Chapter 537 - 478: Fu Tailan: Fu Tailan Scattered All Over the Place

Chapter 537: Chapter 478: Fu Tailan: Fu Tailan Scattered All Over the Place

He could hear the flames leap, warping the air with heat. He could hear sixty years of history swaying within the Candle Tears.

All the sounds were low, like the whispered conversations of museum-goers in a spacious gallery, floating indistinctly beneath the ceiling, the words blurred, chaotic, and distant.

Every sound was present, except for the sound of Kai Luonan’s footsteps.

There was no unusual movement around the pillar, nor were there any new, faint shadows on the ground—though the matte floor and the scattered, soft spotlights made it difficult to be certain.

Fu Tailan held his breath. Lowering his gaze, he slowly took out the power strip Illusion and held it in his hand.

The power strip displayed a total of five Illusions. The last switch was blank, as the power strip wouldn’t show itself, and there were no weapons like pistols nearby. Two of the five were defensive Illusions given to him by the Ballet Resident.

The other three lines of small text were perfectly clear:

Black Cube

Rumor

???

Each one was a target Illusion for the Nest Dominance Game. They were all in his hands, and yet none of them were.

Fu Tailan tried pressing the switch next to "???" again.

Still nothing.

Fu Tailan had already tried it once, right when Kai Luonan entered the hall. The other Illusions could all be switched off, but the switch for "???" seemed to have suddenly become a mere decoration, a prop, frozen solid and unpressable.

The Ballet Resident’s words rang in his mind again—’With ??? in his hands, he is no longer an ordinary human.’

’...Why does everyone give their Illusions to Kai Luonan?’

He cursed them internally—those two sons of bitches, so eager to suck up to their master, as if afraid he wouldn’t die fast enough. He slowly peeked out from behind the pillar.

Fu Tailan let out a sigh of relief.

Kai Luonan hadn’t snuck up behind him while he was distracted. The lapse he’d noticed hadn’t been discovered by Kai Luonan yet.

The old man was still standing behind the Candle Tears, far from the candle’s end, motionless as he watched a certain period of his life play out.

’No wonder he’s not moving... When your entire past life is replayed scene by scene, with no missing pieces of memory, no forgotten ambiguities, who could resist watching?’

Wasn’t that exactly how Fu Tailan had been stopped in his tracks?

Except...

Except... through the flowing light and shadow of the Candle Tears, Kai Luonan appeared indistinct, like a figure seen through a pane of frosted glass.

The vast river of Candle Tears floated in midair, blocking most of his body. The flames leaping in their trough blocked his feet.

Everything was normal and logical.

But the intuition Fu Tailan had honed through nearly a hundred near-death crises was like a hand squeezing his brain, pressing hard from behind his eyeballs, making his nerves throb.

’Wrong—something’s wrong—’

Fu Tailan looked up.

He saw Kai Luonan again.

At the junction where the pillar met the ceiling, a place that should have been sealed solid with concrete, there was now Kai Luonan’s face.

It was as if he were a man taller than the pillar itself, standing behind it so that just his face peeked over the top, looking down at Fu Tailan.

’Is—is it the ??? Illusion—’

The thought flashed through Fu Tailan’s mind, and the instant his eyes met the gaze of Kai Luonan’s face, he was already bolting from behind the pillar.

He knew he was covered in wounds, weak from blood loss, and couldn’t run fast. But he had to run; he had to put some distance between himself and Kai Luonan first—

’But where is Kai Luonan, really?’

Fu Tailan risked sacrificing speed for a quick glance back.

The hall was empty.

The Candle Tears were slowly receding, the fire long since extinguished. There was no face wedged between the ceiling and the pillar. Even in that fleeting glimpse, the underground hall seemed vacant, as if he were the only one there.

Fu Tailan turned his head and kept running.

’I don’t care where that old bastard goes to hang himself. I’ve only ever had one option: if I can’t fight him head-on, I have to run.’

The underground hall was wide and open, with an unobstructed view. Besides the few pillars, there was nowhere to hide. As long as he could get to the stairs and rush up to the first floor of the Museum of Modern Art, there would be doors nearby.

Now that the Nest and the human world were gradually merging, Fu Tailan couldn’t say how much a Path was really worth, but as long as it could throw him to another place—

Fu Tailan screeched to a halt, nearly slamming headfirst into a wall.

He stared blankly at the white wall in front of him, reached out, and carefully touched it.

Cold, hard, and solid. It was a real wall, not an illusion.

’...Where are the stairs?’

He had been running straight for the stairs just now. How had they turned into a wall in the blink of an eye?

’Could ??? be capable of altering physical space?’

’But if all it does is separate a ceiling from a pillar or turn stairs into a wall, what would the Residents be so afraid of?’

Fu Tailan turned his head once more, looking back at the empty underground hall.

For a second or two, even someone as sharp as Fu Tailan could only stand there stunned, unable to react appropriately.

How had he not noticed before?

He had been running in such a hurry that he’d left a trail of things behind him.

The gym bag the Ballet Resident had given him, the penlight its original owner had left inside, a ring of keys, the three Illusions from the bag... all scattered on the floor, one after another.

Next, there was a bundle of bloody bandages that had fallen off him at some point.

After the bandages was a door, lying flat on the floor, still opening and closing. It would open and close three times, pause for a moment, and then continue.

A cloud of particles belonging to Vulture floated and drifted in the air, vaguely arranged into the shape of a face—Fu Tailan’s face.

No, it was more than just a face.

Within the mist of particles, besides Fu Tailan’s likeness, there were countless gazes that had once lingered on his face, the feelings of longing from those deceived by his appearance, the endless misunderstandings of people who thought his inner self was as beautiful as his exterior.

They were all intangible things, yet they floated in midair along with Fu Tailan’s face.

A length of slick, blood-red intestine trailed along the ground, snaking all the way to Fu Tailan’s feet and up his leg, the other end buried deep in his abdomen.

In a daze, Fu Tailan touched his own stomach—he had been running in such a panic, he hadn’t even noticed when his guts had spilled out.

Next to a soft, quivering pile of innards glistening with blood, Fu Han was prostrated on the floor. He tilted his head up high toward Fu Tailan, his face drenched with tears and snot.

"Don’t leave me, who—who doesn’t make mistakes?"

His throat was dry and hoarse, his voice like a frog that had been croaking for too long. "Son, no matter how much you hate me, we’re still the only blood relatives, the only family each other has in this world... Don’t abandon me. Don’t leave your father all alone. Don’t leave yourself all alone..."

All of this was likely Kai Luonan’s handiwork, using ???...

It seemed its ability to interfere went far beyond mere physical space...

Fu Tailan thought, his mind in a daze.

’Whatever Kai Luonan is planning, I have to first collect all the things I dropped while running and put them back inside myself.’

Fu Tailan took a dazed step forward, reaching for a poorly rolled, unraveled cigarette.

So many things had fallen out of him, but the black, hollow, all-consuming pain inside him could not be dropped.

"...It’s not on you," a low voice said.

Fu Tailan looked up.

"What?"

He picked up the cigarette paper and swept the curly, fuzzy green leaves into his hand. They quickly vanished from his palm, as if they had returned home.

"The radio," Kai Luonan said grimly. He sounded like an examiner whose student had failed to provide a satisfactory answer.

"Of course it’s not on me,"

Fu Tailan’s voice was faint and indistinct, his gaze fixed on a point in the void. He spoke as if sleep-talking. "Because the radio isn’t part of my personal history."

His steps were unsteady. He slowly picked up a length of intestine and, like a blind man following a guide rope, began tucking it back into his body as he walked.

"That was close," Fu Tailan whispered. "I almost forgot something so important... Thank goodness... Thank goodness Kai Luonan didn’t find out."

Kai Luonan seemed to chuckle, or perhaps he just cleared his throat. "What do you mean?"

As Fu Tailan walked, he came to stand before Fu Han.

He looked down at his pleading father for a moment.

"Jin Xueli tricked you..." Fu Tailan’s words were soft and slurred, though he hadn’t smoked a cigarette in a long time. "She told you a half-truth, and a half-lie... if I’m not mistaken."

Kai Luonan paused.

When he spoke again, he sounded as if he were prompting Fu Tailan, asking, "Tricked me about what?"

Fu Tailan swept the pile of innards into his hand as well.

"When she melted the candle, the Candle Tears became her personal history... Even if the radio was hidden in the Candle Tears... it would be *her* Candle Tears, not mine, and certainly not yours..."

Kai Luonan fell silent—it seemed he hadn’t considered this and was taken by surprise.

Fu Tailan walked around Fu Han and continued on.

Fu Han’s face, wet and glistening with tears, watched him intently. Like a loyal sunflower, it turned to follow Fu Tailan’s steps, still pleading, "Tailan... Xiaotai... Take me with you, I’m your father... Carter tortured me so badly. My whole body aches. I’m old, I can’t take it..."

As if he hadn’t heard a thing, Fu Tailan gripped the door.

"To get the radio, you have to get Jin Xueli to touch the candle. Ah, speaking of which, I don’t think I’ve ever met this contestant, Jin Xueli... Have I? I can’t remember..."

Fu Tailan was still muttering to himself. "How strange... I’ve picked up so many things, but I still feel so empty... What’s going on..."

"How did you know about the radio?"

The moment Fu Tailan opened his mouth, a Ballet Resident fell out of him—it was a size smaller than a real one. It fell to the ground, endlessly repeating things like, "Kai Luonan knows the radio’s location," and "You can get there first."

"So that’s how it is. A Resident tipped you off."

Every syllable of Kai Luonan’s next sentence seemed to seep a toxic miasma. "There’s no point in leaving you alive anymore. You can have the Path you tricked me out of. Consider it my funeral gift to you, Fu Tailan."