Artifact Report

Chapter 40: Chase: Very, Very, Very Simple

Was he wrong?

After five-year-old Chai Si ran a few steps like crazy, he suddenly remembered that his injured mother was still lying on the side of the road.

At that moment, he instinctively stopped and turned back without thinking, wanting to help his mother up and run with her - shouldn't he have done that? Was he wrong?
"I told you to leave!"

My mother's scream at that moment was loud and sharp, almost unlike the person who was seriously injured and unable to speak.

"mom--"

He grabbed his mother's arm and only had time to say one word.

The next second, he looked at his feet dangling in the air, swaying away from the ground.

My mother raised her face, half blackened by blood. She froze for a moment in shock and fear, then suddenly screamed, "Let him go!"

The thing didn't hold Chai Si, nor did it lift him up.

He belatedly realized that a long black shadow pierced out from his chest and reached into the air, like a sword that pierced through him and lifted him up in mid-air - but Chai Si did not feel any pain, nor did he bleed. He just lost all his strength, felt dizzy, and could not lift his head.

"Don't worry," the residents murmured in the background. "I don't think you fully understand the beauty of this situation. Let me explain it to you in detail."

My mother's voice floats between the lines like a sobbing wolf's howl.

"My favorite taste to savor is irony. It's found only in humans, not in the nest.

"The disappointment of not winning the lottery is also disappointment, but it tastes ordinary and meaningless, like a box of instant noodles, which only satisfies hunger. But your disappointment at this moment is a delicacy. Why? Because your hopes have been dashed, which has the 'irony' of it; not winning the lottery lacks this flavor. I must make you fully understand this wonderful feeling, otherwise my heart will itch uncontrollably."

The resident shook the firewood up and down several times and sighed with satisfaction.

"First of all, I'm so happy about your passage. The lair can only be entered in a car accident. No wonder you opened the passage for the first time at the age of thirty-six... But if your car accident happened a few months ago, none of this would have happened tonight. Do you know why?"

Mom's eyes were fixed on Chai Si, swaying slightly as he did in mid-air.

"Because the population of your Los Angeles area just passed 10 million this year. Look at you. If this car accident had happened earlier, it would have been just plain bad luck. But if you had moved this year as you've always thought, you wouldn't have entered the lair for the rest of your life... Don't you think the timing of the car accident is particularly ironic and delicious?"

Chai Si vaguely remembered that his mother had indeed asked him once if he was willing to move to her hometown.

But at that time, he couldn't understand what moving or not had to do with everything going on right now.

"You thought you'd escaped, but you didn't realize you'd become a guide dog, bringing me into the human world. That's already pretty good. If you'd called the police and been rushed to the hospital the moment you got there, wouldn't that have been boring? Then I'd have left, naturally, to find another human.

"But you didn't go to the hospital. You wanted to go home to see the child first, to make sure he was safe, but instead you exposed the child to me... How nice of you.

"If you didn't love him so much, he wouldn't be dead tonight."

Chai Si knew that he was crying, and he also knew that he was not crying for himself.

His mother's whimpering and howling on the ground frightened him more than a dark shadow piercing his chest.

He used to think he had a superpower. When his mother was unhappy, he could always make her laugh with just a few words - but tonight, this superpower seemed like another arrogant dream of a five-year-old child.

"Don't cry for help, who can save you?

"Didn't you notice that the neighbor who opened the window just now closed it again and went back to sleep? Ordinary people who have no access and have never had any contact with the residents can't see me at all... nor can they see the child I stuck in mid-air. Now you are just a crazy woman sitting on the roadside crying in the middle of the night."

In the hands of the residents, the firewood was like a piece of meat on a skewer.

It swung him from mid-air with a whoosh, and swung him in an arc in front of his mother. After his mother pounced and reached out to grab him but missed, it lifted the firewood high again.

"Oh, you two are crying together, and it makes me sad too. Come on, I have a ray of mercy. How about this, I'll give you a choice."

My mother looked up blankly, with a glimmer of water in one eye; but that was not the light of hope.

"The number of residents who can come to the human world is very, very, very small, not even one in ten years. There are far fewer than the number of humans who have access. Don't you think it's unfair?" The resident smacked his lips - if it had a mouth.

"The conditions for coming here are difficult and demanding. After all the effort to get here, if you're not careful, you'll fall back into the nest. Next, I'll tell you how to get me back to the nest."

Mom froze. She murmured, "Wha...what?"

"Very, very simple. You still have a rope around your waist, right? Actually, that's a part of me. If you cut it, my path to the human world will be severed, and I will naturally return to my lair. Don't you believe me?
"Well, I can't do anything about that. All I can say is that those of us who are able to come to the human world will fall back into our nests as soon as the passage is cut off. It's that simple. If you don't believe me, try it yourself."

"What about the choice?" Mom put her hand on her waist and asked breathlessly, "You give me...a choice, what is it?"

"Oh, it's about whether or not to cut the rope."

After these words were spoken, the air was filled with confusion and silence for a second or two. Chai Si couldn't see clearly, but his mother must have frowned.

"Why...why wouldn't I cut it? You have a...trap..."

"No, I didn't set any traps," the resident said calmly. "I'm a very, very, very trustworthy person. I allow you to cut the rope, and I won't break it. The rope can regenerate anyway. But think carefully before you cut it."

Chai Si felt himself being lifted up and hung high next to a huge, flat black shadow; the resident seemed to rub Chai Si on its face a few times with his hands, as if in a very affectionate manner.

"I won't let you go, kid.

"So your choices are: one, don't cut the rope, and I'll stay and kill you and your child. Two, cut the rope, and I'll take your child's body back to the lair, and you can save your life."

Chai Si felt that the flat black shadow that was his face bulged up and pushed his body up a little - the resident was laughing.

"I guarantee that your child will die tonight. The difference is whether you want to bury him with him."

Even after all these years, his mother's sharp and shrill scream still pierced Chai Si's chest like a knife.

He was indeed dead. No matter what my mother chose that night, he was undoubtedly killed by the residents...

A voice in his head, not Chai Si's, kept telling him, "Yes, you died that night. Do you remember?" The tiny body in the plaster cast slammed to the ground with a plop, landing right before his mother's eyes...

Where are the residents missing from this world?

I had one when I was five years old, and now another one is here.

…Of course he didn’t die that night.

Chai Si refused to die in the car accident because if he died in the car accident, he would never be able to see his mother for the last time.

He still remembers the warmth of his mother's body when she hugged his shoulders that night.

Chai Si also refused to die at the hands of the residents. The reasons were a little more complicated: first, the residents were seriously injured that night and were driven back to the nest, so the remaining rationality deep in his mind did not allow him to believe that the residents had killed him that night; second, if the five-year-old had died that night, he would not have been picked up from the pool of blood by Uncle Kai.

He stretched his neck and tried to turn around to look at his mother in a confused state, but Kyronan covered his eyes.

"Listen...listen to him and go quickly," my mother's final, broken words echoed from the warm darkness of her palm. "From now on...I'll leave you to him."

If he had not met Uncle Kai, he would never know what happened to his mother, and there would no longer be a place for his soul in the world.

Chai Si regained consciousness in the subway car, but this time he did not open his eyes.

He sat up silently, and with his concentration, his five senses were magnified and strengthened several times: he followed the rustling sounds, the faint fishy smell of the residents, the breathing of the subway driver... and drew a topographical map of the carriage in his mind.

It is "very, very, very simple" to drive the residents back to their nests.

Just cut off the path they come from.

　After I finish writing each chapter recently, I will write a few hundred more words to save for additional chapters... The idea is good, but the progress is really too slow.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)