Artifact Report

Chapter 151: Fu Tailan: The Yellow Bird Going to the Third Floor
At the last moment before entering the screen, Fu Tailan heard a distant, exasperated female voice.

The figure in charge of explaining things in Room 201 seemed to have returned at some point, and no one knew how long he had been gone. He finally couldn't help but curse out loud: "What's going on? I've been—"

The second half of the sentence was cut off by the screen.

Fu Tailan's body merged into the screen unconsciously; as his vision blurred, he fell into the door of Apartment 208 again - this time, it was the reality behind the TV screen.

The apartment was filled with darkness, as if covered with thick dust and drowning out the light. The TV that was originally placed at the door had disappeared.

He turned on the flashlight and scanned the narrow living room, and found that there was no TV in the living room either.

Fu Tailan opened the door silently and walked into the corridor.

In the dark and quiet corridor, every apartment door was closed, including Room 201; there was no TV, no light, and no sound.

Guided by the flashlight, Fu Tailan walked out of Room 208 and headed towards the stairs deep in the corridor.

A few steps ahead is Room 209 with its door tightly closed.

Even if you open the door of Room 209 now, there won’t be a TV inside, and there won’t be a reality of my mother on TV.

After all, "the reality that leads to different realities" is no longer the reality he lives in - it may seem a bit confusing to say this, but in short, he is back.

Fu Tailan did not touch the door of 209.

He walked straight ahead, passing Room 210, without stopping; Fu Tailan raised the flashlight, and the circle of light fell in front of the stairs - between Room 210 and the stairs stood the door of the last apartment.

That was Room 211, which did not exist, in the previous "second-floor corridor of the apartment."

Fu Tailan really wanted to hum; but after crying, his nasal tone was a little heavy and muffled, so he just sniffed hard.

The second floor of the apartment really put a lot of thought into deceiving people.

Anyone who breaks the illusion, resists the "welcome", and finally walks down the entire corridor will want to rush up the stairs and leave the second floor early, right?
But the trap is in the "stairs" just now.

Fu Tailan had cried until he was dizzy, but he still hadn't lost his intuition as a hunter - if there was any doubt in the whole process of walking through the corridor, there was undoubtedly only one.

Those are the hands that come out of the TV to "receive people".

The "pick up someone" setting is a little unnatural - it's not that it can't exist, but its existence should be to achieve a certain purpose.

Fu Tailan initially thought that it was trying to force people into the TV, but after thinking about it carefully, he felt that it was not right.

If you are not tempted by the reality on TV, you will not fall into hallucinations; if you are not tempted by the reality on TV, you will definitely be careful and will not stand directly in front of the TV, so naturally there will be no chance of "picking up" someone.

From another perspective, when a person falls into a hallucination, or is distracted like he just was, and loses vigilance, he may accidentally stay for thirty seconds, giving his hands a chance to appear - but in that case, wouldn't they be repelled too easily?
Fu Tailan wasn't even sure whether the bullet hit the TV, but he had already loosened his hands around his neck, giving him a chance to break free.

After finally waiting for an opportunity for the prey to stay for more than thirty seconds, you let it go so easily?
The unnatural feeling had grown stronger since he escaped, becoming increasingly impossible for him to ignore.

Think about it more deeply, what would happen to a hunter after he was almost dragged into the TV with his hands?
According to common sense, people who are still frightened will quicken their pace and rush to the "stairs leading to the third floor".

Not letting people linger in front of the TV probably also has a suggestive effect: stopping and walking between apartment doors (illusions) always makes you feel uneasy. What if you end up in the wrong place? Of course, it's best to get upstairs as quickly as possible.

Once he realized this, Fu Tailan stopped moving.

Come to think of it...it's a good thing he took pictures of all the residents' mailboxes when he first entered the apartment.

When he saw that the last room at the end of the corridor was Room 210, he felt something was amiss; and when Fu Tailan pulled up the photos on his mobile phone, he finally understood the source of the strange feeling - there were clearly eleven mailboxes in the row of residents on the second floor.

Eleven mailboxes correspond to eleven apartments; and where is the last apartment?
Fu Tailan has two guesses about this.

First, a huge screen was pulled up in front of Room 211. The staircase he saw was actually a projection screen, which probably allowed people to enter just like a TV screen;
Second, since he went up to the second floor, he has entered another parallel reality. In this parallel reality, there is no Room 211.

Either way, it means the same thing: he can't walk up the stairs ahead.

Going up to it means that he has completely chosen a parallel reality that is different from his original life.

Ever since Fu Tailan began regularly entering the lair at the age of twelve, he had witnessed countless rule areas, scripts, traps, and other vague areas that had not yet been named by hunters...

Although there are occasional exceptions, there is a general rule that the rules told to hunters may contain concealment and traps, but there is rarely blatant deception.

The woman in Room 201 clearly told him from the beginning that there was a real parallel reality behind the TV.

In that case, isn’t the reality where Fu Tailan originally lived also real?
Compared to other realities, isn't his own reality also a "parallel reality"?

Of all the TV content on the second floor, the only one that matched his original reality—that is, the reality that there was a staircase on the second floor that allowed people to go up and down normally—was Room 208.

It's so deceptive, the real exit is not at the exit, but hidden in the room.

If the trap in the corridor of the second-floor apartment is not about "luring people into other realities" but about "making it impossible for people to return to their original reality" - then everything makes sense.

Even what his mother said had an explanation; because even if he went back then, he would not be returning to his original reality.

Thinking of her, Fu Tailan paused.

He took a breath in and exhaled again. ...Everything that happened in the corridor of the second-floor apartment was over.

Since he didn't choose that reality, there was no need to think about it anymore.

Before entering the corridor and after leaving the corridor, Fu Tailan's life has not changed; what he wants to do has never changed.

Only by taking the nest into your hands...

When Fu Tailan reached the stairs, he turned his head and looked to his left - there was only a blank wall there.

He withdrew his gaze, held the gun in his hand, half-crouched, and walked up the stairs step by step.

The woman in Room 201 only said half a sentence, but judging from the word "again", she should not be the first person to see through the trap on the second floor - Mai Minghe should be upstairs.

She can see through the trap and her brain works pretty fast.

However, Fu Tailan was not only cautious but also quick. It had only taken him more than half an hour from the time he entered the gate to now. Considering that Mai Minghe also had an ankle injury, the two of them might still be trapped on the third floor.

To avoid being fooled by the same trick, he also counted the mailboxes in the photo; there were indeed only ten apartments on the third floor.

When he was about to climb the last step to the third floor, a loud noise broke the air again - Fu Tailan's heart skipped a beat and he immediately squatted on the steps.

The smell of gunpowder that he hadn't smelled just now, the thick smoke that was drifting, the fine dust floating in the air... all suddenly rushed into his eyes along with the sound of the explosion; he quickly covered his mouth to avoid coughing from being choked.

"Sea Reed!"

Amidst the reverberating aftermath of the explosions, Mai Minghe was shouting from deep within the corridor, "Your foot is injured, why were you running around? I really should have broken both of your bones!"

When Hai Luwei replied, his voice was clearly very close, but Fu Tailan couldn't tell where he was. "Are you addicted to hurting others? You apologized to me before, but was that all fake?"

Mai Minghe seemed both furious and helpless, but no matter how loud she shouted, no one could tell where she was in the apartment. "No, no, I'm sorry, okay? Please, stop running around!"

"Who's running around?" Sea Reed said unconvincedly, "I'm trying to get upstairs! Are you planning to betray me here?"

Eh? I don't know what kind of trap is on the third floor, but it looks like... it's pretty exciting.
Fu Tailan stretched his neck from the bottom of the stairs and took a look at the corridor on the third floor.

The corridor was covered in a white mist due to the thick smoke, but a rough outline could be vaguely seen.

Aren't the stairs just at the other end of the corridor?

It seems that if I just walk straight ahead, I can go upstairs... isn't that right?

Really, this is a rare opportunity to take advantage of the situation. If I can hide on the stairs and quietly watch what they are playing for a while, then when I go upstairs, won’t I be more confident?

Unfortunately, you can't stay on the stairs.

Fu Tailan suddenly realized this hidden rule in the apartment when he went up to the second floor.

He didn't know yet how long a person could stay on the stairs; but he didn't want to be chased by danger and run up to the third floor in a hurry.

Let's see if I can sneak upstairs without them noticing me...

He took the last step tentatively.

Fu Tailan did not walk into the corridor on the third floor as he had imagined.

When his vision blurred and then became clear again, he found himself standing in the entrance hall of an apartment.

The door with the number 301 on it was slowly closing behind me, shutting silently.

Before him was a very spacious living room - a living room that was large and grand, but also wrong.

The building itself is not big, and it can be divided into ten apartments, which is enough to show that the floor space of each apartment is very shabby; how come the living room of 301 is so spacious?
Fu Tailan looked around and found an envelope on the hook used to hang keys on the wall next to the door.

"For the third player to enter the household," the words were written on the envelope.

That's for me, right?

Fu Tailan took the envelope, opened it, and found an A4 paper with small print inside. He glanced at it and saw that it was indeed an introduction to the third floor.

He stood there, quickly read the rules on the paper, and quietly put it into his bag.

The sound of Hai Luwei came from about twenty meters away from him, shouting to Mai Minghe, asking her where she was now; the two of them asked and answered each other, both shouting at the top of their lungs.

...None of them realized that there was a new person named Fu Tailan on the third floor.

　I now feel more and more that the artifact report is not like an online article, it is just published in the form of an online article.

　　But it’s quite different from traditional publications. I don’t know what it is exactly…

　　
　
(End of this chapter)