Chapter 493 - 434: Mai Mingle, Cynthia, and an Old Acquaintance

Chapter 493: Chapter 434: Mai Mingle, Cynthia, and an Old Acquaintance

The light in the first-floor lobby of the apartment building was hanging on by a thread, its dim yellow glow coated in a layer of dust. That thread seemed ready to snap at any moment, and the occasional flicker always put one on edge.

The moment the memories began, it was as if she were right back there—Mai Mingle could almost smell the dust in the apartment building, feel the uneven paint on the walls.

’Is memory really that powerful?’

Back then, she had just come downstairs with Hai Luwei and Fu Tailan, preparing to wait out the "renovation project" in the first-floor lobby until the apartment building let them leave again.

"After we got downstairs, Fu Tailan started looking everywhere for something he’d left on the first floor..."

At this, Mai Mingle furrowed her brow.

She knew she remembered what the boy was looking for, but she just couldn’t seem to fish the memory out—like when a word is on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t recall it.

’Oh well. This detail happened before I met Cynthia. The two aren’t related, so it doesn’t matter if I can’t remember.’

"I was helping him look. It wasn’t anywhere in the lobby, so I went into the hallway."

The hallway was long and narrow. Two rows of tightly shut doors, one after another, gradually disappeared into a gloom that neither sight nor light could penetrate.

’Strange. The apartment building wasn’t large, and the upper floors had the same layout. Why did the first-floor hallway alone seem to have no end?’

Mai Mingle didn’t know if there were traps in the hallway, so she didn’t dare go too deep. She just craned her neck to peer inside.

She didn’t find what Fu Tailan was looking for—’why can’t I remember what it was?’—and was about to turn and leave when she stopped again.

"Back then, I felt... I thought I saw something in my peripheral vision."

’Yes, that was it. Her peripheral vision had caught an inconspicuous shadow in the gloom; it was all coming back to her.’

Mai Mingle narrowed her eyes, staring fixedly into the depths of the shadows for a moment.

With a soft RUSTLE, a patch of shadow in the deep gloom moved.

It was hard to discern when it was still, as Mai Mingle couldn’t tell if it was part of the hallway—but with that movement, she understood instantly.

It was a pair of calves in sweatpants, sticking out from an apartment door at the end of the hallway. They lay on the ground, motionless, as if dead.

Judging by the shoes, it seemed to be a woman.

...A resident?

When the RUSTLE sounded again, the calves retracted further into the doorway—it seemed their owner was being dragged inside.

’Was it a trap to lure someone over? Or had someone really met with an accident?’

’While they were clearing the stages upstairs, had new Hunters entered downstairs?’

Though kind-hearted, Mai Mingle wasn’t a fool. She called out softly to the other two in the lobby, "Come take a look, I think there’s someone in the hallway."

As the three of them stood at the entrance to the hallway and peered into its depths, they happened to see another door recede into the hazy darkness.

The newly opened door was farther away than the one the legs were sticking out of, making it even harder to see.

A figure, hunched over, backed out of an apartment doorway, apparently dragging a heavy object on the ground. Mai Mingle held her breath as she watched the heavy object being pulled from behind the door into the hallway, revealing a lolling head, and limp, powerless shoulders and arms... it was a person.

’Are they dead?’

The shadowy figure didn’t seem to notice Mai Mingle and the others. It kept backing up, dragging the person down the hallway step by step. Each drag was accompanied by a soft RUSTLE.

The calves in the other doorway retracted again—now only a pair of feet remained.

"I thought at the time, ’It must be a resident. The legs are in 103, but the torso is in 104?’ Of course, the room numbers are just an example. I couldn’t see which ones they were exactly."

Mai Mingle was a little worried. She raised her voice and asked, "Can you hear me when I speak like this?"

"Yes," Cynthia’s reply came from the night sky. "Keep going!"

’How bizarre. They were at least a hundred meters apart, yet they could converse normally.’

On one hand, she could see Blackmoor City and the inverted Nest before her; on the other, she felt as if she were back on the first floor of the apartment building...

The feeling was familiar, but Mai Mingle couldn’t place it.

’No matter. If I can’t remember, I won’t dwell on it.’

’The priority right now is to rescue Cynthia.’

"Hai Luwei shone a high-powered flashlight down the hallway, right on that thing’s face, and I saw it clearly in an instant."

The resident, struck suddenly by the beam of light, whipped its head around, revealing a face covered in—and made of nothing but—veins. Countless purplish-blue blood vessels, thick and thin, densely layered and tangled, completely covered its face.

’Why is every resident more disgusting than the last?’

Hai Luwei let out a small, involuntary cry—but to everyone’s surprise, the resident acted like a thief caught red-handed, panicking even more than Hai Luwei.

"Not me,"

a hurried denial came from the lipless face. "I didn’t do anything!"

Before the three of them could react, the resident let go, dropping the unconscious woman’s upper body to the ground.

It immediately kicked the woman, sending her into the apartment and making a dull THUD against the wall. Mai Mingle instantly whipped her head around and saw that the legs sticking out of the other doorway had also vanished.

"If you saw anything, you must have been mistaken,"

the resident said as it retreated deeper into the hallway. "Don’t go around slandering an honest person. There’s nothing here. All right, that’s all, ciao!"

Before its voice had faded, it had already pushed open another door deep in the hallway, slipped inside, and vanished completely.

The three of them looked at each other, none of them sure what had just happened.

"What was that...?" Hai Luwei swept the flashlight beam over the spot where the woman had disappeared. "Was that a real person, or part of a trap?"

Fu Tailan turned to leave. "Who cares? As long as it doesn’t cause me any trouble."

But Mai Mingle refused to give up.

"It was strange back then,"

she said, rubbing her neck, which was sore from looking up for so long. She raised her voice to Cynthia in the Nest. "I had a gut feeling that woman was human, and I had to see where she went. Both apartment doors were still open at the time, so I wouldn’t have to open them myself and trigger anything. The risk wasn’t that great."

Mai Mingle borrowed the flashlight and cautiously entered the hallway. With every step, she had to toss some small object ahead to test the path, tapping and checking her surroundings to ensure it was safe before proceeding. It took her a while to reach the first open apartment door.

The apartment where the legs had vanished was just old and messy; the other one, where the woman’s torso had been, was also completely normal.

It was on her way back that Mai Mingle suddenly heard a groan from behind a wall.

"Who... who’s out there?" a woman’s voice asked softly. "Where am I? Is this... a Nest trap?"

That was the first time Mai Mingle met Cynthia.

Cynthia was a rookie Hunter. After running a few Nests with experienced veterans, this was her first time entering one alone, and she had run into trouble.

At first, Hai Luwei refused to believe she was human.

"I really am a human,"

Cynthia said from deep within the wall. "If you don’t believe me, I’ll turn on my phone’s ringtone for you to hear. Nests and their residents don’t have cell phones, you must know that, right?"

When Mai Mingle heard the clear, piercing sound of a phone alarm coming from inside the wall, her last shred of doubt vanished.

"Fu Tailan checked the situation back then and said the resident that caught you might have a... a certain kind of..."

’What kind of ability was it? Why do I keep tripping up on the details?’

"Ah, a space-editing ability." ’Yes, that’s it.’ "To hide you, it probably kicked you into some kind of spatial crevice."

That’s why the first-floor hallway seemed endless; why Cynthia’s legs were outside one apartment while her torso came out of another—it all made sense now.

"I never thought you’d hold on for this long."

Mai Mingle shouted, looking up. "We went into the two adjacent apartments afterward and tried to break down the wall between them to see if we could find you, but we never succeeded. So? Do you remember now?"

The Nest in the night sky suddenly felt distant. The air grew cold and sharp, as if it had just shed a layer of mist that had never truly existed.

Cynthia didn’t seem to hear.

’It was already incredible that they could talk for so long over such a vast distance; maybe her voice wasn’t loud enough?’

Mai Mingle raised her voice again. "Cynthia? Can you hear me?"

She shouted until her voice was hoarse this time, but the Nest in the sky above remained utterly silent. There was no longer any response from Cynthia.

’Why did Cynthia suddenly stop talking?’

For a moment, Mai Mingle thought that giant, snake-like shadow might have returned when she wasn’t looking, but a scan of the Nest revealed nothing.

"Cynthia?"

Her neck ached terribly, and she couldn’t help but lower her head to stretch it. The moment Mai Mingle turned her head, she froze.

Down the road, standing between the orange halos of two streetlights, was a dark figure.

She stared blankly at the figure, remembering the dented car bumper.

"Who’s there?" Mai Mingle called out. "Are you a resident?"

The figure took a step toward her, and then another.

As he walked into the lamplight, Mai Mingle’s heart suddenly began to pound. She immediately snatched up the machine gun leaning against the car door and barked, "Don’t move!"

Ivan stared at her, unmoving, and slowly opened his mouth.

His tongue rolled around a few times, as if searching for the correct position to form words.

"Tossing me back into the Nest... I bet you didn’t think it would be all for nothing, did you?" Ivan raised a hand, pointing straight at the Nest in the sky. "I fell out again."

A cold sweat broke out on Mai Mingle’s palms. ’Wait, if Ivan was nearby this whole time—’

"When I fell out, the other resident—the one whose entry into the human world depended on ’me being sent back to the Nest’—naturally returned to the Nest."

Ivan’s hand was still aimed straight at the night sky. "It cooperated with me a bit. The effect was pretty good, don’t you think? You should be familiar with it, right? Didn’t you just have a feeling like you were in both reality and a dream at the same time?"

"...What do you mean? I don’t understand."

Mai Mingle’s question was barely more than a breath.

Because she understood.

She felt her stomach turn over. Layers of cold sweat had already broken out on her back and palms. Though she was standing on her own two feet, her soul felt like it was sinking deep, deep inside her body.

"Finally shortened the time," Ivan said with great satisfaction. "Finally shortened the deadline of your ’Extracellular Telomeres’ to December 6th."