Artifact Report

Chapter 142: Chai Si: The one who arrived before him

"Brother Chai Si, I'll be embarrassed if you do this."

Under Chai Si's big hand, Han Liuyue said almost calmly: "Although I don't have that intention towards you, I am a woman after all."

...Is it a change in her personality after she encountered an unexpected incident, or has she become smooth-talking after spending one night with Jin Xueli?

He paused for a moment before Chai Si whispered, "Shut up."

"Oh."

Han Liuyue now still obeys orders - even when her hands and feet are tied and her clothes are torn on the back.

Early this morning, Chai Si was woken up by a phone call.

The subordinates who went to monitor Han Liuyue last night told him on the phone that they had to abduct her back home and put her in a detention cell.

"I don't know how she found us..."

Over the phone, the subordinate sounded terrified. "By the time I realized it, she was already standing behind me, staring at me motionlessly. Although she didn't show any aggressive behavior at the moment... we were still worried, so we tied her up."

After locking Han Liuyue into the prison cell, perhaps to test her true nature at the moment, or perhaps out of consideration for their peers, the family sent hunters to bring her water and food.

"She... doesn't seem to recognize those things anymore."

It was the following words that made Chai Si immediately put on his coat and rush over - and it was also for the same reason that he suddenly had a guess.

"Her concept was fine; she knew people needed to drink water and eat. But she actually acted like... it was like she was seeing water and food for the first time in her life. I urged her to drink some water, and she said yes, because she was thirsty and hadn't had any water since leaving the nest. This was already unusual... Then I watched her hesitate for a few seconds and put her finger into the bread."

Her abnormality was even more serious than yesterday.

So, isn't it that "some kind of alienation has occurred" in Han Liuyue, but that "some kind of alienation is occurring"?
If it is a process, then perhaps it can be stopped and reversed - but how much time is left?
Chai Si gently pulled with both hands, and the autumn sweatshirt broke into two pieces with a "hiss", like a paper-made piece, revealing Han Liuyue's back.

The thick, suffocating, deathly white color of the "Noh mask" was indeed spreading down from her neck inch by inch, and now had passed the middle of her back.

Chai Si thought for a moment, wrapped his fingers with his clothes, pressed them against the pale skin, and asked, "Do you feel anything?"

"Yes," Han Liuyue replied, not caring at all about her current situation. "I felt like you were poking me."

Han Liuyue was like a dead end. Apart from the abnormality on her surface that was visible to the naked eye, Chai Si's various attempts and explorations had all hit a wall in the dead end.

I have to go to the underground exhibition hall and find the clues as to why she has become like this...

However, Han Liuyue could not wait for him for long.

Judging from the spreading trend, by the day after tomorrow at the latest, her entire body will turn into the same color as the Noh mask - this is the most optimistic estimate; no one knows what will happen then.

"Why don't you let me go?"

There were people who volunteered, like Tian Xi, who had come to him right now. "Even Han Liuyue was caught unknowingly. You wouldn't be able to trust anyone else, would you?"

Chai Si glanced at the time on his phone screen.

September 21th, 2025

8: 10AM
Like Han Liuyue, Tianxi is also one of the most outstanding hunters in the family.

However, he was slightly injured during the battle in the cemetery, and for the den dwellers and other strange creatures, he is now far more attractive than ordinary hunters...

The scar on the back of my hand seemed to be tightening and hurting slightly.

He thought that his abilities were no less than others, but his strength was always of no use at critical moments.

"I'm sitting at home, but I let you, a wounded man, enter the lair?"

Chai Si endured and endured, and finally did not say this out loud.

Finally, he simply said, "Let me think about it."

After Tianxi left, Chai Si was silent for a few minutes and turned on the video in Han Liuyue's handheld camera again.

The method that would allow him to enter the lair must be hidden in Vesile's life history - as long as it was recorded, he would find it.

Vesile received the first and only "false image report" more than half a year ago.

On the surface, that fake report doesn't have many words, but if you dig deeper, you'll find that it contains a lot of information - for example, the description of the third action point says "transfer pathway" instead of "obtain pathway."

Just a difference in wording may determine how Vesile acts.

The idea of ​​allowing people who don't have access to a channel to "develop" it themselves does not have many followers - people who don't know about the existence of the nest naturally don't want a channel; and more than half of those who know about the existence of the nest wish they would never enter the nest in their lifetime. Instead of developing a channel, they would rather close it.

After all, there are probably not many people like Chai Si in the entire Blackmore City.

However, the "transfer" pathway is different.

The essence of transfer lies in "seizing".

It doesn’t matter to whom the access is given or how it is handled; what matters most is from whom the access can be taken away.

In the endless pursuit, fighting, and robbing of hunters, is there any better way to completely crush your competitors than to prevent them from ever entering their lair? If someone had something like this, and the slightest word got out, no one would be afraid of Vesile's wealth and power anymore, and he would immediately become the target of public criticism.

What he thought of, Vesile probably thought of as well.

Weisilai would never assign this task to a large family; he would not even send out the task in his own name - after all, once the three words "Wesilai" were mentioned, he would become the focus of attention.

As long as Vesile has auxiliary intelligence, he would prefer to give the task to a small, marginal faction or a lone hunter, hiding it in an inconspicuous place and mixing it with other trivial commissions.

Moreover, he would probably disguise himself as someone who wants to open a passage and hide it deep under the water.

Compared with the population base, the number of hunters is very small; however, the hunter's world is still large enough to accommodate countless dark corners. Even Chai Si dare not say that he knows every corner and wrinkle of the hunter's world clearly.

...At times like this, we have to find the scavenger of this world.

"Mr. Monroe,"

Martin Hartley answered Chase's call on the first ring. "I didn't expect to hear from you again so soon... What's wrong? Did we miss something?"

"No," Chase replied, "Whether it's the police station or the cemetery, you've kept it very clean."

"Thank you so much. Is there anything else I can do to help?"

"I need some information."

Martin Hartley was quiet for a few seconds.

"...Mr. Monroe," he finally said, "The reason I can continue to do this business is because I know the boundaries, what I can say and what I can't say. What we do is not our secret, but our client's secret."

"I know."

"If anyone asks me about the Kai family, you wouldn't want me to tell anyone about the cemetery. I'm still alive today because I'm tight-lipped and can't be pried open with money."

Chai Si snorted and smiled silently.

"Don't worry, the information I want to obtain won't affect your livelihood or your life. I don't even need to pay you to open your mouth...it's just a token of your appreciation for your old client."

Martin said "Hmm?" in confusion and asked, "What do you want to know?"

"I don't want to inquire about the news of the big families. I want to inquire about the small-time and small-time people, the lowest-paying jobs you receive, the ones that can be described as 'menial work'."

"……Eh?"

Martin was stunned for a moment, then laughed. "Mr. Monroe, you're really tricky. As long as it doesn't involve the confidential information of major clients, you can ask about our miscellaneous work, that's fine."

The time span that Chai Si wanted to inquire about was too long - if he was not one of Martin's biggest clients, he would probably never have such patience to call up the records early in the morning and spend an hour or two briefly describing to him all the odd jobs he had taken on in the past few months.

"...We are not the only organization that provides aftermath to hunters,"

When he finished the record, Martin's mouth was dry and he drank water repeatedly. He said, "Maybe you should ask other people—"

"No need, I've already found the target," Chai Si whispered. "It's in your work records."

His sense of smell once again led him to where the prey was hiding.

"Ah? Which one is it? Can I ask?" Martin was stunned.

"Of course not." Chai Si smiled and said.

In the early morning of November 11, Martin's men received an urgent request to dress up as police officers and go to the scene to calm the situation.

The request itself is not surprising; what is surprising is what they want to quell.

An unknown hunter went to visit an old lady who had been unable to go downstairs in the middle of the night. Somehow, the old lady found the way and the hunter disappeared. In order to prevent the caregiver she called from making things worse, the hunter had no choice but to call the Martin family.

...Bingo.

Whether it was the hunter's family or their station, they all had a sense of being a small-time, far away from the center of power and wealth.

Even if the other party was a hunter, it couldn't stop Chase from rushing into their office like a bulldozer - when he heard the name "Chase Monroe", the leader of the Hunter family faction turned pale and lost the will to resist.

"H-how did you know?"

He swallowed hard, as if using willpower to keep his feet steady and not fall.

"We...we did receive a commission. We found an artifact that can extract one person's access and give it to another...We haven't been able to contact the client yet, and we're still worried."

There are almost no words, no language in the world, that can describe how Chai Si felt when he heard the next sentence.

"But, but... Mr. Monroe, do you know Fu Tailan? On the night of the 19th—no, that was after midnight, it should have been the 20th... Anyway, it was very late—he came to my house in person and offered a very high price to buy the fake image."

　Oh my god, after rushing so hard, I finally made it to 12 o'clock!
　　This chapter has so much information that I managed to squeeze it all into just over 3,000 words... I'm very proud of it.

　　The water writing ability of hypocritical money-making has declined again!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)