Chapter 456 - 398: Fu Tailan: A Timely Hint

Chapter 456: Chapter 398: Fu Tailan: A Timely Hint

Carter Morgan blinked a few times, slowly waking from his dream.

"...Ngh?"

Separated by the burly bodyguard captain, Fu Tailan didn’t spare him a glance. His ears were pricked, refusing to miss the slightest sound.

’Will he notice? Will he realize he was just dreaming?’

"What the..."

Carter raised a hand to rub his temples, stopping mid-sentence. "Did I just... nod off for a few minutes?"

The bodyguard captain turned his head. He wasn’t a smartwatch, constantly tracking Carter’s status, so he could only reply, "Did you?"

"Probably just a little tired," Carter said, hugging the brown leather handbag full of junk tighter to his chest.

He clearly felt something was off but couldn’t put his finger on it. Carter thought for a moment, then suddenly whipped his head around to glance at Fu Tailan.

"Has he been behaving?" Carter asked.

Fu Tailan’s heart skipped a beat, but he remained perfectly still.

The bodyguard captain grunted in affirmation. "Yes."

Fu Tailan kept his hands hanging between his legs, the dream and his handcuffs both dangling beneath the seat. He stared straight ahead, only watching Carter’s direction from the corner of his eye.

’This is the part of the plan most likely to go wrong...’

Before Carter fell into the dream, he had already seen its inhabitant—the dream itself could only create a dream; it couldn’t alter his waking memories.

He knew Fu Tailan had come with a dream.

He also knew that there was no dream among the target Illusions.

In other words, once Carter woke up, all he had to do was think too deeply about why Fu Tailan had brought a dream, or recall the icons of the target Illusions. He would then realize that, a short while ago, he had mistaken a "dream" that was clearly not a target Illusion for one, and had even been ecstatic about it.

Once he seized on that discrepancy, Carter Morgan, who was no fool, would almost certainly figure out what had happened.

No matter how vivid the dream, the difference between it and reality could never be completely erased.

Fu Tailan kept the dream tucked under the seat between his legs, holding on to a sliver of hope that out of sight would mean out of mind. Of course, simply wishing for Carter to forget was no different from praying to the gods.

Even Fu Tailan had no good way to stop the situation from spiraling downward. The only "solution," if you could call it that, was to prevent Carter from having the chance to think too deeply.

’Thankfully... thankfully, the storm, thick with the Nest’s Original Liquid, has already washed over Blackmoor City.’

’As expected... only a dim, chaotic ruin is a place truly fit for me.’

"...Carter," Fu Tailan began, his voice almost calm. "Was this your doing?"

"What?" Carter faltered.

The bodyguard captain swallowed hard.

"Can’t you tell?" Fu Tailan said softly. "Something’s wrong outside."

"What’s wrong?" Carter turned his head and pressed his face to the window to look out. "It’s just raining, isn’t it?"

"Mr. Morgan," the bodyguard captain finally spoke up, "the situation is still unclear—"

"What situation?" Carter cut him off impatiently. "Spit it out."

Fu Tailan gave a silent smile.

Their group had been driving through the storm for nearly ten minutes.

For the last minute or two, the bodyguard captain’s body had been gradually tensing up. The bodyguard in the front passenger seat kept glancing back, exchanging looks with him.

They might be lousy Hunters who had to make a living as bodyguards, but they were Hunters nonetheless... not so slow they might as well be slabs of pork.

It was precisely because he’d sensed the suspicion and alarm swelling inside the car like a balloon that Fu Tailan had slowly ended Carter’s dream.

’Carter, only waking up now, no longer has the luxury of suspecting me.’

Though Carter himself didn’t know it yet.

"We think there’s something in this rain. Mr. Morgan, we’ve taken all necessary precautions," the bodyguard captain said cautiously. "Whether the thing in the rain is targeting us specifically is still hard to say—"

Carter Morgan, of course, believed the world revolved around him.

"Is that even a question?" Sure enough, he was displeased. "Don’t you know what kind of Hunter Fu Tailan is? Just keep him pinned down! What’s in the rain? I don’t see anything."

The bodyguard captain opened his mouth, clearly unable to bring himself to say, "I don’t know."

Fu Tailan let out a muffled laugh.

"Carter," he said in a low voice, "look ahead."

Carter’s suspicion was so thick you could almost see it. He clutched his handbag tightly and leaned forward.

The driver’s head, a swirling mass of black mist, was wavering just inches away from him, yet he still hadn’t noticed.

Despite the driver not even having a head anymore, his awareness of traffic laws remained. The SUV was currently stopped at an intersection, waiting for the red light, blurred and dim in the wind and rain, to change.

"What am I looking at?" he said impatiently. "It’s just a street in the rain. What’s so strange—"

Carter’s teeth clicked together, biting off the rest of his sentence.

The car fell silent.

"That... is that person crossing the street?" Carter muttered.

"If you insist on calling that ’crossing the street,’ I suppose you can," Fu Tailan chuckled.

A hunched, short, and small shadow was inching forward, one jerky movement at a time. The figure was steeped in the pitch-black midnight storm, its features impossible to make out.

In profile, the figure was crouched over on all fours. Whenever it was about to touch a white line of the crosswalk, it would suddenly seem to leap up in uncontrollable joy, its hands flailing wildly in the darkness. Then, as it crouched back down, it would carefully avoid the white stripe, hopping over it to land on the asphalt between the lines.

"Captain," the bodyguard in the front seat swallowed. "Should we keep going? If we drive forward, we’ll definitely run over the crosswalk..."

"Keep going," Carter cut him off coldly. "It seems I know what kind of Hunter Fu Tailan is better than you do. You think he can force us to change our route just by having someone act weird on the road? Wouldn’t that be playing right into his hands?"

"But, Mr. Morgan," the bodyguard captain couldn’t help but say, "this can’t be something he arranged beforehand. After all, even we don’t know where we’re going right now."

"Huh?" Carter froze. "What—what do you mean?"

"Mr. Morgan, weren’t you the one who gave the order when we got in the car?" The captain glanced at him. "You were afraid Mr. Fu might have... ideas, so you told us to just drive randomly, anywhere would do, and that you’d tell us the destination when the time was right."

This, of course, was part of the dream Fu Tailan had fabricated—he didn’t know where Fu Han was being held, so he couldn’t issue the order for Carter.

"Oh... right, right." Carter frowned, a dazed look appearing on his face. "I did say that..."

This was likely the same expression anyone would have while trying to grasp a fading dream.

"Strange," Carter grew uneasy. "How could I..."

An event from just ten minutes ago now felt submerged and blurry when he tried to recall it. Anyone would be unsettled—and Fu Tailan couldn’t let him think any deeper.

"Besides, even if I could get someone to cross the road, could I also replace every traffic light in Blackmoor City?" He sighed. "I haven’t even seen my dad yet. What’s the point of me pulling all these stunts now?"

"Wait, what’s wrong with the traffic lights?" The bodyguard captain immediately tensed up, leaning forward as well.

In the redredredredred light a redredredred smiling face was redredredred waving come on just run the redredred light then we can red be red together mel-el-elding into red merging with me redredred

"What the hell?" The bodyguard captain jerked back into his seat. "The Nest? Impossible—"

"Turn around! Don’t go forward!" Carter, finally realizing something was wrong, snapped out of his trance from the red light and shrieked, "Turn around! Turn around, head toward 99th Street first, hurry!"

At his words, the driver turned the steering wheel.

’How strange. How did he swap his head for a Black Abyss Belt?’

His head had turned into a mass of black mist, yet not only could he drive, he could even speak, though his voice was a bit shrill. "Where to after this?"

"Just drive! I’ll tell you when the time comes!"

Carter seemed to be the type who lashes out at those around him when under pressure. "If I tell you the destination now, aren’t you worried Fu Tailan will make a move? Are you stupid?"

He himself had taken the initiative to sync up with the dream’s logic.

The driver remained quiet, showing no sign of anger, and continued to drive.

A few minutes later, Fu Tailan was the only one in the entire SUV to see it: from deep within the half-mass of black mist visible above the driver’s seat, right where the back of his head should have been, a hand slowly extended.

The hand was small and pale. There was only one, but it had at least twenty or thirty fingers.

Twenty or thirty densely packed fingers gently pushed aside the black mist.

Something seemed to flash from deep within the mist—eyes, perhaps, but Fu Tailan couldn’t be sure.

’...Isn’t this interesting?’

He felt like he was playing a horror game and was on the verge of getting completely absorbed. He never knew what plot twist was coming next—if he weren’t still worried about Fu Han, he would have loved to let loose and really play.

"There’s a car tailing us," the driver reminded them in his shrill voice.

The moment he spoke, the other four people in the car, including Fu Tailan, all whipped their heads around.

Aside from the second SUV, which also belonged to Carter, they saw nothing.

"Are you blind?" Carter cursed. "That’s our own car."

"It’s not," the driver said, then paused. "Just wait. You’ll see it in a moment."

"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?" Carter, already on edge from the mounting suspicion, was fidgeting. "This is all—"

Just then, Fu Tailan’s phone rang, startling Carter so badly he nearly slammed into the car door.

’Strange. Who would be calling me?’

"Excuse me," Fu Tailan gestured toward the bodyguard captain with his chin. "Mind getting my phone for me? You can’t just not let me answer calls. That’s a good way to lose friends."

Carter, already a bundle of nerves, was about to shake his head but suddenly changed his mind. "Get his phone for him. Put it on speaker. I want to hear what this is all about."

’Even better. If he’s listening to the call, his attention won’t be on the dream.’

The bodyguard captain fished the constantly ringing phone out of Fu Tailan’s back pocket and showed him the screen.

The caller ID read "Longzhen."

Fu Tailan clicked his tongue softly.

"Hello?"

After the bodyguard captain hit the speakerphone button, Longzhen’s slightly anxious voice immediately filled the car. "Fu Tailan, where are you? Never mind, wherever you are, listen up. I really shouldn’t be warning you, but—forget it, that’s not important. In short, you know what you’ve done. You know what the consequences will be. Now—"

She took a deep breath.

"Now, Chaisi is coming for you."

The car was silent for a few seconds.

The bodyguard captain ended the call. Carter muttered, "Chaisi? Chaisi from the Kai Family? What did you do?"

At the same time, the black-misted driver spoke up, "Oh, here comes that car."

In the next second, a car burst through the curtain of rain from a side road, bearing straight down on the SUV—its high beams instantly washed Carter’s side of the car in a blinding flash of white.