Artifact Report

Chapter 180 Jin Xueli: The Genius of Disruption
Fortunately, Morandao was beaten.

The resident swung his hammer so fast that his arm became a shadow - if Morandao hadn't blocked it with his body, Jin Xueli really wasn't sure whether her hammer could hit it.

As Morando stumbled back and fell, the resident jerked his hand back as if scalded, his angry cry echoing beneath the ceiling:

"I'm so annoyed. I hate this thing. It's so disgusting and unpleasant. I feel like I'm being insulted. What on earth is this thing? Hmm, I'm really curious."

Compared with last time, the residents were hit by the same hammer and felt the same pain.

But when I heard it, I didn't feel the same fear of being trapped in suffocating darkness as last time... I just felt a little dizzy.

Why? Did she get used to it so quickly?
...or is it barking less loudly?

The slender patient rubbed his arms vigorously, and on his face, which was very different from that of a human, a vague human expression appeared - similar to the look on a person's face when dog shit was smeared on it.

"Are you okay?" Jin Xueli stared at it and stretched out her hand towards Morandao on the ground.

"...You're not dead yet." Morandao's face turned pale with pain. He paused, held Jin Xueli with the hand that was not holding the gun, and climbed up again.

"Who did you say you couldn't fight?"

Morandao glanced at her. "Do you really want it to think you're a threat?"

She was answered by a voice that seemed to be churning thick mucus in its throat.

"Is it a threat or not? Let me see what she has in her hand."

The slender patient had just been rubbing his arms beside Chase's bed; but at some point, that meter-long face had passed through the ward and floated next to Jin Xueli's shoulder.

They both froze and slowly turned their eyes away.

...The resident's lower body was still on the hospital bed. Deep within the dark, narrow cleft on its face, densely packed, blurry faces, silently clamoring, rose and fell. At first glance, it looked like a fleshy cauliflower emerging from the darkness.

"Don't keep me waiting. Show me the connector on you." Jin Xueli said.

Morando closed his eyes.

The resident laughed flatly, his laughter divided into even segments without ups and downs, like the sound made by forcibly contracting the diaphragm.

"I'm talking about you. But she's fine too. I want her fake image. Whoever gives it to me first, I'll kill him."

...Is this encouragement?
"Whoever resists can live with me forever."

That was indeed encouragement.

"Don't look at me," Morando said, not knowing to whom. "The docking artifact is disposable. It's a sea fish. I salted and grilled it for dinner because it's only effective if eaten. So attacking me is useless. I can't even vomit it out. I've already digested it."

"Hey, you're having dinner pretty early? It's only a little after nine. How long does the effect of the fish last?"

"Tomorrow morning - is this the time to worry about this?" Morandao pointed at the resident next to him and asked.

...Is this resident so at ease because of curiosity or confidence?

Jin Xueli gripped her weapon tightly, glanced at the residents quietly, and then looked at Morandao.

The two of them just exchanged glances without saying a word.

"Then let me show you the weapon," she said to the resident, suppressing her nervousness. "This is a weapon I designed and made myself based on my previous experience in the nest..."

"Isn't it just a hammer?"

The weapon in her hand, at first glance, did look like a silly hammer.

The reason why it is called silly is that its shape is not as smooth as that of ordinary hammers, and the handle is even a square rod, which always feels uncomfortable to hold.

The "hammer head" is just a cube protruding from the end of the pole, densely engraved with words - although the cube is made of metal, it looks far less heavy and threatening than an ordinary hammer.

"It's not that simple,"

Jin Xueli raised the hammer and said, "Well... let me give you an analogy, and you'll understand. Which party did the person who gave birth to you vote for before he died?"

I really don't know whether to say that curiosity killed the resident; because the slender patient actually answered honestly: "Com--"

This is enough.

Without waiting for it to finish a word, Jin Xueli quickly pressed the "hammer", and a blue square with a donkey pictured on it immediately jumped up from the other end of the square pole; the "hammer" turned rapidly in her hand and turned over, and she swung the pole, and the blue square end swept across and hit the resident's face.

Before it could even let out a howl of pain, Morando shot it.

Countless bullets poured out of its face hole, hitting the slender patient like clusters of autumn leaves trembling in the wind, his face swaying and retreating again and again - it seemed as if there was a ball of jumping, bright fire in his mouth.

Morandao quickly ran out of bullets. She tossed her Desert Eagle aside, placing herself between the resident and Jin Xueli, and turned to her, shouting, "Get out! I don't have any spare magazines!"

Eh? Isn't there a gun on your back? Why not use it?

The question that flashed through Jin Xueli's mind was different from the one she asked: "Why don't you bring a spare magazine?"

"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have had to shoot in my original plan—get out of here!"

But the narrow gap that was fought for has ended.

When Morandao turned around and shouted this, a face that was getting longer and longer appeared behind her; the skin seemed to be unable to hold on and cracked into countless narrow and dark cracks.

The widest one was facing the back of Morando's head.

"Get out of the way!"

The weapon in Jin Xueli's hand swirled and flew towards the slender patient. This time, the slender patient watched it fly towards him, but did not dodge or avoid it. "Bang!" He was hit. His face, which was leaning down, was shocked and wrinkled, but that was all.

"I see. No wonder your weapon is as annoying as a booger. It turns out you've exploited the remaining human traits of our residents. You're so cunning, so treacherous, and so unprincipled. You wouldn't have thought I'd get used to it so quickly, would you? The effects are getting weaker each time."

Jin Xueli's vision is blurred.

...She really hadn't expected it. After all, this was her first time putting theory into practice; but Jin Xueli couldn't even muster the energy to feel upset.

Every word the residents said seemed to be swinging on her nerve endings, making her consciousness dizzy and drifting, as if she had drunk a lot of fake alcohol - all her internal organs came alive, rebelled, and scrambled to crawl out through the esophagus.

By the time she reacted, she had already fallen limply to the ground, and her weapon was nowhere to be found.

Morando was clearly no better off than she was, but he was still able to stand, tugging at her arm—perhaps wanting Jin Xueli to leave quickly. However, she was also too weak to speak, so he could only tug.

"What was written on my square the first time you hit it? Well, I answered Christianity, so could it be the Bible?" The resident was intrigued and didn't rush to attack, but instead started chatting. "But I'm not afraid of the Bible either."

"No, no..."

Jin Xueli took great pains to ensure that only words came out of her mouth, without any dirty talk.

She had to hold off the residents, buy Morando time, and use the gun on her back. Maybe it was a last resort weapon, giving them a chance to escape... She had to hold on to hope.

"It's... Satanism... the number 666, the hexagram, the goat's eye... a declaration of atheism..."

Anyway, Jin Xueli engraved everything that could make a Christian feel ominous, uncomfortable, or taboo, so she engraved a fist-sized square densely.

The inhabitants are all born from human bodies.

If a human has strong beliefs, the people they produce will likely inherit some of these beliefs. Reading the Bible to a human being certainly won't cause them to writhe on the ground—and so people born from human bodies, inheriting the same lineage, will naturally remain unaffected.

Among the many hunters in the den, none of them could be safe from harm by the residents just because they wore a cross.

But the residents seem to be more sensitive to things like "consciousness" and "intention" than humans - perhaps because they are born from abstract concepts such as thinking consciousness, personality desires, etc.?

The mere "thought" that makes humans feel taboo and uncomfortable, if transformed into a physical entity and struck with force, can cause considerable pain to the residents - this is the theory that Jin Xueli put into practice after summarizing her observation experience in the nest, and it actually has some effect.

"Well, I've been a patient at St. Louis Hospital for four or five years, and this is the first time I've encountered your kind of thinking. Sure, you're a natural hunter."

The slender patient actually exclaimed in admiration. "What if I had been a Muslim before—well, that's easy enough, needless to say. What if the body I was born into was a Buddhist? What if it was an atheist?"

Of course there are different ways.

The residents born from Buddhists will theoretically be less hostile when they are hit in the face by the concept of emptiness of the four elements; asking the atheist residents about the nature of "residents" and "nests" should also confuse them for a while.

If all else fails, there are blocks from the two party camps, each engraved with a donkey and an elephant icon; use the donkey when you encounter an elephant, and use the elephant when you encounter a donkey.

Even Jin Xueli took into consideration that non-voters and foreigners might die in the nest, so she prepared two ideological blocks, left and right, in the middle of the pole. Just press the button to pop out the one you need.

The residents said she had no principles, which was not unfair to them - in her hands, the mainstream beliefs in the world were reduced to mere weapons.

Now it seems that this is a weapon that is only suitable for assault and not for fighting.

Jin Xueli's revelation bought her a few brief seconds, but Morandao didn't seize the opportunity to attack. Instead, after regaining his strength, he urged her once more, "Get out! What's happening here has nothing to do with you. Let me talk to this... resident... brother."

It's already this late, and you're still thinking about negotiating? Why don't you just use the one behind you—

Jin Xueli took a breath.

She suddenly understood.

Morandao had actually just said that she had no intention of fighting the residents, and her plan didn't even require her to fire a gun - she probably only carried a gun just in case.

She neither intends to fight nor to rob others...

In other words, what Morando hides behind the scenes does not have lethality, but it can somehow dig out the fake image from the hands of the residents.

In other words, Morando's original plan was most likely to hide in a corner, and after the residents succeeded, he would unexpectedly snatch the "tongue", then rush out and cancel the connection - as for Chai Si, he would probably stay in the nest forever.

He has no way out and will die naturally after seven days without any action; if he can hold on for seven days.

The realization flashed through her mind, and before she even had time to look at Morandao, she was suddenly enveloped by a black shadow above the door - the next second, Jin Xueli and the person who pounced on her rolled to the ground.

In mid-air, the resident's long arm, with who knows how many joints, was lying horizontally; the hand crossed the air and hit the door frame, like a spider with many long legs.

If Morandao had not pounced on her just now, both of them would probably have become flies swatted by a spider on the door.

"There's no round head getting in the way this time. You can't deal with me like you did with that old lady..."

The slender patient didn't know what he was saying, but he was quite happy anyway. "I want you all to die here today and turn into nutrients. Ideally, give me new pseudo-images. I want pseudo-images. I want them so badly. I want them so badly. Eh? What is this?"

It lowered its head, stretched out two fingers like safety posts, and picked up a gun from the ground.

...a plastic water gun.

"Is this what you've been hiding?" The resident turned his head, looked at the two people on the ground, and sniffed hard. "What's that liquid in there? It smells weird."

Morandao smiled bitterly silently.

She glanced at Jin Xueli and whispered, "You're a genius at disrupting things... Now that I've lost that, I can't even get the artifact. Are you ready to evacuate together?"

　This chapter seems long, but in reality, only a few minutes have passed. During these few minutes, Chaimala has been dying, so there is no need to worry.

　　I've been really unlucky these past few days. Nothing major has happened, but there have been a lot of small problems that have been bothering me... I comfort myself that luck is conserved, and I'm bound to have a big stroke of luck. If not, the world will owe me a huge sum of money again.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)