Illusion Report

Chapter 349: Chapter 302: Fu Tailan: Don’t Tell Me I Did It?

The third Illusion had only been in the human world for a few days. It had just undergone one ability assessment, hadn’t officially been sold yet, and was still sitting in the Morgan Family’s inventory.

But the moment word got out, a queue of prospective buyers had already formed to view the goods. One buyer from a war-torn region was even willing to pay a "first-look" fee — fifty thousand dollars just to be the first in line to inspect and place an order, with the purchase price on top of that. And if they passed, the fifty grand was non-refundable either way.

Fu Tailan had already been planning to run another assessment before that buyer arrived in the country. He had always felt the Illusion had more potential — maybe there was still more destructive capability to draw out of it.

Who could have guessed that the second assessment would take place inside Westley Manor, with human lives as the test subjects?

Fu Tailan slid his hand into his trouser pocket.

"Fu——"

Green’s face went rigid. He’d caught on.

The moment the shout left his lips, it came out slow — drifting, unhurried, like a goldfish opening and closing its mouth at the bottom of a tank.

Fu Tailan felt as though he had all the time in the world — so much of it, it was almost tedious — to activate the Illusion in his hand.

"——Tailan!" Green shouted, still oblivious to what was already happening. "It’s him — open fire!"

Time had not stretched. It hadn’t thinned out, or turned to water, spreading in slow, lazy ripples.

Time was still moving forward, second by second, exactly as it always had. It was just that once the Illusion activated, time ceased to be a meaningful reference point.

When enough incidents — frequent enough, dense enough — erupted all at once, what was the difference between one second and a hundred years?

Green’s words hadn’t even finished leaving his mouth when, unfortunately, someone had already understood him.

The black-haired middle-aged man standing closest to Fu Tailan had not only heard the name "Fu Tailan" with perfect clarity — he had also made the connection. "Fu Tailan" was the intruder. The intruder was this young man right in front of him, the one with the cap pulled low, head bowed.

Put into words, it would take a sentence or two to explain. But as a thought, it was nothing more than a flash — a split-second spark in the mind.

One flash was more than enough.

A young man with a lowered cap and an indistinct face cracked the black-haired man’s skull open from within, like some enormous infant being born from the wrong part of the body. In the blink of an eye, another person’s upper half had crawled out through his head.

The skull had shattered from the force of the splitting — fragments of bone embedded themselves into the skin of the face and scalp. The face had peeled away halfway like a half-removed leather jacket, sagging in folds beneath the chin, unrecognizable as anything human.

The capped young man who had cracked his way out of the skull was frozen there, halfway emerged, lodged on top of the black-haired man’s head. The man’s legs buckled and swayed, and he finally gave out under the weight of the extra half-body above him, the two of them crashing heavily to the floor together.

Fu Tailan fished a crumpled, char-black, flaking cigarette stub from his trouser pocket, eyes downcast. He didn’t look.

It wasn’t exactly a pleasant sight.

And if it turned out that the half-figure protruding from the man’s skull bore a passing resemblance to himself — wouldn’t that be nauseating enough to ruin the rest of his week?

The black-haired middle-aged man was just one of many unlucky souls.

Around Fu Tailan, throughout the great hall of the security center, among the people near and far — seated, standing — countless thoughts flickering through countless minds were erupting like wildfire, taking on physical form, clawing their way out of skull after skull and stretching up toward the ceiling.

Someone had heard "open fire" and, in that instant, thought of a gun.

A metal gun barrel burst straight through the bridge of their nose, sending shredded skin, splintered bone, and beads of blood spiraling into the air. When the body dropped, it looked as though a well had been sunk between the eyes — and something dark and wet was gurgling up from inside it.

Others had heard the name "Fu Tailan," knew only that it belonged to the intruder, the "terrorist" Secretary Green had named — but hadn’t gotten a clear look at Fu Tailan’s face.

So from the back of one person’s skull, a broad Arab man emerged horizontally — turban wrapped around his head, thick beard across his face, his expression one of frank appraisal, as though examining the original owner’s back and backside.

Neck and all, it looked like two blood-red tomatoes hanging from the same stem.

Fu Tailan reached into his pocket and came up empty. He turned to look at someone standing not far away. "You got a lighter?"

The person didn’t seem to see him at all, as if he’d turned invisible.

She was just staring, frozen, at the man who had collapsed after a Fu Tailan had clawed its way out of his skull — and whatever had passed through her mind in that moment was obvious enough.

Because the words had barely left Fu Tailan’s mouth when a man with a Fu Tailan erupting from his head had already begun forcing its way out of hers. Her legs buckled under the sudden extra weight of two upper bodies above her, and she went down hard, raising a small cloud of dust as she hit the floor.

Fu Tailan couldn’t help turning away, his whole face scrunched up.

He didn’t like blood. But the thing that made him most reluctant to use this particular Illusion wasn’t the gore — it was the domino effect. Once someone saw it, once the realization hit, the deaths of the ten people before them would faithfully replicate themselves out of their own skull, one after another, like a cluster of tumors.

And there it was, right on cue.

Not far behind, another person’s head split open to birth a woman whose head had birthed a man whose head had birthed a Fu Tailan.

Lucky for him, there was no one directly behind that last person — though a staff member in front of Fu Tailan suddenly had their neck erupt in a roaring column of flame, the entire head crackling and spitting like a log in a winter fireplace.

...That’d be because he asked about a lighter.

Fu Tailan thought this, eyes still downcast. He didn’t regret it.

Still better than dying with a whole cluster of tumors growing out of your head.

"Everyone close your eyes and sit down — don’t move!"

He kept his gaze carefully averted and raised his voice: "If you’ve got kids, think about your kids. If you don’t, think about cats and dogs. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts — don’t say I didn’t warn you — and keep those eyes shut!"

As long as they kept their eyes closed and didn’t come looking for trouble, Fu Tailan had no particular need for all of them to die.

Admittedly, asking people to think happy thoughts in the middle of all this was a pretty tall order.

That buyer from the war-torn region — as he recalled, they’d bought this Illusion a few days after this, in the original timeline. Never mind that only thirty-five days remained on its lifespan; what they’d paid for it was enough to outfit a small private army.

Then again, given what it could do, that was practically a bargain.

No living, conscious person could simply stop thinking — stop having thoughts flicker through their mind.

And the more violent the thought, the more likely it was to take physical form and force its way out of the thinker’s skull.

A soldier on a battlefield had no leisure to think about things like "nice weather today" or "the birds are singing nicely" — and even if they somehow did, the moment they watched a comrade’s skull split open and a corpse come crawling out, any thought of what might be for dinner was gone for good.

Five-plus years as a Hunter, and Fu Tailan had never come across an Illusion better suited to armed conflict than this one.

He resettled his backpack on his shoulders, raised one hand to shield his brow, and glanced down briefly at the alpha wolf.

It had been barely six or seven seconds since Green had shouted his name. The alpha wolf hadn’t even had time to close its mouth — or wait, could it close its mouth? It didn’t seem like it could.

The alpha wolf’s human eyes were wide open, every red vein stark and visible across the whites, staring fixedly at him, completely unable to speak.

"Xiao Yan,"

Fu Tailan kept his distance — two steps back, just in case — and addressed the wolf’s open mouth: "Coming?"

Both eyeballs rolled left and right a few times, out of sync with each other, like the strings holding them in place had gone slack.

"Not coming? You want to stay in there?"

The eyeballs bounced up and down a few times.

"But... why?"

That wasn’t a question two eyeballs alone could answer. They went still in the depths of the wolf’s throat, staring up at him.

To think they’d only been together for a few hours, and already they had to part.

Fu Tailan straightened up, a vague sense of loss settling over him.

"You sure? Alright, take care of yourself then... come find me sometime, Xiao Yan."

He’d given it a name. He’d done most of the talking on his end during their brief time together. But whether Xiao Yan truly existed — what it actually was — remained entirely unknown.

"Nest Dissociation Syndrome"... what a strange thing...

There was no one left in the security center who could stop him now.

An unknown number of people lay dead. Those still alive had heeded his warning — eyes shut, not daring to move.

Probably cycling through every cute cat-and-dog video they’d ever seen online.

As for Green — the second he’d shouted "open fire," he’d almost certainly sealed his own fate, without even a moment to spare for thoughts of cats and dogs. Served him right.

Fu Tailan quickly found what he was looking for on the monitors.

He walked over to the surveillance screen and pulled out a chair — only to discover that, sitting on the floor right beside him, was a young female staff member, eyes screwed shut, trembling violently.

The fear was understandable, of course. But she must have been keeping her thoughts carefully harmless this whole time — the fact that she’d lasted until now meant her self-control was impressive.

"You’re okay, sweetheart,"

Fu Tailan said, voice gentle: "Think about flowers, scenery — or your favorite singer... it’s almost over. You’re doing great."

When the blood hit, he flinched, eyes closing involuntarily — like he’d just been slapped across the face by it.

Fu Tailan wiped his face with one hand. He didn’t look at the body as it crumpled softly to the ground. He let out a long, slow breath.

...Fine.

He fixed his eyes on the screen and put her out of his mind, then spent a moment familiarizing himself with the security center’s internal communication system before picking up the phone on the desk.

On screen, an armed bodyguard standing outside a room raised his hand and touched his earpiece.

"This is Dylan," his voice came through the receiver in Fu Tailan’s hand.

"This is the security center," Fu Tailan said, deliberately dropping his voice lower. "Secretary Green has an urgent matter to report to Prima and will be there shortly. Please take all personnel on that floor and secure the corridor entrances — don’t let anyone else approach."

After he hung up, he’d need to track down Green’s body. He just hoped it wasn’t too mangled — all he needed was something that could serve as an "ID."

"...Copy that," the bodyguard named Dylan replied.

Fu Tailan set down the phone and stood up straight.

Even with his gaze deliberately averted, the periphery of his vision was still thick with smeared red, the blurred outlines of ruin. He couldn’t help sighing again.

"How did it come to this," he muttered. "Don’t tell me Westley was actually killed by me."

What was that saying — "if something can go wrong, it will"?

Tonight was practically a footnote to that saying.

Mounting chaos, mounting loss of control, disaster snowballing step by step into something no human effort could contain...

"Looks like the news left out a lot," he said to himself.

At the very least, nothing that happened inside the Westley Manor security center had made the news — as though only Westley had died.

Fu Tailan picked up his backpack and made his way toward where Secretary Green’s body lay, having to lift his feet high and step carefully over one body after another.

But the thing that sat heaviest in his chest tonight — the thing he knew, with quiet certainty, he would never be able to forget for the rest of his life — wasn’t the fact that he’d used the Illusion and killed so many people.

It was a small detail. One small, stupid detail.

That female staff member’s favorite singer.

Why — of all things — did it have to be a death metal band?

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