Chapter 43: Jin Xueli and the Overlooked Oddity

Meeting Morando was a thing of barely a dozen hours ago. Jin Xueli had not expected the two of them to cross paths again so soon—roughly half an hour after Anthony had dissolved into soda pop, to be precise.

Why?

Well, as that young girl named Qiao Xiyue put it, the only things that absolutely must be redeemed these days, aside from your own flesh and blood, are smartphones.

Jin Xueli had no children. Suffice it to say, without her phone, she felt as though she had literally lost a piece of her soul.

"Oh, it's the person herself this time?" Morando chuckled after picking up the call.

Could people please refrain from dropping blunt or subtle reminders of humiliating incidents? Even without reminders, she was perfectly capable of remembering every single awkward moment she had ever experienced for at least a decade—and they always ambushed her mind in the dead of night, banishing all sleep.

"I can pay you back now. Are you free tonight?"

Morando fell silent for a second. "Where?"

Jin Xueli recited the address of the "Against the Light" bar, and heard Morando reply, "Not far from me."

She wanted to ask if the other woman lived in the neighborhood, but stopped herself for fear of being suspected of prying into a hunter's intelligence. Before she could speak, Morando added, "I just finished a handoff with a client, so I'll head right over."

Must be nice. Other people went to a nest and came back making a profit; look at her, she had lost twelve thousand on top of everything.

Perhaps because this thought hung over her head like a dark cloud, occupying the majority of Jin Xueli's mind, or perhaps because she knew she had returned to Black Mole City and no longer needed to maintain constant vigilance—whatever the reason, when she stepped into "Against the Light," she had no inkling that she was about to make a monumental mistake.

"Don't move!"

A sharp roar shattered the quiet, startling Jin Xueli right as she crossed the threshold.

She lifted her eyes and discovered that every single hunter in the bar had stood up, glaring at her with naked hostility. A few of them even had one hand pressed against their waists, clearly poised to draw their guns.

"What... what are you doing?"

Jin Xueli froze mid-step, too terrified to move. She swept her gaze around the dim bar and asked in sheer bewilderment, "What's wrong with you people? What's wrong with *me*?"

To say everyone had stood up wasn't entirely accurate. One person in the entire bar remained seated at the counter, pulling down a flat-topped cap to conceal a low chuckle.

"What do you think you're doing?" The Sharpei-like bartender hoisted a glass bottle, looking ready to smash it as a weapon at any moment. "Walking in here carrying an active artifact—what is the meaning of that?"

Jin Xueli looked at the crowd, looked down at the half-can of soda in her hand, and then looked back up at the crowd, suddenly enlightened.

"Ah, this, no,"

Panicking, she moved to lower the soda can, only to be barked at with another "Don't move!" Realizing she dared not budge, she rushed to explain, "I'm not trying to hurt anyone with it—well, I *did* use it—oh, but it has nothing to do with you lot, I'm not using it on your bodies! I just happened to be holding it and forgot, I've been carrying it the whole way."

Experienced hunters possessed a sixth-sense-like intuition for artifacts. Even when held by someone else, an artifact stood out to them like a lamp in a dark room, impossible to ignore—and among them, an active artifact was the most conspicuous of all.

Belatedly, Jin Xueli thought that the nature of her stunt was probably akin to strolling into an airport with a rifle.

"...She's a regular," the bartender muttered, lowering the bottle hesitantly and addressing the others.

"Who forgets they're holding an artifact?" a middle-aged man asked with lingering skepticism.

At this point, Morando finally decided to chime in.

Slowly spinning her barstool around, she said, "It's true. When she bought this artifact earlier, she ran out of cash and started hitting up a total stranger of a hunter for a loan."

"How do you know?" A woman slowly removed her hand from her waist, though she remained standing.

"I was that stranger." Morando lazily beckoned to Jin Xueli. "Come on, time to pay me back."

Under the watchful eyes of an entire tavern of hunters, Jin Xueli scuttled over to the bar in a few hurried steps—but the ordeal was far from over.

Several still-suspicious hunters gathered around from near and far, staring at her and the soda can. "How does that artifact work? What's its function?"

The possibility remained that they were asking questions they already knew the answers to, just to see if she would tell the truth.

Not that Jin Xueli had any intention of lying in the first place.

"Take a few big gulps, make sure there's enough grape flavor left in your mouth, and blow a breath into your target's face as quickly as possible."

"And then?"

"The target turns into grape soda," Jin Xueli said honestly. Sitting on the barstool, she lifted a foot clad in a rain boot, pointed at it, and added, "I thought it would take a huge amount, so I specially wore rain boots—see? Look at that. Turned out it only took the volume of a cup or two of soda."

"Did you just... kill someone?" a strange hunter asked.

"You can't go around saying things like that." Even in a room full of hunters, Jin Xueli wasn't about to admit to such a thing in public. "I only said I blew a breath at the target. I never said anything about killing."

At her words, the tension among the remaining hunters eased slightly. A few pairs of eyes drifted toward the soda can, gleaming faintly.

"Turning into soda—wouldn't other people see it happen?" an old man asked.

Jin Xueli raised a single finger. "No. After the breath is blown, it takes effect the very first moment the target is unobserved by human eyes. It's instantaneous."

Clothes, shoes, cell phone—not a single trace was left behind. Though she couldn't exactly voice that detail out loud.

"How much is left?" Someone stepped forward a couple of paces. "What's the shelf life?"

"Half of it's left, and the expiration date—" Jin Xueli suddenly woke up to what was happening around her. "Are you interested in buying?"

Everyone present was a veteran. Even though the purple soda was an artifact making its debut appearance, it took them less than fifteen minutes to evaluate its value and utility.

Considering that the expiration date had less than three hours remaining, and the longer she dragged it out, the less it would fetch, Jin Xueli simply sold the remaining half-can to the first hunter who stepped up to buy it. Regardless of anything else, this trip had at least cushioned her losses by three or four thousand.

"I haven't drunk out of it myself," she said brightly after pocketing the cash. "Drink up with confidence! It's actually quite tasty, though it might be a bit flat by now."

The hunter gave her a look with an expression that defied translation, grabbed the soda, and hurried out the door.

"I trust you aren't planning to scrape together the rest of my money right here on the spot," Morando remarked from the side.

"Of course not." Jin Xueli turned around, though she lacked the courage to meet the other woman's eyes. She dug into her bag and retrieved an envelope, handing it over. "Twelve thousand. Count it."

The fingers that took the envelope were slender and fair, the fingernails trimmed short and clean.

"Do you have some kind of profound objection to electronic transfers?" Morando tapped the envelope lightly as she asked.

"I haven't found anyone willing to launder my money yet, so I keep cash at home." Jin Xueli looked at her seemingly powerful hands and said, "If you know anyone suitable, recommend them to me."

For some reason, Morando kept smiling. When they first met, Jin Xueli had taken her for someone who loathed talking.

Furthermore, Jin Xueli had assumed Morando would be the type to pocket the money without even looking, but instead, the woman poured the entire stack of bills onto the counter and began methodically counting them bill by bill into the envelope.

"What?"

Her hat removed, Morando suddenly turned her gaze toward Jin Xueli. Her eyes were an astonishing blue—like a blue sky frozen by Arctic ice, or a sea burning with extreme cold, so pristine they looked as though they had never touched the mortal realm.

Every worldly concept, even down to gender, seemed entirely detached from Morando. Yet at this moment, she was holding up a single banknote.

After inspecting it closely and tucking it away, she said, "...Twelve. Of course I have to check properly. How do I know you didn't mix in any counterfeits?"

Where would anyone even get fake cash these days?

Jin Xueli simply ordered a drink for her, hoping to keep her safely occupied as a human currency detector. Morando smiled and said to the Sharpei-like bartender, "Right, it's her. She's the eyewitness to the Vulture."

Huh? The Vulture?

The bartender nodded, turning to Jin Xueli, whose attention had snapped to full alertness. "Just a few hours ago, a house faction sent down a notice looking for information on the Vulture. You can call this number; as for what kind of reward you want, you can negotiate it then."

He scribbled a note and handed it to the slip of paper across the bar.

"Chaise Monroe?" She thought for a moment. "Never heard of him. Is he a hunter? Which faction is he from?"

The bartender stared at her for a second or two. "No, he's not a hunter... You don't know who Chaise Monroe is?"

"Should I?" Jin Xueli looked even more blank than he did.

"Never mind, you aren't part of any faction," the bartender said, finding an explanation for her ignorance and waving a hand. "No need to memorize the names of people from those factions anyway. Just make sure you tell him your story properly when the time comes, and don't piss him off. For Chaise Monroe to personally step forward means this matter must be quite important. Otherwise, it's usually the House of Kai contacting me."

"The House of Kai," Morando chimed in, though her tone was unreadable. "...Thirty-one."

*Very important...* Jin Xueli weighed those words.

Although the Vulture residents' behavior had grown abnormal and dangerous, in terms of sheer importance, it hardly seemed to warrant a major faction bigwig stepping out to personally dig for information—especially since, judging by the bartender's implication, the man was the second-in-command of the House of Kai.

What factor had caused the Vulture to become this significant?

Jin Xueli checked the time on her phone—those hundred-plus messages had long since been cleared, vanishing alongside Anthony's existence. The time read 10:23 PM, November 18th.

She had encountered the Vulture residents in the early hours of yesterday morning, and already a faction was out looking for intel today.

While marveling at the terrifying speed at which major factions gathered intelligence, she suspected there was a great deal more to the Vulture affair that she was unaware of.

Had something happened in the hunter community lately?

Jin Xueli pondered for a moment, then probed the bartender indirectly, but the information he gave her was nothing she hadn't already known: "Recent events? Nothing particularly worth mentioning. The most sensational thing was Westley's death. You were right here in the bar the day that news broke."

...Westley?

Cradling a cup of freshly ordered plain cola in both hands, Jin Xueli stared blankly with her mouth half-open, momentarily unable to believe she had let slip such a bizarre piece of the puzzle.

No, no, she had just crawled back alive from the nightmare of the fake and real Jin Xueli; she was still shaking and utterly unmoored at the time, so missing it was entirely normal...

When she woke up on the museum floor, that resident had been studying the history contained within the candles.

To be precise, what it was looking at back then was Westley's history preserved inside a candle.

Yet when the entity copied her appearance and touched a candle, shouldn't the history that appeared have been Jin Xueli's own? Why did Westley's history show up instead?

Moreover, it must have been crucial, considering how utterly engrossed the resident had been.

What was her intersection with Westley? What kind of connection could possibly exist between Westley and herself?

Did she have to go back into the nest just to check the candles?

"What's wrong with you?" Morando glanced at her. "You suddenly look utterly devastated."

"I... I might have to make another trip into the nest," Jin Xueli groaned. At the mere thought of having to jump off that building again, she could practically feel the blood draining from her face.

Was there any way around returning to the nest? She rubbed her temples hard, her mind racing.

The history the resident had been watching... seemed to take place in May.

Right, she remembered a massive chunk of candle melting into a lake of wax tears. In the "lake" not far from the resident, there had been the exact fragment from the night she met Anthony—the moment a bodyguard's car crashed into the bar's back alley.

That was a new history brought into being by the resident's own hands, and the only version of history that had truly happened.

Jin Xueli snapped her head up.

She grabbed her phone and quickly located Amber in her contacts. After a few rings, Amber answered on the other end: "Hello, Xueli?"

"You remember that incident in May when a car crashed into the bar, right?" Jin Xueli asked straight to the point. "Did you hear any news about that bodyguard convoy afterward?"

Amber paused, not answering immediately. "Why are you suddenly asking about that?"

"...You do know," Jin Xueli realized.

"Well—I wouldn't call it 'knowing'," Amber said, sounding somewhat constrained. "Um... it's not like I meant to keep it from you the whole time. I casually mentioned what happened that night to my faction later on, not thinking it was any big deal, but after a while, our faction's chief hunter came looking for me."

Amber took a breath and continued, "He instructed me to keep the events of that night confidential and not talk about it with anyone. Even though I didn't know much and couldn't see any reason for secrecy... it was the faction's order, so I had no choice but to comply."

This was precisely why Jin Xueli loathed joining a faction: her own actions would be dictated by others. By what right?

She didn't even know the House of Kai's second-in-command, let alone the chief hunter of the House of Morgan, so she simply asked, "Who is your chief hunter?"

"Fu Tailan," Amber replied.

Her tone was so flat that it made it impossible for Jin Xueli to tell whether Amber was simply accustomed to it or genuinely unaware of how profoundly prestigious the name "Fu Tailan" was in the hunter underworld.

...When on earth had Fu Tailan joined the House of Morgan?

While Jin Xueli was still reeling from shock, Amber seemed to misinterpret her silence. "You aren't planning to go ask Fu Tailan about this, are you? He won't tell you. Besides, our faction is upside down with chaos today, completely frantic—he's about to lead a team straight into the nest..."

"What happened?" Jin Xueli asked instinctively.

"A small team our faction sent into the nest last week somehow got wiped out entirely; not a single person has returned yet. The team leader, a guy named Jonah, is currently only known to be alive, but needs urgent rescue—if we wait any longer, it'll be too late... A woman who just came out of the nest, I forget her name, brought the news to our house."