Artifact Report

Chapter 192 Mai Minghe: Officially Entering the Hunter World

When Mai Minghe woke up, the bedroom was dark and it was still night that shone through the curtains.

She was sleeping in her familiar bedroom, and in the corner of her view was the railing of the nursing bed. Hanging from the railing was a plastic bag, filled with toilet paper used by the social worker to wipe her mouth, leftover sweet cookies, and other garbage that Mai Minghe couldn't get up but needed to throw away.

It turns out that everything was just a dream...

The despair, loss, and fear I felt at that moment were like waking up and finding myself trapped in a car, wrapped in a steel coffin, and sinking to the bottom of a deep river.

Just when Mai Minghe was about to cry, she suddenly realized that she was feeling dull pain in her feet; everything in the room seemed clearer than usual... Yes, she could actually see the plastic bag clearly.

She fumbled to sit up from the nursing bed, and the first thing she saw was her foot, which had been hastily bandaged into a pillow.

It’s not a dream… It’s not a dream.

Mai Minghe sat on the bed in a daze, slowly recalling - no, savoring - everything that happened in the past few days.

Whether good, bad, or scary, they were all precious to her. Mai Minghe never imagined that she could once again be enveloped in the aura of youth, wandering through the Transfiguration Paradise and witnessing all sorts of dark daisies.

Even the hunter's doctor was so sneaky and full of secrets... She really opened the door to the underworld.

It seems that she needs to adjust her mindset, because she might encounter fatal situations from time to time in the future. When she was in the clinic today, she even thought about whether she should call the police. Ordinary people's thoughts like these probably won't have much room for survival in the future.

No matter how frightened Dr. Nate was, the injury was finally treated at her request. Before leaving, Dr. Nate sold each of them a crutch - because hunters often suffer injuries, there is a small warehouse in his office, which is full of support frames, various crutches, folding wheelchairs and other things, and the prices are much higher than the market price.

Mai Minghe leaned on his crutches and picked up a small clock. He found that it was 22: in the morning and it was already the nd.

It was around four or five in the morning of the 21st when she and Hai Luwei went to see the doctor. After returning home, she didn't even have time to eat and fell asleep immediately, and has been sleeping ever since.

Hai Luwei had reminded her that people usually sleep for a long time after coming out of the nest; but sleeping for nearly twenty hours in a row was really beyond Mai Minghe's expectations.

Has the child woken up a long time ago?
A simple treatment cost old lady Mai Minghe half of her savings. When young Mai Minghe woke up, the first thing she thought about was to find a customer for the fake lipstick. After hesitating for a moment, she took out a piece of paper with Hai Luwei's number written on it.

He said that I should call him after I woke up, any time is fine. After all, hunters don’t have a normal schedule... Then 1:30 in the morning should be fine, right?
The phone rang again and again, but no one answered. When Mai Minghe was about to start suspecting that the number was wrong, she finally heard Hai Luwei's sleepy and unclear "Hello".

He was obviously woken up and sounded very aggrieved: "...You woke up already?"

“Yes, yes…” Mai Minghe had the illusion that he had done something wrong.

After a rustling noise, Sea Reed seemed to be about to cry. "You and I have only slept for nearly twenty hours, right? Why are you awake?"

talent?
Should the word "cai" be used here?

"Are you really not sleepy?"

"I'm not sleepy," Mai Minghe was also puzzled. "I've slept for twenty hours. How could I still be sleepy?"

"Hunters usually have to sleep for a day or two after they go out!"

Could it be that the elderly don’t sleep enough?
"Is your mind clear? No tinnitus, hallucinations, or any sense of disharmony with your body?"

He's more of a doctor than Dr. Nate.

"None of that," Mai Minghe answered as he twisted his waist, kicked his legs, and moved his shoulders, doing some arithmetic problems in his head - except for being so hungry that he could eat people alive, everything was fine.

"That's really rare... Could that long black artifact on your body also have the function of preventing nest dissociation?"

Hai Luwei didn't expect her to answer. After thinking for a moment, he said reluctantly, "We're all awake now... Never mind, let's go to 'Backlight Room' now. Let's finish early and come back to sleep... Well, I can even grab a meal while I'm at it."

"Between the Lights" is a bar that seems to be well-known in the hunter circle, especially among lone hunters and hunters from small families.

At two o'clock in the morning, "Backlight Room" was not like other bars with a lack of customers and a desolate look. As soon as the two pushed the door open, they were immediately hit by the voices, music, heat and the smell of alcohol in the room.

"Oh!" Mai Minghe couldn't help but open his eyes wide.

The structure and decoration of the bar were similar to the bars she had in mind. The most noticeable and outstanding difference was the guests in the bar.

It seemed as if everyone knew that in the "backlight", they no longer had to hide their hunter side; the shadows of the nest and Blackmore City seemed to be intertwined and overlapped in this bar, forming a unique hunter space outside of the two worlds.

A man with a doll-like hairstyle sat at the bar. For some reason, he kept putting eye drops in his eyes. As Mai Minghe walked past the bar, he heard his companion remind him, "Hey, it's been half a minute. It's time to get the medicine."

"Less than half a minute, right? Didn't it just pass by... Ugh, so annoying."

As the doll-haired man spoke, he turned his head and his left eyeball suddenly burst into laughter, "Oh ha ha ha ha", and cursed him with a series of passionate swear words.

He seemed startled, and amidst his companion's gloating "I told you so," he quickly put some eye drops in his eyeball, which then grumbled and quieted down. ... Then what about sleeping? Mai Minghe wondered blankly.

In a corner, a few young men were arguing fiercely about something, each holding a glass of beer. Upon closer listening, they were arguing about the share of the profits after selling a fake image.

The blonde girl said, "Boo died to get this artifact!"

People were all dead, and Mai Minghe suddenly felt nervous.

Then, the blonde girl pushed the chestnut-haired girl next to her and said, "Xiaobu, don't you think you should get a bigger share?"

...So the dead Boo was there too. A kid who wanted to taste beer even in death.

Mai Minghe didn't even feel that anything was wrong.

At another table, a woman with a ponytail was talking when she finally became impatient. She said "I know", stood up from her seat, tilted her head back and threw a handful of what looked like candy beans into her mouth - the next second, her whole body suddenly swelled up rapidly with knotty muscles, filling up her loose sportswear. It felt as if if you accidentally bumped into her, you would break a bone.

As the ponytailed woman walked toward the door, the man she was talking to shouted, "Remember, you must leave your fingerprints!"

What criminal activities must leave fingerprints?

Has this bar always been this fun?

Mai Minghe's curiosity had long been filled and expanded. If she were a balloon, she would have floated into the sky because of her curiosity.

Injured and sleep-deprived (this is questionable), Hai Luwei whispered to her, "You're stretching your neck too far. Pull it back a little. If someone sees you and gets upset, who can we, the two injured ones, defeat?"

Mai Minghe was startled - at that moment, she also did something that was very consistent with the atmosphere of this bar.

She touched the top of her head and subconsciously asked, "Has my second head emerged again?"

Someone in the booth next to her glanced at her, then turned away and continued chatting.

"Hey, this place is free, let's sit here."

The man who had just asked to leave his fingerprints also paid the bill and got up to leave. Hai Luwei quickly gestured to Mai Minghe to take a seat - the bar was doing so well that it was always full, with new customers coming in from time to time, so it was not easy to find a seat.

After the two sat down, they didn't dare to leave their seats. They tilted their heads and stared closely at the waiters who were coming and going in the crowd in the bar, trying to catch her taking orders; this was the case for both ordinary people and hunters.

"Why is it called Between the Lights?" Mai Minghe asked. "It's a very artistic name, not something a hunter would come up with."

"You look down on hunters, don't you?" Sea Reed laughed. "The bar owner once hung a poster advertising it. It left a deep impression on me."

While waiting for the waiter, he explained, "It's said that in Japanese aesthetics, which particularly appreciate the beauty of shadows, 'backlighting' is a frequently used motif due to its sense of mystery and haziness. Furthermore, backlighting exists because one area is darker than another, so 'backlighting' also implies a yearning for another. Isn't this a bit like the existence of a nest?"
"And 'space' also has meaning. The world isn't a whole made up of parts; we just happen to name the parts 'streets' and 'hills'... Between these named parts, there's an inexpressible ambiguity, called 'space'. 'Backlight Space' is, in fact, the very essence of a nest, a place to which every hunter returns time and again..."

When Mai Minghe was dazzled by what he heard, Hai Luwei suddenly raised his arm and shouted, "Waiter! Hello! Here, we haven't ordered yet!"

...He turned really fast.

The bar had a limited menu. After Hai Luwei ordered two burgers, two plates of buffalo spicy chicken wings, and two plates of fries, he looked up at Mai Minghe and asked, "What would you like to eat?"

"Are those all yours?"

Mai Minghe checked with his stomach and it seemed to understand. He then said to the waitress, "Then... I'll have the same. I'll also have a Caesar salad."

As soon as the waitress left, Hai Luwei was suddenly stunned.

His gaze passed over Mai Minghe's shoulder and fell on a booth diagonally behind her; he seemed afraid to stare at her all the time, but his eyes seemed to be tied to a string, drifting over from time to time.

"What's wrong?" Mai Minghe asked.

"Don't look back," Hai Luwei whispered, lowering his eyes to study the wooden tabletop in front of him. "Speaking of the devil, the devil appears... What a coincidence, tell me."

"What Cao Cao? Who did you see?"

Sea Reed coughed and covered his mouth with his hand. "Chase Monroe is sitting over there."

　Today's chapter is posted a little late because I found it very interesting (don't tell me if you don't like it), and I wrote it with great enthusiasm, and it became longer and longer as I wrote... The name "Against the Light" was designed when Jin Xueli appeared, and it finally came into being after 180 chapters.

　　The unfortunate news is that I need to take a leave... Qidian organized an exchange activity and asked me to be a human background board (eight hours a day, my goodness), so I am afraid I will not have time to write updates on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd.

　　Of course, I will try my best to squeeze in updates, but I don’t know how much I can update, so I’ll give you all a heads up first.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)