Illusion Report

Chapter 324: Chapter 280: Jin Xueli’s First Clue

Jin Xueli never knew just who Morando was waiting for.

As they sat there, Morando would suddenly start talking, plucking a single point from the whole story, speaking of it without a beginning or an end before abruptly stopping.

But the silence never lasted long. As if by compulsion, Morando would inevitably be dragged back to the subject of that person’s death, continuing her story in fits and starts, saying a few words before falling silent again.

Piece by piece, Jin Xueli cobbled together a rough picture.

"She said that people are just like that, they never learn their lesson."

Even when you know it’s dangerous—no, extremely dangerous—you’ll still work up the courage to reach for what you desire.

"She said she regretted it the last time. But this time, she had no regrets. Even if she failed, even if she died, it was better than... better than..."

Morando stopped there. So Jin Xueli never found out what state was worse than death.

Jin Xueli couldn’t tell how much of Morando’s narration was the person’s actual words, how much was her own additions, or how much was involuntary imagination conjured up while listening to their voice.

As the evening sun slowly sank, in the dim, cool half of the room, Morando’s story painted a series of images in her mind—hazy and faint, as if Jin Xueli were watching them through a thick fog.

...Counterattacked by her prey, she suffered a fatal wound, fell into the sea, and was washed ashore who knows where.

When the person opened her eyes, she was lying alone on a coastline shrouded in twilight. A long, straight highway, guided by one lonely pool of streetlight after another, stretched out into the distance, disappearing beneath the dark blue canopy of the sky.

She slowly crawled to the side of the road.

A long time passed, but not a single car appeared.

She thought she was going to die there, under that unfamiliar, deep purple sky.

After who knows how long, a car screeched to a halt beside her. The driver’s footsteps vibrated through the ground, his voice echoing from a distance as he asked what was wrong, if she could still hear him, telling her he was calling 911 right away...

The person’s senses returned slightly. She remembered her phone had been washed away by the sea, but her handgun was still tucked away on her person.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position on the ground, pointed her gun at the driver, and told him to hang up and give her his phone.

She figured this was probably the last chance she’d ever have to make a phone call.

"She said she knew she was about to die. Her brain was torn apart by a bullet, and the only reason she’d held on for so long was a side effect of the Nest. But not even the Nest could defy the final law... She said she was fading away, that she could feel it."

Morando said, staring at the drink in her glass.

’I can finally die,’ the person had said.

’I wanted to let you know, so you wouldn’t have to doubt anymore, wouldn’t have to be tied down by me, wouldn’t have to wait for me any longer.’

’It’s a shame the last voice you hear won’t be my own.’

Jin Xueli didn’t understand that last sentence—and Morando didn’t explain.

’It doesn’t matter if I don’t understand, anyway,’ she thought. ’No matter who died or how they died, it really has nothing to do with me. I’m just acting as a sounding board, giving Morando a chance to vent.’

It might sound a little heartless, but she was only sitting here and listening to comfort Morando. Even if she sighed with sympathy and pity now, the moment Jin Xueli turned around and went home, she would forget all about it.

Of course, Morando couldn’t accept it that easily.

"I told her, ’Put the driver on the phone, let me ask him where you are, I’ll come get you right now.’ But she refused. She said she was too far from Blackmoor City, that by the time I got there, it would be too late for anything."

The person said her consciousness was slowly fading. Once she lost consciousness or died, the driver would definitely take his phone back. After that, who knew if he would still call 911.

"You’ve held on for so long," Morando had said then, unable to avoid the cliché. "You can’t give up yet—"

"...I haven’t given up," the person said, their voice as thin as a thread. "I would never give up on you. That’s why... that’s why my last call is to you. I want your voice to be the one that sends me from this world..."

For a moment, Morando was speechless.

"Do you remember? When you used to go to the Nest... near the end of the seventh day, I would go to Between the Backlight to wait for you."

She said in a low voice, "I couldn’t stand sitting at home waiting for you alone. So I would go to the bar early and sit there... You would always look for me there first... You said that as long as you weren’t dead, you would come find me at Between the Backlight."

Jin Xueli was beginning to understand why Morando had been waiting in the bar all this time.

According to Morando, the last thing the person said was, "I don’t think I’m going to make it," and then the call was cut off. Morando tried calling back again and again, but for some reason, the call never went through.

She waited at Between the Backlight for two days, but the person never came.

Morando searched the news online, asked friends at newspaper offices to make inquiries, and made countless calls to police departments in nearby counties that had coastal highways...

"Any leads?" Jin Xueli asked. She had originally wanted to ask if a body had been found, but she rephrased it at the last second.

Morando frowned, seeming a little unsure how to explain.

"Her situation... it’s rather special." She seemed reluctant to say more, but also didn’t want to offend Jin Xueli, so she just said vaguely, "The body was sent back to Blackmoor City this morning."

’Huh?’

’The body has already been sent back, so what is Morando still waiting for at Between the Backlight?’

’Besides, if there’s a body, why did she sound just now like she had only confirmed the death through deduction... Isn’t that a little strange?’

’Could it be that the shock was too much for Morando, and she’s not thinking straight?’

"Did you go identify the body?" Jin Xueli, really not knowing a better way to ask, chose a different question.

"I have no legal relationship with him, so it wasn’t my place to identify him. But I made inquiries through my connections. There’s no mistake."

...’Him’? Wasn’t it a woman?

’She’d been saying ’her’ this whole time. It seemed Morando had either been so shocked she wasn’t thinking clearly and misspoke, or she was a deeply closeted straight woman. The second possibility was far too disappointing, and besides, she didn’t seem like one at all...’

’Wait, that’s not the important part.’

Jin Xueli was always like this, her mind a runaway horse she couldn’t rein in.

"Sorry for talking so much about things that have nothing to do with you. You must be bored."

"Oh, not at all..."

After all, just a moment ago, while wondering if it was inappropriate to be thinking about such things when someone had died, she had been simultaneously considering the possibility that Morando was bisexual.

It was truly strange. Even though the body had been confirmed, when the bar door was suddenly pushed open, Morando still shot her head up. Her attention, like a spotlight, fixed on the woman who had just walked in.

For several seconds, she looked as if she were genuinely expecting the woman to walk over to them.

Jin Xueli glanced back as well and sighed internally.

’Morando is just completely avoiding reality.’

It was obvious at a glance that the woman wasn’t going to approach them; in fact, she was actively trying to avoid interacting with anyone. She wore large sunglasses and a scarf. Though she was well-maintained, you could still tell she was past middle age. She seemed surprised to find customers in the bar so soon after it opened, hesitating for a moment before picking a corner seat farthest from the two of them.

Perhaps unsettled by Morando’s stare, after sitting down, she glanced back at them several times before finally getting up in a hurry. Ignoring the bartender’s call, she said, "No, thanks," and rushed out the door.

"Hey,"

The bartender, looking rather displeased, said with a grimace, "We get all sorts of people in this bar. You just sitting here, scanning everyone who walks in like a searchlight, it’s bad for business."

He wasn’t wrong. Although there was an unwritten rule in the Hunter community not to seek revenge or cause trouble in bars, there were always exceptions.

Hunters carrying Illusions, those with a guilty conscience, others with ulterior motives... such people made up nearly half of the regulars. Morando’s stakeout-style waiting was bound to scare a lot of them off.

"Why don’t you take her home," the bartender said to Jin Xueli. "Your drinks are on the house this time."

’No matter how you look at it, there’s no downside.’

And so, Jin Xueli led a silent, dazed Morando out of Between the Backlight, two bottles of liquor in hand.

She settled Morando on the sofa, then went into her room to change into a set of athletic wear designed for the Nest, which was easy to move in.

She stuffed all the necessary supplies into her backpack—weapons, her custom-made hammer, a change of clothes—and grabbed a few cans of coffee from the fridge.

As she bustled around the room, Morando just sat on the sofa watching her. After a while, Morando finally seemed to snap out of it. "...You’re going to the Nest?"

"Yeah," Jin Xueli said. "Shouldn’t you be heading home? Or are you going to wait here for me to get back?"

She didn’t really want anyone else to know about her Path, but she felt it would probably be fine if Morando saw it. She didn’t know where this confidence came from, but the feeling was there.

"Hasn’t Chaisi gotten back to you? Why are you going in again so soon?"

When she mentioned Chaisi, it might have been a trick of the light, but Morando’s expression seemed to darken for a moment.

"Don’t even start... I can’t even get in touch with him. If I could, I wouldn’t have to go into the Nest. Ugh, it’s a long story. I’m going in this time to find something."

"An Illusion?"

Jin Xueli thought for a moment. "I’m not sure, but it’s probably not an Illusion."

Illusions that enter the human world all have a countdown timer. Unless the Original Liquid’s countdown was exceptionally long, there would always be a chance that the final drug produced from it would be ineffective because its time had run out.

But Jin Xueli had carefully examined the packaging for Brain Hacker and found that it didn’t list a clear expiration date.

Considering all the steps involved—production, sales, shipping, stocking, and turnover—not to mention customers who might buy it and not use it right away, how long would that countdown have to be?

Of course, Illusions with countdowns of ten years or more did exist.

But the longer the countdown, the rarer and more precious the Illusion. And from what Scott had relayed, Chaisi had sounded quite confident—’Just get the investment, don’t worry about the raw materials. I can supply as much as you need.’

No matter how you looked at it, that didn’t sound like a precious Illusion.

Morando grunted in acknowledgement, then fell silent again, her thoughts drifting away.

’What should I do? Just leave her here? Ask her to go home? Let her watch me jump off the building?’

Just as Jin Xueli was worrying about what to do, Morando abruptly asked, "What are you looking for?"

It seemed like she was using the question to distract herself.

"Heaven knows what I’m looking for," Jin Xueli sighed, taking out her phone. "Oh, right, he gave me a photo... but I don’t recognize it."

The photo showed a transparent test tube filled with Original Liquid.

To someone in the know, it was the Brain Hacker Original Liquid. To anyone else, you could say it was cough syrup and they’d believe you. In other words, it was completely useless.

Morando glanced at it, and just as expected, her eyes drifted away again.

But after a few seconds, she suddenly looked up.

"Let me see that again," she said.

Jin Xueli froze for a second, then quickly handed her the phone. "You recognize it?"

"No... I don’t recognize it," Morando said, her brow furrowed. "This liquid doesn’t look like anything special, but I feel like it’s a little familiar..."

"Familiar? Why?" Jin Xueli wished she could poke her with a teaching pointer to make her keep talking.

"Back when I was with the Knight Family..."

Morando cut herself off and looked up at her. "You said this has something to do with Chaisi?"

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