Mai Minghe and the natural course of events

"We've been through life and death together, more or less. I saved you, and you saved me."

The red-haired man was covered from head to toe beneath a white sheet, his voice muffled as he spoke.

In the room reeking of disinfectant, the old incandescent light began buzzing the moment it was switched on; Mai Minghe opened her eyes, but all she could see was the white cloth covering her face, her vision a pale, murky blur.

"For that reason, I won't try to take your Phantasm for now. But if you run into the other Hunters under me and they attack you, I certainly won't stop them. This is our assignment, after all. My people risked their lives entering the Nest. I have no right to ask them to give it up."

"...That's all well and good."

Mai Minghe spoke from beneath the white sheet, a puff of hot, damp breath trapped in the fabric. "But why are we pretending to be corpses in a morgue?"

A few minutes earlier, the two of them had decided they were far enough from the resident beneath the floor, jumped off the hospital bed, and taken off running, desperate to get as far from the ward as possible and lose the resident completely.

But as she ran, Mai Minghe hurriedly glanced back and saw a dark shape flash past the distant doorway of the ward. It seemed a resident had come chasing after them-the red-haired man also realized something was wrong and barked in a low voice, "Running won't solve anything. We have to hide. Follow me!"

The tall, thin patient was three or four meters long and could stretch its body. If it was the one chasing them, neither of them could outrun it.

What Mai Minghe had not expected was that, after leading her headlong into the stairwell and thundering down to level B1, the red-haired man would push open a door marked "Morgue" with practiced familiarity.

Seeing her hesitate, he even turned to glare at her. "Come on! What are you standing there for? Do you want the resident to catch you?"

Easy for him to say. Who would see the word "Morgue" and be eager to go inside?

But with her only living companion in this hellish place striding inside, Mai Minghe apparently had no choice but to follow.

The moment she entered, she could not help shuddering; the temperature in the morgue was at least three or four degrees lower than outside.

"Find an empty bed." The red-haired man switched on the morgue lights, lifted the white sheet on one bed, and lay down. "Do what I do. Cover yourself from head to toe and don't move. Don't worry about any beds that already have someone on them. It's fine."

Mai Minghe stared at the mortuary bed in one corner-the white sheet on it rose and fell in the outline of a human body. The room's lights flickered occasionally, and she could not make out whether whoever lay there was breathing, much less whether it was a person, a corpse, or a resident.

At any rate, the corpse had not sprung up to greet them when it heard them enter. That probably counted as a good thing.

"Um..." She pointed at the mortuary bed, but had barely begun speaking before the red-haired man swiftly settled down and covered himself, urging her from beneath the white cloth, "Hurry up."

In the blink of an eye, the spacious morgue contained only one living person still standing-Mai Minghe-and two human bodies covered in white cloth.

As she climbed onto a mortuary bed, she felt a little dazed: an eighty-six-year-old woman had entered a hospital ward, then the hospital morgue. It certainly followed the natural course of events.

Tonight's experiences were practically a metaphor; she lacked the wisdom to figure out exactly what for.

The red-haired man sighed beneath his white sheet.

"People entering the Nest for the first time are such a pain. They don't know anything," he said quietly. "Training the newcomers in our group is one of my least favorite parts of the job."

"I don't want to be lying in a morgue either," Mai Minghe replied. "As long as you're alive, there's no avoiding doing things you don't like."

Including playing dead.

"Don't get upset. The morgue is this hospital's 'Life Gate.' Sounds unreasonable, doesn't it? How could a place for dead people be a Life Gate?"

Mai Minghe immediately murmured her agreement.

"The Nest contains countless locations, each with its own unique terrain, dangers, and opportunities. St. Louis Hospital is a location our faction knows fairly well. This is already my third time here. In St. Louis Hospital-"

"Wait, this is St. Louis Hospital?" Mai Minghe could not help interrupting. "Didn't you say this was the Nest? St. Louis Hospital isn't far from my home."

She had visited St. Louis Hospital a few times before, but had never seen any of these monsters.

"No, you're talking about St. Louis Hospital in Blackmoor City. Where we are now is St. Louis Hospital inside the Nest.

"The Nest isn't in the human world at all."

The red-haired man fell silent for a few seconds, as though he wanted that statement to truly sink into Mai Minghe's understanding.

"Perhaps a crack formed in the universe, and the shadow Blackmoor City cast into it became this Nest full of danger and strangeness, another world that only a few people can enter. You can find the place names from Blackmoor City in the Nest too, but they're almost all twisted, dark versions."

As though afraid she would interrupt, the red-haired man continued, "In short, we discovered that when someone encounters a danger they can't shake off in St. Louis Hospital-for example, when residents have set their sights on us-the morgue is a place to 'reset.'"

"Reset?" Mai Minghe worked to digest his words, committing whatever she could not digest firmly to memory.

She did not understand young people's language very well; clever phones-oh, no, smartphones-had taken her quite a while to figure out too.

"Yes. Simply put, if you come to the morgue, cover your face, and lie down for a while, you've 'died' in St. Louis Hospital's eyes. Once the person the residents are chasing dies, they naturally stop chasing. When you walk out again, you're a brand-new living person, with nothing chasing you. It sounds childish at first, but if you think about it carefully, it's perfectly logical, isn't it? Of course the hospital soon forgets anyone who enters its morgue."

"It's the same in life," Mai Minghe murmured. "The hospital isn't the only one that forgets you."

"That's why I brought you here," the red-haired man concluded. "Count yourself lucky. If you were a Hunter from another faction, I would never have brought you here so readily."

"Why?"

"People in the same trade are rivals."

Mai Minghe understood a little now. These people called themselves Hunters, and the Hunters apparently belonged to many different factions. They did not know whether the other factions knew the morgue was a reset point; if they did not, naturally they would not willingly reveal such valuable information.

"But why do you come to the Nest...?"

"Lady," the red-haired man said with a laugh, "feel the Phantasm on your belly and ask yourself why. Phantasms have countless effects, from raising your IQ by five points to defying fate and changing your destiny. There's no end to their wonders. They can even fulfill humanity's most impossible fantasies. But Phantasms only exist inside the Nest. Blackmoor City has no shortage of political and business elites willing to pay high prices for them. Where there's demand, there's supply. The principles of economics led us all into the Nest."

After a pause, he said, "That's why we're called False Image Hunters."

False Image Hunters...

In Blackmoor City, where she had lived her entire life, there was actually a group of people pursuing and trading things as fantastical as dreams...

And now, she too had accidentally stumbled into a world beyond the world and gained a second life.

Mai Minghe lay on the mortuary bed, her heart pounding.

She was surprised that she felt no fear at this moment, no desire to flee home. Instead, she felt like a child who had wandered into an amusement park at midnight-night was another realm, and the amusement park's outlines in the darkness were strange and eerie, yet also irresistibly vast and wondrous.

The Nest... a paradise in the shadowy, pitch-black night where she could ride a carousel blood-horse toward wonderland.

"I never imagined... I would fall into a place like this," she whispered.

Compared with tonight, her entire life before it suddenly seemed flat and faded.

"It's understandable that you didn't know the Nest existed. Without an experienced person guiding them, it's rare for someone to open their passage by sheer chance and enter the Nest-"

"Passage?" Mai Minghe seized on the word, nearly springing from the bed like a reanimated corpse. "After I hit the television screen, I fell into the ward. Was that my 'passage'?"

The red-haired man gave a thoughtful hum of assent.

"So that's how you got in... You'd never hit a television screen before, had you?"

Naturally. Nobody went around bumping into televisions for no reason.

"Every Hunter's passage is different." The red-haired man chuckled. "Only one percent of humanity is born with a passage that lets them enter the Nest. The conditions for each passage are different, and most are strange and tricky. So even among that one percent, who knows how many live their whole lives without ever opening their passage, let alone knowing the Nest exists..."

Wasn't she just such a person? Eighty-six years, until the thief broke into her home-

Mai Minghe jolted.

...Right. That thief was a False Image Hunter too.

"Some people have fairly ordinary passages," the red-haired man continued. "I've heard of someone who could enter the Nest simply by sitting in a bathtub full of water. Of course, his luck wasn't exactly good. Think about it: the first time he took a bath, he must have been young, naked, and carrying nothing-what chance would he have of returning from the Nest alive?

"Other people have tricky passages, like standing in a toilet and flushing it, or opening a door inside an abandoned building... There are all sorts. The conditions for simply opening a passage are already so difficult that they weed out a huge number of people. And that's not even mentioning another important condition for entering the Nest."

"What condition?"

"You can only open a passage in a major city with a population of over ten million. We don't know the exact reason either, but..."

The redhead said quietly, "Hunters generally believe the Nest is a byproduct born when human society develops to a certain scale. That's why the most densely populated places are where connections to the Nest exist."

Mai Minghe lay quietly for a while.

Every sentence he had just spoken was like a puzzle piece, gradually assembling a deep world she had never imagined in her mind. She badly wanted to reach up and touch her temple, the spot swollen from hitting the television screen, to confirm that she really was not dreaming.

"All right."

Fabric rustled nearby, as though the redhead had lifted his white sheet and sat up. "It's been about long enough. The reset should be complete. If you want to keep your Phantasm, you'd better not let my companions see you."

This young fellow was rather decent.

"Were you planning to hand my Phantasm over to Wei Xilai?" Mai Minghe asked.

"Yes, he's the one who hired us." The redhead turned back in surprise. "You even know that?"

"He's already dead. He can't buy this Phantasm anymore." Recalling the endless television news coverage over the last two days, Mai Minghe asked, "Haven't you heard? When did you enter the Nest?"

The redhead gave her a dubious look, then turned his gaze away.

Clearly, he did not believe her.

The Phantasm Wei Xilai wanted happened to have fallen into her hands, and she immediately said Wei Xilai was dead and could no longer take it... It was far too convenient a coincidence. No wonder he did not believe her.

"Ha, he wouldn't die. Those Phantasms he has are so powerful-" The redhead stopped halfway through, rubbed his nose, and cut himself off. "Whether he's dead or alive, I told you I won't try to rob you. I suggest you hurry back to Blackmoor City."

"How do I get back?"

Although the Nest was both terrifying and fascinating, leaving now was the best course if Mai Minghe wanted to keep her Phantasm.

"Ugh, honestly..." The red-haired man's shoulders slumped, and he looked rather dispirited. "Might as well see this through. I'll take you to the exit. But let's make this clear beforehand: if the faction's Hunters see you, I'll have no choice but to join them in taking the Phantasm from you."

Hello, friends. What you're seeing now is another message from above. I've ascended the throne now, so how does this not count as a hearing from on high?

All day long, it's nothing but power struggles, ascending the throne one moment and stepping down to earth the next.

I have a question in my belly (sorry, not a baby): I saw readers mention before that Qidian now places importance on a "follow-up reading" metric. What's that? As the name suggests, is it the number of people keeping up with updates? What happens if it's not enough? How much counts as enough? Can I contribute one myself, does that count...? Writing a story is awfully nerve-racking.