Artifact Report

Chapter 264 Mai Minghe: Unexpected Rescue Arrives
If the floor in 2019 is defined as "Floor 0", then going up, Floor 1 is "Tianxi with Left-Facing Braids", and Floor 2 is "Ten Minutes Left to the Interview" - it seems that from this moment on, everyone realized that the boring and heavy work had just begun.

Outside the third wall, it was a deep night with howling storms, as if the entire block had long been abandoned by the world, and there was no trace of the Kai family hunters at all.

The Tianxi outside the fourth wall was a woman. Her facial features still retained the shadow of Tianxi, and she even had a long braid on the left side. Robert took a few more glances.

The timing of the 5th floor being smashed open was particularly coincidental. Everyone just saw five interviewed hunters leaving Annie's warehouse with three Kai family hunters and embarking on their way home. They only saw a group of small backs and argued for several minutes, but could not confirm whether those five people were themselves.

But whether it is or not, it doesn’t seem to matter, they should never go out anyway.

After the six layers of walls cracked, there were pieces of backdrop standing under the gray sky.

Building backdrops, tree backdrops, and Tianxi backdrops.

As soon as the Tianxi backdrop saw them, it immediately slid towards the hole in the wall, as if there were slides hidden on the ground; the smile printed on its face seemed to grow bigger and more sincere as the backdrop got closer.

As the five people staggered backwards, Mai Minghe almost fell into the stairwell - after the railing was broken and removed, the handrail was unstable. She bumped her back and the handrail fell into the void below; along with it, one of her feet.

...If Su Beihua hadn't grabbed her reflexively, she would still be falling now, right?
They smashed through nine walls in a row, their hands blistered and bloody, their ammunition and energy expended, yet they saw no hope of rescue. In sheer blind desperation, desperate to try anything, they turned back to level 0 and chipped away at the wall.
-
Tianxi on the first floor advised them not to move and said that two residents had been sent in to rescue them.

"Don't worry, those two are the few harmless residents of the nest. We, the Kai family, have a partnership with them and will ask for their help when we encounter tricky traps." -1 Tianxi said gently, "But you must not run around anymore, understand? ... What Chi Baili? Sand Snow? We don't have those two people in our faction."
-
The scenery and date on the 2nd floor were completely normal, but -2 Tianxi insisted that Suo Beihua was not one of the interviewed hunters.
-
As soon as a crack appeared on the third-floor wall, Li Sidan was about to go forward when a long, flesh-red shadow suddenly flashed in from the crack and brushed past the countless antennas on his head and face - at least dozens of antennas were crushed and broken on the spot. Li Sidan's screams of pain seemed to be as endless as the stairwell.

What’s even more disturbing is that Aimee Li seems to have not spoken for a long time.

Every time Mai Minghe urged her to speak, she would just mumble a low "hmm." She moved slowly, and once, seemingly losing her balance, she bumped into a wall, creating a shallow dent—a discovery that would naturally be helpful in breaking down walls, but Mai Minghe still couldn't understand how Ai Meili, still essentially a mortal, could actually dent a wall.

Also, the Sobei flower stands sometimes high and sometimes low, as if it can really stand on the tail of a snake.

Robert, needless to say, could only use his left hand to smash the wall; wasn't Li Sidan's antenna an illusion? The illusion was broken, yet he howled in pain for so long...

What about her?

What changes are happening to her?
If there was a change, she, like everyone else, had no way to stop it...it seemed as if she didn't even know where to start self-reflection.

"That's enough. Stop wasting your energy."

Suo Beihua was the first to speak out what no one wanted to say. "Each floor seems to lead to a different reality. Infinite floors, infinite realities. We... I'm afraid we won't be able to find our way back."

"Are you going to spend the rest of your life in this stairwell?" Robert snorted immediately. "Or are you planning on finding a random reality to escape from?"

"Don't talk nonsense," Suo Beihua said, as if intending to throw every word like a flying knife. "For now, we can only wait for the Kai family to rescue us."

Although Mai Minghe had no such plan, the image of "life in the stairwell" involuntarily emerged in his mind - because from a certain perspective, this is completely feasible.

There are infinite floors and infinite Tianxis, and there must be many Tianxis among them who are willing to provide them with some necessary supplies: food, water, sleeping bags, axes, bullets... Just now, there was a Tianxi who asked them if they needed a power bank.

Anything thrown into the endless stairwell will never hit the ground, so there is no need to worry about the excrement falling down emitting a foul odor or breeding bacteria; but when defecating, it probably requires some effort in alignment and balance.

Even the restriction that people can only stay in the nest for seven days seems to be circumvented - as long as you find a floor outside the wall that is not the nest but the city of Blackmore, stick your body out and then retract it, there is a certain possibility of avoiding the worst outcome.

No, that idea is ridiculous. Who wants to spend the last nine months here?

Mai Minghe shook her head vigorously, throwing away the string of uninvited and unpleasant thoughts - this shake of her head suddenly made Su Beihua glance at her.

"The door on your face can be opened...what's the matter with the mirror behind you?" Su Beihua slowly descended from the ceiling and asked her.

Mai Minghe finally realized that she had slammed the wooden door shut on her face as she ran away from the transparent face in the mirror. After seeing everyone, she naturally didn't need to open the door specifically, and she had even forgotten to mention it. With a flick of her head, she inadvertently flung the door open.

"I don't know either,"

Mai Minghe thought for a moment and asked everyone, "Is the scenery reflected in my mirror the same as what you see?"

Li Sidan, who was lying on the ground, immediately understood what she meant. He got up and stood between the mirror and the wall. He didn't need to turn his head back and forth to look, as if his antenna had already received the visual signal for him.

"Same thing," he said dejectedly, sitting back down. Luckily, there were no antennas on his butt. "Hey... you have quite the imagination. It got me a little excited."

Sure enough, she overestimated her luck... Mai Minghe closed the door again.

Exhausted, aching, and heavy, several people collapsed onto the stairs, either lying or sitting. Even if they were scattered across two floors, it seemed unlikely they would be thrown to another random floor by the infinite stairwell. So, Suo Beihua, dragging her long, snake-like tail, swam to Stair -6 and sat down next to Mai Minghe.

Just now, in order to avoid the shadow that reached into -3, they ran down three floors in one breath, but no one suggested breaking down the wall again.

"...What do you think?" Suo Beihua sat silently for a while before asking in a low voice.

"Me?" Mai Minghe was a little surprised.

Suo Beihua nodded. "You're the calmest and most composed person among us, and you were the first to suggest going upstairs to continue smashing the wall. If there's one person whose judgment I trust the most... it's probably you."

Mai Minghe smiled bitterly and patted her hand comfortingly.

"After a short break, we can take down the emergency exit sign and take a look. Then go upstairs... and use my mirror to look at the crack. Other than that, I really don't have any other way... When waiting for rescue, sitting is also waiting, and doing something is also waiting, right?" Su Beihua leaned against the wall and exhaled.

"If I had known this, I wouldn't have come to this interview. I've only heard of dead-end traps in the lair, but never encountered one... How could I have run into such a dead end?"

As the player in the "Nest Domination Game" that the residents of the nest most want to kill, Mai Minghe may be the biggest reason for the sudden and hideous mutation of this warehouse trap - but things have evolved to such a situation that she can't even say this guess out loud.

"Even if the Kai family is powerful, can they really find us?" Suo Beihua smiled coldly and said, "Even if they can find us, how are they going to get out? The hunters who come in are just hunters relying on their family's resources. In essence, how much stronger are they than us..."

The only hunters who came in were those who relied on their clan's resources...

This sentence made Mai Minghe feel vaguely uneasy.

Are you afraid that you won't even be able to count on rescue in the end?

Mai Minghe was stunned for a moment, and only came to her senses after Su Beihua called her several times: "...What?"

"What's wrong with you?" Suo Beihua gave her a probing look. "I was just asking you why you came for an interview. Newcomers don't usually try to join the Kai family right away."

Now that the interview had failed, getting the lipstick back had become a dream that was drifting further and further away... Mai Minghe sat there in a daze, not knowing for a moment whether the intense fatigue in his body came from smashing the wall or something else.

It doesn't seem to matter anymore.

"I have a reason to enter Kai's house," Mai Minghe was unwilling to lie or tell the truth, so he could only say it vaguely.

Suo Beihua did not ask any further questions.

"There's no way in now," she sighed. "We can only hope they can get us out."

Mai Minghe was almost fidgeting - this sentence actually made her feel a little scared.

why?
"Eh?"

Li Sidan suddenly raised his head. In the silent stairwell, all the antennas on his body stretched downward, almost flattening.

"There are footsteps," he said, scrambling to his feet. "There are footsteps about twenty floors downstairs—more than one person's footsteps. Is it rescue? It must be rescue?"

Although no one heard anything, they were still agitated and leaned over to look down. Robert even shouted angrily several times, "Is there anyone downstairs? Who's here?"

After a few seconds, a small, indistinct figure replied from deep within the stairwell.

"Is this the person who is interviewing you?"

Judging from the voice, it belonged to a man, probably Chi Baili. But the sound bounced back and forth in the stairwell, knocking off the edges, drifting and blending layer by layer, and the distinctive sound of Chi Baili could no longer be heard. "We are here to rescue you. I am Chi Baili!"

Li Sidan let out a whimper from his throat, and even Su Beihua couldn't help but let out a breath.

It was at this moment when everyone felt relieved that Mai Minghe suddenly understood the source of her uneasiness.

She stepped back from the handrail, glanced at everyone, and asked in a low voice, "...Which floor sent the rescue?"

The other four people seemed to have their throats grabbed at the same time.

Robert snapped his head back, forgetting all about winding up, and asked, "What do you mean?"

"If the world outside each layer isn't an illusion," Mai Minghe said, "then the Kai family hunters from each layer who think we failed the interview will come in to 'rescue' us. So, which layer sent the Chi Baili in now? In other words, if we follow them out, which level of reality will we enter?"

Robert smiled.

"Are you stupid?" he said lightly. "Do you really think there's a reality outside each layer? There are no parallel realities in the world. Of course, they're all illusions, designed to trick us out."

cheat?
If you want to deceive people, why not create an illusion that is exactly the same as reality? Or make every world outside the layer exactly the same?

It is precisely because the outside of each layer of the wall is different that they dare not go out, isn't it?
"Of course it's because the nest needs to maintain fairness," Robert also had an answer to this.

...Where can you see any fairness in this stairwell?

Mai Minghe turned his eyes and met Suo Beihua's. They stared at each other for a second, then Suo Beihua bent down and called downstairs, "Qi Baili, who did you come in with?"

"Connie, of course."

Those words seemed like a rising whirlpool, hitting the stairs in circles and rushing into everyone's ears.

　I was so good to Mai Minghe. I originally only hoped for one rescue, but I gave you countless rescues. Ah, this is my real mother.

　　Okay, I'm going to reply to the comments on the previous chapter now. I haven't been in good shape recently. After I finished writing, I just collapsed and took a rest. I haven't replied to you yet.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)