Chapter 208: Chapter 172: Jin Xueli: The Ghost Ship Sailing into the Dock
In that instant, two thoughts sprang to mind, and Jin Xueli couldn’t tell which came first.
First, Morando had startled her so badly that she aborted her lunge for Chaisi, spinning around mid-motion. As her peripheral vision swept across the hospital bed like a camera lens, Jin Xueli suddenly noticed a row of long, grayish-white shadows pressed tightly against its underside.
The glimpse was fleeting, but by the time her eyes landed on Morando, a lightbulb went off in her head, illuminating the answer.
’...So those were its hands.’
The resident was crying out in pain on the other side of the bed, but it had secretly snaked an arm under Chaisi’s mattress, reaching all the way to Jin Xueli’s side, lying in wait.
If Morando hadn’t called out and stopped her, if she had just lunged straight ahead, she would have delivered herself right into the resident’s grasp.
The second thought was: how dare Morando, the culprit behind all this, yell at *her*?
"You’re glaring at *me*?"
Morando’s blue eyes widened in disbelief. She leaped off the bed with the lithe agility of a cat. "Were you invited? What does this have to do with you?"
"And what does it have to do with *you*?" Jin Xueli shot back, keeping the resident in her peripheral vision.
"My business here is none of your business."
"If your business here is none of my business, then what does my business here have to do with you?"
"Enough!"
A sudden, angry roar from the resident silenced them both.
Its long face swiveled left to look at Morando, then right to look at Jin Xueli, like a pellet drum. Realizing its trap was useless now, it abruptly snatched its hand back from under the bed and clamped it onto Chaisi’s chin again.
Chaisi, whose convulsions had only just subsided, instantly went rigid again like an electrocuted fish.
Jin Xueli sighed, casting a worried glance at him.
He didn’t have a Path and had never entered a Nest. He wasn’t like a Hunter, who would gradually build up a tolerance to the things of the Nest through repeated exposure. She’d heard that ordinary people who had the misfortune of making physical contact with a resident for the first time could go into shock.
Chaisi might not go into shock, but he was already poisoned and unconscious. She didn’t know how many more minutes he could hold on under the resident’s torture.
’Besides, he’ll definitely choke to death if he vomits while lying on his back. That’s an even more pressing issue than him going into shock.’
"You! I’m talking to you! Stop getting distracted!"
The resident pointed a long, slender finger at Jin Xueli and shrieked, "You hid a partner? No problem, I’ll just kill you all kill you all kill you all then after I kill you I can study your weapon at my leisure."
"Wait,"
Morando raised a hand as if she were a student volunteering an answer. "I’m not with her."
One of the resident’s eyeballs—the very one Jin Xueli had dented—swiveled toward Morando.
’...There’s my chance.’
Jin Xueli had to admit, she could be impulsive.
If she didn’t act on an idea immediately, she’d get antsy, like her skin was crawling. Worse, sometimes her body would move before her brain even finished processing the thought—just like now.
The instant the resident was distracted, she lunged toward the bed, dug her fingertips into Chaisi’s shoulder, and yanked him downward with all her might.
Chaisi was still just as heavy, but this time, Jin Xueli wasn’t trying to move him. She just wanted to drag his upper body off the bed so he would hang head-down toward the floor—a much simpler task.
Just as she heaved his upper body off the bed, the sharp CRACK of a gunshot sent a shockwave humming through the air.
Jin Xueli’s heart nearly leaped out of her throat. She looked up just in time to see the resident stumble back two steps, shaking its hand violently. A bullet was squeezed from the skin of its palm, clattering to the floor still wreathed in wisps of white smoke.
A turn of her head revealed Morando holding a Desert Eagle, its muzzle still raised.
Their eyes met for a split second, an entire message exchanged in that fleeting contact.
’The resident must have been about to grab me, but Morando’s bullet stopped it.’
Bullets couldn’t kill a resident, but the kinetic energy was strong enough to obstruct or injure it—though in this case, it didn’t seem to have done much damage.
’Not bad. I guess Morando hasn’t completely lost her conscience.’
"It hurts! And you claim you’re not working together?" the resident shrieked.
A SPLASH of liquid hitting the floor made Jin Xueli instinctively look toward the sound. She immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
It had been worth the risk, dangling Chaisi off the bed like he was in *The Death of Marat*.
He was now hanging upside down, and a torrent of blood, stomach acid, and foam gushed from his mouth. It looked like he hadn’t eaten today, as there wasn’t much vomit. Amazingly, the little man was flushed out too—half of him, anyway.
The little man’s two bare legs now dangled from Chaisi’s chin, its upper body still hidden inside his mouth.
’I have no idea how I’m going to describe this scene to him when he wakes up.’
’Whatever, I’ll just let the little thing hang there. I really don’t want to touch it and risk causing more trouble. The priority right now is getting my weapon back.’
While Jin Xueli was briefly distracted by her "Chaisi-Marat" creation, Morando was trying to negotiate with the resident.
"...I want you to take the Illusion. That man is my rival. The Illusion is useless to me, but I don’t want him to have it either."
’She’s totally lying. She definitely plans to double-cross it. But should I call her out now?’
’Hmm, pointing that out to the resident probably wouldn’t do me any good either.’
As she hesitated, Morando continued, "She’s in your way, isn’t she? How about this: I’ll help you get rid of her, and you can take the Illusion. In exchange, you don’t attack either of us. Deal?"
’Get rid of her?’
That phrasing was ugly, as if she were some stray dog. Jin Xueli shot her a furious glare.
"I don’t remember dying and letting you plan my funeral."
Morando ignored her, running a hand roughly through her short hair, mussing it into waves as if trying to soothe her own agitation.
She always dressed like a boy in baggy clothes and pants. If it weren’t for Jin Xueli’s sharp eyes, she would have missed the faint shape bulging under the back of her loose T-shirt.
’Another gun? She’s hiding it well.’
"Don’t listen to her. She’s no threat. I’ll point my gun at her and she’ll leave," Morando said, staring intently at the resident. "You don’t want to push me so far that I cancel the ’link,’ do you?"
Jin Xueli, who had already been backing away slowly, couldn’t help but ask, "What ’link’?"
To her surprise, the resident had the same question. "What ’link’?"
"Haven’t you noticed? While this room is still part of the Nest, it’s a section that I’ve plucked out and linked to the human world. Because this was originally a hospital room of the same nature and size, the Nest’s hospital room was able to overlay and replace it—like a ghost ship pulling into a harbor."
It all clicked for Jin Xueli.
’So that was one reason she risked discovery by the Kai Family to have Chaisi transferred. The other, presumably, was that it would be easier to kill him after the move.’
There were two types of residents in the Nest: those uninterested in Illusions, and those who, upon seeing one, were like hyenas catching the scent of carrion.
Morando needed the second type of resident to extract the Illusion for her, since she couldn’t get it herself. Then she could double-cross the resident.
This lucky resident she had chosen happened to live in a hospital-type territory, allowing her to directly link the Nest Hospital with the human one—something that would be much harder to pull off in a bustling public hospital.
Morando pointed at the door. "In other words, behind that door is a hospital in Blackmoor City. Path or no Path, any human who pushes open that door can walk right into this part of the Nest."
The resident’s eyes lit up.
Even though they looked like the back of a heel, Jin Xueli could still see them brighten.
’But why tell it that? Is she trying to end the world?’
"Humans can get in, but you can’t get out," Morando said. "Not only can you not enter the human world, you can’t get to other parts of the Nest, either."
The heel-like eyes blinked. "Why?"
"Like I said, this is a section that’s been plucked from the Nest. It’s not connected to the rest of the Nest, but it’s not fully connected to the human world, either... It’s like there’s a small gap between the Nest and the human world. We’re in that gap right now."
The resident seemed completely captivated by the topic, even forgetting about Chaisi.
The room’s representative of evil and its Nest resident seemed deep in conversation. Neither of them noticed Jin Xueli inching her way toward the corner of the room.
Her weapon lay just a few steps away.
Jin Xueli kept her eyes locked on the resident, not daring to look away.
Seizing every moment of its inattention, she stretched out her foot, slowly nudging the weapon closer. Then, in a sudden motion, she bent down and snatched it up.
"To think you found such a rare and devious Illusion... linking to the human world? Oh, my, my... even if I can’t enter the human world myself, just hearing about it sets my heart pounding."
Just as Jin Xueli stood up straight, she saw the tall, slender shadow fling out a long arm. It swung through the air in a semicircle, striking Morando with a speed that was impossible to follow with the naked eye.
"Give me that one, too!"
Comments