Chapter 400 - 348: Chaisi and the Death of Han Liuyue

Chapter 400: Chapter 348: Chaisi and the Death of Han Liuyue

Chaisi stood before a first-floor window, which offered a perfect view of the Kai Family Mansion’s driveway.

After he woke up, he naturally no longer needed bodyguards. Every Hunter stationed at the mansion had already gotten into their respective cars. Under the thin, gentle morning sun, one car after another started its engine, filing out of the driveway in an orderly line until they gradually disappeared from sight.

Kai Luonan was the first to leave. Chaisi didn’t see him off—the two of them had agreed on this. Chaisi waited for a while, and by the time he walked to the window, Uncle Kai’s car was already out of sight.

Just now, Chaisi had given Kai Luonan an answer, doing the best he could.

It was as if he hadn’t slept a wink for the past few days, constantly thinking about how to act, how to eliminate his rivals. It was as if he knew he would face Uncle Kai’s interrogation the moment he awoke and had been planning ceaselessly even in his dreams, so the answer came spilling out of him.

After Chaisi had explained everything, there was still a moment of unease when he didn’t know if Uncle Kai was satisfied with him. He stared intently at Uncle Kai, searching for praise and approval like a dog waiting for a bone.

In Blackmoor City, quite a few people had called Chaisi Kai Luonan’s lapdog, but he was never offended by it. He even felt that the insult held a subtle hint of validation, a sort of envy toward Uncle Kai. Besides, a dog would never want to leave its home just because it’s a dog.

Kai Luonan finally nodded.

"Then we’ll do it that way," he said. "Your plan is a good one."

...In that moment, it was as if Chaisi’s life had been granted a temporary extension.

After all the Hunters had returned to their own homes, all that was left to do was wait.

Chaisi was not used to having nothing to do and no one around.

He put away the notes from Lan Jiesen that he had shown Uncle Kai, cleaned the dining table, killed some time in the combat training room, then bathed and groomed himself... By constantly finding things to do, he didn’t have to think.

Chaisi finally made it past eleven at night. A full day had now passed since the Kai Family Hunters went their separate ways.

Over the course of the day, he had called Tian Xi, Mai Mingle, and Jin Xueli several more times, but still couldn’t reach any of them. Outside, a torrential rain had been pouring all day, as if he and the Kai Family had been isolated in a lonely corner of the world.

’What on earth happened?’

The latter two didn’t matter as much; when it came down to it, they weren’t his responsibility. But if Tian Xi remained missing, Chaisi would have no choice but to postpone his operation again to search for him—and Chaisi had already wasted too much time.

He hadn’t received any messages from the "Nest Dominance Game" during his coma, which meant the game was still at a stalemate, with no one making any new progress.

’If the game is at a stalemate, what could have made all three of them disappear at the same time?’

Chaisi, filled with questions and frustration, grabbed his phone for what felt like the dozenth time that day. As luck would have it, the moment he picked it up, it immediately started buzzing with an incoming call.

"Brother Chaisi!"

It was a Household Hunter on the phone, practically shouting. "Get to the hospital, quick! Han Liuyue is in critical condition!"

"What happened?" He shot up from the sofa.

"The doctors don’t know what happened either. Her vital signs suddenly plummeted. Not long after she was taken to the emergency room, they issued a critical condition notice..."

The drive from the Kai Family Mansion to Han Liuyue’s hospital was supposed to take a full two hours, but just over an hour later, Chaisi was already wedging his car into an empty parking spot. As he slammed the door shut, the car behind him—the one whose spot he’d stolen and nearly hit—blared its horn furiously a few times.

"Are you crazy?!" the driver yelled, sticking his head out the window. "Willing to die just to steal a parking spot?"

Chaisi shot him a sideways glance and turned to leave.

That only infuriated the male driver more, and he laid on the horn without letting up. To the accompaniment of that long, sharp blare, Chaisi strode through the curtain of rain and into the hospital.

He was a step too late.

The Household Hunter registered as Han Liuyue’s emergency contact came to meet him from the other end of the long corridor. The hospital smells, the lights, the sound of wheelchair wheels rolling across the floor, the names called out by nurses, the occasional scuff of a shoe... a whole trembling, humming wave of sound seemed to push him forward, right up to the Hunter.

"She’s dead," the Hunter said.

"...How long would you need to kill all the Kai Family Hunters?"

That sudden question from his conversation with Uncle Kai this morning now resurfaced uncontrollably in Chaisi’s mind—here, in the hospital, face-to-face with a Kai Family Hunter.

"What?" Back then, Chaisi had been so startled he suspected he’d misheard.

The hazy morning sunlight filtered through the window, falling at Kai Luonan’s feet and submitting into a dim patch. Uncle Kai looked at him as if he had just asked a mundane question like, "What are your plans for the weekend?"

"You heard me," Kai Luonan said. "Answer me."

Chaisi opened his mouth but couldn’t get a single word out.

Kai Luonan waited for him in silence.

"I—Why? I—I can’t..."

His hands, hanging below the chair, were clenched and twisted together so tightly that blue veins and blood vessels bulged from beneath his pale skin, like the veining in white marble.

"I don’t understand. Why would I kill my own comrades?"

"It’s a hypothetical."

Kai Luonan looked at him and said, "Suppose I ordered you to kill every Core Hunter—Tian Xi, Sha Xue, Suo Beihua, Chebri, and so on... Oh, and Han Liuyue. How long would it take?"

Chaisi still couldn’t answer.

Just imagining it was like being crushed between steel walls weighing millions of pounds, making him want to flee, unable to breathe.

"How long would it take?"

He didn’t understand the point of Uncle Kai’s question, but Chaisi knew that if he were to argue that there was no good reason in the world for them all to die, he would be making a mistake.

"If... if neither side uses Illusions, then even after the first one dies and they start to fight back... half a day at most would be enough."

As he pushed open the door to the hospital room, Chaisi could almost hear his own voice from that moment again.

’If it were Uncle Kai’s final order, then Uncle Kai must have his reasons. Besides, he didn’t have the right to say no.’

Kai Luonan was satisfied.

He nodded and said, "About what I estimated"—as if he had already considered using Chaisi in this way one day.

But now, in this hospital room with just him and Han Liuyue, Chaisi had a faint realization. Perhaps Uncle Kai had only wanted to see his reaction, especially after he had risked everything to save Han Liuyue.

’Uncle Kai has been semi-retired for a long time. For years, I’ve managed all the Kai Family’s affairs, big and small, sharing life-and-death bonds with the Household Hunters. Perhaps he just wanted to know if I could still distinguish my priorities—that has to be it, right?’

’In this world, once you start thinking about "how to do something," you’ve already passed the stage of "whether to do it."’

He slowly sat down by the hospital bed, his vision filled with a field of white.

The white pressed against his retinas, and from the end of the white sheets, strands of messy, silvery-pink hair poked at his vision like sharp spikes.

"Brother Chaisi..." the Household Hunter named David called out softly.

"You can go," Chaisi said. "Tell the hospital staff not to disturb me. I need some time."

After the door closed, the room was not silent.

The ventilation fan and air conditioner were both humming, and several machines faintly radiated the heat of their operation. This was an expensive private room, tucked away in a corner of the hospital, but he could still hear the occasional footsteps and voices from the corridor outside.

The blanket covering Han Liuyue was thick, as if she had become even more sensitive to the cold. At the foot of the bed lay one of her bags, its zipper half-open, revealing the edge of a plastic bag inside.

Chaisi sat there in a daze for he didn’t know how long, until he heard a soft knock on the door.

"Who is it?"

"Brother Chaisi," the door was pushed open, and David peeked his head in. "I’m sorry, but the hospital says we should... proceed with the next steps as soon as possible."

He carefully closed the door, looked at Chaisi, then glanced at the contoured white blanket on the bed. "Brother Chaisi, I know you’re grieving. But she can’t stay here forever."

"Yeah," Chaisi said, but he didn’t move.

He remained leaning slightly toward Han Liuyue, his arms resting on his legs, his hands dangling between his knees.

David stood by the door, seemingly also upset, raising a hand to cover his mouth.

Chaisi didn’t even realize he had started speaking until the next second, when he heard his own lips, teeth, throat, and tongue work together to form a sentence: "I have a rumor to tell you."

In that instant, David suddenly lowered his hand and smiled. He seemed to be holding something, which vanished into his pocket in a flash.

"I heard a rumor," David said.

At that moment, Chaisi understood completely. He shot up from his chair and lunged for the door. "David" dodged back, retreating several steps with nimble agility. When he raised his arm toward Chaisi, there was a gun in his hand.

"Don’t move," he said. His voice was muffled and soft, and now that Chaisi was really listening, it sounded nothing like David’s.

Chaisi was even vaguely surprised at himself. ’How did I not notice it at all just now?’

A crisp CLICK echoed in the hospital room as a safety was disengaged.

"You’re the one who shouldn’t be moving," a cheerful female voice said.

At some point, Han Liuyue had silently sat up from between the white sheets. She too was holding a gun, aimed directly at the back of "David’s" head.