Illusion Report

Chapter 348: Chapter 301: Dual Perspective: Brianna and... Who?

The bullet buried itself in Fu Tailan’s forehead.

From the moment Brianna laid eyes on Fu Tailan to the moment she pulled the trigger, no more than thirty seconds had passed.

He was the so-called "Genius Hunter" of their world. With a reputation like that, how could she afford to give him even a single chance to show what he was made of?

What he wanted, how he’d gotten in, what he knew — none of it mattered.

Dead men don’t cause problems.

Brianna walked forward step by step, moving with each shot, and emptied every last round from the magazine.

Each heavy blast tore through the invisible rope that had been holding Fu Tailan upright, sending his limbs and head spinning in every direction — like a sheet of paper being ripped apart by waves — until he hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud.

For one brief moment after he went down, the air hung thick with layers of vivid, blazing red.

The gasps, the overturned chairs, the scrambling footsteps, the alarm still wailing — all of it fell away behind Brianna, dissolving into an indistinct backdrop.

"Sec — Secretary Green..." someone called out.

Whether or not this counted as murder, it was no concern of hers.

The people who had been standing near Fu Tailan — some now flat on the floor, some crouched behind chairs to dodge the stray bullets — almost every one of them stared at her with wide white eyes set against blood-splattered faces, utterly speechless.

Brianna looked down at the body.

Aside from the shot to the forehead, his face was otherwise intact. His eyes were half-open, as though he still had countless schemes, countless plays left to make — all of them shattered and frozen along with his brain.

Even without looking around, she could feel the unease and panic rippling through the room. This was a security center, yes — but not everyone here had seen a dead body before, and certainly not everyone had mentally prepared themselves to witness a killing on an ordinary workday.

"I received a tip that this was a terrorist who infiltrated private property carrying lethal weapons."

She had no interest in soothing anyone’s nerves, but she did need to steady the room. She raised her voice: "I’m going to examine the body. After that, notify the authorities if necessary, clean up the scene if necessary. Any responsibility falls on me. Everyone return to your posts and get back to work."

That said, there were still plenty of people too stunned to move, standing there and staring blankly.

Brianna opened her mouth and said, "The alert can be stood down. He was working alone."

"Understood." The head of security looked pale and sickly, but kept himself together. "Should I have two people move him to a room?"

Moving him to a room for examination meant fewer eyes around — naturally more convenient.

As for any concerns about preserving the scene, Brianna didn’t give them a second thought. Whatever explanation Westley’s people put forward, the police would accept. It was nothing but a formality.

The head of security waved a few people over. They draped a jacket over the body and carried it away. Someone pushed open the door to a small conference room nearby, and the two men tasked with moving Fu Tailan dropped him onto the table with a heavy thud.

Brianna opened her mouth and said, "Hans, head to the estate and brief Mr. Westley for me. Take that wolf with you."

An employee with blood all over his face gave a nod and turned toward the alpha wolf.

"Wait," Brianna said, something stirring in the back of her mind. "Head Wolf — where is Fu Tailan right now?"

After all, she was dealing with a Hunter whose reputation as a prodigy went back to his youth.

A man shot dead in thirty seconds and a handful of bullets — even if the person lying there looked exactly like Fu Tailan, she wasn’t arrogant enough to simply assume he’d died so cleanly at her hands.

Whether it was the bright lights inside the building or something else entirely, anyone who saw it now would never mistake it for an actual wolf — not the way they might have under the cover of night.

"But Fu Tailan is right here,"

The alpha wolf’s mouth had split open as wide as it could go. Its lower jaw seemed to unhinge from somewhere deep in its chest, forming a dark, tunnel-like void — a gaping hole far too large to belong to anything natural.

The voice that rose from within that blackness carried a slick, faintly gleeful undercurrent, as though it was privately delighted about something only it was privy to. Brianna felt every nerve in her body pull taut.

"Let me rephrase that. Is the person I just killed Fu Tailan?"

That cavernous, ink-black maw remained frozen, unchanged.

Silence.

"...Head Wolf?"

Brianna turned and fixed her gaze on it.

The void inside the wolf’s open mouth stayed perfectly, eerily still.

Above that wide-open black hole, a pair of bloodshot, unmistakably human eyes strained with visible effort, rolling hard to one side — as if its mouth had lost the ability to speak, and it was desperately trying to communicate with its eyes alone.

Brianna raised her gaze.

Behind the Head Wolf, someone in a cap stood with their head down, and let out a quiet sigh.

Who?

***

Even for Fu Tailan, there was no outrunning bullets.

Xiaoyan was floating in the shadows beneath an office desk several meters away. And he had no defensive Illusions on him whatsoever.

On top of that, Secretary Green had fired without a moment’s hesitation — almost frantically — as though she existed completely outside the realm of worldly consequences, without a shred of restraint. That had left absolutely no window for dodging or escape.

So the only outcome waiting for Fu Tailan had always been this: shot, dropped, dead.

Didn’t see that coming — Green’s ruthless... he thought.

Not only had she been fast on the trigger, but even after putting one bullet through Fu Tailan’s forehead, she hadn’t been satisfied. She’d gone ahead and emptied the entire pistol.

She’s not even of age yet. How does someone that young kill without the slightest hesitation?

But then — well, Fu Tailan was dead the instant that first bullet hit his forehead. That much was clear. Hunters were still human. One bullet was always enough.

He watched Fu Tailan crumple to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. He couldn’t help looking away, dropping his head. His face was wet and warm, spattered all over with Fu Tailan’s blood.

Secretary Green walked over to Fu Tailan’s body and looked it over.

Really now — the blood had nearly all drained out of Fu Tailan, the man was thoroughly, completely dead, and yet her expression was still guarded and suspicious, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it.

How much more dead did he need to be? Fu Tailan had hit rock-bottom dead.

"...Everyone return to your posts and get back to work." Green turned and addressed the people in the hall.

As if anyone could just go back to work after watching someone get killed in front of them.

Never mind the people who were only here in supporting roles — even a bodyguard or security guard who’d mentally braced for something like this couldn’t just wipe away a dead body like it was blood on your face and move on. Oh, right — speaking of blood on faces, that was one thing he actually couldn’t wipe off yet.

The fact that plenty of people were too dazed to move actually worked in his favor.

He took advantage of the distraction to slip quietly into a corner. Then, as though pressing a hand over his own mouth, he gently pressed the Mouth Puppet in his palm against his lips.

"The alert can be stood down. He was working alone." Secretary Green opened her mouth and said the same words, simultaneously.

...Illusions really were extraordinary things.

Point the spent card at your own face, feed it Fu Tailan’s information, and it becomes "Fu Tailan’s ID."

Slip it quietly into someone else’s pocket, and that person becomes Fu Tailan in his place.

Even though his own memory was perfectly clear — he had been Fu Tailan just minutes ago — the moment the proof of identity passed to someone else, he became a man with no identity at all. Even when he tried to think of himself, he no longer knew who he was.

...He had never felt a freedom this clean, this vast.

A pity it was only an illusion.

He was already deep inside this game. Whoever he was, whatever identity he wore — to break out of it, to gain the upper hand, the things that needed doing remained exactly the same.

He watched the head of security wave people over, then moved to join them, handing over a jacket. The men understood and covered Fu Tailan’s body before carrying it into the conference room nearby.

Even as an illusion, that freedom had vanished far too quickly, far too soon. The moment someone touched the body, the identity snapped back to its rightful owner — and once again, he opened his eyes from inside the cage called "Fu Tailan."

Some things, you simply cannot escape.

Fu Tailan deliberately hung back as the last one in, pretending he’d left something in his jacket pocket, and quietly retrieved his "proof of identity." When he judged the moment was right, he pulled the brim of his cap down lower and pressed the Mouth Puppet over his lips once more.

Secretary Green opened her mouth and said: "Hans, head to the estate and brief Mr. Westley for me. Take that wolf with you."

Fu Tailan gave a nod, then turned and made his way out from behind the other employees. One of them glanced back at him — probably trying to remember who "Hans" was — but their eyes landed on the ID badge on his chest, and they quickly turned away again.

He’d taken down this many people. Of course there was a badge.

Even if the photo on it was a woman’s, he could just wear it flipped around. And honestly, what human being could guarantee that neither they nor any of their coworkers had ever worn their badge upside down?

As long as he could stop that Nest creature from tipping off Green, his walk to the main building would be practically above board — and that thing, which looked less and less like a wolf with every passing moment, was tilting its head toward him now, showing him a smile that looked entirely, disturbingly human.

How was he supposed to persuade it? Could it understand human speech? It seemed considerably more intelligent than the goldfish Westley had used last time.

What a Nest creature wanted was never more than a few basic things —

But he’d barely taken a step closer, hadn’t even opened his mouth yet, when Secretary Green suddenly turned her head.

"Wait," Green called out from across the room. "Head Wolf — where is Fu Tailan right now?"

...This woman was so infuriatingly in the way that he could kill her without a twinge of guilt at this point.

He quickly took two steps behind the Head Wolf, positioning himself behind a row of monitors, out of Green’s line of sight.

As it turned out, the Head Wolf didn’t just understand human speech — it spoke perfectly fluent human language itself.

"Fu Tailan is right here," it said, its mouth-hole stretching wider and wider as it spoke, and those human-looking eyeballs drifted ever so slightly in his direction.

...This was about to go badly.

How was he supposed to shut it up?

Fu Tailan couldn’t help darting his eyes around the room — and when his gaze came back to rest on the Head Wolf, he stopped cold.

From somewhere deep inside that yawning black void, a pair of eyes were rolling around, and then locked directly onto his.

Xiao — Xiaoyan?

Since when had Xiaoyan ended up inside the Head Wolf’s mouth?

Hold on — Xiaoyan could get in there? What did that mean?

Was that why the Head Wolf had been silent this whole time?

His mind was crashing with a torrent of questions, but there wasn’t time to think through a single one of them.

Secretary Green had already turned around. She looked at the Head Wolf for a long, fixed moment — and then, following the direction of the wolf’s rolling eyes, her gaze shifted, inch by inch, until it landed on him.

He let out a quiet sigh.

...He hadn’t wanted it to come to this.

When he’d left the Morgan Family, he had taken three Illusions with him.

The Mouth Puppet was one. The "proof of identity" was the second. The third — he had never once used it.

Because Fu Tailan didn’t like blood.

Didn’t like it... but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it.

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