Chapter 44: Maiming River - Nowhere to Call Home

Mai Minghe: Homeless and Adrift

Mai Minghe had a home she could not return to.

She walked barefoot through the dark streets of the city of Blackmole in the small hours of the morning. Her entire body felt chilled to the bone, her toes in particular feeling as though they were merely glued on and might fall off at any moment.

At first, she could still feel a layer of dust caking the soles of her feet, and whenever she stepped on something suspiciously sticky, she would forcefully stamp and scrape the bottom of her foot. But after walking for a while, Mai Minghe gave up entirely—the streets of Blackmole were hardly clean, behaving much like someone spitting into a blazing fire to put it out; if she cared about such things, she wouldn't make it home by daybreak.

Before she collided with the screen, Jonah had grabbed her by the shoulder, a spot that still burned with a fiery ache. Despite the young man having been usurped by a parasite, his grip had been remarkably strong.

She had thought that the greatest difficulty in returning home from the nest would be managing to shake off Jonah.

She had collided with the screen just before Jonah could catch her, successfully returning to the mortal world; yet unexpectedly, the place she dropped out at was not her own home.

Having lived for this long, she never imagined that in her old age, she would find new and varied ways to suffer.

Sighing inwardly, Mai Minghe walked past a group of whistling drunkards on the roadside without changing her expression. "Hey there, chick! Why are you walking around in your pajamas at this hour? Did your boyfriend kick you out for the night?"

Logically, she knew that she was currently a young woman walking alone through the streets of Blackmole in the early hours of the morning, which was undeniably unsafe.

Emotionally, however, Mai Minghe could not muster the energy to be afraid.

"Hey!" One of the drunkards actually pursued her, reaching out to grab Mai Minghe’s arm while slurring his words, "My boys are talking to you... Don't walk away, how miserable is it walking barefoot? Come with us... We'll give you some money."

Mai Minghe stopped, her gaze looking past him to land on the building behind him.

"Where is the pharmacy around here?" she asked, unable to help herself. "It’s been open for decades, when was it demolished? How did it turn into a real estate agency? I’ve never even seen this building..."

The drunkard blinked and glanced back in a daze. "...Huh?"

"The old man who ran the pharmacy raised his granddaughter all by himself, and life wasn't easy for them. I suppose by now he's probably long gone..." Mai Minghe shook her head and continued walking. "I haven't walked this far in seven or eight years. Ah, to think this is a place I've lived for a lifetime, and now I can't even recognize it..."

The drunkard stood frozen in place, watching her walk away, and did not pursue her again.

If he had actually kept chasing her, Mai Minghe wouldn't have minded chatting with him a bit more; she always felt that speaking her inner thoughts aloud helped sort them out piece by piece.

For instance, as she walked and summarized her experience, she concluded that the rules for entering and exiting the nest were as follows: she collided with the screen and fell into the nest; inside the nest, if she collided with the screen once more, she would fall back into Blackmole.

However, the spot where she fell out was not necessarily the place where she had originally entered the nest, nor did she have to emerge directly from a screen—she had just plummeted out of thin air onto the garbage bin of an apartment building, and after rolling off the lid to check, she was still a kilometer away from home.

It seemed the pathway did not require precision; anywhere that dropped a person back more or less close to their destination would do.

During the time it took her to walk home, what on earth had happened to that young man named Jonah? How could a perfectly fine kid end up possessed by a bug?

Besides, a person could not stay in the nest for more than seven days, and Jonah did not have much time left.

She had to find a way to locate the Morgan family... They all used that thing nowadays, oh right, the internet. Or perhaps she could go to the library and ask the librarian to help search for it using the internet?

Lost in her thoughts, she walked and walked, but abruptly halted when she saw the low-rent apartment building where she had lived for decades.

A police car was parked right at the entrance of the apartment, its emergency lights casting flashing red and blue reflections against the brick wall.

Despite the dead of night, a scattering of onlookers had gathered to watch the spectacle; some were Mai Minghe’s neighbors from the same building, while others were idle residents from the neighborhood.

Public safety in this district was poor, with many immigrants and low-income residents, so seeing a police car in the middle of the night was hardly a rare occurrence—yet Mai Minghe instantly recognized one person among the crowd: a middle-aged housewife who lived on the floor below her, notoriously fond of gossip, though admittedly kind-hearted.

"...The two of them climbed down the fire escape in the middle of the night, groping all around outside the windows, it was terrifying!" Mrs. Smith grabbed a policeman's arm, refusing to let him leave, and said, "Talking about looking for someone, I simply don't believe it. I know that old woman on the second floor very well; she hasn't been able to get out of bed or leave her room in years. Could she suddenly grow wings and fly away in the middle of the night?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

The female caregiver’s face turned pale with anger as she snapped, "We are professional nurses; would we come here to steal from you? We came because we received an emergency distress call, but the old woman suddenly and quietly vanished on her own. How could we not look for her?"

The male caregiver, meanwhile, was pondering an entirely different issue.

He cornered the police officer from the other side, repeatedly clarifying the situation: "...This matter is definitely not a result of any negligence on our part. Please make a proper note of it, and be sure to explain it clearly to our hospital. Her grandson was watching her at the time, and we were just about to leave. Caretaking was no longer our responsibility. If you find that the old woman really did fall down the building..."

Right, Mai Minghe only then belatedly realized a crucial problem.

The thief was undoubtedly a phantom hunter, or at the very least, connected to that trade.

He knew she had entered the nest via the pathway; but the other two caregivers present were ordinary people completely ignorant of the nest, just like she had been not long ago.

They only knew that an old woman had been in the room and then suddenly vanished into thin air in the blink of an eye—how was this situation supposed to be resolved?

Thinking about it this way, it was actually quite fascinating: with so many phantom hunters and so many clients of theirs, they managed to keep the existence of nests and phantoms tightly concealed, preventing the world from catching even the slightest whisper of it.

Tens of millions of ordinary people bustled about day after day in the mortal world for survival, completely unaware that beyond their daily routine lay a world resembling dark fantasy.

"I understand, I understand, Mrs. Smith, right? Go on back. This is a misunderstanding, no one is trying to steal your things."

With great difficulty, the police officer extricated himself from their encirclement, pulled open the car door, and said to the male caregiver, "The family has already stated that they won't hold you responsible. Figure out how to contact them regarding the next steps. A living person isn't just going to vanish like this; my guess is the old woman was disoriented and wandered off somewhere. We've already filed a report, and we'll dispatch a few more people right away to search the neighborhood again... Alright, alright, everyone disperse."

By family, did he mean that thief?

Mai Minghe thought of her sham grandson, but craned her neck to look around without spotting a trace of the thief.

Seeing the police get into their car, the rest of the crowd gradually dispersed as well; in the blink of an eye, Mai Minghe was left all alone on the roadside.

The police car drove past her, and the officer inside glanced her way—causing Mai Minghe’s heart to skip a beat, as if she were the one hiding a guilty conscience for doing something wrong—only for the officer to immediately look away again, glancing down at his phone and pressing it to his ear.

Mai Minghe let out a sigh of relief.

Naturally, they would never suspect that this young woman who looked to be in her twenties was the very old woman they were searching everywhere for...

Passing carefully by Mrs. Smith’s doorway without making a sound, she turned and headed up the stairs.

Mai Minghe was single-mindedly focused on getting home quickly, washing her feet first, and changing her clothes—to save Jonah, she would have to wait until dawn to ask someone for help gathering information, as the library was not open in the middle of the night.

Yet her journey home came to a halt just a few steps short of her front door.

Her forced-open door was currently half-open, not tightly shut.

Through the gap in the door, she heard the sound of footsteps pacing around, occasionally stepping on the wooden floorboards in front of the kitchen with a creak; amidst the sound of movement, the thief's voice clearly uttered a single "Mn."

Mai Minghe froze in place, caught in a momentary dilemma of whether to advance or retreat.

"You've left?"

The thief's voice drifted out from behind the door, sounding very distinct in the dead of night. "The caregivers went back too? What did you tell them?"

Who was he talking to on the phone?

The room went silent for a few seconds before the thief let out a breath. "This time, we really have to thank you for cleaning up the mess so promptly. Mn, right, I was mainly worried about those two caregivers..."

Mai Minghe's curiosity and investigative instincts were fully aroused at this point, and she quietly took a step forward.

Whoever was on the other end of the phone must have said something to set the thief at ease, as his voice relaxed a fraction. "You're right. If that woman downstairs hadn't insisted on calling the police, I figured those caregivers also wanted to turn a big issue into a small one and a small issue into nothing, so they probably wouldn't have dug deeper. Yes, your cleanup crew is indeed professional... It looks completely identical to the real thing. If I hadn't been the one making the call, even I would be worried."

Goosebumps erupted all over Mai Minghe's skin as she suddenly realized who the person on the other end of the line was—just moments ago, she had laid eyes on that very individual.

"Yes, send the bill to our House faction..."

The thief seemed to hesitate upon hearing a tricky question, pausing before continuing, "Mn? No, I have no idea how that old woman managed to discover the pathway out of nowhere..."

He was lying.

That pipe of his, the moment it was placed against someone, could induce the illusion of opening a pathway.

Recalling the scene, Mai Minghe felt everything fall sharply into focus: the thief had intended to use that "vacuum cleaner" to seize her pathway, but the operation of the "vacuum cleaner" had also allowed her, for the very first time, to see how her own pathway should be opened.

As if responding to a summons, she had been called by the pathway to the television set and stumbled into the nest.

While she was deep in thought, the thief's next sentence arrived a fraction of a second too late, finally piercing through Mai Minghe's thoughts and entering her mind.

"...Wait, there's someone outside my door."

Mai Minghe was jolted with a start. Subconsciously glancing down, she saw a hazy shadow cast by her own figure under the hallway light, falling squarely right in front of the door.

I need to leave quickly—

Before she could even turn around, however, the door was yanked wide open by the thief; raising her head, she found herself locked in a direct gaze with him.

Aside from the faint sounds of vehicle traffic leaking from his phone, absolute silence hung between the two of them.

In a flash of lightning, Mai Minghe felt as though another version of herself had taken over her reactions: first, she blinked at him blankly, then, as if regaining her composure, she offered the thief a smile.

"I just went out to take out the trash," she said in a low voice. "Did you just move in?"

The thief furrowed his brow slightly, his gaze sweeping across her face twice.

Without giving him a chance to overthink, Mai Minghe stepped forward and walked away, acting as though her home was just a bit further down the corridor.

Even though her appearance was decades younger and she had discarded her pajama jacket, she still dared not let the thief's gaze linger on her for too long—as she passed her own doorway, she could practically feel his eyes sweeping across her dust-caked feet with physical weight.

Having walked a couple of steps, Mai Minghe still didn't hear the thief go back inside; looking back, she predictably ran into that pair of eyes once more.

"What is it?" She frowned as well, saying, "By the way, you left your door open just now."

"Huh? Oh, thanks."

The thief was momentarily startled, likely realizing that staring fixedly at a young woman in the corridor in the middle of the night was indeed somewhat inappropriate; though suspicion still lingered on his face, under Mai Minghe's unyielding gaze, he finally retreated inward—and this time, he shut the door.

The moment the door latched shut, Mai Minghe turned on her heel and broke into a sprint.

Disregarding whether her footsteps would wake Mrs. Smith, she pounded down the stairs; just as she lunged around the corner of the first-floor landing, she heard a door upstairs yanked open abruptly, slamming against the wall with a loud bang.

Immediately following that, a second set of footsteps echoed through the hallway.

The thief might not have suspected that she had grown younger; but he had certainly noticed enough suspicious clues to arouse his doubt—it seemed her home was temporarily off-limits.

Rushing out the front entrance of the building, Mai Minghe did not continue running down the street; instead, she darted into the narrow alley behind the building and crouched down behind a row of waist-high garbage bins.

Ten seconds or so later, she indeed heard footsteps; peeking cautiously from behind the garbage bin, she saw the thief's silhouette scanning the street back and forth before choosing a direction and walking away.

After several minutes, the street was entirely deserted.

Not daring to make a single sound, Mai Minghe slowly stood up, hunched over, and retreated step by step under the cover of the garbage bins. She worried the thief might still be lingering nearby; occasionally stepping on a cracked piece of hard plastic sent sharp pains shooting through her foot, causing her to bite down hard on her lip, but she managed not to make a sound.

Following the alley behind the building, she finally put some distance between herself and her home, inch by inch.

As the sky began to turn a pale, fish-belly white, Mai Minghe stood blankly on the street, having no idea where she should go.

If she simply waited patiently, the thief would eventually give up; he couldn't possibly live in her house forever. But during the time before he left, where should she go?

The goal of finding the Morgan family seemed to have drifted even further away.

The most pressing matter at hand was seemingly to find a pair of shoes for herself first.

Come to think of it, there was precisely one place that fit the bill: not only could she find shoes there, but she could also get a piece of clothing and eat a few bites of bread—near the Bluecloth Community College, there was a charitable relief station where homeless vagrants frequently went to collect relief supplies.

Was she not essentially a homeless vagrant right now?

The relief station wasn't close by, but Mai Minghe had no other choice and could only urge her bare feet forward.

She didn't have a watch and didn't know the time, but by the time she finally drew close to her destination, daylight had completely broken, and the congested traffic of the morning rush hour was thinning out, returning to a normal flow.

Mai Minghe did not witness the exact moment a black Mercedes suddenly popped its door open.

By the time she realized a tall figure had leaped out onto the street and was striding toward the opposite subway station, the driverless black Mercedes had already spun out of control—careening crookedly onto the sidewalk and crashing with a resounding boom directly into a tree just a few steps ahead of her.

A woman with purple dreadlocks inside the car seemed to have taken a heavy hit; struggling to push the door open, she muttered spitefully to herself: "...The moment I get back to the House faction, I'm definitely tearing up the contract!"

Today's chapter was so long, I didn't even expect to write this much myself, consider it a celebration of publication!

Truly, I couldn't stockpile a single word...

The timelines of the three protagonists are (currently) finally about to converge!

PS: My cat is fine!

The doctor asked me, "Does the cat have fleas?" I said with absolute confidence, "No, she never goes outside." Then the doctor took a little comb, brushed a few times, and the fleas on the comb were more abundant than my confidence...

No wonder my sweet girl was losing so much fur, she was allergic to fleas, ahhhhhh!

There's a massive engineering project waiting for me when I get home: spraying medicine everywhere, taking down fabric to wash it, and scrubbing the floors with a steam mop...

Truly, one never has to worry about time dragging on with nothing to do...