Chapter 209: Chapter 173: Jin Xueli - The Disruptive Genius
Luckily, Morando took the hit.
The Resident’s arm swung so fast it was a blur. If Morando’s body hadn’t intercepted it for a moment, Jin Xueli wasn’t sure her hammer would have even connected.
As Morando stumbled backward and fell, the Resident yanked its hand back as if burned. An furious cry echoed and swirled beneath the ceiling:
"Soannoyingsohatefulwhatisthiswhatisthisit’sdisgustingunpleasantlikeI’vebeeninsultedjustwhatisithmmI’mactuallyalittlecurious"
Just like last time, the Resident had been struck by the same hammer and felt the same pain.
But this time, hearing its cry didn’t inspire the same fear of being trapped in suffocating darkness. There was only a slight dizziness, a blurriness in her vision.
’Why is that? Could I have gotten used to it so quickly?’
’...Or was its scream not as intense?’
The elongated patient rubbed its arm vigorously. On its very inhuman face, a distinctly human expression flickered—something like the look of a person who’d just had dog crap smeared on their face.
"You okay?" Jin Xueli kept her eyes on it, extending a hand to Morando on the floor.
"...Not dead yet." Morando’s face was pale with pain. She paused, then grabbed Jin Xueli’s hand with the one not holding her gun and pulled herself back to her feet.
"Who was it you said couldn’t fight?"
Morando shot her a glance. "You really want to make it see you as a threat?"
The answer came in a voice that sounded like thick mucus churning in a throat.
"Whether she’s a threat or not will depend on me getting a look at what’s in her hand."
Just a moment ago, the elongated patient had been by Chaisi’s bed, rubbing its arm. Now, somehow, its meter-long face had crossed the room and was hovering next to Jin Xueli’s shoulder.
Both of them froze, slowly turning their eyes.
...The Resident’s lower body was still on the hospital bed. Deep within the long, dark slit of its face, countless indistinct human faces silently screamed, rising and falling like a cauliflower of flesh blooming in the darkness.
"Don’t keep the big boss waiting. Hurry up and show him that connected thing you have," Jin Xueli said.
Morando closed her eyes for a moment.
The Resident let out a flat laugh, a sound evenly segmented with no inflection, like it was being produced by forced contractions of the diaphragm.
"I was talking about you. But she’ll do too. I want her Illusion. Which one of you will give it to me first? Whoever is first, I’ll let them die."
’...Is that supposed to be an incentive?’
"Whoever resists can live with me forever."
The last thing it said was definitely an incentive.
"Don’t look at me," Morando said, it wasn’t clear to whom. "The Illusion I used for my connection was a one-time-use item. It was a sea fish. I salt-grilled it for dinner because you have to eat it for it to work. So there’s no point attacking me. I can’t even throw it up; it’s long since been digested."
"Oh? You had dinner pretty early, didn’t you? It’s only a little past nine. How long does the fish’s effect last?"
"Until tomorrow morning—is this really the time to be asking that?" Morando demanded, pointing at the Resident beside them.
’...Is this Resident so relaxed because it’s curious, or because it’s confident?’
Jin Xueli tightened her grip on her weapon, sneaking a glance at the Resident, then at Morando.
Their eyes met for just a moment, not a word was spoken.
"How about I show you my weapon, then," she said to the Resident, suppressing her nervousness. "This is a weapon I designed and made myself, based on my experiences in the Nest..."
"Isn’t that just a hammer?"
At first glance, the weapon in her hand did indeed look like a goofy-looking hammer.
It was goofy-looking because its shape wasn’t as streamlined as a normal hammer. The handle was even a square rod, which seemed like it would be awkward to hold.
The "hammerhead" was just a cube jutting out from the end of the rod, covered in densely carved text. Although the cube was made of metal, it looked far less heavy and threatening than a normal hammer.
"It’s not that simple, you know."
Jin Xueli raised the hammer. "Hmm... Let me give you an example, and you’ll understand. The person you were born from—which party did they vote for before they died?"
It’s hard to say if curiosity killed the Resident, because the elongated patient actually answered honestly: "Repub—"
That was enough.
Before it could finish the word, Jin Xueli quickly pressed something on the "hammer." On the other end of the square rod, a blue cube emblazoned with a donkey instantly popped out. The "hammer" spun rapidly in her hand, reversing its orientation, and she swung the rod, the blue-cube end sweeping across to strike the Resident’s face.
Before its howl of pain could even escape, Morando opened fire.
Countless bullets poured into the hole in its face, making the elongated patient shudder like a cluster of autumn leaves in the wind. Its face rippled as it was pushed back, step by step—its mouth seemed to be holding a dancing, brilliant flame.
Morando quickly emptied her clip. She tossed the Desert Eagle aside, positioned herself between the Resident and Jin Xueli, and turned to yell at her, "Get out of here! I didn’t bring a spare clip!"
’Huh? Isn’t there another gun on the small of her back? Why isn’t she using it?’
The question that flashed through Jin Xueli’s mind wasn’t the same one that came out of her mouth: "Why didn’t you bring a spare clip?"
"If it weren’t for you, my plan wouldn’t have required firing a single shot! Now get out of here!"
But the brief window they had bought was already over.
As Morando turned her head to shout that sentence, a face rose up behind her, growing longer and longer. Its skin, as if unable to contain itself, split open into countless long, dark, stringy fissures.
The widest one was aimed right at the back of Morando’s head.
"Get out of the way!"
The weapon in Jin Xueli’s hand spun through the air toward the elongated patient. This time, the patient watched it fly over but didn’t dodge or evade, taking the hit with a THUD.
The face it had lowered was jolted by the blow and crumpled together, but that was all.
"Igetitnowonderthisweaponofyourisasanannoyingasaboogeryou’reexploitingtheresidualhumantraitsofusResidentsyou’resocunningsotreachceroussounprincipledforagirlbutyoudidn’texpectthisdidI’vegottenusedtoitsquicklytheeffectisgettingweakerandweakerandweakerandweaker"
Jin Xueli’s vision swam.
’...She really hadn’t expected this.’ After all, this was the first time she had put her theory into practice. But right now, Jin Xueli couldn’t even muster the strength to be frustrated.
Every word from the Resident was like it was using her nerve endings as a swing set, leaving her consciousness dizzy and adrift, as if she’d drunk a massive amount of bootleg alcohol. Her internal organs seemed to come alive, rebelling, scrambling to crawl up her esophagus.
By the time she came to her senses, she was already slumped limply on the floor, her weapon nowhere to be seen.
Morando was clearly not much better off, but she was at least still standing, tugging on her arm—probably trying to get Jin Xueli to leave. But she was just as weak and unable to speak, capable only of pulling weakly.
"The first time you hit me, what was written on that cube? Hmm, I answered ’Christian,’ so was the Bible carved on it?" The Resident sounded curious. Instead of attacking, it struck up a conversation. "But I’m not afraid of the Bible, you know."
"N-No..."
Jin Xueli used all her strength to ensure that only words came out, and not her viscera.
She had to stall the Resident, buy Morando time to use the gun on her back. ’Maybe it’s her ace in the hole, something that could give us a chance to escape... I have to have some hope.’
"It was... the tenets of Satanism... the number 666, the hexagram, the eye of the goat... the atheist’s manifesto..."
Basically, Jin Xueli had carved anything that would make a Christian feel uneasy, uncomfortable, or was considered taboo. That’s why the fist-sized cube was so densely inscribed.
Residents are all born from human bodies.
If a human has strong beliefs, the Resident born from them will inherit some residue of those beliefs. Reciting the Bible to a human wouldn’t make them writhe on the floor in agony—so a Resident born from that person, following the same line, would naturally be unaffected.
Among all the Hunters in the Nest, not a single one was ever safe from a Resident’s harm just by wearing a cross.
But Residents seemed to be more sensitive than humans to things like "consciousness" and "intent"—perhaps because they themselves are beings born from abstract concepts like thought, personality, and desire?
The "intent" that merely makes humans feel uncomfortable or taboo, when made physical and delivered with force, could cause a Resident considerable pain. This was the theory Jin Xueli had implemented after summarizing her observations in the Nest, and it had actually been somewhat effective.
"Well now, I’ve been a patient at Saint Louis Hospital for four or five years, and this is the first time I’ve encountered your kind of thinking. Not bad, you’re a natural-born Hunter."
The elongated patient actually offered a word of praise. "So what if I was a Muslim before—hmm, that’s too easy, never mind. What if the body I was born from was a Buddhist? Or an atheist?"
There were, of course, different methods for those.
For a Resident born from a Buddhist, being hit in the face with the concept that "the four elements are empty" should, in theory, reduce its hostility. For a Resident from an atheist, asking about the nature of "Residents" and "Nests" should be enough to confuse them for a while.
Failing that, there was still the cube utilizing the two-party system, inscribed with the icons of a donkey and an elephant. If you met an elephant, you used the donkey, and if you met a donkey, you used the elephant.
Jin Xueli had even considered that non-voters or foreigners could die in the Nest, so she had prepared cubes for left-wing and right-wing ideologies in the middle of the rod, ready to pop out with a press of a button.
When the Resident said she was unprincipled, it wasn’t exactly wrong. In her hands, the world’s major belief systems were reduced to nothing more than weapons.
It was now clear that this was a weapon suited only for surprise attacks, not for prolonged battles.
But during the brief few seconds Jin Xueli had bought by revealing her hand, Morando didn’t seize the opportunity to attack. Instead, after regaining some strength, she urged her once more, "Get out of here! This has nothing to do with you. Let me talk to this... Resident... big boss."
’At a time like this, she’s still thinking about negotiating? Why won’t she use that gun on her back—’
Jin Xueli took a breath.
She suddenly understood.
Morando had actually said it earlier. She had no intention of fighting the Resident; her plan didn’t even require her to fire a gun. Bringing one was probably just a precaution.
She didn’t plan to fight, but she was prepared to double-cross it...
In other words, the thing Morando had hidden behind her back wasn’t lethal, but it could, by some means, pry the Illusion from the Resident’s grasp.
To put it another way, Morando’s original plan was most likely to hide in a corner, wait for the Resident to succeed, then snatch the "tongue" by surprise, dash out the door, and cancel her connection. As for Chaisi, he would probably be left in the Nest forever.
He had no Path, so he didn’t need to be killed. He would die on his own after seven days—if he could even last that long.
The realization flashed through her mind, but before she could even glance at Morando, a shadow loomed over her face. The next second, Jin Xueli and the person who had tackled her went rolling onto the floor together.
In mid-air, the Resident’s long, multi-jointed arm was barred across the doorway. Its hand spanned the open space, striking the doorframe like a long-legged spider.
If Morando hadn’t tackled her just then, both of them would probably have ended up like flies swatted against the door by a spider.
"There are no annoying round-heads this time, so you can’t deal with me like that old woman did..."
The elongated patient was rambling about something, but it sounded happy. "IwantyoualltodieheretodayandturnintonutrientsbestofallgivebirthtoanewIllusionfor meIllusionIllusionIllusionIwantanIllusionIwantitoneIwantitsobadlyso, huh? What’s this?"
It lowered its head and, with two fingers like traffic bollards, plucked a gun from the floor.
...A plastic water gun.
"Is this what you’ve been hiding all this time?" The Resident turned its head, looking at the two people on the floor, and sniffed hard. "What’s this liquid inside? It smells strange."
Morando gave a silent, bitter smile.
She glanced at Jin Xueli and said in a low voice, "You really are a genius at messing things up... Well, great. Now that’s gone, I can’t even get the Illusion. Are you ready to retreat together?"
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