Illusion Report

Chapter 346: Chapter 300: Combo: The Death of Fu Tailan

Brianna paused for a few seconds, then pressed the answer button.

She spoke with perfect calm — "Hello?" — and only then noticed she was smiling.

...Huh?

She raised her hand and felt the soft hills of a smile on her cheeks.

How strange. She pressed a fingertip into the corner of her parted lips, and her teeth closed gently around it, biting back a laugh before it could escape.

A brief silence on the other end.

Sometimes, things that slip beyond the reach of the five senses — things that drift beneath murky ambiguity, that slip between words and language — can still somehow be felt by another person.

Like right now. Brianna could practically see it with her own eyes: the moment the call connected, Fu Tailan had been about to speak, and then suddenly stopped.

What was wrong? Why the sudden silence?

Ah — well, she hadn’t said anything either.

"Fu Tailan?"

"...You’re awake."

Fu Tailan’s voice — low and slightly blurred — pressed close to her ear in the darkness of the night. Not a guess. A statement.

"Why are you still awake?" he said quietly. "It’s almost five in the morning. Every Prima has long since gone to bed. But when you picked up, you were calm and clear-headed — no drowsy irritation from being woken up, no surprise at a call from me out of nowhere."

He paused.

"And then someone suddenly ordered those three guards to go find their supervisor right away. That alone was enough to put me on edge."

He asked, as though discussing someone entirely unrelated to himself: "...Is that supervisor Hunter? Or had he already spoken with you? Have you figured out how I got in?"

Brianna pulled the phone away from her ear, drew a long breath, then pressed it back.

"You’re such a little pest. I actually thought I might have gotten the jump on you."

Since Fu Tailan had picked up on something being off from a single word the moment she answered, there was no point in keeping up the pretense.

As if taking his cue from her, Fu Tailan gave a soft laugh. "Thanks for the compliment. What are you all so afraid of, honestly? I was so careful, and you still made me the second I walked in."

If she sounded the alarm right now, the estate would go into full lockdown immediately: blast-proof doors would drop on every floor of the main building, cutting off all access between levels; a ring of laser grid would light up along the outer walls, vaporizing anything that dared get close — every last flying insect included.

And Westley, naturally, would be moved to the safe room at once.

The safe room even had its own independent backup oxygen supply, because he worried that in a real emergency, even the air flowing in from elsewhere might not be safe.

...Pathetic.

Like a cat pawing lazily at a ball of yarn, Brianna turned the idea of sounding the alarm over in her mind a few times, watched it roll into a corner, and couldn’t be bothered to go after it.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Why would you ask it like that?"

Fu Tailan’s voice had a smoky quality to it — or maybe he’d actually just taken a drag of something. "You know I’m here. You have every advantage. You could mobilize the entire estate, throw everything you’ve got at catching me... that would be quite a spectacle, wouldn’t it? So why ask a question like that — like you’re the one with your back against the wall?"

Brianna realized she wasn’t entirely sure why she’d asked it either.

It had just slipped out on instinct.

Ah... no. She knew. She had some inkling of the answer — she just wanted to keep lying to herself a little while longer.

"I don’t have to sound the alarm. After all, knowing Mr. Westley — if he found out later that you’d snuck in, even if I’d caught you in time, he wouldn’t praise me for doing my job. He’d only ask why we let you sneak in at all."

Every word of that was true, even if it wasn’t the real reason.

"And I don’t need the whole estate on high alert just to find you."

She hit mute and looked at the lead wolf in front of her. "Where is he?"

The lead wolf said nothing. It turned and padded off into the dark, and the faint trace of Fu Tailan’s scent drifting through the air slowly dissolved into the space around it.

Brianna followed at a quick pace.

On the other end of the line, Fu Tailan made a soft sound of acknowledgment — so clean and unguarded that Brianna was suddenly struck by just how young he really was.

"I’ll be waiting for you to come find me then," Fu Tailan murmured with a quiet laugh, and the next second, the line went dead.

Where was he? What gave him such confidence that he wouldn’t be caught?

Even without sounding a full alarm, Brianna could still quietly mobilize the security center without waking Westley — drones, guard dogs, Illusions... the number of tools at her disposal was almost beyond counting.

And if he was still inside the security center building, it would be even simpler than that.

She had no intention of making this easy for Fu Tailan.

"Hello? Secretary Green?" The security supervisor picked up on the first ring. "You were right. Of the three who just came back, one of them — a guard named Lowell — is unaccounted for."

"Lock down the entire building that houses the security center immediately."

Brianna kept pace with the lead wolf, moving faster with every step — she could already tell where it was heading. "I’m almost there. The intruder is in that building. No one in or out except to let me through. That’s it."

The lead wolf’s sense of scent was precise to within half a meter; it was certain Fu Tailan was still inside the security center building, and that meant there was nowhere else he could be hiding.

"Once I’m inside, no one leaves until we have him in custody — and that includes both of us." Brianna repeated herself for emphasis; she was already breaking into a stride toward the side entrance of the building.

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