"What I'm about to say might be hard to believe. I find it hard to believe myself.
"I'm still standing inside the chalk-drawn house. I have nowhere to go. I can't go back. I've tried. Behind me, two rows away, there's a square with 'Left Hand' written in it. I could do a one-handed handstand against a utility pole to get here, but trying to go back, I can't reach that pole anymore."
Jin Xueli couldn't possibly do a handstand on her weaker left hand while carrying a heavy backpack. Hunters only had a Path and could enter Nests; that didn't mean they were reborn with divine strength.
Besides, the resident's breathing hung in the air by her ear. In the corner of her eye, her own face was always there, faintly distorted, like a reflection gazing up at her from deep underwater.
She had been clutching the Hunting Knife in her hand again for some time now.
Jin Xueli closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. To her left, the road was still being silently pierced and splayed open by repeated slashes of purple light, like glistening viscera exposed under an X-ray.
"The hopscotch game and the 'Vulture' residents… seem to have formed some kind of… cooperative relationship."
Jin Xueli murmured into her phone's voice memo, "I can't think of a better explanation for it, other than that they're working together."
The "Vultures" were trying to drive her into the chalk-drawn house, and the house returned the favor. When she had gone too deep to turn back, it wrote the penalty 'Be Copied' in all the squares ahead of her…
If she were to step on one, the resident behind her would likely become a second Jin Xueli.
'What would happen to me then?'
For the "Vulture" to become the target itself before the original host had even died… she'd never heard of such a thing.
"Maybe I'm overthinking it… The traffic light hasn't changed color for nearly ten minutes. It's been purple the whole time, trapping me on the sidewalk. Could it be part of this trap too? It's hard for me to imagine… Unlike the residents, other things aren't sentient. How could they work together?"
The messages she recorded in her voice memos served another purpose, beyond being potential intelligence to trade in the future.
If she could never again leave the Nest and was fated to die here, she could at least imagine that one day, her phone would be found by some other Hunter.
Who she was, where she died, the last moments of her life… they wouldn't sink into the depths of the Nest with her.
Perhaps someone else in this world would hear her final words and know that a person named Jin Xueli had once existed. Even if, a moment later, her name vanished from their thoughts like smoke in the wind.
Sometimes, she found it strange: how could a person like her, one who reveled in her intense desires and the pursuit of pleasure, also be prepared to die at any given moment?
Perhaps you couldn't be an Illusion Hunter without that kind of resolve.
Putting her phone away, Jin Xueli looked at the traffic light again.
'I don't even need to look up to know the purple light is still on. But what else can I do besides look at it again and again?'
The buzz from the alcohol had mostly faded, but her energy and stamina seemed to have evaporated through her pores along with it, leaving her body feeling limp and heavy. The muscles in her legs trembled, as if they could no longer grip her bones.
The square said, "Trade food for the right to stand." It didn't say anything about sitting, so Jin Xueli didn't dare to sit. Her backpack, which weighed more than ten kilograms, rested only on the tops of her feet; she didn't dare let it touch the chalk lines.
"Just you wait," she said in a low voice to the resident next to her. "I refuse to believe this purple light will stay on for seven days straight."
The resident did not respond. Perhaps it also knew that Jin Xueli was just bluffing—even with food and water, standing for seven days straight without sleep would be enough to kill someone.
Sigh. This was why most Hunters, after braving a few Nests on their own, would end up applying to the major Hunter Family Factions. Even someone like Jin Xueli, who detested taking orders and being managed, couldn't help but feel a pang of regret. 'If only I had a partner to watch my back right now,' she thought.
She stood in a square of the chalk house as the night wind grew colder. The longer she stood there, the more foolish she felt. 'What am I even doing?'
'Did I survive that fall just to stand here like a moron, a human pillar?'
Jin Xueli racked her brains for a while, considering everything from climbing trees to walking a tightrope. After reality vetoed each idea, she even worked up the courage, in a fit of reckless desperation, to shout, "Anyone there!?" a couple of times. It was hard to say if she was lucky or unlucky, as nothing was lured out from the row of stone-brick houses.
After trying and failing at several ideas, she went back to her old trade: being a human pillar.
'It would've been nice if the broadcast had given a heads-up. If I'd known, I never would've taken this stupid road.'
But even as she thought it, Jin Xueli knew how unrealistic that was.
If the "Virtual Guide to the Infinite Illusion Realm" were to announce the conditions for every single road in a Nest, she'd be due back in Blackmoor City by the time it finished, having gotten nothing done.
Thinking of the broadcast reminded her of the map she'd covered in notes. 'Wait, what if my notes are useful here?'
Jin Xueli glanced at "Jin Xueli."
It was still standing two steps away, but its appearance was getting more and more unsettling. When she glanced over, it mimicked her movement, its dark pupils rolling to the right until the whites of its eyes faced forward, where they remained stuck for a good while.
'That's my own face. I've got enough nightmare fuel for a week now.'
Jin Xueli sheathed her Hunting Knife at her waist, pulled the map from her backpack, and shook it open. By the flashing purple light and the dim yellow pool of a streetlight, she began to carefully examine her notes.