Artifact Report

Chapter 69 Mai Minghe · Face of responding to the nest theme event

Mai Minghe's gaze swept around the bathroom and returned to the back of the woman who was putting on makeup.

"Why?" she asked suddenly.

The back of the woman putting on makeup remained motionless. "...Why?"

"I don't understand."

Mai Minghe had never heard of such a thing before: "I want to leave, why won't you let me go? What are you doing with these rules and instructions? I didn't even agree to cooperate. Doesn't this require mutual consent? How can you force a deal?"

The back of my head fell into silence.

"Also, you're embarrassed. Why did you let me find it? What does this have to do with me leaving? You don't even have the nerve to open the door for me, do you?"

After nearly ten seconds, the makeup-touching woman slowly asked, "Have you never been to the lair before?"

“Of course I’ve been here,” Mai Minghe said. He wasn’t sure if it could see him, but he still shook his finger at it and said, “So you can’t treat me like a newbie.”

"You can't leave until you find my face." The woman putting on makeup emphasized again.

"That's why I'm asking you," Mai Minghe sighed. "What's the connection between these two things? Why? I'm telling you, you have to wash my feet before you can eat. Are you happy with that?"

"No, I'm not happy..."

"Isn't this going to end?"

The bathroom was cold and silent for a long time.

"Have you never played... games?" The woman putting on makeup seemed to have finally found the right words. "To progress in the game, you must accept the mission—"

"Like a game of chicken?"

"No, online games, console games, escape rooms—"

"Never heard of any."

The woman who was putting on makeup fell silent again.

"…You know the epic novel? The Lord of the Rings?"

"Ah, I've seen this." Mai Minghe hadn't expected to discuss human cultural works with a woman with only her back in the nest. "Do you like it?"

"No... Frodo accepted the Lord of the Rings quest and set out on his journey..."

"I understand," said Mai Minghe, "but I am not Frodo. I don't want to accept the task of finding a face."

She didn't say anything definite. What if she said "I don't accept" and the resident got angry?
"No, you have to find it!" The makeup woman's tone hardened. "If you want to leave, you have to find my face."

"Why? Borrow one from the guy in the restroom. I don't think you'll need it."

Mai Minghe was not deliberately looking for trouble, she really didn't understand - and she also thought that if she figured this out, would it help her "find face"?

After all, it seems that this broken face must be found no matter what.

The woman stood there in awe for several seconds before finally speaking softly, "I've already told you, this is a restaurant. You can operate by the rules, or not. Your choice has put the rules, logic, and prompts online. That's why my face has to be separated from me. This is a rule."

Mai Minghe's attention and ears pricked up simultaneously.

"I'm asking you, how can I eat without a face? Isn't a restaurant a place for people to eat?" The thin voice of the woman who was putting on makeup suddenly became high, sharp and urgent: "My face, my face, my face, I want to eat, I want to eat, I want to eat—"

Mai Minghe subconsciously took a half step back and was about to cover his ears, but the back of the woman's head, who was putting on makeup, returned to calm.

"I have to eat enough food in time," she said slowly, "because there are several diners in this restaurant at the same time. I have to eat enough food before them so that I can continue to occupy this territory... When you find my face, I will start to eat hard to express my gratitude to you. Once I push the other diners aside, I will allow you to leave the restaurant alive."

"Wait a minute, you mean, after you find the face, you still have to 'push the other diners aside' before you can let me go? What if you can't push them away?"

"Then you'll have to find my face as soon as possible. The sooner I start eating, the sooner I can let you out."

Even if it was a lie, she had no way to verify it.

Mai Minghe tensed up and asked, "You mean, 'find all the faces'? What? Is there more than one face?"

"I only have one face," the makeup woman said from the back of her head. "There's a themed event going on in the lair lately... To support this event, my face has been shattered into seven pieces, scattered around the restaurant. Your task is to collect all seven pieces of my face based on the clues."

"What theme event? Why is the nest still holding an event?" Mai Minghe knew she should hurry, but she was still curious. Besides, it wasn't easy to meet a local who could communicate; how could she not try to dig out as much information as possible?

"It seems you're not one of the hunters specially invited by the Nest, ha, ha, ha." The makeup woman said softly, "Since the Nest hasn't issued a 'recruitment invitation' to you, you don't have the right to know. Don't worry, even if you don't know about the theme event, it won't affect your search. Now, can you go find a face?"

I originally thought it would only take finding a face and saying a few words, but the difficulty turned out to be seven times greater.

"You have to give me some clues, right?" Mai Minghe sighed. "Please tell me everything you need to tell me."

The explanation of the woman who touches up her makeup is that it takes so much time and effort that it is worrying.

Mai Minghe firmly believed that a good memory was not as good as a bad pen. When the woman who was putting on makeup said "all resources can be used", she immediately went to the makeup bag on the sink, took out the light brown eyebrow pencil of the woman who was putting on makeup, and went into the toilet cubicle again - the female model turned her face to her shoulder and watched her pull off a few pieces of toilet paper.

When she bent over the sink and wrote lightly on the toilet paper, the back of "Mai Minghe" at the other end of the sink was still standing upright and motionless.

With the back of his head watching, Mai Minghe wrote down rows of key words on the paper.

"The rules maintain a certain degree of fairness. The seven faces are hidden in places where you, as an ordinary restaurant guest, can see them. They are not hidden under the floor tiles behind the bar, in the refrigerator in the kitchen, or on the ceiling... Unless you get a specific tip, they will not be hidden in the clothes or backpacks of other restaurant guests."

The woman applying makeup seemed to think this was very important and emphasized it again, "Generally speaking, it's the place that ordinary customers can see when they walk around the restaurant and look carefully. Do you understand?"

This is a very necessary restriction; otherwise, after being broken into seven pieces, each piece would be very small. In a restaurant as big as this, how long would it take to find the face?

The first part of the face is the forehead which includes the two eyebrows.

The second part of the face is the entire nose.

The third and fourth are the left and right eyes respectively. The fifth face is the area from the philtrum to the chin, including the mouth.

The left cheek and the right cheek are the sixth and seventh parts of the face.

Clues and hints are scattered throughout the restaurant, which may come from the written menu or the conversations between diners...This requires Mai Minghe to discover them bit by bit.

During the face-hunting process, Mai Minghe has "priority," meaning she can search however she wants without worrying about being stopped by restaurant staff or other guests.

"The restaurant is my residence," the makeup-applying woman said with a gentle laugh. "I'm asking you to look for something in your own residence, so of course no one will stop you. But the longer you delay, the lower your priority will be. If you don't find everything within 30 minutes, the other diners who want to occupy my territory will start to use various tactics to hinder you."

Then your territory isn't very secure. Mai Minghe swallowed his words and asked, "What method?"

"For the first thirty minutes, every word they uttered had one of two properties: either a clue or a hint, or useless nonsense.

"However, starting from the second and a half hour, what they say will become nonsense, lies and traps, and they will no longer provide clues and hints.

"From the third and a half hour onwards, they have free rein. They can't kill you directly, but they can take indirect measures, such as setting up 'bombs' or 'dead ends' in the restaurant, or sending agents to attack you."

Mai Minghe never expected that he would have to risk his life to escape this seemingly non-threatening situation—"Bomb? Dead end? Agent?"

"As for bombs, you can imagine them as places you shouldn't touch, words you shouldn't say, things you shouldn't do, and so on. You need to discover the specific restricted areas through clues and hints. They'll lure you into touching the restricted areas, and once you fall for them, it's like you've detonated the 'bomb'... I don't need to tell you what will happen to you after detonation."

The back of his head chuckled softly. It was clearly trying to save face, but imagining Mai Minghe's death seemed to bring him great pleasure.

"Dead ends are easy to understand. If you had just crawled out from under the restroom stall door, you would have stepped into a dead end. Dead ends are always marked with warning signs. For example, didn't you just see your own back, retreating towards you? However, dead ends set by other guests may not have such obvious warning signs, so be careful."

In other words, if you leave the restroom and haven't found all seven faces in more than an hour, you'll be faced with "bombs," "dead ends," and—"What is an agent?"

"You are my agent," said the makeup woman. "Other diners might also find other hunters to act as their agents, if there happens to be an unlucky hunter nearby."

Is it possible that a situation of confrontation with hunters will arise?
I hope I don’t run into the Morgan hunters face to face - it would be funny if they stayed in the restaurant outside for half a day.

Seeing that the woman who was putting on makeup had almost finished her instructions, Mai Minghe sighed, carefully folded a few pieces of toilet paper, and put them away.

There wasn't even a photo of the woman putting on makeup, so this was the only way she could find one.

"Well, I should go out and find your face."

After saying this, something he had never said in the previous eighty-six years, Mai Minghe asked, "Are you just going to wait for me here? If I have any last-minute questions, can I come back and ask you?"

"Yes, I'll be waiting right here for you. Every time you find a piece, bring it to me immediately. You can come back and ask, but don't forget, the more time you waste going back and forth, the worse it will be for you."

The woman putting on makeup smiled gently. "I'm really looking forward to working with you. You want to go home early, too, right?"

　Yesterday, I had to make a phone call for work, and I stayed up until 4:30 in the morning, feeling groggy. These last few chapters have been incredibly taxing, and I didn't have much to begin with, and now I've worn them down to the skin... If you don't eat grapes, you don't spit out the skins; if you don't eat your brain, you spit out your brain skins.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)