in a deep voice, while reaching out to examine Chai Si's gunshot wound and bones. As Chai Si slightly opened his eyelids, he whispered, "Don't move yet. Sayuki just fired four shots at you in one go... Was that gun the new healing illusion you got your hands on? Your waist and abdomen wound is completely healed now."

Chai Si looked bewildered, as if he had just woken up from a dream and couldn't remember where he was.

His gaze shifted slightly and landed on Damian's face.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him hurt you,” Kaironan said softly.

Damian's smile remained unchanged. "It's not a gun..." Chais opened his mouth, his voice still weak and hoarse, but gradually becoming steady. "It's a bullet."

He was panting as he slowly sat up.

“They brought back a box of healing bullets,” Chai Si said, head bowed, surrounded by his adoptive father and brother. “Even though they’re fake, they’re meant to be loaded into real guns and used to shoot people. And the box even says that people shot by them will look like they’re really dead. The Nest’s wickedness… Uncle Kai, you know it better than I do. We have a hard time judging whether these bullets are really healing or just a trap to kill people, so they’ve never sold… This is the first time they’ve used them on me.”

Sand Snow truly lives up to her reputation as a core hunter; knowing when and what risks to take is a mandatory lesson for every hunter who wants to survive the lair.

She chose this illusion to both conceal her true purpose and provide remote treatment—if Damian hadn't been so vigilant, constantly watching her and preventing her from making a move, she probably would have already shot Chess.

"You have no idea how worried Dad was just now,"

Damian said with a smile, as if Chase were lying in a hospital bed and he was just a younger brother visiting him. "Even though he didn't know about the box bomb, he still refused to believe you were dead. What a deep feeling, ah, so touching."

Chai Si got up from the ground and slowly straightened his body.

He was taller than both Caronan and Damian, and his shadow fell on Damian's pale face like a lunar eclipse.

“Don’t talk about Uncle Kai in that local’s tone,” Chai Si said in a low voice.

"Otherwise what?" Damian said dismissively.

Kaironan glanced at the two men, then took a step back—Chais and Damian were staring at each other face to face.

“Nothing else,” Chess said. “I will personally make sure you can’t.”

"Oh? Tell me about it?" Damian asked with great interest. "How do you ensure it?"

Even if the nest enters the human world—

As Chai Si spoke, the muscles on his cheeks bulged suddenly. He suppressed his emotions, took a breath, and said, "Even if the hive enters the human world, what I must do is still crystal clear. Whether you are a resident or a hive, go back to where you came from. Even if I have to expel you one by one, I will make sure you all go back."

He paused, then said almost calmly, "Let's start with you."

Damian raised his hands and clapped slowly, one clap at a time.

“Oh, impressive, you can talk such big. But I want to ask, how will you expel me?” Damian spread his hands and said, “Do you have a gun? With your fists? Don’t you know that if I just lift a finger, you will be physically altered? What advantage do you have over me?”

"Really?" Chai Si suddenly smiled.

Damian didn't say anything.

Kaironan raised one eyebrow, but did not voice his doubts.

"You wanted to kill Sayuki and her group, and you also wanted to reduce their chances of escaping to zero, so you dragged a building from your lair into the human world and smashed a row of cars. Instead of going through all that trouble, why didn't you just twist the cars into steel balls? Why didn't you just twist the people into balls of flesh?"

Chais stared straight at Damian and said, "If you're saying it's because you wanted us to see your power, to see that the lair can indeed descend to earth... then why didn't you attack that SUV just now?"

Even if he used the mouth puppet to get Kaironan to plead for mercy, Chai Si was far from naive enough to think that Damian would genuinely let Sayuki and the others go out of consideration for their father-son relationship—he was just trying to create an opportunity for them to escape.

"For a moment, I thought I had made a huge mistake. I was certain I would see that SUV roll into the air right away... but you let them go. Don't tell me it's because you had good intentions."

Chai Si let out a soft breath.

“You’ve loved dramatic things since you were little. When you come home and announce your test scores, you’ll even create a suspenseful monologue for Uncle Kai and Aunt Hai as an opening. You only get interested in practicing the most beautiful and visually stunning moves in your fighting class.”

"What exactly are you trying to say?" Damian was getting impatient. "You're an old lady too? What are you reminiscing about the past for?"

Chai Si Ning stood still for a second or two, seemingly slowly analyzing the message of "old lady".

“You said you ‘almost’ completely inherited Damian, and I believe you,” Chais said. “You brought us from the underground parking lot to the surface, turned the parking lot into a spectator hall, turned the hive upside down, and shattered the hive rules… These are all the grand scenes you like, and every move you make carries your design.”

He turned his head and looked at the empty, bare concrete ground.

"All of this you've done is based on... power. But when it comes to impromptu, unpredictable situations, you don't use it. Why?"

Damian shrugged. "Why?"

Chai looked at him and said, "Of course it's because you can't."

Damian smiled.

"you're right,"

He suddenly raised his voice, making the eardrums of the three people present ache slightly: "Is there no limit to the power of such an unimaginable illusion? The changes that can be made each day are limited. Once they are used up, we can only wait for the next day. Before I appeared, I had already used up all the command quota... Now there is only one last scene that you have not seen with your own eyes."

Damian turned to look at Kaironan and said with a smile, "I call it... 'Power Exercise'."

(End of this chapter)