Chapter 522 - 463: Chaisi: What Happened Back Then Was Because You Were Too Outstanding (Part 1)

Chapter 522: Chapter 463: Chaisi: What Happened Back Then Was Because You Were Too Outstanding (Part 1)

...What other reason could there be?

’Why did that resident look like Mom?’ It was a question he had, of course, asked before.

Whether it was when he was lying in the hospital right after the incident, or after Uncle Kai brought him back to the Kai Family, Chaisi had murmured the question over and over.

He had asked himself, asked Uncle Kai, and even asked ordinary Hunters a disguised version of the question.

"This is not a rare phenomenon."

Uncle Kai sat in the study, his glasses having slid down his nose, his eyelids lowered to look at the open book on his lap. He slowly turned a page; under the night lamp, the paper made a crisp rustle.

The study’s light was enveloped in the thick, lingering scent of cigars, and Chaisi slowly relaxed, feeling at ease.

"Even before it sees you, it already knows who is approaching. Some residents possess this special ability. They instinctively know what form to take to make their target most vulnerable, most likely to let down their guard... I have never personally encountered one, but I have heard of them a few times."

At this, Uncle Kai closed his book, thought for a moment, and suddenly stood up.

He took an old, leather-bound volume from the top shelf of the bookcase. On that shelf, scattered about, were several other documents related to Hunters.

What Chaisi was looking at was one of those Hunter records, about ten years old. The entry inside about this type of resident was actually just two or three short sentences.

But he read it very intently, for a full five minutes.

’How old was I that year? It must have been not long after I returned to the Kai Family, right?’

Back then, Chaisi was still in a growth spurt, lanky and thin. When he sat on the leather sofa in the study like a grown-up, his arms weren’t even as wide as the armrests.

’So it was a resident that could read my mind,’ he thought at the time.

’If I see one in a Nest in the future, it’ll be different—I’ll be mentally prepared. I’ll definitely make that resident pay.’

Chaisi felt a faint, bittersweet pride and satisfaction: nearly nine years had passed since the day of the incident, and even though he was so young back then, he had still kept the mother he hadn’t seen since he was five firmly cherished in his soul, not letting time blur her image in the slightest.

’That’s why the resident was able to instantly take on the appearance of Daiju Monroe, right?’

"Of course, there is another possibility."

When Chaisi looked up at the sound of the voice, Kai Luonan was still sitting in the same posture on the armchair, a whiskey beside him, but the book and glasses were gone.

’No... his appearance is different, too.’

His hair was now completely silver-white, and the skin on his rock-hard bones had become loose and sagging. This wasn’t the Uncle Kai from when he was thirteen or fourteen; this was the Uncle Kai of his thirties.

Chaisi looked down and saw a muscular, tall, and well-built adult male body.

He touched his ear. The pair of his mother’s silver earrings, which he had only gotten in his twenties, were still on his earlobes.

’What’s going on? Isn’t this the study in the Kai Family Mansion from back then?’

’Back then, Uncle Kai and Aunt Hai still lived here with me; they hadn’t moved out... Back then, Uncle Kai never mentioned "another possibility."’

"What possibility?" Chaisi asked, his voice hoarse.

This conversation, of course, had never happened.

"There’s no shortage of shapeshifting residents in the Nests," Uncle Kai said, placing his hands on his slightly paunchy stomach. "The most common are Vultures."

"It couldn’t have been a Vulture," Chaisi said in a low voice.

"It wasn’t a Vulture," Uncle Kai said, and as he spoke, he suddenly stood up again. "Chaisi, come with me."

"Where are we going?"

By the time the question left his lips, Chaisi’s body was already on its feet, following Kai Luonan to the study door.

Kai Luonan turned his head halfway, his slightly clouded, gray-blue eye resting on Chaisi’s face for a moment.

"This is probably the only chance you’ll get in your life," Uncle Kai said with a smile. "The only chance to go to a Nest."

’What?’

’I can go to a Nest?’

Before Chaisi could voice his question, he saw Uncle Kai pull open the study door. The heavy wooden door slid open silently, but beyond the threshold was not the familiar second-floor foyer.

It was... a corridor filled with the strong smell of disinfectant.

Monotonous white lights, devoid of any human warmth, reflected off the white walls and green tiles, stabbing at the eyes.

"This isn’t the Nest yet," Kai Luonan said, as if he already knew what Chaisi was about to ask.

’Then where is this?’

As Chaisi stood there in a daze, Uncle Kai had already strode out. He hurriedly followed, but this time, just as he was about to ask, the question died in his throat.

He recognized this place—the room Kai Luonan had just pushed open the door to was a morgue.

As the door opened, a bone-chilling cold rushed out like a furious, fleeing fugitive, piercing his body before lunging past him.

The door slowly closed, cutting off the chill. A few seconds later, Kai Luonan’s voice came from inside the room: "Come on in."

In a state of indescribable fear, Chaisi glanced back at the corridor he had come from—but he knew very well that even if he turned back, there was no escape.

’...No matter how realistic Damian’s so-called "movie" is, it isn’t real.’

’The "movie" that Kai Luonan refused to watch was indeed immersive—Chaisi just didn’t know what kind of script he had fallen into, or what had been arranged for him.’

He raised his hand, and the trembling in his fingertips startled him. Chaisi pulled his hand back, clenched it tightly into a fist for a few seconds, then extended it again.

...The room behind the door was no longer a morgue.

It was a guest bedroom in the Kai Family Mansion; before they had moved out, no one had used it.

Kai Luonan was half-leaning, half-lying on the bed. On his chest was a standard-issue supply pouch for a Kai Family Hunter about to enter a Nest. He was dressed in black clothes and black boots, with a gun tucked at his waist.

Beside him was Daiju Monroe, her face a deathly, bluish-white pallor.

Her body lay stiffly on the bed, less like a person frozen through and more like a human-shaped block of ice. A single glance was enough to be stung by the chill of a body that had been frozen for who knew how long. Beneath her simple medical gown, her bare legs and feet were the dark, bluish-green of withered trees.

After so many years, her eyes were finally closed; she couldn’t look at him one last time.

’...So this is how young she was.’

Chaisi’s vision blurred. In a daze, he seemed to take a slow step forward, seemed to call out, but his very soul and being felt empty, scoured out and swept away by a gale, lost to the winds.

’Why is she here?’

He knew Kai Luonan had frozen her corpse and brought it to Blackmoor City, but Chaisi still didn’t understand why. Why was his mother lying on a bed, her face so pale and blue?

In an empty room, falling off the bed would grant entry into a Nest—this was Kai Luonan’s Path.

’But I’m clearly here. The room clearly isn’t empty. It’s impossible. He couldn’t possibly—’

"After being frozen in the police morgue for two weeks, the autopsy was completed. She was supposed to be cremated, turned into a pile of ash, and buried in a public cemetery by the Luocheng Government."

’Isn’t that what happened?’

’...For twenty-five years, I had always believed my mother was far away in Luocheng, that she had never left her home of sunshine and palm trees.’

The Kai Luonan on the bed said nothing. He reached his arm behind Daiju Monroe and gripped her shoulder tightly, like a lover in a couple with a large age gap.

But Chaisi could still hear Kai Luonan’s voice in his ears, like a movie voice-over.

"When I learned that she was to be cremated the next day, I made a decision."

Kai Luonan wrapped his arms around her corpse, and with a twist of his waist, dragged her with him as they fell off the edge of the bed. On the dim floor beneath, the dust lay silent and undisturbed.

’Come back, come back—Why? Where are you taking her?’

"She gave birth to a good son," Uncle Kai said, as if in praise. "So young, yet with such a mind, such talent. And what’s more precious is that I’ve done him a great service, and he’s eternally grateful to me."

"...Why?" Chaisi finally found his voice. "Why? She’s already dead."

"Because I saw your potential."

Kai Luonan said slowly, "I have good judgment, don’t I? Back then, I looked at you and thought, as long as you find a Path when you grow up, you will become a top-tier Hunter, the likes of which Blackmoor City hasn’t seen in decades. Such talent... and so readily available, ready to be used by me at any time."

He paused for a moment, then said, "Naturally, I had to make some extra arrangements."

Chaisi could understand every word, but it was as if a switch had been flipped off; he couldn’t comprehend Kai Luonan’s meaning.

He stood in the empty room, staring at the faint indentation Daiju Monroe’s stiff corpse had left on the bed.

"Capable people inevitably have ambition. And once they have ambition, they become difficult to manage."

Kai Luonan said calmly, "I had to have a backup plan, a leash to pull you back with, a bargaining chip that would make you hesitate, make you lose your composure, make you weak."

He let out a heavy sigh.

"Back then, I didn’t know you would get yourself killed by Damian. In the end, I never got to use her."