Goodbye, Jin Xueli

"Thank you for riding,"

The driver's silhouette remained motionless. Throughout the journey, it had been the only absolutely still thing in the moving cab. "You've reached your destination."

Jin Xueli stood on the road beside the Museum of Modern Art; with a bang, the car door shut behind her.

When she instinctively turned to look, she caught the yellow taxi's bright red taillights driving into the fog rising from the depths of the night and the white steam billowing from the sewer grates, blurring as they receded.

...She seemed to have forgotten something.

Jin Xueli stood in the road, watching until the taillights vanished into the dark night, the misty blue and smoky white, yet she had no idea why she kept staring at them.

Of course, she knew a portion of her memory had been taken as the fare. No amount of thinking could bring it back.

But Jin Xueli felt that what she had forgotten lay outside that memory, as though there was something she should have noticed but hadn't-sometimes, before leaving home, she would have a nagging suspicion that she had forgotten to bring something. It felt just like this, as if clouds had obscured part of her brain, and she couldn't part them to see the moon.

At times like these, thinking was usually a waste of effort; only after she had left home and needed the thing would she slap her thigh in sudden realization.

Never mind. She had gotten out of the cab with all her limbs intact, and her head was still on her neck. Even if she really had forgotten something, it clearly wasn't a matter of life and death. She would remember sooner or later.

She pressed herself against the glass doors of entrance D and peered around inside before carefully pushing the door open a little at a time.

Unlike in Blackmoor City, the buildings and facilities inside the nest were almost never locked. If a door wouldn't open, there was probably a hunter inside-the faint reassurance a lock provided seemed to be something humans venturing deep into these eerie realms clung to all the harder.

After all, people couldn't go on living without some illusion of safety. If everyone knew about every single thing that happened in society, probably no one would dare take a step outside their home, would they?

Jin Xueli held the door open with one hand but didn't enter. She waited a few seconds. Only when everything behind the door remained silent did she step inside as quietly as possible, setting foot on the floor.

Even late at night, half the museum's lights were still on, bathing its corridors, exhibition halls, and elevator lobby in a white light that seemed disinfected.

Perhaps because it was a modern art museum, the lighting design and architectural style always felt empty and cold. Walking between the stagnant white walls and white light, she seemed too "alive," her vitality too warm, too superfluous, utterly out of place.

Following the signs, she soon found the elevator lobby.

The broadcast had provided three main instructions: first, "take the first elevator on the left"; second, "don't look at the other elevators"; third, "go to the first basement level"-none of them complicated. Fortunately, the fare she had paid upon entering the cab hadn't been this particular memory, or things really would have been difficult.

Jin Xueli pressed the button, stood before the first elevator on the left, and lowered her gaze, focusing inward.

This lousy place really could be utterly predictable sometimes; when a crisp ding broke the silent air, sure enough, the elevator on the right arrived first.

The deathly silence held for a moment, then slowly parted like a zipper with the elevator doors.

Jin Xueli didn't look, but every hair on her body stood up like a tiny antenna. Her eyes stayed fixed on the closed elevator doors before her, and she vaguely sensed that the elevator on the right really wasn't empty. There was something inside.

Bring it on. She had already made up her mind. Never mind a resident-even if banknotes spilled out of the elevator on the right and covered the floor, she wouldn't so much as shift her eyes.

"Oh, wonderful, there's someone out here..."

A woman's voice was like a strand of silk drawn little by little from the elevator by an invisible hand, trembling in the air. "Listen to me. I came down from the third floor. Something very serious happened up there..."

Don't talk to me, Jin Xueli silently told herself. I'm deaf and blind.

A blood-red "28" glowed on the display above the first elevator on the left; this building had only three floors aboveground.

"Don't be afraid."

The woman's originally threadlike voice gradually grew thicker, as though voices had roots, too. It was also possible that the woman was crawling out of the elevator, little by little, bringing the source of the voice closer to Jin Xueli.

"I'm a hunter who came in from Blackmoor City, too. I came to find a Phantasm I hid... But after I came in, I lost track of time... What month and day is it now? The day I came in, Reagan was giving his election victory speech."

I'm blind and deaf, I'm deaf and blind, Jin Xueli repeated silently several times, like a spell.

She pretended to take a casual step aside-but didn't dare move too far, lest she be unable to rush straight in the instant the elevator opened.

"You mustn't get into the elevator."

As the voice drew nearer, it no longer resembled silk, but sewage bubbling from a black hole. "I never should have listened to the host... The first two times gave me a taste of success, but the third led me down a dead end. Luckily, I reacted quickly..."

At the word "host," Jin Xueli almost failed to suppress the urge to turn her head. She still stared fixedly at the elevator, but her heart felt as though something had stabbed it, beating almost uncontrollably, its pounding filling her ears.

She kept her gaze suspended in midair, not daring to lower it; a dark shape, however, slowly rose from the floor and stopped at her chest, seemingly listening closely.

...Did her quickening heartbeat count as a response to that woman?

Jin Xueli didn't dare react rashly. Her breathing and the dark shape before her chest remained at an impasse in the cold, silent elevator lobby for several seconds-until another elevator's arrival ding finally shattered the stagnant air.

The doors of the leftmost elevator opened.

Wait. That woman stopped in front of me. I'll have to go around it to get past... But would going around it still count as ignoring it?

But if I don't go around, I can't just walk into it, either, can I?

Jin Xueli watched the doors part little by little, revealing an empty elevator car. While she was still unable to decide, she suddenly felt the dark shape at her chest shrink aside and retreat.

"How annoying..." the woman seemed to mutter.

When something good happened, Jin Xueli never examined why it had happened to her, because good things were fragile and couldn't withstand scrutiny.

The moment the dark shape moved aside, she strode into the elevator and repeatedly jabbed the close-door button, tapping away as though she meant to push through the panel. All the while, she kept her gaze turned aside, never once looking out through the doors.

But even without looking, she could sense at the edge of her peripheral vision what seemed to be a dark shape on the floor, its limbs swaying against the ground as it slowly crawled away like a giant lizard.

Only when the elevator doors closed completely and it carried her down to the first basement level with a low grumble did Jin Xueli release the breath held tightly in her chest.

So far, she had followed the broadcast's instructions to the letter. There shouldn't be any more-

"...The first two times gave me a taste of success," the woman's voice abruptly echoed in her mind, "but the third led me down a dead end."

Jin Xueli rubbed the corners of both eyes and decided to suppress this irritating, distracting thought for now.

Infinite Illusion’s Virtual Guide was meant for the nest's residents to listen to. There was nothing strange about that woman knowing the host.

Compared with the lizardlike resident in the elevator lobby, she still trusted the radio host a little more; of course, that "trust" also contained three parts doubt, three parts wariness, and three parts scrutiny.

The next few minutes, however, seemed to prove that the radio host hadn't told a single lie. In the dimly lit exhibition hall on the first basement level, she found the exhibit called Candle Tears with almost no effort-to be honest, not finding it would have been harder.

Now, standing before the exhibit, Jin Xueli was dumbfounded.

Because the exhibit called Candle Tears was a giant white candle lying horizontally on the floor, roughly as tall as she was and dozens of meters long.

Had its entire body not been waxy, milky white, and lustrous, with a black wick as long as an arm hanging from one end, it probably would have looked more like a giant's roof beam. The candle rested on numerous iron stands custom-made for it, with a row of metal troughs underneath whose purpose was unclear.

"This thing's a Phantasm?"

The candle was so big that Jin Xueli walked around it for a while without managing a full circuit. "I can't tell how powerful it is, but it certainly has the size..."

How was she supposed to take something this big back all by herself? Could she cut off a piece?

She couldn't even tell what this Phantasm did, so naturally she didn't know whether that would work.

Art exhibits generally came with brief introductions to the work and its creator; judging from experience, if there was detailed information about the Phantasm, it was very likely in the introduction.

Sure enough, when Jin Xueli reached the other side of the candle, she found that the introduction to Candle Tears covered half a wall.

"Some say time is flowing water; others say time is speed. But the artist Judy Picoult believes time is wax... The time we are living through is a candle gradually melting, giving us the illusion that its form remains within our grasp; yet once this moment, this instant has passed, it becomes solidified candle tears, its shape fixed in history for a long time.

"...The artist's interpretation of time ultimately took the form of the exhibit Candle Tears. The giant candle the audience sees represents a long stretch of raw time.

"It is an interactive artwork. Visitors may light fires beneath the iron stands to heat the candle, watching it gradually change shape and drip Candle Tears."

Among the sentences formed by neat black print were crooked, handwritten passages, as though whoever had originally printed the introduction to Candle Tears had deliberately made one section orderly and rational and the next deranged and mad.

"It's a Phantasm, a Phantasm, a Phantasm—a Phantasm that melts time."

"Melting time means freeing history from its shackles! Hurry and look at your history don't accidentally kill your past self how about putting me in put me beside your past self"

The next passage returned to normal.

"Once the candle becomes transparent from the heat, visitors will notice the contents the artist has encased in the wax. They represent historical events occurring within raw time. By reshaping and molding the warm wax and altering its contents, visitors can change 'the original history.' The artist believes..."

At this point, Jin Xueli couldn't help turning to look at the giant milky-white candle behind her. For a moment, she had no idea how to process this shock.

Melting and reshaping this candle could change time-no, change history?

Had she understood correctly?

If she had, then it truly deserved to be called "one of the most powerful Phantasms."

She needed to examine the specific instructions more carefully, preferably trying it herself once. She also needed to see what effect it had on the future.

Only after gaining a preliminary understanding could she consider her next step. Cutting off a piece and taking it away probably wouldn't work; even with other hunters helping, they couldn't carry it out, because everyone had a different passage and couldn't return together. It seemed she could only hide it for now...

That was the last thought that passed through Jin Xueli's mind before she turned around and a hunting knife plunged into her throat.

After taking half a year off, nothing else has changed much, but my typing speed has practically gone into reverse... I've discovered a kind of resolute beauty in all of you. I clearly don't look like a donkey who can churn out twenty thousand words a day and repay all my debts within a month, yet you big shots invest so decisively that my donkey legs tremble with fear.

For example, Wanjin... Even if you don't feel bad about it, I do. Can't we make this relationship last at a gentle, steady pace? All right, that's a sixth big, chubby baby I owe. And 95-she really isn't my alternate account. I don't know what potential 95 sees in me, either, contributing her presence, money, effort, and support. All right, another big, chubby baby...

Don't Ask How Many Flowers Bloom, big shot, don't you know what I'm like? And The Tall Fish, Always on the Egg's Side, Linze, Song of the World's End—you’re all longtime big-shot readers. We really can take this slowly. I can't keep shearing the same flock of sheep, can I?

I also want to thank Sea Salt Chiffon, Love Letter W0ZV, nestea, Fengyin (are you two new readers? Or just quiet?), Dongxie (you feel like part of a matching set?), Miss Pinellia, Pancake Consort (please fucking stop), Kafka, Gas, Junmi xi, Whirlwind Fat Pill, Qiwu, Tail's Leave Request (isn't that backward?), and everyone else for your support and encouragement... I feel as though I've worn every Chinese expression of thanks threadbare! I haven't even written anything good. How could it be worth all this?

S-seven chapters' worth of updates, aaaaaah!

Maybe I should just go catch seven Calabash Brothers instead.

PS: I definitely won't spend as long writing this one as I did the apocalypse one! An eighteen-year-old cherishes her life, too! Two or three years, I say with youthful recklessness.