Illusion Report

"...Mai Mingle? Mai Mingle!"

She jolted back to her senses, only then realizing Suo Beihua had been calling her for a while, but she hadn’t heard a thing.

Suo Beihua was staring at her, a strange mix of shock and suspicion in her eyes that was hard to interpret. "What’s wrong with you? What did you do?"

’...What did I do?’

Mai Mingle said blankly, "Huh? I didn’t do anything... Chaisi just disappeared on his own."

The translucent face that had been floating behind her eyes was now completely gone from her vision.

"Brother Chaisi is gone?" Suo Beihua was clearly even more shocked and suspicious. "Where did he go? And how did you recover?"

’Recover from what?’

’How did a few seconds of zoning out turn this conversation into such a tangled mess?’

"Wait, I feel a little confused right now."

Mai Mingle raised a hand, closed her eyes, and tried hard to remember. "Why... why do I feel so muddled? What just happened?"

"How should I know?"

Suo Beihua took a deep breath. She seemed to understand that this back-and-forth questioning was useless for figuring things out. As expected of a Kai Family Hunter, her logic immediately took control of her emotions.

"If you’re confused, I’ll start from a few minutes ago. You suddenly got tense and said it looked like Brother Chaisi was trying to warn you, but you couldn’t read his lips to see what he was saying. Do you remember that? Do I need to go back further?"

Mai Mingle frowned, then it suddenly came back to her. "Right—right, I remember now."

It was strange. The memory was there, but it felt as if her recent past had been severed and isolated from the present. Suo Beihua’s reminder was like a bridge, and only by crossing it could she reach the other side where the last few minutes lay.

"Then you said Brother Chaisi took out his phone and was typing something for you to see. I was surprised at the time and asked you how there could still be a phone in the ’Black Abyss Belt’."

The more Suo Beihua spoke, the more Mai Mingle remembered.

"Yes, that’s right. He showed me his phone screen..."

Chaisi had leaned halfway into the black hole, so anything on him should have gone into the "Black Abyss Belt" with him. Thinking about it that way, having a phone didn’t seem so strange after all.

But the phone was also translucent. The lines of text he typed were like a swarm of hesitant phantoms, incredibly difficult to make out.

"Next, I told you to wait because I had to focus on deciphering the message he was showing me." Mai Mingle recalled another detail.

’I need to think hard... what did the message say again...?’

"But just now, you suddenly seemed to zone out, staring blankly into the air. No matter how I called you, you didn’t respond."

With half her mind still on Chaisi’s warning, Mai Mingle subconsciously nodded, then stopped midway through the motion.

’Something’s not right.’

"How did you know I’d zoned out? Or that I was staring blankly into the air?" She looked at Suo Beihua as a realization began to dawn on her. "You just asked me..."

At the same moment she raised her hand to touch her face, Suo Beihua’s answer came.

"Because your appearance returned to normal," she said, looking at Mai Mingle. "From my perspective, you’re no longer in the form of a wooden door mirror."

For a moment, all Mai Mingle could manage was, "Huh?"

Two seconds later, it finally sank in, and she said, "Huh?"

She finished feeling her face, then immediately pulled out her phone and took a picture of herself. In the photo, a slightly weary but young, full face stared back at her.

It was her. Her twenty-something self, full of boundless energy and future.

"It’s really me," Mai Mingle said, a mix of shock and delight. "I thought something bad was about to happen again... That’s strange. I didn’t even do anything. How did I suddenly change back?"

"Your happiness is a little too obvious. Try not to dance around."

Suo Beihua’s expression was grim.

It made sense. Chaisi was gone, she herself was still half-snake, and they still couldn’t find a way out of the stairwell. Yet Mai Mingle was the only one who had suddenly returned to normal, her joy written all over her face. Anyone in Suo Beihua’s position would find it hard to share her happiness.

"I get it. Chaisi probably disappeared because I recovered."

Mai Mingle didn’t mean to add fuel to the fire. "My mirror-face must have formed a sort of channel, allowing him to make contact with me. Now that my human face is back, he’s disappeared... Oh, don’t worry. It just means I can’t see him anymore, but isn’t he still in the same spot? He should still be able to see me. The method I mentioned before is still worth a try."

"The method that benefits you the most. Of course you’d be keen on remembering that."

Suo Beihua let out a long, frustrated breath and waved a hand dismissively. "Forget it. Regardless, we have to get out of here first. But I have no idea how. This stairwell has no exit."

The clockwork sound from downstairs never stopped, its winding spinning faster and faster. Just listening to it from upstairs seemed to create a phantom grinding pain in their eardrums.

’...As if demonstrating the consequences of falling.’

"I have a transmitter on me. Tian Xi and the others should know my location. If they could get in, they would have come to rescue us by now."

Suo Beihua’s face was grave as she looked downstairs. "But no one has come... I’m afraid they can’t access this stairwell at all. We’ve interviewed at least four or five Hunters here, but we’ve never been trapped in the stairwell before. We didn’t even know a place like this existed."

She turned to Mai Mingle and asked, "What was Brother Chaisi’s warning? Does it have anything to do with our escape? Obviously, it wasn’t a personal warning for you. You’ve recovered quite thoroughly."

Mai Mingle was silent for a few seconds—not because of the sour note in Suo Beihua’s tone.

That swarm of ghostly words, floating in the gaps of light and shadow from a translucent phone screen... How was a person supposed to struggle to see something in the depths of their own eye?

"Your form," "stagnation," "total immersion," "solidification," "after breaking free," "solidification."

"Here," "memory fragments," "I," "will forget."

This was everything Mai Mingle had been able to decipher and remember.

Putting the second line of text aside for now, based on their experience, it was true that the longer they stayed in the stairwell, the more their forms would "solidify." Their transformed appearances would gradually become more real and extreme until they completely replaced their original selves.

Chaisi had been watching them and seemed to have noticed this as well, so it wasn’t strange that he would issue a warning.

But her returning to normal was a good thing. By any logic, it shouldn’t be something to be warned about...

A chill ran down Mai Mingle’s spine.

The deeply unwelcome thought came out of nowhere, like a splinter suddenly jabbed under a fingernail, making her break out in a cold sweat.

’When I swung my arm just now, didn’t it... didn’t it feel like something was missing?’

’Someplace felt... empty...?’

Mai Mingle raised a hand and slowly felt her lower abdomen through her clothes.

Nothing.

She felt lower.

Still nothing.

The "Extracellular Telomeres" wrapped around her body were gone. The space around her waist and abdomen was empty.

Mai Mingle’s legs gave way, and she nearly collapsed to the floor. She hurriedly touched her face again and carefully examined her limbs and body—that’s right, even though the "Extracellular Telomeres" were gone, she was still her younger self.

’...What does this mean?’

’I can maintain my peak physical condition without relying on the Snake Belt anymore? Does my second life finally not have a nine-month limit?’

’Would the Nest be so kind?’

’Or... or...?’

"Mai Mingle."

Suo Beihua called her name in a low voice.

Mai Mingle’s mind was still wandering in some distant place, but she subconsciously followed the sound of her own name and looked up at Suo Beihua.

"We have company," Suo Beihua said, almost calmly.

Mai Mingle mechanically turned her eyes.

On the stairs leading up and on the stairs leading down, countless figures stood silently, packed tightly shoulder-to-shoulder, layer after layer.

There were many versions of Robert, Emily, Tian Xi, and Li Stan... The eight Hunters who had entered the warehouse stood crowded together on the stairs in countless forms and appearances, their bodies overlapping to fill every gap.

Emily lay on the stairs of the floor below, like a giant, disproportionate pinecone that had fallen from a forest of human flesh.

It was unclear if she hadn’t noticed at all, or if she still firmly believed she could handle it, that she wasn’t afraid.

"Come on," a Suo Beihua with a snake’s head and a woman’s body called out to the real Suo Beihua. "Don’t worry. I’ve already been through everything you’re experiencing today."

"We were trapped in the stairwell too. We couldn’t get out," said an Emily whose face was covered in watery ripples, her voice dazed.

A heavily pregnant Mai Mingle, looking as if she were about to give birth, smiled at Mai Mingle.

"There’s no way out of the stairwell. But as long as you accept that, you can live happily in the ’stairwell’ world... Before you, many, many of us have already experienced this firsthand."

"We’re only extending a helping hand to you—that is, to us—because you are us, you know."

Every mouth opened, a uniform sea of black holes contracting, dilating, and contracting again... It felt as though one’s gaze and mind would be sucked right in.