Chapter 459 - 401: Fu Tailan: One, Two, Three, Four

Chapter 459: Chapter 401: Fu Tailan: One, Two, Three, Four

This was a play Fu Tailan had personally arranged and directed.

He had obsessed over it, used every trick in the book, all just to see the final, climactic act.

The play wasn’t over yet, the climax hadn’t arrived, so of course the director couldn’t die—even though one of the actors could erupt at any moment, reach out, and snuff out Fu Tailan’s life.

So as he sat in the car, caressing his caved-in forehead, Fu Tailan knew he had to squeeze a path to survival out of this situation; he had to conjure a trump card from thin air.

Luckily, it seemed even the heavens felt his time wasn’t up just yet.

The reason Fu Tailan dared to chat with Chaisi, to slowly flay him with words, was because he held four pieces of information that Chaisi’s side didn’t know.

One: he had a gun.

It was the gun he’d swiped from the head bodyguard, beating Carter to it.

Chaisi had dragged Fu Tailan out of the car, throwing him around and beating him senseless like a rag doll. There was plenty of physical contact during the assault, but he never found the gun Fu Tailan had hidden. Logically, this should have been impossible. If nothing else, with the force Chaisi used to throw him, the gun should have flown out long ago.

So Chaisi clearly thought he was unarmed.

That was why Chaisi had allowed himself to be overwhelmed by emotion, to hang his head before Fu Tailan.

"...I hope those are tears of relief," Fu Tailan chuckled indistinctly, then let out a low groan of pain, clutching the arm he’d kept curled in front of his body. "Otherwise, you’re just far too boring."

"Brother Chaisi!"

Han Liuyue suddenly roared, no longer paying any mind to Carter. She whirled around and aimed her gun at Fu Tailan. ’Her reflexes are too fast.’

But even someone with reflexes as fast as Han Liuyue’s was a step too slow.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t done well enough. Rather, it was that almost no one could have imagined Fu Tailan pulling a gun from an empty arm.

Han Liuyue held her gun steady, its muzzle locked on Fu Tailan, but she didn’t dare move—because Fu Tailan’s gun was now aimed at Chaisi.

"How..." She gasped, her breath forming a white cloud. "What’s going on? An Illusion?"

Chaisi finally raised his head, his eyes meeting the barrel of Fu Tailan’s gun.

Aside from his blood-red eyes, every line on his face looked as if it had been carved with a knife—frozen, hard, and unmoving.

He looked at the gun’s barrel, then at Fu Tailan’s arm.

Fu Tailan had rolled up his sleeve.

The patch of skin formed by the Vulture Particles was connected to Fu Tailan’s arm on one end, while the other end had yet to fully recede from the pistol.

To an outsider, it looked as if the skin of Fu Tailan’s arm had somehow formed a pouch that enveloped the pistol, and that he had just pulled the gun out from within his own skin.

"Who said the Vulture Particles had to stay inside my body?"

Fu Tailan couldn’t suppress a hint of smugness. "See? Turns out I can be a kangaroo, too."

Chaisi’s eyelids were half-lowered as he watched him coldly. The next second, a pale white shadow lunged out of the night rain.

Perhaps only Chaisi would think he could snatch the gun away faster than Fu Tailan could pull the trigger.

And perhaps only Chaisi’s speed at snatching the gun truly was faster than Fu Tailan’s at pulling the trigger. The moment the muzzle flashed, a large hand had already knocked it aside. The bullet grazed past Chaisi, the force of its passage slicing a bloody line across his ear.

Once Chaisi got a grip on the barrel, it was bound to be wrenched away by brute force. If Fu Tailan hadn’t let go at the last second, his fingers might have been dislocated.

The gun flipped around in Chaisi’s hand and was aimed at Fu Tailan.

He lowered his eyelids slightly.

The Vulture Particles were still on Fu Tailan’s arm, appearing as a folded, empty pouch of skin. They hadn’t had time to move—and even if they had, it was hard to say where would be the best place to block.

Without a single word, Chaisi pulled the trigger on Fu Tailan.

Fu Tailan started to laugh.

"I already ejected all the other bullets," he said. "I only left the one I just fired at you, precisely for a moment like this."

"Brother Chaisi," Han Liuyue immediately shouted from a distance, "Let me! Move aside."

"No need." Chaisi tossed aside the head bodyguard’s gun, reached behind his back, and pulled out another one. "Don’t let him escape."

Han Liuyue froze for a second, then immediately understood and whipped her head around. Sure enough, while the two sides were clashing, Carter had taken the chance to slip away. Silent as a ghost, he had already put a good distance between them.

"Yes," she said, stepping forward and raising her gun toward Carter’s retreating back. "Should I kill him?"

"Kill him."

As those two words left his lips, Chaisi raised his own gun at Fu Tailan.

In that instant, Fu Tailan almost felt as if he had just taken a drag from a cigarette—a pity his stash had been soaked by the rain and was long unsmokable. A light warmth filled his mind, loose and scattered, and everything between heaven and earth seemed to slow down.

The world moved frame by frame. The rain fell, drop by drop, into the Human World.

Fu Tailan watched his own hand, watched it push through the curtain of rain inch by inch. He was at once amazed, amused, and felt that none of it really mattered. If he failed to block the muzzle with his palm before Chaisi fired, it wouldn’t be anything to regret.

If there was one single regret, it would be not getting to see the final, climactic act with his own eyes.

But he already had a faint premonition of what that final act would entail—

A gunshot exploded in the palm of Fu Tailan’s hand.

Countless bits of flesh, shattered bone, and severed sinew burst from the back of his hand and sprayed into the rainy night, like a small firework or a suddenly inflating hot-air balloon.

It was as if invisible strings were attached to the specks of blood and flesh. They fanned out into a small, umbrella-like shape, then stopped falling. Instead, they were yanked back by the invisible strings, rapidly retracting into the bloody hole in his palm.

"Go on, again,"

Fu Tailan stared at Chaisi, his voice soft and slurred, his arm now completely bare. "...I can block you with this hand as many times as you want."

Chaisi seemed to feel that even a single word in response would be beneath him. He just sneered. And just as he was about to aim again and pull the trigger, the second piece of information that Fu Tailan knew—but Chaisi did not—finally made its belated appearance, slowly poking its head into the rainy night.

It really did poke its head out of the car window and into the rainy night.

Two: the driver’s head was a Black Abyss Belt.

And there was something inside the Black Abyss Belt.

When Chaisi had rammed his car into the side of the SUV, it would have been impossible for him to see the driver. Carter’s windows were tinted; you couldn’t see inside even in broad daylight, let alone in the middle of a stormy night.

After hitting the SUV, Chaisi still hadn’t seen the driver. He probably knew Fu Tailan wouldn’t have been the one driving, so he never even glanced at the driver’s seat.

In fact, even if he had glanced at the driver’s seat, he likely wouldn’t have made anything of it. Fu Tailan had seen the driver’s state at the time; the driver was slumped crookedly in the seat, the black mist of his head hanging down into the unlit gloom of the car’s interior.

The idea that a driver with a Black Abyss Belt for a head could be killed in a simple car crash would have made Fu Tailan laugh.

He watched Chaisi stand frozen in the curtain of rain, his gun still pointed steadily at him, but his gaze involuntarily flickered toward the SUV’s driver-side window.

The black mist that had replaced the man’s head had now fully emerged from the window and turned toward the two of them.

Had the black mist not been faceless, containing only a small white hand, it might have looked as if it were enjoying the show.

"Hey," Fu Tailan said, waving at it. "You’re here."

The hand, which was covered in twenty or thirty fingers, extended outward bit by bit, pulling a slender arm along with it.

Chaisi slowly turned his head toward it.

Not far down the road, a series of gunshots suddenly rang out, followed by the dull thud of a body hitting the ground.

If the dream hadn’t already fled, Fu Tailan might have suspected Chaisi was trapped in one as well—he seemed not to have heard Han Liuyue’s gunshots, not even blinking an eye.

He just stared, dazed and shaken, at the resident climbing bit by bit out of the Black Abyss Belt, not even noticing Fu Tailan slowly straightening up and taking two steps away.

"...What?" Chaisi asked, sounding almost lost.

"Never seen one before?" Fu Tailan knew he shouldn’t be talking right now, but he couldn’t resist. "Never been a Hunter? You don’t recognize what this is?"

Chaisi raised his hand and slowly wiped the rain from his face, his movements so slow it was as if he was waiting—waiting for the resident from the Black Abyss Belt to vanish by the time he lowered his hand.

’...Something’s not right.’

’With Chaisi’s mentality and personality, just seeing a resident shouldn’t make him lose his composure like this. Even if he’s never entered a Nest, the Kai Family Hunters must have described them to him.’

’He looks... almost as if—as if—’

"Did—did you do this?" Chaisi still didn’t look at Fu Tailan, his voice beginning to tremble. "You... I know your Path is very rare. Does that mean you can..."

’Wait, is he afraid? Why?’

’A resident has entered the Human World. Isn’t this fun?’

Han Liuyue had killed Carter and was walking back. Fu Tailan didn’t have time to waste words on him.

"Of course I didn’t do it. How could I bring a resident here? Even if my Path is top-tier, aren’t Paths for people to walk?" He said this with righteous indignation, glancing at Han Liuyue in the distance. "However, I did just receive some news..."

"What is it?" Chaisi asked, just as expected.

’Good. With that question, Han Liuyue won’t raise her gun and kill me before he gets his answer.’

The resident was now about to be fully born from the Black Abyss Belt. Its body was emaciated and disproportionate, with a long, spindly thigh jammed into its chest cavity.

As it took a step forward, it trailed a series of afterimages of its leg, as if countless layers of limbs were compressed and folded together, and any movement would leave some of them behind.

Its body was now standing on the ground of the Human World, but its neck was still stretched out long and crooked, its head submerged in the black mist, not yet revealed.

"Does the Knight Family’s Original Liquid mean anything to you? I hear it’s spilled all over the streets and alleys, washed everywhere by the rain." As Fu Tailan spoke, he even called out to Han Liuyue, "Look, it’s a resident."

Han Liuyue stared blankly at the resident and called out in a low voice, "Brother Chaisi..."

Fu Tailan smiled. ’The heavens really don’t want me to die yet.’

Three: there were two drivers whose heads were Black Abyss Belts.

The other driver, in the car behind Han Liuyue, had just silently opened the car door and was now walking toward them.

It was still the driver’s own body, but the black mist on his head was beginning to dissipate. As the black tide receded, it revealed a naked, grayish-white, slickly writhing brain.

Fu Tailan gestured toward Han Liuyue with his chin. "Hey," he called out, "Big Sister."

"Who’s your—"

As expected of Han Liuyue, she reacted before she could even finish her sentence, whirling around to come face-to-face with the brain-driver behind her.

As she instinctively raised her gun, Chaisi also seemed to finally snap out of his long daze.

As the pair unleashed a bright volley of gunfire at the two residents, Fu Tailan had already slipped quietly to the side, gotten behind the car, and broken into a run.

He dove into the second SUV and immediately slammed the door shut. Amidst the sounds of gunfire and rain, he started the engine and, carrying the dead bodyguards in the car, stomped on the gas and shot forward—but then, just as quickly, Fu Tailan slammed on the brakes.

He lunged over to the passenger seat, leaned across it to push the door open, and barked at the person lying on the road, "Stop playing dead and get in!"

Four: Chaisi’s side didn’t know that Carter had a defensive Illusion on him.

Carter’s eyes snapped open. His face was drained of all color. Not daring to waste another half-second, he quickly scrambled into the passenger seat, into the embrace of the dead bodyguard.

Restarting the car under the kisses and send-off of the pouring rain and countless bullets, Fu Tailan burst into loud laughter.