Illusion Report

Chapter 334: Chapter 290: Fu Tailan - The Price in the Envelope

’...Is this going too smoothly?’

This was an angle of questioning he had racked his brain to find, yet when Fu Tailan finally got the answer, he was filled with suspicion.

The hand holding the red pill was composed of 27 units of stirred matter.

The hand holding the blue pill was composed of 3,970 units of stirred matter.

On the surface, the answer seemed clear: the blue pill was in the hand the size of a soccer ball, which was to Fu Tailan’s right.

But... the traps in the Nest were always a set of steel jaws within another. The moment you thought the clouds had parted was often the most deadly.

"My, you found a clever angle," the nurse giggled from behind the curtain. "But I’m a resident. Can a resident’s body really be analyzed like that?"

Fu Tailan ignored it.

He had no more questions left to ask.

’The trap... what could it be?’

Since they were called "units," each unit should be of equal mass, size, and composition. To make an analogy, it was like one penny not being worth more than another.

In theory, however, the hand with fewer units could have been "diluted" or "inflated" to increase the distance between units, forming a larger volume. By the same token, the hand with more units could have been "compressed."

But the disparity in the numbers was so vast that it made this possibility very unlikely.

For a hand made of 27 units to be dozens of times larger than one made of 3,970 units... there should have been some telltale sign in its appearance. It would be like a blown-up balloon, its color certainly lighter than an uninflated one.

Fu Tailan stared at the two hands before him until his vision began to blur. He feared that even ten years from now, he would still be able to clearly picture these thumbless hands whenever he closed his eyes. But no matter how he looked, their skin tone, texture, and apparent thickness... were identical.

"Hurry up," the nurse urged from behind the curtain. "We medical staff are short-handed and very busy. You think you’re the only patient here? If everyone took this long to take their medicine, everyone else would die."

Fu Tailan snorted.

He was the only Hunter hospitalized in the entire hospital. Who would stay here unless they absolutely had to?

"Hurry up."

The nurse’s voice grew rougher, vaguely reminiscent of grinding stone. "I can’t waste all my time on you. Haven’t you finished asking your questions? You should have an answer by now about which hand has the blue pill. Choose, quickly. If you don’t, I’ll just have to randomly stuff one in your mouth."

"I still need to think about it—"

"Five."

The nurse’s voice suddenly dropped low, like an insect landing on his skin.

Fu Tailan’s nerves tensed. ’It’s starting a countdown?’

’A countdown from five?’

Even knowing it was trying to create a sense of urgency and force him into a mistake, he had no way to counter it. If the nurse decided to force-feed him the medicine, what could he do? In the Nest Hospital, the one holding all the cards wasn’t the patient, and it certainly wasn’t the Hunter.

"Four."

"Wait a second," Fu Tailan felt his own mind descend into chaos. For a moment, he could think of nothing but stalling, unable to make a decision. "Uh, if you give me half a minute..."

"Three."

’No more delays—I’m out of time.’

"I know,"

Fu Tailan could only grit his teeth and, with the resolve of one burning his boats, reach for the fist the size of a soccer ball. "The blue pill is in the larger hand—"

Even through the curtain, he could almost feel the resident fall silent, its anticipation swelling.

A flash of white light shot through his mind.

’How could I have almost made that mistake?’

The resident had stated it clearly— "The blue pill is in the left hand, but until you confirm which hand is the left hand, it could be anywhere, couldn’t it?"

’In other words, finding the hand with the blue pill is only the first step—’

Just as he was about to touch the resident’s skin, Fu Tailan shouted, so fast he almost bit his tongue, "This is the left hand!"

’Just finding the blue pill isn’t enough. I also have to verbally confirm that the hand holding the blue pill is the left hand, to lock "left hand" and "blue pill" together—that must be it, right?’

’Say one without the other, and I won’t get the blue pill. This is the trap, isn’t it?’

Silence fell both inside and outside the curtain.

Fu Tailan kept one hand resting on the cool fist, holding his breath, his eyes fixed on the hospital blanket covering him. The thin, wrinkled blanket was piled on top of him, faintly revealing the outline of his legs.

He would have no way of knowing if his deduction and choice were correct.

’Perhaps... choosing wrong wouldn’t be such a bad thing.’

’It’s like pressing that button that makes humanity disappear... Take the red pill, and you’d live in an Illusion of your own youth and health, in peaceful, tranquil ignorance, until one day you’re suddenly yanked from the world, never to open your eyes again.’

’At that point, whatever happened to Fu Han would no longer be his concern.’

’The iron chain that had always been wrapped around him would no longer be able to bind him once he had no body.’

"...Alright, I’m going to open my hand now." The nurse’s voice returned to its sweet tone as it slowly opened the soccer-ball-sized hand.

In its palm lay a tiny blue pill.

’Of course.’

Fu Tailan didn’t say a word. He snatched it, closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and swallowed.

"How wonderful, you chose the blue pill."

The nurse withdrew both hands, and the curtain closed again. "Well then, my task is complete. I’ll be back again tomorrow morning."

Fu Tailan let out a long breath, slumping heavily back onto the bed.

Even as his back slammed against the mattress, his wounds surprisingly didn’t hurt.

Just like that, the nurse came three more times. For the next three visits, Fu Tailan managed to choose the blue pill every single time.

’Whether any Illusions were mixed in... he didn’t want to think about it.’

By the morning of the 26th, the day of his discharge, Fu Tailan felt no different than he had before his injury. No, if he had to say, after lying in bed for a couple of days, he actually felt his senses were sharper, more agile and powerful. Even his physical fitness seemed to have reached a new level.

It was just that compared to the benefits, the costs and risks were too heavy to dwell on.

"Oh my, to think we have to say goodbye to you so soon."

That morning, the four doctors and nurses who had interacted with him at the hospital all stood at the door to his room, waiting for Fu Tailan with nearly a hundred faces.

The ceiling, walls, and corners of the entire hallway were crammed with countless faces. He didn’t know how so many faces were connected to bodies, but he knew he couldn’t look.

"If you accidentally took a red pill and suddenly explode into a puddle of meat juice outside the hospital, don’t be too surprised," one of them said.

"You were such a model patient. I’m sad to see you go."

Fu Tailan kept his head down, trying not to look at anyone, and stepped through their tangled, complex bodies, finding footing in the small empty spaces.

"Actually, you’re leaving at a good time. We just got a critical patient."

"Oh? You mean that half-a-body sent over from Nest Central Station? In that state, can it even pay the hospital fees?"

...The residents who had come to see him off had started chatting amongst themselves.

"Of course it can. Why not? It’s true that he became half-a-body today trying to buy a return ticket and is on the verge of death, but he wasn’t like that before."

"A return ticket?"

A resident with who-knows-how-many-faces laughed with all of them at once. "Buying a return ticket at the Central Station? Where in the world do you see someone eating a meal, vomiting it up, and then eating it all over again?"

"I know, right? It refused to believe there were no return tickets and lingered at the station for too long, so it ended up as half-a-body. Anyway, the surgery is scheduled for this afternoon. I’m confident in my skills; I’ll be able to perfectly suture it onto a resident."

’A return ticket?’

’For some reason, that term seemed to strike a chord...’

He did have a ticket Illusion for a departure from Nest Central Station, but it had long since expired. Besides, its destination was Blackmoor City, so he wouldn’t need a return ticket. To get back to the Nest, you just used a Path.

’Hadn’t the Hunter who’d become half-a-body thought of that?’

’Or was the thing that ruined him different from the Illusion in my own hand?’

Fu Tailan wasn’t sure if he was using the matter of the "return ticket" to distract himself.

"Congratulations on your discharge."

When he returned to the first-floor lobby, the same voice spoke again from the empty nurse’s station. "Since you’ve fully recovered, you can settle your hospital bill, can’t you?"

As if the torment he’d suffered in the Nest Hospital wasn’t enough, he had to endure one more mental trial upon being discharged.

"...I understand,"

Fu Tailan rested his arm on the nurse’s station counter, propped his chin on his hand, and said listlessly, "I suppose I can’t run up a tab, can I? Go ahead and take it. I’ll just wait here."

Just like two years ago, a hand reached up from behind the counter, crawled across the surface, and stopped in front of Fu Tailan, setting down an envelope.

"You can only open it after you get back to Blackmoor City," the voice said, sounding almost cheerful. "Well then, until we meet again."

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