Artifact Report

Chapter 47 Jin Xueli: The Omission of Weirdness

The last time she met Morandao was just a day ago; Jin Xueli didn't expect that they would meet again so soon - in fact, it was just half an hour after Anthony turned into soda.

why?

After all, as the girl named Qiao Xiyue said, these days the only things that must be redeemed, besides one’s own children, are mobile phones.

Jin Xueli has no children, so she can only say that without her mobile phone, she feels like she has lost a piece of her soul.

"Oh, it's the real person this time?" Morandao laughed and said after the call was connected.

There was no need to remind her of embarrassing things, either overtly or covertly. Without anyone reminding her, she could keep a record of all sorts of embarrassing things for at least ten years—and they would always pop into her mind in the middle of the night, keeping her awake.

"I can pay you back now. Are you free tonight?"

Morandao was silent for a second. "Where are you going?"

Jin Xueli reported the address of the "Between the Backlight" bar and heard Morando say, "It's not far from me."

She wanted to ask if she lived nearby, but she was afraid she would misunderstand her as seeking information about the hunters. Before she could open her mouth, Morando said, "I just finished a meeting with a client and happened to be going over there."

That’s great! Others can make money by going to the nest, but she lost 12,000 yuan.

Maybe it was because this thought hung over her head like a dark cloud, occupying most of Jin Xueli's mind; or maybe it was because she knew that she had returned to Blackmore City and no longer needed to be vigilant all the time - no matter what the reason was, when she walked into the "Backlight Room", she had not yet realized that she had made a big mistake.

"do not move!"

A sudden shout startled Jin Xueli, who had just entered the room.

She raised her eyes and found that every hunter in the bar had stood up, staring at her with swords drawn; some even had one hand on their waist, obviously ready to draw their guns.

"What...what?"

Jin Xueli froze the step she had just taken, not daring to move. She looked around the bar and asked blankly, "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with me?"

It would be wrong to say that everyone stood up. In the entire bar, there was one person who was still sitting at the bar, pulling her baseball cap down to cover up her low laughter.

"What do you want?" The bartender, like a Shar Pei, held a bottle, ready to use it as a weapon. "What do you mean by bringing in an active artifact?"

Jin Xueli looked at everyone, then looked down at the half-filled can of soda in her hand, then looked up at everyone again, and suddenly she realized.

"Ah, this, no."

She panicked and was about to put the soda down when someone yelled at her, "Don't move." She didn't dare move and had to explain, "I didn't mean to hurt anyone with it—I did use it—but it has nothing to do with you. I didn't mean to use it on you! I just forgot about it and was carrying it all the way."

Even if the appearance of a pseudo-image is not much different from an ordinary object, when it is placed in front of an experienced hunter, the hunter will be triggered by a sixth sense intuition - especially an active pseudo-image.

Jin Xueli realized belatedly that the nature of her action might be the same as rushing into the airport with a gun.

"...She is a regular customer," the bartender put down the bottle hesitantly and said to everyone.

"How could anyone forget the illusion?" a middle-aged man asked in disbelief.

Morando finally agreed to join in the support.

She slowly turned her chair and said, "It's true. When she was buying the fake image, she ran out of money and even asked a stranger hunter nearby who she had never met to borrow some money."

"How do you know?" A woman slowly took her hands away from her waist, not yet sitting down.

"I'm the stranger." Molandao waved to Jin Xueli casually, "Come, return the money to me."

Under the gaze of a bar hunter, Jin Xueli dejectedly scurried to the bar counter—but the matter was not over yet.

Several hunters, still worried, gathered around her from a distance, looking at her and the soda can, and asked, "How do you use that artifact? What's its function?"

It is possible that they asked knowingly to see if she was telling the truth.

But Jin Xueli had no intention of lying.

"After taking a few big gulps, while your mouth is already full of grape flavor, blow a breath into the target's face as quickly as possible."

"and then?"

"The goal has become grape soda," Jin Xueli said honestly. Sitting on a bar stool, she lifted a boot-clad foot and pointed at it. "I thought it would be a huge amount, so I even wore boots. Look, it turns out it's only about the size of one or two cans of soda."

"You just... killed someone?" asked a strange hunter.

"Don't say that." Even in a place full of hunters, Jin Xueli would not admit this in public. "I just said to blow on the target, I didn't say to kill."

After she said this, the other hunters relaxed a little; some pairs of eyes turned to the soda cans, with a faint gleam in their eyes.

"If it turns into soda, people will see it, right?" asked an old man.

Jin Xueli held up a finger and said, "No. After blowing, the first moment the target is not under human observation, it takes effect. It takes only a moment."

Nothing was left, not clothes, not shoes, not even cell phones - but this detail can't be said directly.

"How much is left?" someone stepped forward. "What's the expiration date?"

"It's halfway there, and the expiration date is—" Jin Xueli suddenly realized what was happening. "Are you interested in buying it?"

Everyone present was an expert, and even though the purple soda was an artifact that appeared for the first time, it only took a dozen minutes to determine its value and function.

Considering that the validity period was less than three hours, and the longer it took, the lower the price would be, Jin Xueli simply sold the remaining half can of soda to the hunter who decided to buy it first - no matter what, this trip at least saved her three or four thousand in losses.

"I've never drunk it orally," she enthusiastically accepted the money and said, "Don't worry! It's quite delicious, but it might be a little flat now."

The hunter looked at her with an expression that was hard to interpret, and hurried out the door with the soda.

"I hope you're not planning to give me the remaining money on the spot," Morando said.

"Of course not," Jin Xueli turned around, but didn't dare to look up at her. She lowered her head and dug in her bag, took out an envelope and gave it to her: "Twelve thousand, you count it."

The fingers that took the envelope were thin and slender, with short, round and transparent nails.

"...Do you have any objections to electronic transfers?" Morandao asked, tapping the envelope lightly.

"I haven't found anyone willing to help me launder money yet. My house is full of cash." Jin Xueli looked at her seemingly powerful hand and said, "If you have a suitable candidate, please recommend one to me."

For some reason, Morandao always smiled. When they first met, she'd thought she was quiet. Jin Xueli had assumed she was the type to put money away without even looking at it, but she'd dumped all the bills onto the table and slowly put them into her envelope, one by one.

"what?"

After taking off his hat, Morandao suddenly turned his eyes towards her - his eyes were shockingly blue, like the blue sky frozen by Arctic ice and snow, or the sea burning by extreme cold, so clean that it seemed as if they had never fallen into the human world.

Everything in the secular world, even gender, seemed to have nothing to do with Morando; however, at this moment she was holding a banknote in her hand.

After she took a closer look and put it away, he said, "...Seven. Of course I have to take a closer look. How do I know you don't have any counterfeit money?"

Where can you get counterfeit money these days?

Jin Xueli simply ordered her a drink and let her concentrate on being a money detector. Morando smiled and said to the Shar Pei-like bartender, "Oh, that's her. She's a real vulture."

Huh? Vulture?

The bartender nodded and said to Jin Xueli, who was now paying attention, "Just a few hours ago, someone informed me that they were looking for information about Vulture. You can call him and tell him how you would like to be rewarded. We can discuss that later."

He wrote a note and handed it to Jin Xueli.

"Chase Monroe?" She thought for a moment and said, "I've never heard of him. Is he a hunter? Which family?"

The bartender stared at her for a second or two. "No, not Hunter... You don't know who Chase Monroe is?"

"Should I know?" Jin Xueli was even more confused than him.

"Forget it, you don't have a clan," the bartender offered to explain. With a wave of his hand, he said, "There's no need to remember the people in those clans. Just talk to them nicely when the time comes and don't upset them. If Chase Monroe is personally involved, it must be a very important matter. Otherwise, it's usually the Kai hunters who contact me."

"Kai's family," Morandao interjected, but it was hard to tell what emotion she was feeling. "...31."

Very important... Jin Xueli weighed these words for a while.

Although the actions of the vulture residents were unusual and dangerous, their importance did not seem to be high enough to require an important member of the family to come forward and personally inquire about the news - not to mention that from what the bartender said, that person was the second-in-command of the Kai family.

What factors have made vultures so important?

Jin Xueli looked at the time on her phone - the more than one hundred messages had long been cleared by her, and disappeared along with Anthony's existence - it was November 11th, 18:10 PM.

She encountered the vulture residents in the early hours of yesterday morning, and a family has been asking about it today.

While marveling at how well-informed the large families were, she thought there must be something else behind the Vulture that she didn't know.

Has anything happened in the hunter circle recently?
Jin Xueli pondered for a moment, then asked the bartender indirectly, but all he could tell her was what she already knew - "What's going on recently? Nothing special worth mentioning. The most sensational thing is that Wei Xilai died. Weren't you here on the day the news broke?"

...Wesile?

Jin Xueli held a cup of ordinary cola that she had just ordered in both hands, her mouth half open, and stood there in a daze. She couldn't believe that she had actually missed such a big thing.

No, no, she had just escaped death from the mystery of whether she was the real Jin Xueli. She was still in shock and her mind was still unsettled. It was normal for her to miss it...

When she woke up on the museum floor, the resident was looking at history in candlelight.

To be precise, what it was reading at that time was the history of Vesile in the candle.

But after it copied itself, it touched the candle, and what appeared should have been Jin Xueli's history; why did Weisilai appear?
And it must be very important, the resident was watching it intently.

What was her connection with Wei Xilai? What relationship did Wei Xilai have with her?
You have to go back and look at the candles to find out, right?

"What's wrong with you?" Morandao glanced at her. "You suddenly look desperate."

"I... I might have to go back to the nest again," Jin Xueli could hear the blood draining from her face when she thought about jumping off the building again.

Is there any way to avoid returning to the nest? She rubbed her temples hard and thought.

The history that the resident was looking at at that time...seemed to be in May.

Yes, she remembered that a large part of the candle had turned into a lake of wax; in the "lake" not far from the residents, there was a scene where a bodyguard crashed his car into the back door of the bar on the night she met Anthony.

That was a new history created by the residents, and it was the only version of history that actually happened.

Jin Xueli suddenly raised her head.

She grabbed her phone and quickly found Amber in her contact list. After a few rings, Amber answered the phone on the other end: "Hello, Sydney?"

"You remember the car crashing into the bar in May, right?" Jin Xueli asked straight to the point. "Did you hear anything about that bodyguard convoy later?"

Amber paused and didn't answer immediately. "Why did you suddenly think of asking this?"

"...You know," Jin Xueli understood.

"No—I wouldn't say I know." Amber seemed a bit embarrassed and said, "Well... I didn't mean to keep it a secret from you forever. I later briefly mentioned what happened that night to my family. I didn't think it was anything special, but after a while, our family's hunter leader came to see me."

Amber took a breath and continued, "He told me to keep what happened that night a secret and not tell anyone. Although I don't know much and don't see the need to keep it secret...but this is the will of the family, so I can only obey."

This is the most important reason why Jin Xueli is unwilling to join the family faction: her actions are decided by others, why?
She didn't even know the second-in-command of the Kai family, so naturally she didn't know who the Morgan family's hunting chief was, so she asked, "Who is your hunting chief?"

"Fu Tailan," Amber said.

Her tone was very flat, and Jin Xueli couldn't tell for a moment whether Amber was used to it or really didn't know how famous the words "Fu Tai Lan" were in the hunter circle.

...When did Fu Tailan enter the Morgan family?
While Jin Xueli was still surprised, Amber seemed to have misunderstood her silence and said, "Are you going to ask Fu Tailan about this? He won't tell you. Besides, our faction is in a state of chaos today. He will soon lead people into the lair..."

"What's wrong?" Jin Xueli asked subconsciously.

"Last week, a small team we sent into the lair was somehow wiped out, and no one has returned yet. The team leader, a man named Jonah, is still known to be alive, but needs urgent rescue. It will be too late if we're not there sooner... A woman who just came out of the lair, whose name I forgot, informed our family."

　Friends, I'm posting this chapter early today because I have to take my cat to the vet soon. She's been losing hair in strange ways lately, and it's really worrying...

　　I didn't expect that the extra chapter would be released before I even finished it. Yes, tomorrow, the 29th. I'm such a procrastinator...

　　Could you please spread the good news (?) about the release? I'm going to try and get 20 first orders. My biggest strength is that I'm not greedy.

　　I ordered one for myself, asked my editor to order one, and then added friends and family. So, there are still 17 people left to win over...

　　I'll go home after seeing the vet (?) and write a thank you note for putting this book on the shelves. Oh, I do have a lot of nonsense I want to say.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)