Chapter 469 - 411: Mai Mingle: Melting, Disappearing

Chapter 469: Chapter 411: Mai Mingle: Melting, Disappearing

Version No. 2:

"What do you mean?"

In that instant, Mai Mingle couldn’t hide her shock and anger, no longer having the capacity to wonder what Brianna had been through. "You want the mortal world to be completely devoured by the Nest, too?"

In the rainy night, Brianna’s eyes rolled up, a black dot floating in each gray-white orb. "...So what if I do? Does it break your heart?"

Mai Mingle took a step back.

She didn’t have to look back to know Jin Xueli’s car door was still open. If she just took a few more steps back and went around the front of the car, she could rush to Jin Xueli’s side.

"I don’t know what you’ve been through, but... no," Mai Mingle said in a low voice. "I won’t allow it."

"You won’t allow it?" Brianna suddenly laughed. "And how are you going to stop me?"

"I’ll take the two target Illusions in your possession," Mai Mingle said, taking another slow step back. "This world wasn’t created for any one person. Even if your pain is infinite, that’s no reason to end the world. If I can’t persuade you, then I’ll just have to stop you."

Like a little girl, Brianna lowered her head and tucked her hair behind her ear. It was at that exact moment that Mai Mingle’s chest tightened. Amid the blaring alarms in her mind, she spun around and fled.

"Jin Xueli!" she roared, sprinting toward the driver’s side door. "The gun!"

Jin Xueli, sitting behind the windshield, glanced behind Mai Mingle and froze as if she’d been electrocuted.

"Quick, give me the gun!"

As Mai Mingle yelled for the second time, a wind from behind pierced her body, chilling her to the point of pain. Jin Xueli finally snapped to her senses, grabbed the machine gun, and tossed it out of the car.

Mai Mingle snatched the machine gun, spun around, and fired at the dark shadow bearing down on her without even a chance to see it clearly.

Plane 37:

Brianna’s shriek rang out, immediately following the gunshot.

Her serpentine upper body was knocked backward, and she collapsed onto the rain-slicked ground. The small pouch on her chest had taken a direct hit. Several shattered, pitch-black objects slipped out, splashing on the road.

"A cell phone?"

Mai Mingle took a step forward, standing where the resident had been sprawled in the rain moments before, and recognized the shattered fragments. ’How can a resident have a cell phone?’

"It’s over it’s over it’s over I can’t I can’t get into Jacqueline’s basement I can’t get them out the two Illusions you have no idea what you’ve done you idiot how dare you hide a gun and ambush me"

When she had first gotten out of the car to approach Brianna, Mai Mingle knew it was too dangerous.

The other party was an unpredictable resident, and Mai Mingle had driven to find Brianna alone. If anything went wrong, she’d have no backup. She knew she needed to leave herself an out.

While Brianna had her head buried in her arms, not even glancing in her direction, Mai Mingle had quietly stashed a machine gun under the front of the car before approaching.

If need be, she only had to retreat one step toward the front of the car and bend down to retrieve the machine gun. And sure enough, her plan had come in handy.

’But what did this resident mean by, "can’t get the two Illusions out anymore"?’

Softening Clay:

Mai Mingle gasped. Her head, her face, her body, and her consciousness were all plunged back into the torment of the rain.

The columns of rain were still dense, hammering relentlessly against her skin, again and again, offering not a moment’s respite, as if determined to fray a person’s nerves until they snapped and drove them to madness.

’...What’s going on?’

’What was all of that just now?’

She stared in stunned silence for a few seconds, first at Brianna before her, then down at her own hands.

Just seconds ago, Brianna had uttered the words, "make the mortal world come down and keep me company..." The timing couldn’t be wrong.

Mai Mingle was still standing in the same spot. She had no gun in her hands, and she certainly hadn’t fired at Brianna.

’Was it a dream? Am I trapped in a dream again, like before?’

After her words faded, Brianna watched Mai Mingle quietly, as if waiting for a reaction.

She was like a long-abandoned, haunted mansion. Her face and body were like mottled, peeling plaster, revealing cracked, dark holes where chandeliers had been ripped out... It was impossible to discern the expression on her face.

In a daze, Mai Mingle subconsciously glanced around.

If she had fallen into a dream again, she might be able to see the "dream" nearby—the resident she had seen in the ocean waves.

But last time, she had fallen into a dream because the mastermind behind the scenes had hoped to use her to overturn the tanker and spill the Original Liquid across the land... Why this time?

’I don’t have a gun, and I didn’t shoot Brianna. Nothing’s changed. The mastermind’s goal hasn’t been—’

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

’What did I see just now?’

’What did I see?’

Mai Mingle forced her gaze back to the car.

Jin Xueli was still in the driver’s seat, her face a blur behind the water-streaked windshield as she watched the woman and the resident. The headlights were still on, the car door was still open, and the road was still empty.

But there was something jarringly wrong with the scene—she had seen it, her subconscious had noticed it first—

Mai Mingle suddenly understood.

If she weren’t already soaked to the bone and shivering, she would have broken out in goosebumps.

There were supposed to be two machine guns in the car—one was Mai Mingle’s, the other was Mercury’s.

Just a short while ago, when Brianna was measuring the distance with her gaze, Mai Mingle had confirmed that both guns were propped against the window.

But now, behind the car window, there was only one gun left.

"...You’ve noticed it too?"

Mai Mingle started, whirling her head back to stare at Brianna.

At some point, Brianna had crawled right up to her—close enough to grab her ankle if she just reached out.

She instinctively took two steps back.

"Noticed what?"

"Oh? Are you always this dense?" Brianna tilted her head, looking as surprised as a little girl. "Didn’t you see the news that the ??? has emerged?"

...Mai Mingle genuinely had no idea what she was talking about.

"Are you lying to me? You’re not a player in the Dominion Game?"

A dark, inky interest crept into Brianna’s voice. "Every Dominion Game player should have received the notification on their phone that the ??? has emerged."

"...I see," Mai Mingle said, taking another step back. "I was trapped in a dream the mastermind created for me, and my phone’s been off."

And for the brief time it was on afterward, Mercury was holding it—which is why she was only just learning that the final target Illusion had appeared.

"Then allow me to kindly explain," Brianna said with a good-natured smile. "First, why don’t you ask Jin Xueli if she has the other gun."

It was the most logical and simple explanation. But when Jin Xueli stood up from behind the car door, her hands were empty.

"The gun?" she called out through the curtain of rain. "I don’t have it! You put two guns in the car?"

Mai Mingle froze, but Brianna laughed.

"You have two feet, see? You stand so tall, so you didn’t notice." With that, she crouched down like a cat, tucked in her arms, and jutted her chin toward the front of the car. "Why don’t you take a look under there."

Wary of a sudden attack from Brianna, Mai Mingle crouched down and glanced under the front of the car.

The machine gun was lying on the road beneath the car.

"Wait," Mai Mingle suddenly realized. "In the scene that just flashed through my mind, I hid the machine gun right here when I got out of the car. That scene wasn’t a dream? You saw it, too?"

Still lying obediently on the ground, Brianna replied with an almost serene, "Yep."

"H-how? Why—"

"Didn’t I tell you? Is it that hard to understand?" Brianna laughed again. "The ??? warps objective reality. It can blur and shatter the boundary between the real and the illusory... It can turn a finished vase back into clay. Any ’fact’ as we know it can be overturned and redone."

She seemed delighted to see Mai Mingle speechless. Even for a resident, her emotional shifts were too fast, too clean.

"Still don’t get it? Our world is a clay vase, slowly softening and melting," Brianna said with a wave of her hand. "The boundaries of our world seem to be blurring... The ’cause’ never happened here, but we’re seeing the ’effect.’ Isn’t it marvelous?"

It was all too much to process. Mai Mingle stood stunned for a good while. Even Jin Xueli was drawn in by the conversation, walking up behind her to ponder the matter with a dazed expression.

"I don’t get it. If the ’cause’ never happened, where did the ’effect’ come from?" Jin Xueli asked, her face a mask of frustration. "No one touched that gun..."

"You didn’t see the notification either?" Mai Mingle asked.

"No, I lost my phone."

Brianna sighed. In the headlight beams, streaked with rain, her mouth was a deep, silent black, not even emitting a puff of white breath in the cold.

"So stupid. Humans are just slow-witted. You can’t shed your mental constraints and look at things with flexibility. This world is a big lump of melting clay! Can’t you picture it?

"The melting clay flows, and whatever it touches, we see, because we’re *in* the clay, right? If someone presses a finger into the clay, we see a finger. If the clay swallows an apple, an apple appears in our world."

Mai Mingle felt she was vaguely beginning to understand, but she still had many questions. ’For instance, where did the apple come from?’

’And what kind of space contains this "clay vase"?’

’Is it really possible to understand the world this way?’

Perhaps Brianna was right. The human mind had been confined by common sense and convention for too long, making it difficult to think outside the box and use imagination to understand a problem. Mai Mingle remained trapped in her confusion, struggling for a long while. Her mind was entirely consumed by the "???" and the "clay," but the more she thought, the more muddled she became.

By the time she finally realized Jin Xueli had unknowingly drifted too close, it was too late.

Ever since Jin Xueli had gotten out of the car again, Brianna had paid her no mind, not even sparing her a glance.

But in a flash of lightning-quick movement, Brianna abruptly pushed off the ground. She shot up like a giant python, her hand chopping down on Jin Xueli’s neck with the immense force unique to residents.

"Sto—"

Furious and alarmed, Mai Mingle spun around and lunged between them—but before the word "stop" could fully leave her mouth, her shout died abruptly. ℴ

Jin Xueli didn’t fall to the ground.

Jin Xueli didn’t retreat to dodge.

Jin Xueli had vanished.