Chapter 410 - 357: Fu Tailan - Complete Trust - Illusion Exchange - Immediate Escape (Part 2)

'Forget getting off the bed or peeking over the edge. It wouldn't even be easy to hit him just by sticking my gun out—the moment I make a move, Chaisi can just roll under the bed. Worse, if I stick out a hand and he grabs it, pulling me to the floor, the situation would be truly disastrous.'

"If you really couldn't kill me, you would've gotten out from under the bed to kill me already."

'As expected, the old man didn't fall for it.'

Fu Tailan shrugged.

"Whatever. You can stay under there if you want. You took two Illusions from me, you know. Such thievery isn't very nice. Let's see what you've got hidden in this bag of yours... You went to all the trouble of setting a trap and luring me in. There's no way you didn't prepare at least one Illusion, right? Maybe you even have something special for me?"

Chaisi said nothing.

Fu Tailan smiled. Keeping his gun aimed at the foot of the bed with one hand, he opened the toiletry bag again with the other.

There wasn't much in the bag. The top layer held miscellaneous items like clothes, a towel, and a power strip. The real goods were underneath: a heavy pile of spare magazines, another gun, a walkie-talkie, and a listening device.

'I thought I might have missed it before, but after searching again, I still can't find a single Illusion.'

'No way.'

'No matter how skilled Chaisi is, he wouldn't be this arrogant…' Fu Tailan looked up and scanned the room. Staying on alert, he began searching the bag a third time.

'There's no way Chaisi thinks he can take me down with just a couple of guns.'

'He even hid that decoy sign under the bed beforehand. There has to be an Illusion—could it be the bag itself?'

He kept his gun raised with one hand while using the other to empty the bag's contents onto the bed. He picked up the bag, examined it, then tossed it back.

'The bag is just a worn-out bag. So the Illusion is…'

Fu Tailan's gaze shifted, and from between the bedsheets, he picked up the six-outlet power strip.

'Han Liuyue was unconscious the whole time. An unconscious person might need clothes, a towel, or even a toothbrush, but what would she need a power strip for?'

'…Might as well give it a try.'

"So you guys do have something good," he said tentatively, clutching the power strip and staring at Chaisi's hiding spot. "Something that even I almost didn't recognize as an Illusion... how did an ordinary Hunter bring this back?"

Chaisi still didn't make a sound.

Fu Tailan held his breath, remaining on high alert for a few seconds. Seeing no unusual movement around the hospital bed, he quickly lowered his eyes to examine the power strip.

'Could I be wrong?'

But just as this doubt surfaced, he instinctively flipped the power strip over and immediately knew he'd bet on the right horse.

The seemingly unremarkable power strip, once turned over, revealed several lines of small text that shouldn't have been there, on the blank underside where one would normally only find information like voltage or country of origin.

Each line of text seemed to correspond to an outlet, and at the end of each line was a small switch.

Fu Tailan's Pistol - Power Active - Switch

Illusion at the door - Power Active - Switch

Chaisi's Pistol - Power Active - Switch

Room's Electricity - Power Active - Switch

Illusion on Chaisi - Power Active - Switch

The Phones - Power Active - Switch

'...Does this mean what I think it means?'

Fu Tailan glanced back. Chaisi had placed his phone on the nightstand earlier. Keeping his gun raised with one hand, Fu Tailan put down the power strip with the other and stretched his arm as far as it would go. He barely managed to reach the phone and carefully brought it into his hand.

The battery was full. The screen lit up at a touch, displaying the time and date: December 6th, 12:38 AM.

Fu Tailan, still holding his gun up, tried flipping the switch for "The Phones"—the phone's screen instantly went black and wouldn't light up no matter how many times he touched it.

'So that's how it works.'

Fu Tailan shoved the phone back into his pants pocket. He understood now.

'Chaisi is remarkably cautious. If he'd brought a highly destructive Illusion, he would have risked it falling into enemy hands or some other accident. So instead, he chose something that could suppress my abilities as much as possible, neutralizing my advantages. As for the actual killing, he planned to handle that part himself.'

'In that case, the next switch to flip is, of course, "Chaisi's Pistol."'

Fu Tailan lowered his head, his finger already sliding to the corresponding spot on the power strip. Before he could flip the switch, however, a dim shadow seemed to creep into the very edge of his senses.

The next second, he was suddenly floating in mid-air.

The feeling of weightlessness seemed to lift his very thoughts and mind into the air, leaving them to drift for a moment.

In that instant, a dawning realization came to Fu Tailan in a daze.

'Ah, no wonder Chaisi has been so quiet.'

'He knew my attention was focused on the power strip, so he could wait for an opportunity, for me to let my guard down, and then scramble out and flip the entire hospital bed—with me still on it—into the air.'

In Fu Tailan's vision, the ceiling, the floor, the pistol in one hand and the power strip in the other all tilted, seeming to leisurely trace an arc through the air. As they passed the apex, everything suddenly accelerated into a sharp, steep fall. The lights dimmed, and the shadow of the hospital bed pressed down on him.

'I can't let Chaisi get a chance to shoot.'

As Fu Tailan fell, the world spinning around him, in the split second before he hit the floor and was crushed by the bed, he kept a death grip on the power strip. Fumbling for the right spot, he managed to flip a switch. The instant he did, his world went black.

'Great. I turned off the room's electricity.'

The entire hospital room was instantly filled with vast shadows. Only the dim light from the hallway illuminated a small patch of floor by the door.

Fu Tailan hit the floor first. He had just curled up to protect his head and face when the hospital bed came crashing down heavily on top of him. The blanket, sheets, and miscellaneous items he had just dumped out became like a fishing net weighted with countless reefs, trapping him completely and blinding him.

'If I struggle to throw off the sheets and push away the bed right now, I'd just be telling Chaisi my position, telling him where to shoot.'

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Fu Tailan remained motionless. Only his fingers moved, quickly flipping every switch on the power strip that was still on—except for the one for his own gun.

'Since "Fu Tailan's Pistol" was the first one, it was easy enough to avoid.'

Just as he felt someone lift the weight off him, Fu Tailan pinpointed the direction by sound and fired from under the sheets toward the movement.

'...Cockroaches are always hard to kill.'

By the time Fu Tailan threw the sheets off himself, he already knew the result of his shot.

He scanned the dim hospital room and saw a figure diving behind the vital signs monitor. He honestly couldn't tell what the difference was between Chaisi and a rat or a cockroach.

"Brother Chaisi?"

Just as he was about to follow up with another shot, Han Liuyue's voice called out from the hallway outside.

'Damn it, why does Han Liuyue always show up at the worst possible times?'

'The sign Illusion at the door was also turned off by the switch, so there's no chance it would fool her. I can't let her trap me in this room. If I'm attacked from both front and back, there'll be no escape.'

Fu Tailan sighed inwardly. Using the light filtering in from the doorway, he snatched his wallet and keys, which had miraculously not been sent flying, from the nightstand and rushed for the door. Chaisi had clearly realized his gun was useless and actually threw it at him like a brick. Luckily, Fu Tailan was prepared and ducked to dodge it.

'How annoying can you get?'

"Han Liuyue!" Chaisi roared from the depths of the darkness. "Fu Tailan is still alive, and he has a gun!"

Fu Tailan's response was to fire two shots back at him as he rushed out the door. 'That's for running your mouth.'

As much as he would have loved to play a game of Whac-A-Mole with Chaisi using his bullets, the opportunity had passed. Han Liuyue had rushed over, and when she pulled her hand from a plastic bag, she was holding a Desert Eagle.

"Sister Liuyue," Fu Tailan said with a soft smile, raising his gun toward her first. "Don't miss me too much. I'm leaving."

Amidst the screams and footsteps of people nearby, the bullet he fired at the ceiling did indeed force Han Liuyue to dive behind a corner of the wall—buying him the chance to turn and flee.

Fu Tailan had expected the two from the Kai Family to not let him go so easily, that they would have clung to him relentlessly, even if it meant turning the hospital into a battlefield.

However, it seemed Han Liuyue didn't even give chase.

As Fu Tailan pushed open the stairwell door, preparing to slide all the way down on the handrail, he faintly heard fragments of Han Liuyue's voice, carried by the draft into the corridor. It was like a few falling leaves, drifting on the chaotic waves of sound.

Her voice was frantic, even bordering on fearful.

"...Brother Chaisi... something's wrong... Blackmoor City... we have to go, now..."