Artifact Report

Chapter 115 Sea Reed Schrödinger's Mai Minghe
"Is this your first time seeing this?"

A smile curved across the young girl's face. "A completely alive person, retaining everything they had before, becoming a resident... you've never seen that before, right?"

Hai Luwei lay on the ground in a daze. He knew clearly that he should get up and run, but for some unknown reason he hummed and said, "Yes, yes..."

"If you haven't seen it, you'll see it more often." The resident said with a smile.

Hai Luwei felt that he might be endorsing this proposal with his life.

The scene before our eyes had never happened even in the deepest nightmare of mankind: Mai Minghe was crawling out of Mai Minghe's head bit by bit.

Two hands held the edges of the face, the forehead, eyebrows, eyes... gradually rose, and two overlapping human faces emerged in the dim light.

He was terrified, yet unable to look away—he felt as if he were bound to his own gaze. His brain was straining to comprehend the visual signals his eyes conveyed, and he couldn't even think of running away.

There was one more head above most of the people's heads.

Mai Minghe stretched his neck from his face and slowly opened his eyes.

"How strange," the new face whispered, "How strange."

"What's so strange?" Dream screenwriter asked from the side. "Come out quickly, Dad is waiting for you."

"……dad?"

Mai Minghe turned his head and looked at the screenwriter Meng; the face below did not turn, so the two faces of Mai Minghe were twisted, one left and one right.

The residents seemed to have forgotten that its face still bore the appearance of a young girl.

"Yes, get out quickly, you are reborn."

"Reborn..." She said in a trance, "Yes, I am reborn."

Mai Ming River—was it still Mai Ming River?—looked at the sea reeds on the ground again.

"Ah...sea reed,"

She whispered, her dark eyes devoid of light, her lips moving in perfect sync. "I remember you... so strange."

"What's so strange?" He heard his own voice and asked tremblingly.

Resident Mai Minghe lowered his head and looked inside the body of Mai Minghe below. "This inside... is the same as the outside, but also a little different."

What was she saying? Hai Luwei didn't understand.

Before he could even ask, the resident was already getting anxious. "Get out of that body! What are you dawdling for?"

Mai Minghe turned a deaf ear to him and looked at Hai Luwei's watch. "...What time is it?"

Hai Luwei shuddered, raised his wrist to check, and stammered, "Ten, twelve thirty-eight."

Mai Minghe's head tilted away from Mai Minghe's face.

Under this newly stretched-out face, there seemed to be only an infinitely long and thin neck, and the shoulders were still not visible.

"Outside is the real nest, right?"

She said this abruptly, looking down at the interior of her original body, like someone stretching their pants and looking at their legs. "Inside... is a small, artificial world... It's twelve twenty..."

If "lucid dreaming" is described as a small world, it seems possible - but that kind of thing should be left to Mai Minghe and the dream screenwriter to discuss.

Perhaps his brain had finally recovered from the visual shock, and Hai Luwei's sanity had returned to normal.

The important thing is to leave as soon as possible. Why chat with a new resident?

"Now that you're reborn, you don't have to worry about the past world," the dream writer said, seemingly suppressing his impatience. "You're already a resident. Get out of here quickly."

"No, I can't climb out."

These words startled Hai Luwei, who was retreating.

He pricked up his ears and moved towards the door as quietly as possible. The two residents seemed a little unsure of the current situation and neither paid any attention to him as he was about to escape.

"Oh, is this what you look like as a resident?" Dream Writer seemed to understand. "Well, 1.7 faces isn't bad either. It's quite strikingly beautiful..."

Mai Minghe looked at it dimly and whispered, "No."

"What do you mean?"

"I understand now... It's so strange because I was fooled, right?"

Sea Reed paused.

In the dim hall, he stood several meters away, unable to clearly see the expression on Mai Minghe's face. He only heard her say, "This world inside is man-made... I filled out the resident registration form before I saw the exit... I left as a resident."

Compared with before, the thinking and language of resident Mai Minghe seem to be very loose.

"right,"

The dream scriptwriter clearly felt that there was no need to continue the deception. He smiled carefully and said, "That was a lucid dream I wrote. Did you like it? The ending of the dream script was that you filled out the resident information truthfully and finally woke up as a resident - that felt great, right?"

It raised its head, and the faces on its face switched rapidly, as if an actor was about to complete a great opera, singing the final high note with his head raised.

"Being a resident is so refreshing, so happy, and so blissful. Being a resident is so refreshing, so happy, and so blissful. There are no worries, no pain, no pressure, just being yourself is fine."

When the last sharp note fell, Hai Luwei found that he had slid to the ground again without knowing when - even if he tried his best to block his ears, he still couldn't stop the broken notes from piercing into his brain through his fingers.

...His brain was like a piece of cloth full of holes, swaying in the dim hall.

"But I was thinking about other things," Mai Minghe, a resident, said calmly. "While filling out the form... I kept wondering, why is it still 12:20? Why do I know the guide's name? Why am I missing an hour?"

The expression on Dream Screenwriter's face was frozen blank.

It raised its head, looked at Mai Minghe's tall face, and said, "What?"

The two faces—no, 2.7 faces—stared at each other for a moment before the dream writer said, "So what? You still finished filling out the form." "Yes, because generally speaking, it's hard for people to imagine they'd suddenly enter a dream, so they can't discover the truth."

Mai Minghe tilted his head, and this time, his lower face also tilted.

"By the time I realized I wasn't actually a resident, I had already filled out the form and was about to start becoming a resident...ah, how ironic, how ironic, how ironic."

Sea Reed couldn't help but frown.

"The last question on the form is, 'As a resident, do you still possess the human body you had at the time of death?'" Mai Minghe said, suddenly calming down.

The dream screenwriter laughed.

"This is a question I've specially asked to get you to become a resident as a complete human! A complete human, once a resident, will definitely be stronger than everyone else."

Mai Minghe raised one of his long, thin hands and scratched his head - the other hand was still resting on his face below.

"When I saw this question, I just answered 'yes' because I was still thinking about it."

The dream screenwriter seemed to be patiently conversing with his own achievements: "So what? I told you, you can only write down the truthful answers. Only by answering truthfully can I turn you into a resident."

"Well…I was fooled by your lucid dream into thinking I had a heart attack and died while I was in the Nest ward."

Mai Minghe whispered, "But that's the problem... When I answered the question, I was both in the body I had at the time of death and not in the body I had at the time of death. So my answer was both true and false."

"What do you mean by both there and not there?" Screenwriter Meng stood there with a blank face and asked.

Resident Mai Minghe smiled softly for the first time since he showed his face.

"My body when I had the heart attack was an eighty-six-year-old body. When I thought I was a resident, I was only in my twenties. The same body, but because of an illusion, sixty years different."

Sea Reed opened his eyes wide.

"So, that 86-year-old body... I am both and haven't."

She whispered, "Is this your first time turning someone into a resident? The answers you seek are all black and white... but that one question can't be answered with a yes or no..."

Resident Mai Minghe raised his hands, looked at them, and then looked at his body below.

"It seems that the dual nature of that last answer has led to my current strange state... I seem to be both a resident and a human... The two states are superimposed."

The dream screenwriter was speechless for a while.

"Is that so..." It held its chin like a human and murmured, "But as long as you are a resident, the other things don't seem to be a problem..."

Can she ever return to being human again?

But Hai Luwei understood that it was not his business.

He had no control over what became of Mai Minghe; the only thing he should do was to escape as soon as possible.

Even if she needs to be saved, it should be the responsibility of her family, not his.

Go, go now, he has no obligation—

Neither Mai Minghe nor screenwriter Meng noticed Hai Luwei quietly slipping out of the library door; or perhaps they did notice, but no one cared.

...This time entering the nest was so uncomfortable from beginning to end.

He rushed out the door, down the stairs in one breath, and as he strode past the abandoned car, he suddenly heard someone call out softly from the car: "...Sea Reed?"

Hai Luwei's entire body was covered in white sweat. He staggered back two steps before realizing that the car radio had come on again.

"Our lucky listener today is Sea Reed, a hunter from Blackmore City," the host whispered in the car. "Ah... thank you very much for calling. What are you doing now?"

Hai Luwei stood there in a daze, looking at the library and then at the car.

The next moment, he heard his own voice on the car radio - slightly breathless due to panic and escape.

That was indeed him, not someone else pretending to be him; because every word that voice said was the thought in Sea Reed's mind.

"In the Blueland District Library... there was a hunter I had just met, Mai Minghe. He seemed very kind and gentle... but he seemed beyond help. I had never encountered residents like them before... I couldn't resist them. I had no choice but to abandon her and run away, just like I did all those years ago..."

"Alas. Man's fate..."

The host sighed softly. "I hope you won't take fate's twists and turns and mockery to heart. This time it's different, I promise. Look, someone's already rushed to rescue her... She's truly a lucky person."

Hai Luwei didn't hear clearly what was said at the end of the broadcast - because he had already started running when his own voice opened.

Finally, he still had some sense and knew that no matter how strange the night was, he couldn't just run around in the nest like a headless fly - he had to carefully test and check every step he took, and only after finding a safe route could he carefully put down a foot.

In this case, the sea reed naturally cannot walk fast.

He looked at his watch and found it was already twelve forty-nine; but when he turned around, he could still see the library and the square, so he hadn't walked very far.

"Excuse me,"

When a soft and vague voice suddenly sounded from the front under the night sky, Hai Luwei even forgot to be afraid - he had been frightened too much tonight and his nerves were numb.

"I see you seem to be coming out of the library. Could you be Sea Reed?"

A thin shadow with a hood on his head, nearly 1.8 meters tall, emerged step by step from the night on the road ahead.

Judging from his figure and voice, he seems to be still a teenager.

"Mai Minghe... is in that library, right?"

　Well, with three names in one title, who else but me...

　　Having said that, whether it is Doomsday or Pseudo-Image, I always encounter a problem, that is, I don’t know whether to use "he", "she" or "it" to refer to a character.

　　I feel like the characters I write always go beyond the rules of pronouns...

　　
　
(End of this chapter)