Chapter 460 - 402: Fu Tailan: Effective Question

Chapter 460: Chapter 402: Fu Tailan: Effective Question

"The handbag!"

That was the first word to burst from Carter’s lips after he finally managed to compose himself.

His rear was wedged between the thighs of the bodyguard’s corpse. Unable to sit properly and not daring to try, he clung to an overhead handle with one hand, half-propping himself up to keep his distance from the body. "The handbag—did you grab the handbag?" he yelled. "All those target Illusions are in there! What if Chaisi... Fu Tailan, what are you laughing at?"

Fu Tailan finally managed to catch his breath and gradually stopped laughing, wiping the tears from his eyes.

As he placed his hand back on the steering wheel, he saw that besides tears and lingering raindrops, it was also streaked with watered-down red from his blood.

He didn’t rush to answer Carter, instead using the rearview mirror to inspect his own face.

Fu Tailan hadn’t even noticed when Chaisi had hit him in the face.

A cut had split open on his cheekbone. It was already swollen and turning white from being soaked by the rain, revealing a pale pink flesh like that of a dead fish. ’It probably won’t leave a scar, right?’

As he thought this, a distant ache from his ribs reminded him they were probably fractured...

"Fu Tailan!"

Carter’s sharp cry from the side snapped him back to attention. "Where’s the handbag? Don’t you dare tell me you forgot to grab it when you left. I won’t believe you."

His main activity just now had been lying on the road playing dead. He knew that Fu Tailan had hidden the handgun, ambushed Chaisi, and even removed the bullets beforehand—so Carter certainly didn’t believe that Fu Tailan would be flustered enough to forget the handbag during his escape.

Fu Tailan’s gaze shifted, sweeping past the bodyguard’s waist.

Without a word, he jerked the steering wheel. The SUV swerved sharply, throwing Carter—who was still half-standing between the corpse’s thighs—headfirst into the car door.

Amidst Carter’s pained cries and curses, Fu Tailan calmly reached out and retrieved a gun from the bodyguard’s waist.

By the time Carter steadied himself, the SUV was driving smoothly again, and the gun was resting on Fu Tailan’s thigh.

Carter looked at the gun, then back at Fu Tailan.

"You know, guns are useless against me..." he said with some hesitation.

"I’m the one who pulled you into the car. Of course I know," Fu Tailan said lightly. "And don’t worry, I grabbed the handbag."

After Han Liuyue had "shot" Carter, she had quickly glanced at the handbag on the ground. At the time, Carter had his eyes squeezed shut to play dead, so he hadn’t noticed that Han Liuyue immediately lost interest in the handbag and walked away.

’Of course she would lose interest. After all, it was just filled with a pile of junk.’

Or rather, while the pile of things like advertisement placards, disposable phones, and even bricks were indeed all junk, hidden amongst the garbage was something Han Liuyue should have recognized but happened to miss.

Fu Tailan picked up the handbag from the floor, driving with one hand while reaching into the bag with the other. He pulled out the power strip he had gotten from Chaisi in the hospital room.

He had traded the Blank Document and the Mouth Puppet for this power strip.

He couldn’t say if it was a bad trade, but no matter what he had in his hands, Fu Tailan could always make the most of it, even finding unexpected uses for it—like Vulture’s pellets.

The delight Carter felt at seeing the handbag hadn’t even fully formed before it was replaced by confusion when he saw the power strip.

"Huh? Is this a target Illusion too?"

He licked his lips, still clinging to the handle, half-bent over and crouched in front of the passenger seat, his eyes glued to the leather handbag. "You should give it to me, Fu Tailan. I’m not afraid of you making a move on me, but you still have to think about your father..."

Fu Tailan raised his arm and tossed the handbag to him—and his ribs immediately twinged with pain. ’So they are fractured, then?’

Carter hadn’t expected him to be so accommodating. He immediately placed the bag on the bodyguard’s legs and began digging through it.

When he finally looked up, stunned, his curly hair was plastered to his forehead. His eyes were wide, his mouth hung half-open, and his lips, plump and glossy from the water, made him look more like a pig than ever before.

"The target Illusions were swapped?" he murmured, seemingly trying to remember. "No... that’s not right... this is what you gave me from the beginning. But these aren’t target Illusions. I clearly remember you giving me target Illusions... What’s going on?"

Holding the power strip, Fu Tailan had already carefully read the text on the back. He turned to Carter and smiled.

"So tacky?"

"Huh? What?"

"Your defensive Illusion is actually named ’360° No-Blind-Spot Life Safety Guardian Shield’? That’s so tacky."

Carter was shocked. "How did you know—"

Fu Tailan’s finger found the "360° No-Blind-Spot Life Safety Guardian Shield" and flicked its tiny switch.

The next moment, he grabbed the handgun. His eyes still fixed on the road ahead, he lowered his hand and shot Carter in the foot.

’Carter really is a predictable guy.’

He just took a bullet to the foot, and already he was wailing, screaming and cursing, his whole body trembling, snot and tears streaming down his face... He even stumbled and fell onto the corpse, demanding to know how Fu Tailan did it and what happened to his Illusion.

’Do rich kids just have a low pain tolerance, or is all of humanity like this?’

To drown out the noise, Fu Tailan turned on the car radio. He tapped the gun barrel against the steering wheel, keeping time with the music. After a few dozen seconds of this, Carter finally caught his breath and regained some semblance of reason.

"I... I get it now."

He sniffled hard, wiping the snot and tears from his face. "It’s... I admit defeat. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have gone after your father. I underestimated you. You tricked me, right? With that dream? You made me think the bag was full of target Illusions... I admit defeat now. I’ll give you your father back. Whatever else you want, I’ll give it to you."

’Being able to read the situation and change course accordingly is a skill in its own right.’

"Just let me go, let me go to a hospital—no, no, just let me call a doctor." It turned out Carter could speak sincerely when he wanted to. "After you saw your father last time, I, uh, with my petty little mind, I took precautions against you and moved him to a different location. But don’t worry! The conditions are perfect. I definitely didn’t mistreat him. I’ll take you there. And after we get there, you’ll let me call a doctor..."

To show his sincerity, he even entered the address into the car’s GPS, repeatedly promising his full cooperation as he typed.

Fu Tailan smiled, glanced at him, and said, "Didn’t see that coming, did you?"

Carter stammered, like an employee who didn’t know how to respond to his boss.

"You still haven’t figured out when or how I transferred the Path to Fu Han, have you?"

"You’re the number one Genius Hunter," Carter said, his tone almost syrupy. "The methods and Illusions you can use, combined with your intellect, are surely beyond my imagination..."

Fu Tailan grew tired of looking at his face and turned back to the rain-swept road ahead.

"You know, it wasn’t difficult at all," he said softly. "As long as you have the right Illusions and the element of surprise, anyone can be caught off guard. Isn’t Kai Luonan the best example of that?"

"Yes, yes, so amazing," Carter panted, not letting the pain stop him from sucking up.

"Back when I was still the Hunter Chief, I sold two Illusions." Thinking back on it now, Fu Tailan felt that the Mouth Puppet and the Blank Document had really given him their all. "You all thought they were sold to an old client, but they actually ended up in my hands."

With those two Illusions, he could constantly change his identity, always becoming the most convenient person for the task at hand, and step by step, walk into the county jail where the Morgan Family was holding Fu Han. Yes, even though Fu Han hadn’t been arrested for murder, let alone sentenced, the Morgan Family still found a way to throw him in jail, letting him get a taste of his future surrounded by hardened criminals.

When Fu Tailan had asked to see Fu Han, Carter had actually been delighted.

In prison, Fu Han was like a slug that had met salt. When he saw his son, he practically melted onto the table, on the verge of tears. Carter must have thought that seeing Fu Han in such a state would make Fu Tailan feel even worse, even more pressured.

’He wasn’t wrong, really.’

"You moved him the day after we met, but I went back that very same afternoon. Once I saw him and knew where he was, what difficulty was there in changing my identity and going back to find him? The Illusions for changing identities were sold to me by your own Morgan Family. Isn’t that interesting?"

Carter listened, stunned, his eyes slowly widening.

"Just by using those two Illusions?" he mumbled. "No... wait, that’s not right. When the Morgan Family sold those two Illusions, I didn’t even know about the domination game. I thought of you as a talented Hunter I had worked so hard to recruit. You... you can’t predict the future, so how could you have started buying Illusions from the Morgan Family so early on, preparing to deal with me?"

As for the matter of the train ticket for November 16th, Fu Tailan had no intention of explaining. Not because he had any reservations, but simply because it was too troublesome, too complicated, and he couldn’t be bothered.

"Irrelevant question," he said flatly.

"Huh?"

"There’s no point in discussing that question," Fu Tailan said with a smile. "Do you know what a truly relevant question is?"

As he finished speaking, he glanced at the car’s GPS.

The second location where Fu Han was being held was in the city center, not far from them. Barring any surprises, they would be there in a little while.

Along the way, he had already seen quite a few things that couldn’t be explained by common sense, mostly people who no longer held a human form. For now, though, none of them had bothered their vehicle.

"What is a truly relevant question?" Carter asked numbly.

’It’s simple.’

Gazing at the dim silhouettes of buildings shrouded in the distant downpour, Fu Tailan said in a low voice, "...Why, when I clearly could have found a way to secretly take Fu Han away, did I not?"

Why did he go to all the trouble of giving the Path to Fu Han?

"The final act..."

Fu Tailan smiled faintly. Whether from blood loss or his injuries, his mind felt a little hazy. "I’ve been waiting for a long, long time."