Chapter 530 - 471: Jin Xueli - Her Goal Has Always Been Very Clear

Chapter 530: Chapter 471: Jin Xueli - Her Goal Has Always Been Very Clear

Jin Xueli whipped around.

When she realized someone had appeared in the back seat of the car, she instinctively jerked back. Her back slammed against the steering wheel, and the car let out a long, shrill honk for her.

"Wh-who are you?" She straightened up, and the car fell silent. "When did you..."

He was a man in his sixties, just entering old age.

He sat securely in the back seat, as if the car was his and Jin Xueli was merely his driver. No, it was more like the city—the entire human world—was his, and Jin Xueli was just a small part of it.

The man’s face was weary, heavy, and hard. His eyes held a faint, eerie glint, like the reflection of a silver knife in the shadow of a drawer.

Jin Xueli felt he looked familiar, yet she knew with certainty that she had never met him before.

’That’s strange. Why does he look so familiar?’

"How did you get in here?"

As she spoke, she fumbled around beside her seat. This wasn’t Tian Xi’s car; she had no idea where he’d gotten it. There were only empty drink bottles on the floor, no pistol under the seat. "Are you the one who made Tian Xi disappear?"

The man gave a slow smile.

He was just about to open his mouth to speak when Jin Xueli suddenly couldn’t hold it in any longer. She held up a hand. "Wait a second."

She shoved the car door open and leaned out. The moment her mouth opened, a triumphant surge of acidic bile rushed up from her stomach, splashing all over the road.

Jin Xueli gasped for air, watching a glistening thread of saliva hang from her lips. She didn’t dare sit back up—sure enough, a second wave came just as quickly.

She vomited until her face was a mess of snot and tears, her body still trembling violently. Keeping her head outside the car, she asked, "Did... did you poison me? Good thing I haven’t eaten yet..."

The man in the back seat was silent for a moment.

"You’re vomiting,"

After a few seconds, he said slowly and deliberately, "because your brain cannot withstand such a violent, massive influx of information. Moreover, for someone without symptoms of schizophrenia, that information is extremely unnatural—something that shouldn’t exist.

"Your central nervous system was shocked, triggering your body’s self-preservation mechanism... It’s actually the same principle as the reaction to poisoning, except you can’t vomit out information. So? Feeling any better now?"

Jin Xueli looked around before finally wiping her face clean with her sleeve.

"What information?" She decided to play dumb. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

’It’s worth a try—what if I can actually fool him?’

The man in the back seat didn’t smile. Beneath his drooping eyelids, his eyes were fixed motionlessly on Jin Xueli.

"What are you staring at me for? I was in a crash earlier, I might have a concussion... I really don’t know what you’re talking about—forget it, fine."

Seeing that she couldn’t bluff her way out, Jin Xueli was quick to admit it. "The experiences and memories of twenty-five other Jin Xuelis suddenly appeared in my mind. I feel like I’m about to become schizophrenic. Did you do this?"

"You see, when you show me respect, I naturally show you respect in return."

The man said unhurriedly, "I wasn’t the one who started this, but I was indeed the one who ended it."

"You mean... you’re not the one who created all those other ’me’s?"

"No." The man, his eyelids still lowered, said slowly, "I just happen to understand a bit of the principle behind it and happen to know how to end it. But don’t misunderstand. I have no interest in you, or in why there were so many of you."

He paused, and his cheek suddenly bulged, as if he were pushing something around with his tongue.

Jin Xueli froze.

"If I didn’t need to know the whereabouts of the radio, and if I hadn’t known which Jin Xueli to find, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in this matter and ruined someone else’s handiwork."

’Someone else’s handiwork—wait, he knows about the radio—the location of the radio is crystal clear in the memories of the other twenty-five Jin Xuelis—and several of them seemed to have clashed with Chaisi and an old woman—’

A thousand thoughts raced through her mind, but the word that ultimately escaped her lips was a name.

"Kai Luonan?"

The man in the back seat didn’t move a muscle.

"No wonder you look familiar,"

She took a breath, stalling for time while desperately rummaging through the memories of the other twenty-five Jin Xuelis. She hadn’t been joking when she said she felt like she was going schizophrenic.

"I must have seen a picture of you somewhere before..."

Although she was a solo Hunter, she had considered joining a Family Faction in the past. Jin Xueli still had some basic knowledge about the major Factions.

"The radio," Kai Luonan reminded her calmly.

’There it is—one of the Jin Xuelis, shortly before she disappeared, had her head forced down onto the trunk of a car by Chaisi.’

That one sentence from Chaisi rang out in the memories of several Jin Xuelis at once.

"...You want money, I’ll give it to you. I can give you all of Kai Luonan’s assets..."

He hadn’t just used the full name "Kai Luonan," but had even treated his assets like dog crap on the side of the road, without a shred of concern or regret.

’What does that mean? Did he and his adoptive son have a falling out?’

"You see, it’s not that I’m incapable of extracting information from a living person’s brain."

Kai Luonan said unhurriedly, "It’s just that the process is neither simple nor pleasant, and the consequences aren’t exactly clean. If you insist—"

"I don’t insist," Jin Xueli said at once.

Kai Luonan, who had been leaning forward slightly, stopped and looked at her.

’The car door is open... If I get out and run right now...’

Jin Xueli snuffed out the thought.

It wasn’t because she thought she couldn’t outrun a man in his sixties; it was because she suspected Kai Luonan probably wouldn’t even need to run.

"I don’t care about winning the ruling game at all," Jin Xueli said tentatively. "I was originally thinking of just selling the radio to Chaisi anyway. Since you want it, it’s no different than selling it to him..."

"At a time like this, you still want money?" Kai Luonan nodded. "Fine."

"No, I... I don’t want money."

As the words left her mouth, it felt as if a layer had been scraped from her very bones.

"The human world has already become half a Nest. In a world like this, money is meaningless to me."

She repeated what Tian Xi had said earlier. When you betray yourself, your insides can tie themselves in knots.

"I want to know what’s really going on with all of this. Of course, if you want to give me money on top of that, I absolutely, definitely won’t object."

Jin Xueli knew she was subconsciously trying to buy time, reluctant to hand over the radio right away. ’But even if I stall for time, what’s the use?’

’Is there a single person in all of Blackmoor City who knows the situation I’m in?’

’Is there anyone at all who would come to save me?’

Even if there was, they would only be after her radio.

’I might as well just trade the radio for a good price—no matter what form that price takes, right?’

Kai Luonan considered it.

It seemed he also felt that trading a few words for the radio was a less troublesome option, so he leaned back into the rear seat again.

"What do you want to know?"

Jin Xueli frowned and said, "I have several questions for you. As long as you give me the answers, I’ll tell you where the radio is."

Kai Luonan didn’t seem at all worried that she would give him a fake location—if he could find her once by some unknown means, he could probably find her a second time.

"Go ahead," he said, gesturing with the air of a gentleman.

Jin Xueli paused.

There were several things she wanted to know. For instance, where did the other twenty-five Jin Xuelis come from? Why did they appear? Who was responsible?

However, that wasn’t what she wanted to know most.

Whatever the answer, those twenty-five Jin Xuelis were already gone. Before they vanished, they had even done her a huge favor. Digging into the reason now would serve no purpose other than to satisfy her curiosity.

"A while ago, several of the Jin Xuelis seemed to have been hit by a resident’s ability."

Jin Xueli said, tracing a circle on her own face.

"A Coil, identical to the one on that resident, appeared on their faces, and then their entire minds seemed to be frozen... No matter what they encountered, their thoughts would repeatedly circle back to one sentence: ’Kill Mai Mingle and receive a one-hundred-million-dollar cash reward.’"

Kai Luonan nodded without a word.

Jin Xueli was quiet for a few seconds.

"Their thoughts and memories were all affected by the Coil. I don’t dare recall too much... because I’m afraid if I get sucked in, it’ll be very hard for my own mind to pull itself out of that state."

"And? What do you want to ask?"

One of the Jin Xuelis had vanished mid-sentence, but the implication of her half-finished words made Jin Xueli’s heart race and her palms sweat.

"She said that other people’s money is useless, that it has no meaning in a world like this. But the one hundred million offered as a reward by that resident was different. Only that hundred million could still function as money... Do you know what’s going on? Why is that the only sum of money that still has meaning? Was the resident lying to her?"

’The resident must have been lying, right?’

’What other explanation could there be? Could it be that the Nest residents who invaded the human world just have a special fondness for that particular hundred million?’

Kai Luonan suddenly laughed.

"Your question... what a coincidence." He said slowly, "Although you don’t care about the origin of all those Jin Xuelis, the question you’re asking happens to be deeply related to the reason they appeared. They are of the same root and origin."

"What do you mean?" Jin Xueli was taken aback. "Could it be... are there really parallel worlds?"

Kai Luonan shook his head, looking as if he found what he was about to say quite amusing.

"Parallel worlds from science fiction novels? Of course not. Even in a novel, that would be too cliché."

He tapped his finger rhythmically and said, "I only realized it myself after obtaining the ???... There are no ’parallel worlds,’ but that doesn’t mean the one we’re in now is the only world."