Illusion Report

Chapter 344: Chapter 298: Fu Tailan: The Manor Ahead

In movies, a single karate chop to the back of the neck is all it takes to drop someone cold — obviously dramatized, and most people couldn’t pull it off. But by any reasonable standard, Fu Tailan didn’t consider himself most people.

Humility was a fine quality. Self-awareness, though, was non-negotiable.

When he was thirteen, some know-it-all resident had taken one hand — the one with only nine fingers — and curled it into a fist, pressing it against the junction where Fu Tailan’s skull met his neck, then launched into a solemn lecture: "...You want to knock someone out, you hit right here. Understand? Do you? Do you really, or are you just saying that?"

No matter how many times he said "I really do, I really do," the resident remained unconvinced.

"I don’t think you do. Here, let me show you—"

When he came to, the resident’s hand was still wrapped around his throat.

"Awake? Do you get it now? This spot right here is one of the most vulnerable places on the human body. Did you learn that? Did you actually learn it, or are you just going to say you did?"

"I actually lea—"

"I don’t think so. Let me demonstrate one more time."

Fu Tailan had gone in and out of consciousness more times than he could count, each session serving as a hands-on introduction to yet another vulnerable — or outright lethal — point on the human body. At that rate, the only way to graduate would have been to die.

He’d barely managed to escape that resident back then. And yet, somehow, he found himself almost grateful now.

Fu Tailan pulled out a blank card and crouched beside the unconscious guard.

"Generate a driver’s license photo using this face," he murmured, holding the card up toward the guard’s face with one hand.

Xiao Yan watched the scene from the dark gap between the bushes, its gaze dim and unblinking.

The photo that materialized on the blank license was, sure enough, the guard’s — though Fu Tailan had to prop the man’s eyelids open with his other hand, which meant the uniformed guard in the photo was staring with eyes stretched wide, looking like he’d just realized the person pressing the shutter was his father’s killer.

"Now then... what’s your name..."

Fu Tailan murmured to himself as he patted the man down, digging through his pockets until he turned up a wallet and a driver’s license. "Marlo?"

The blank card let its user fabricate an identity out of thin air, or borrow a real one. For dealing with strangers — renting a car, getting past police — a fabricated identity was more than enough.

But a fake couldn’t fool anyone who knew the person. To pass as Marlo to the other guard in the gatehouse, Fu Tailan would need to borrow his actual identity wholesale.

Once that identity had been "stolen," even Marlo’s own mother wouldn’t recognize the man lying on the ground. Only when Fu Tailan flicked the license nine more times to wipe it clean would the identity revert to its rightful owner.

It was precisely this ability — borrowing someone’s identity for covert infiltration — that had made Fu Tailan pick it out of the Morgan Family’s warehouse. Something this useful, and it still hadn’t sold. The reason, naturally, was a glaring drawback.

The moment any physical contact occurred — a brush of the shoulder, a graze of a single strand of hair — the identity effect collapsed instantly and completely.

...Which explained just how elegantly he’d managed to keep his fingers from touching the cop’s when he handed over the license earlier.

Fu Tailan hoisted the guard back to the car, bound him, gagged him, and stuffed him in the trunk. The mouth was covered, but he still felt like he ought to do something. He set the pizza box on the man’s chest.

"This is on me. Consider it damages."

He unclipped the guard’s gun, shouldered his backpack, gave Xiao Yan a wave, and headed back to the gatehouse.

The other guard, seated upright at his post, had completely forgotten the words he’d spoken just minutes ago — or more precisely, had never been aware of them at all. He looked up and asked, "Where’d you go?"

The Illusion really was a remarkable thing.

"Stepped out for a smoke," Fu Tailan said, quietly setting his backpack down against the wall outside, then standing in the doorway and taking stock of the gatehouse.

Metal detector. Radio. Phone. Several surveillance monitors. This was Marlo’s station.

He was on the night shift — still a good while before his clock-out time.

And even after his shift, a low-level guard like this would have no real connection to Westley Manor’s inner workings.

If Fu Tailan were to leave this gatehouse and try to walk further into the estate on his own, he probably wouldn’t make it ten steps before every gatehouse and interior guard on the grounds got the word.

Secretary Green’s voice was stored in the Mouth Puppet too, but Green was too far away — completely out of reach. He couldn’t use Green to issue orders and summon Marlo. Speaking through someone else’s mouth had a range limit: no more than a hundred meters.

So how was he supposed to get inside?

And there was still the question of whether the hypothetical Illusion somewhere on the estate could see through the identity card’s effect — or worse, detect weapons, equipment, or hostile intent. If so, things would get a great deal more complicated.

True to form for a trap set by Westley — airtight, and a complete headache.

Fu Tailan chewed the inside of his lip, brooding. Xiao Yan slipped out from the shadows beneath the desk, still watching him, paying no attention whatsoever to the other guard’s leg right next to it.

"Why are you just standing there? Sit down," the other guard said.

The gatehouse was too narrow. Sitting down almost guaranteed contact.

"Ah, I’m a bit worn out tonight. I’ll stand for a while — keeps me from dozing off."

The truth was hard to come by. Lies, on the other hand, were in endless supply.

The other guard stretched and yawned. "This shift really does grind you down."

"After Secretary Green, there shouldn’t be anyone else coming tonight, right?" Fu Tailan decided to take a gamble. He glanced at the time and said, "Since he arrived... how long has it been now?"

"About an hour and a half," the guard answered, no suspicion in his voice.

Good. Secretary Green had come. If he’d had the bad luck to guess wrong and find out Green hadn’t shown up at all, Fu Tailan would’ve had no choice but to shut the guard up with a bullet.

His face stayed calm, but inside his head a resident had crawled in and was screaming at him — what do I do what do I do what do I do—

"Oh, wait." He straightened up abruptly. "Shouldn’t we report the pizza delivery situation?"

The guard turned and frowned.

"The address he gave was this gatehouse. You didn’t order anything. Neither did I. But someone obviously did — and it’s possible someone’s using that delivery kid to get a look at the place. I can’t figure out the angle, but better to report it to be safe, don’t you think?"

Fu Tailan was driving through thick fog, headlights cutting only a short stretch of road ahead, the rest lost in darkness. But he had nothing to go on except instinct, so he kept inching forward, following wherever that narrow beam of light led.

"He left, didn’t he?" The guard was still hesitant.

"Seems like it," Fu Tailan said, tilting his head back as if trying to remember. "Now that you mention it — right after he left, I headed out to smoke. One minute behind him, tops. But I never saw him. No sign of a car nearby, either. He walked out and just... vanished."

"You sure? That’s strange." The guards Westley employed were sharper than average — the man picked up the phone without further hesitation. "Reporting’s never wrong."

Fu Tailan watched him press a speed-dial key and wait for the call to connect before saying quietly, "Put it on speaker. I can fill in a few details."

"Security Center, this is Gatehouse One," the guard said into the phone. "We have a situation to report."

"Go ahead," a male voice answered.

The guard relayed the pizza delivery incident. The Security Center responded at once: "I’ll contact the nearest pizza place to verify immediately."

A misdirected delivery was enough to put them on edge — the strings inside Westley Manor were clearly pulled tight.

Tight enough to snap tonight.

"One more thing," Fu Tailan said, a plan clicking into place. "Neither of us can abandon our post and wander too far, and the area’s pretty large, so we haven’t actually checked whether the kid left any boxes nearby."

The other guard glanced at him.

"Are you saying there might be a bomb?" Security Center asked immediately.

"Honestly, I don’t know," Fu Tailan said, nudging the opening further. "Could you send a few people over to sweep the area? Two or three would be plenty. I can help look as well."

The estate guards arrived fast.

Gatehouse One was a forty-minute drive from the manor, yet in under half an hour, Fu Tailan saw headlights bloom in the distance down the road.

"I’ll take you to the spot."

Once the three guards stepped out of the vehicle, Fu Tailan stepped up. "I watched him turn the corner right there. Less than a minute later, I came out after him..."

He picked the one who looked the least threatening and fell into step beside him as they walked onto the public road. "...Strange, isn’t it? Secretary Green mentioned before he went in that tonight was critical — said someone might try to approach. Should we split up to cover more ground?"

When that guard parted the bushes and swept his flashlight across the ground, he might as well have offered the back of his skull to Fu Tailan and said go ahead — and in that moment, Fu Tailan found himself almost grateful again for the resident’s thorough instruction.

This time, he hit hard and hit without mercy.

If the guard had had the good sense to die quietly, that would’ve been convenient. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite manage it.

Swapping identities was routine by now. As for the unconscious guard, Fu Tailan stripped his gun and shoved him back into the bushes — in the dark, there was no way to tell anyone was hidden there.

He wouldn’t be coming around anytime soon.

Besides, his own identity was still on his person. Even if he did wake up and stumble over to Gatehouse One, he’d only be treated as a suspicious individual and turned away. Marlo’s "disappearance" and the approach of this unknown person would, of course, be reported again by Gatehouse One — but none of that mattered.

Once Fu Tailan was inside the manor, a little more turbulence, confusion, and alarm would only work in his favor.

And so, fifteen minutes later, he walked back through the front gates alongside the other two estate guards.

This was Fu Tailan’s first real entry into the manor grounds tonight.

"Marlo stepped out for a smoke — asked me to let you know." He smiled at the guard in the gatehouse, then pulled the car door open and settled into his seat as naturally as breathing.

Three people, one car. No one touching anyone else.

Neither of the others noticed that the person now sitting with them was not the same one who had left. They chatted idly, speculating about what the pizza delivery kid could possibly have been after.

The car started moving.

Westley Manor lay ahead in the darkness of the night, waiting for Fu Tailan.

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