Chapter 448 - 391: Brianna: The Infected and the One Who Has Always Waited for Her

Chapter 448: Chapter 391: Brianna: The Infected and the One Who Has Always Waited for Her

...Was she really going to do this?

Brianna stared into the swirling black mist, dazed and unable to make up her mind.

The black mist drifted through the middle of the empty road — gathering and dispersing, yet never crossing its invisible boundary, always contained within the same stretch of space.

As the fog thickened and thinned, the road torn open by white lane markings and the distant skyscrapers slowly twisting out of alignment flickered in and out of view — as if the Nest were nothing but an illusion, a dream, a fiction.

If she could just wake up, open her eyes, or close her phone...

Maybe the Nest would disappear. Maybe she’d find that her life was still there, waiting for her.

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again — over and over. The Nest was still there. She, however, had been gone for a long time now.

Brianna lay there in a stupor for a good while.

Time had long since lost all meaning to her anyway. It seemed to be the afternoon of December 4th, and as for the exact hour — she couldn’t even be bothered to check her phone. What difference would it make?

Vulture, on the other hand, kept pestering her from the side. "What are you spacing out for? If you don’t get moving, what happens if all the Dominion players are already dead?"

"Once I go in... what happens to me?" Brianna thought it over for a moment and could only come up with that one question. "Is there anything dangerous in the Black Abyss Belt?"

She already knew the answer. Asking was pointless.

The Black Abyss Belt had always existed. It was only now that the Nest had "cracked" open an entrance, exposing it. No resident had ever gone in before, so no one could possibly know what happened once you did.

But if there really was danger in the Black Abyss Belt... compared to other residents, Brianna’s risk was lower, at least.

If things got dire, she could always pull back. Her physical body was like a safety line anchored inside the Nest — even if she couldn’t find the exit to the Black Abyss Belt, she could always come back.

Not that she cared about risk anymore. She didn’t care where she ended up, either.

Predictably, Vulture replied, "How would I know? We Vultures only got our minds not too long ago."

"Then how can you be so ready to come in with me?"

Vulture was at least honest about it. Even if what followed was long-winded and unpleasant to hear — something about how it wasn’t stupid, it would wait and watch how Brianna fared first, and if everything looked fine, it would climb onto her back, since her back was infinitely long anyway, so there’d always be more back to climb no matter what...

Partway through, Brianna suddenly pushed off the ground, turned around, and started crawling away.

"Where are you going?" Vulture blinked.

"I’m not going. I’m not doing it. Not going, not going, not going, not going, I’m not—"

It was as if a massive boulder made entirely of fear had come crashing down into her mind, sending human language flying apart in all directions — "What if she sees me what if anyone sees me like this I’m not going I’d rather die no one is making me go in there—"

"Who are you afraid of seeing you?" Vulture was both anxious and baffled, scrambling to catch up. "You look absolutely terrifying right now! Nightmarish! Who wouldn’t envy that? And it’s a rare kind of terrifying, too — not like other residents who end up looking like some bug or whatever. So tacky."

The more it talked, the faster Brianna crawled.

"Besides," Vulture saw this was backfiring and got more desperate, calling after her: "If you’re scared of someone seeing you, just stay away from them — how hard is that?"

Brianna stopped dead in her tracks.

Right... the broadcast had said it — Jin Xueli and Morando were both hiding near Central Bay Pier.

As long as she stayed far away from Central Bay Pier...

If she was using a resident’s body to go after a target Illusion, she had absolutely no reason to go anywhere near Jin Xueli.

Jin Xueli only had one target Illusion — the radio. And right now, it was still sitting in the same room as Jacqueline’s dismembered remains.

She hadn’t taken the radio because she didn’t want to tip anyone off, and even more so because she didn’t want anyone — Morando especially — to know she was still alive.

So Brianna had gone through the scattered remains and dug out the tracker she’d originally used to locate Jacqueline, then quietly slipped it inside the back casing of the radio.

If everything went according to plan, Jin Xueli might never get the chance to come back for the radio at all.

Which meant... once she was inside Blackmoor City, all she had to do was set her sights on Chaisi and Fu Tailan.

No matter how sharp or strong they were, against a resident, they’d both get their skulls caved in with one swipe.

Being seen like this by people who were as good as dead — that she could live with.

With that thought, Brianna looked back at the churning black mist and carefully touched the pouch hanging around her neck.

Inside it were another "travel styling kit" she’d bought from the salon and Jacqueline’s phone. Even without Jacqueline’s face to unlock it, she still remembered the passcode, so the phone worked just fine.

Once she was in the human world, she’d use Jacqueline’s phone to send messages to the Westley Family staff and the Hunter — use them to track down Chaisi and Fu Tailan’s locations...

She still had a shot. She could still fight.

Just give me one more chance. One more.

Even if every struggle only drags me deeper down... I want to struggle one last time.

By the time Brianna realized she had been silently repeating those words over and over — losing count of how many times — her body had already slowly begun to slip into the black mist.

When she glanced back, Vulture, still standing on the road, looked like half a torn photograph at the bottom of a dark lake — buffeted and rippled by the black mist, as if it were already very far away.

Brianna swallowed, her heart fluttering with an inexplicable unease.

She called out: "Aren’t you coming?"

Vulture didn’t seem to hear. It was still surveying the situation — crouching down to peer at something, then straightening up to look around.

...Fine. Even if it did come, it wouldn’t be any use. It would just get in the way.

Brianna turned back around and crawled deeper into the dark.

What was the Black Abyss Belt, really?

The thought drifted through her mind like smoke.

Aside from Hunters with a Path and an exceedingly rare handful of legendary residents, no one was able to pass between the Nest and the human world.

You couldn’t just leap into the sea at Central Bay... and drift with the current, be swallowed by the waves, sinking all the way down...

Sinking, sinking down into the dark... into a darkness indistinguishable from the one in front of her now...

And then open your eyes to find yourself surfacing from the sea beside Blackmoor City.

For Hunters and residents alike — that was simply impossible. Or at least, it used to be.

So that was the reason: the Black Abyss Belt had been "sealing off" the human world from the Nest.

Then what had changed in the Black Abyss Belt now? What was allowing people and residents to pass through?

Whatever. Not her problem.

So quiet. So dim.

Brianna suddenly realized that deep inside this layered, shifting blackness, she had absolutely no idea which direction she was crawling.

Was she still moving straight ahead? Or had she veered off course without noticing?

She glanced back at her own body.

Through the dim, murky black mist, she could barely make out even a sliver of her own back. Even the sensation of her body had grown faint — like a biscuit soaking in water, slowly softening and dissolving, beginning to drift in all directions...

She gently closed her eyes.

This wasn’t so bad, really.

Even the pain, the obsession, the bitterness, the yearning — all those emotions that had been tormenting her, driving her, forcing her to keep reaching out toward the human world — they too were slowly softening and dissolving, on the verge of crumbling into countless pieces, slipping free of her, drifting away.

No — if she was being honest, wasn’t she herself dissolving too?

So that’s the danger of the Black Abyss Belt, Brianna thought.

Everyone dies eventually, and her last death had gone wrong. This way — feeling as though every part of her were being gently steeped in warm water, light, peaceful, and unraveling — this was so much better.

So she still had a little luck left in her after all.

Let Morando dissolve out of my memory.

Let everything from my past life dissolve too.

"...Brianna?" A voice called her name, softly.

Brianna jolted as if struck, her eyes flying open. Her eyelids, already on the verge of dissolving away, were barely recalled back into place.

"Who’s there?" she asked, her voice rough, turning her head to look around. "...Vulture?"

No — Vulture didn’t know her name. And that voice was familiar, not anything like Vulture.

"It’s me,"

a low, soft, masculine voice drifted up from the pouch hanging below her neck. "I’m here to help you."

The instant the realization hit her, Brianna nearly snatched the bag and hurled it as far into the darkness as she could.

"You’ve already made it halfway. Well done... Brianna."

The Host’s voice was somewhere between a murmur and a whisper, and yet it carried a faint, unmistakable tremor beneath the surface.

It seemed like the first time she had ever heard his voice waver — like the surface of water trembling in the moments before an earthquake.

"How did you—" Brianna started, then understood immediately. "How did you get into Jacqueline’s phone?"

The Host let out a quiet, low laugh. There was something in his voice — like an ice-cold finger tracing slowly up her spine, sending a prickling numbness across her scalp.

"Even I have to keep up with the times, Brianna."

Every time he said her name, she felt herself pull back together a little more.

"Stop saying my name," Brianna said, and quickly pulled out the phone, lighting up the screen — only to realize with a start that it was already nine o’clock on the morning of December 5th. She had been crawling for an entire night.

She swept quickly through the phone, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing.

She was about to ask again when something clicked. She went to the last page of apps and swiped one more time, pulling up the complete list of everything installed on the phone.

There it was.

Buried at the very deepest layer of the phone: a small, unmistakable icon of a radio.

"You — how did you manage that?" she asked, her voice low.

"I told you, Brianna — even radio has to keep up with the times. Who listens to an actual radio these days?"

The Host spoke without any rush. "Anyone who touches the radio — if they have a phone on them, the phone gets... well, ’infected’ sounds unpleasant. Let’s say ’loaded.’ A radio app gets loaded onto the phone. And the best part is, once someone has the radio app, anyone else whose phone comes into contact with theirs gets the app loaded onto their phone too. Pretty neat, right?"

Brianna went still, then drew in a sharp breath.

Now she understood why the conversation between Jin Xueli and Morando had been picked up and broadcast by the radio.

Jin Xueli had obviously touched the radio at some point, and must have later come into contact with Morando’s phone —

"Your radio is the source virus? Spreading phone by phone?" Brianna asked, stunned. "Who else has Jin Xueli touched phones with? And no — anyone she’s infected would go on to infect others... How many phones are you in right now?"

"That’s none of your concern, Brianna."

The Host spoke as if he was now certain she wouldn’t throw the phone away.

"I’m here to help you. Your willpower is extraordinary — it took this long before you even began to show signs of dissolving. I’m genuinely in awe. How could I possibly stand by and let you dissolve away in the Black Abyss Belt, Brianna?"

"Shut up. Stop saying my name. Shut up—"

"Besides, you need someone to guide you to the exit of the Black Abyss Belt so you can enter the human world." The Host laughed, unbothered. "This is actually something I only figured out recently... it turns out that if you keep calling out from the exit, you can draw someone out of the Black Abyss Belt and bring them into the human world."

Brianna furrowed her brow. Something about this felt slightly off—

"Come on. Listen carefully... put the phone down, and let your attention reach out into the darkness ahead of you... can you hear it?"

She went silent, completely still, and listened.

She heard it.

"Brianna,"

the Host’s voice rose from somewhere deep in the dark ahead — like the pale ghost of a crescent moon surfacing from the depths after countless waves had parted and converged. It drifted in the far distance, calling to her, one soft call after another.

"Brianna, come... I’m here... come on, Brianna, you’re not alone. Because I’ve been waiting for you all along."