Chapter 529 - 470: Jin Xueli: Waves Wash Away Xueli

Chapter 529: Chapter 470: Jin Xueli: Waves Wash Away Xueli

When Jin Xueli returned to the intersection, Tian Xi was still waiting in the car, in the exact same posture as half an hour ago. He seemed not to have moved at all.

She leaned down and knocked on the window. Tian Xi glanced at her, lowered the window a couple of inches, and asked, "Vulture?"

"I’d have to be a pretty stupid Vulture," Jin Xueli said, "to answer ’yes’ right now."

"...Show me proof that you’re human."

"Things have already gotten to this point. The streets are crawling with copies of the two of us. Are you one hundred percent sure you’re the real one yourself?" Jin Xueli said, annoyed. "You might not even be the real you, so what’s the point of being on guard against me?"

Tian Xi was silent for a few seconds, then seemed to finally admit she had a point and unlocked the car.

As she got into the passenger seat, he muttered, "Maybe I *am* the real Tian Xi."

"What does it matter?"

Jin Xueli really couldn’t understand the logic of Tian Xi and his copies. ’We’re all ’Tian Xi,’ right? As long as we haven’t been copied by a Vulture or something, aren’t we all ourselves?’

Faced with the same situation—multiple copies of themselves appearing—the reactions of the Jin Xuelis and the Tian Xis were worlds apart.

She didn’t know which Jin Xueli had come up with the idea—’Not that it matters. Whichever one thought of it, it’s the same as me thinking of it.’—in any case, the large group of Jin Xuelis knew each other inside and out and cooperated wonderfully. They smoothly devised a plan of action and began to deal with her long-standing hidden troubles.

’When you’re dealing with yourself, what’s there to be hesitant about?’

’What partner, what friend, could ever be as easy and familiar to get along with as yourself?’

Tian Xi, on the other hand, was completely different.

Those five or six Tian Xis had never once come within ten meters of each other.

"Why was I copied? How was I copied? Who did it? What’s their goal? Do the other Tian Xis have their own ulterior motives, just pretending to share my thought processes on the surface? These are all things to worry about."

Tian Xi glanced at Jin Xueli and seemed to swallow a retort before saying, "...You, you’re different. You don’t have many concerns."

"Don’t think I can’t tell you’re calling me simple-minded," Jin Xueli said.

Tian Xi sighed.

He seemed to want to start the car, but his hand hovered aimlessly before falling back onto the steering wheel.

"Did you get your things done?"

"All done. I even dawdled and took care of a bunch of other things."

The task assigned to Jin Xueli wasn’t to attend a class at the university to learn how to bury her history and fabricate a new one—which she was a little disappointed about, because it sounded like a lot of fun.

She had simply been assigned to the misdirection team, doing all sorts of unimportant and bizarre things meant to confuse the "novel" curse.

For example, after one Jin Xueli moved the radio, this one timed her arrival at the rendezvous point, gave that Jin Xueli a high five, and then they swapped clothes.

Once she was wearing the other Jin Xueli’s clothes and had received a supply pack from yet another Jin Xueli, she rushed to the entrance of a trap in a Nest without stopping. In the dead of night, with not a single resident on the street, Jin Xueli took a deep breath.

Before stepping into the trap, she stood at the entrance and declared loudly, "My life or death, my success or failure, everything I’ve ever wanted, it all depends on this journey!"

The resident inside the trap had originally been asleep.

By the time she was halfway through the challenge, the bleary-eyed resident, forced to work overtime because of her, had already confirmed with her several times, "Our trap is pretty simple... and we don’t offer any Illusions or information as a reward. We’re basically a joke in the Nests. All the Hunters know about us, and they aren’t afraid of us. Are you sure your life or death, your success or failure, really depends on us? And not someone else?"

Jin Xueli waved her hand emphatically. "That’s right. Right here."

The resident was very moved.

As she was leaving, the resident’s many hands all grasped Jin Xueli’s hand and said, "Thank you for recognizing our potential. I’ve always said you can’t just look at the here and now. We’re late bloomers with limitless potential. I never thought I’d meet a kindred spirit today! You must be very disappointed that we let you escape alive, but we’ll work harder for you in the future and harm a few more Hunters."

"You don’t really need to work hard for my sake..."

"Oh, but we must, we must," the resident said, its many heads nodding repeatedly. "Besides, it’ll be easier to catch people from now on. There are so many ordinary people in Blackmoor City without a Path. If they wander in by mistake, they’ll never escape. The future is bright, the future is bright!"

Jin Xueli tilted her head. "...What?"

"Kindred spirit, you don’t know yet?"

The resident held her hand enthusiastically, reluctant to let go.

"Parts of the Nests have already begun to weave themselves into Blackmoor City. The Black Abyss Belt that used to separate us is gone. Now, with every passing minute, the Nests merge deeper with the human world."

It lifted one of its chins, gesturing toward the road in the distance. "You don’t even need a Path anymore. From that direction, you can just walk back to the human world. And in another place, the human world is hanging upside down in the sky. If you climb up, you can enter it there, too."

...The resident was right.

When Jin Xueli happened to run into another Tian Xi, she confirmed it with him several times before realizing she had actually walked right back into the human world.

She had thought countless times how nice it would be if she didn’t have to jump off a building. Now she really didn’t have to, but she couldn’t feel happy about it.

’...That old saying was really true: Be careful what you wish for.’

Inside the car, the thoughts of the two occupants seemed to have turned to the same subject.

’Perhaps few people could avoid worrying about the current situation and the future of the human world.’

"Where are you planning to go?" Tian Xi asked hesitantly. "The human world is now connected to the Nests... everything tonight feels like a nightmare."

The Jin Xuelis had already agreed to meet up at Jin Xueli’s apartment in the morning after they all finished their respective tasks.

It was still several hours until the meeting time. After a moment of thought, Jin Xueli decided to head back to her apartment first.

Having a temporary destination and a goal, Tian Xi let out a sigh of relief.

"I’ll take you there, then," he said, starting the car. "I’m not clear on the situation right now, so I can’t go back to the Kai Family yet. Maybe talking with you all will help me figure things out."

Jin Xueli was about to say, ’What if the other Tian Xis are thinking the same thing?’ but she swallowed the words before they came out.

She watched the dark buildings streak past outside the window and her own pale reflection in the glass. For a moment, the chaotic jumble of thoughts in her mind was no longer a stampede of wild horses—it was more like fireworks exploding over and over, every single thought, worry, and concern detonating simultaneously and repeatedly.

"My shares..."

Jin Xueli murmured, "Are they completely useless now?"

Tian Xi didn’t answer.

"Nine million," she said, her voice catching as if she were about to cry. "How many chances will I get in my entire life to earn nine million? Now I have the shares, but the human world is gone? Without money, what am I going to do?"

"Look outside," Tian Xi said. "Have you ever seen Blackmoor City with not a single light on? Stop thinking about money right now. It’s useless."

"You think I’m only thinking about the money?"

Jin Xueli’s voice rose. "It’s about everything money can buy! In this world, you need money to get security and order, to earn the right to a decent life. But what about now? Are we supposed to live in a half-Nest world from now on? Then what was the point of me solving my curse? God knows when I’ll get hit with another, even more terrifying one."

Even moving to a small town now seemed like it would only be delaying the inevitable.

She wiped her eyes. "...Money can’t become meaningless. Anything can lose its meaning, but not money."

Tian Xi remained silent. Jin Xueli let out a shaky breath, hot and salty with the taste of tears.

"There should already be a few Jin Xuelis waiting at the apartment."

After a moment, she changed the subject, just to fill the silence. "The Jin Xuelis in that one group have a more important task, so we agreed they’d head back to the apartment as soon as their class was over..."

"Class?"

Tian Xi was curious. They had just reached an intersection. As he turned the steering wheel, he asked, "At a time like this, what kind of class?"

"Oh, there’s a university in the Nests—"

As Jin Xueli answered, she was staring at the pitch-black, empty road ahead. In the corner of her vision, she could see Tian Xi’s hand on the steering wheel.

Just as she said this, his hand suddenly twisted slightly, as if its color and shape had dissolved, or like several layers of light and shadow had been superimposed—in that instant, Jin Xueli’s head snapped around to look at Tian Xi.

Her eyes went wide in a stunned daze.

Like the turn of a kaleidoscope causing images to separate and overlap, Tian Xi’s entire body became "dislocated."

Several overlapping, shadowy figures twisted together into a warped, indescribable shape—and in the next second, the driver’s seat was suddenly empty.

Tian Xi had vanished.

The car was still moving forward.

Jin Xueli’s scalp prickled. She had just managed to choke out half of Tian Xi’s name when she realized the car was out of control. The steering wheel had snapped back to its original position before the turn was complete, and now the car was heading straight for a building.

She scrambled to climb into the driver’s seat but was caught by her seatbelt.

Jin Xueli cursed the seatbelt, grabbing the steering wheel with one hand while fumbling with the buckle with the other. Luckily, with no one on the gas pedal, the car had slowed down, and there were no other vehicles on the road. The car hit the building’s exterior wall, but the impact wasn’t severe. It just jolted her and she bumped her shoulder.

She sat stunned in the driver’s seat.

She wasn’t just frightened. She was captured by the countless thoughts and memories that suddenly flooded her mind. Jin Xueli’s consciousness was like a small boat on the sea during a storm, tossed about with no control over its direction.

"...You probably weren’t the real Tian Xi," Jin Xueli murmured after an unknown amount of time.

"But you are the real Jin Xueli," a low male voice suddenly replied.