Chapter 536: Fu Tailan: Bullshit Candle

Fu Tailan couldn’t even say he’d been framed—because no one had framed him.

The Ballet Resident seemed even more worried about his safety than his own mother. Not only had it called him a taxi from within the Nest and personally seen him to the entrance of the Museum of Modern Art, but it had also fussed over him with a barrage of instructions:

“You have to be quick. Kai Luonan will be here in fifteen minutes, tops. I heard from Jin Xueli that the radio is hidden right at the very beginning of the candle. Just melt the front section, don’t waste time… Can you manage on your own? Can you get out before Kai Luonan arrives? You look so sick right now. If he runs into you, you’re almost certainly a dead man.”

After he got out of the car, the Resident’s head, with its tight bun, leaned out of the car window. For a moment, it watched Fu Tailan worriedly with the back of its head.

“Whatever you do, don’t take fifteen minutes!”

Fu Tailan had barely taken two steps when he heard it call out again: “Don’t let the fact that Kai Luonan’s an old man fool you; he’s fast. Can you get out with the radio in three minutes—no, one minute?”

“One minute,” Fu Tailan said, holding back his anger, “I haven’t even made it down the steps yet.”

The Ballet Resident seemed very disappointed and sighed. Fu Tailan didn’t hear the sigh, but he saw the hair on the back of its head puff out slightly.

It muttered a few words to the taxi driver, its voice so low that he could only vaguely make out fragments like “a better candidate,” “forced into a corner,” and “a young genius, ha!”

Fu Tailan pretended not to understand what it meant, but it wasn’t easy to keep his anger in check.

The Ballet Resident raised its voice again. “In any case, quick in, quick out! We’ll be waiting right here for you. The second you’re out, we’re gone.”

Fu Tailan glanced at it. “You’re going to wait for me here?”

‘Wait for him, or for the radio in his hands?’

“You’re seventeen, have you never robbed a bank? Robbers always have a getaway driver waiting, so they can jump in the car and flee—I mean, leave—the second they’re out. Now hurry up, stop wasting time!”

‘Just who’s wasting whose time here?’

He’d just reached the museum entrance when, like a mother sending her child off to the first day of school, it shouted from the car again, “Do you have everything you need? Do you know how to use it?”

“When I first entered the Nest, you probably weren’t even born yet,”

Fu Tailan muttered under his breath, then pushed open the door and entered the Museum of Modern Art.

And those were just the Ballet Resident’s repeated verbal warnings.

In the car, he’d asked the Ballet Resident why it wasn’t coming with him. It wasn’t that Fu Tailan wanted a Resident’s company; he just had to be absolutely sure of its intentions before he went in.

The Ballet Resident was brutally honest. “Absolutely not. I’m scared. What if I run right into Kai Luonan?”

“…You’re afraid of a human?”

“What?! When you’re in his hands, he’s not just some ordinary human.”

The Ballet Resident thought for a moment before adding, “Besides, he’s the most likely candidate to rule the Nest right now. You know, you have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. What if he wins? I can’t have the future ruler remembering that a Resident like me once appeared to oppose him.”

Hearing such words from a Resident was completely unprecedented. By all rights, Fu Tailan should have been on high alert.

And yet… it wasn’t that he’d let his guard down.

As soon as Fu Tailan entered the underground hall, he quickly confirmed the area was secure, figured out how to use the “Candle Tears,” and immediately started the fire to melt the first section of the candle. The entire process took less than five minutes.

The Candle Tears dripped down as promised, hanging in the air like a pool of lake water.

Reflected in the water was a hospital delivery room. Through its door, across a gap of seventeen years, Fu Tailan heard his own first cry as a newborn.

‘…No newborn child knows what kind of life awaits them.’

Fu Tailan shook his head, forcing himself to focus. He did his best to ignore the scene within the Candle Tears and scanned the area for the radio. But there was nothing there besides the pool of Candle Tears that had dripped down.

‘Did I not melt enough?’

He was only seventeen years old. Who knew if “the very first section” meant his first month, or his first year?

Leaning on a tree branch for support, Fu Tailan shakily bent down again. To be safe, he opened half of the fire troughs.

‘…There was no damn radio.’

In truth, after about six or seven minutes, Fu Tailan had already realized the radio wasn’t here. Either the Ballet Resident had been fooled, or Kai Luonan had been fooled. In any case, a lie had been passed down the line, believed by everyone involved, until it finally tricked him—the forefather of lies himself.

Since there was no radio, he knew he had to leave immediately.

Fu Tailan was about to turn off the flames and leave—but sometimes, a person’s willpower is a fragile thing.

Especially Fu Tailan. He had no willpower whatsoever.

Even as he mentally warned himself not to look up, not to watch, he found himself raising his head for a quick glance as he twisted the switches on the fire troughs back into place, as if compelled by some unseen force.

He saw the back of a woman in a loose nightdress, cradling an infant and rocking it gently. The baby’s head rested on her shoulder, revealing a face so small it was startling. He seemed to be enjoying the rhythm, his eyes half-closed as he drifted off to sleep.

Fu Tailan’s hands stilled.

“…When the wind blows, the cradle rocks and sways… rock-a-bye, baby’s asleep…”

“Mom?”

The moment the word escaped his lips, Fu Tailan felt a pang of shame. Thankfully, no one was around to hear him.

‘It was just an echo of the past. What am I doing?’

‘Did I really think she would turn around and answer me?’

Inside the Candle Tears, his mother suddenly stopped and turned her head—to glance cautiously at the infant in her arms.

She whispered, though to whom, he didn’t know, “He’s finally asleep. That wasn’t easy. This little one will only sleep if I’m holding him…”

Fu Tailan stared, transfixed, at her back. After a moment, he opened another fire trough.

‘Just for a little while,’ he thought. ‘Kai Luonan isn’t supposed to be here for another fifteen minutes, right?’

‘I still have time.’

…He was out of time.

By the time a sudden jolt made Fu Tailan realize that the humming sound echoing through the hall was the elevator in motion, it was already too late.

…All in all, even he felt it was a bit shameless to blame anyone else for getting himself cornered.

Over the next few dozen seconds, the Ballet Resident’s words—”Absolutely not. I’m scared”—blared in Fu Tailan’s head like a fire alarm on a loop.

He’d never moved so fast in his life—it was as if all the blood he’d lost had been replaced with pure adrenaline.

Fu Tailan glanced at the elevator’s display panel, and every hair on his body stood on end. He lunged for the fire troughs, using both hands to slam every switch shut at top speed. Just then, the elevator chimed with a DING.

The elevator had reached the lower level.

Fu Tailan had just enough time for one last scan of his surroundings. He snatched up the tree branch—a moment ago a crutch, now seemingly a weapon—and ducked low, scrambling under the slowly reforming Candle Tears. The fire troughs, having just been shut off, were hot enough to nearly make him cry out in pain.

The elevator doors slowly opened.

By then, Fu Tailan had already thrown himself out of the elevator’s line of sight. Still not daring to stand, he rolled once on the floor and then scrambled on all fours behind one of the hall’s pillars. The so-called young genius was once again forced to act like a rat.

He sat behind the pillar, his heart hammering against his ribs.

The sound of unhurried footsteps emerged from the elevator, echoing on the hall floor. They drew closer and closer, finally stopping beside the candle.

‘…Have the Candle Tears reformed completely?’

‘Will Kai Luonan be able to tell the candle was just melted?’

While straining to listen for any sound, Fu Tailan quietly slipped a hand into the crossbody bag slung over his chest.

The bag, a gym-style sling pack, had been shoved at him by the Ballet Resident. He had no idea which unlucky Hunter it had been taken from.

He held his breath, waiting for what felt like an eternity but was only a few seconds. Finally, after the newcomer took two steps, he heard the soft CLICK of a fire trough switch being flipped.

The soft hiss of the flames scorching the air seemed to fray Fu Tailan’s very nerves.

‘When Kai Luonan doesn’t find the radio, he’ll do the same thing I did. To be thorough, he’ll open all the fire troughs.’

‘He’ll search through the Candle Tears from his entire life. How old is that geezer? Sixty? If he melts his entire candle, it won’t be like mine. The volume of Candle Tears will be immense.’

‘Watching it all will take at least ten minutes.’

‘As long as I don’t make a sound and quietly wait out these ten minutes, I’ll be free again once Kai Luonan leaves.’

‘There’s just one thing to watch out for: the candle is huge, stretching across the entire underground hall.’

‘This means that as Kai Luonan slowly makes his way to the end of the candle, a diagonal line of sight will form between his position and where I’m hiding behind the pillar. Although the candle itself will be in the way, if my luck is bad, all it would take is for Kai Luonan to turn his head at the wrong angle, and he might spot a figure behind the pillar.’

‘My luck has been terrible lately. I can’t risk it.’

To avoid being discovered by Kai Luonan, he focused his entire being on listening.

Sounds from Kai Luonan’s past, emerging from the Candle Tears, began to echo through the hall like floodwaters slowly submerging the floor. Amidst the cacophony of conversations, car horns, and other miscellaneous noise, it became difficult to pick out the sound of Kai Luonan’s footsteps.

“…What’s going on?” Kai Luonan’s voice was low and displeased.

The sound of more fire troughs being opened, one after another, cut through the noise of the past and reached Fu Tailan’s ears clearly.

‘Just as I thought. He didn’t find the radio in his own history, so now he’s moving on to melt the next section.’

‘Wait—’

Fu Tailan froze. When he had touched the candle, the resulting Candle Tears contained his history. What Kai Luonan was melting now contained Kai Luonan’s history.

‘In other words, the “content” of the Candle Tears depends on the person who melts them.’

‘If something else was hidden in the Candle Tears, wouldn’t that also count as part of the “content”?’

‘Don’t tell me the radio really is in the candle… but hidden inside Jin Xueli’s personal history?’

Fu Tailan swallowed a curse.

He didn’t have the luxury of being angry. Gauging the sounds in the hall, he figured Kai Luonan was nearing the end of the candle. He tiptoed around the pillar to the opposite side. This way, even if Kai Luonan glanced over from that diagonal angle, the pillar would block his view.

‘As long as Kai Luonan doesn’t get the sudden urge to meticulously search the entire hall,’ Fu Tailan thought, ‘I should be able to slip away right under his nose.’

‘…Probably.’

Fu Tailan re-analyzed the entire situation in his head, reviewing it again and again. It was a matter of life and death; he couldn’t afford a single oversight.

‘The whole situation… the entire candle being melted… a whole life…’

‘From the moment of birth to the moment he put his hand on the candle…’

Fu Tailan’s breath caught.

‘Wait.’

‘When Kai Luonan melts the final section of the candle… the scene that appears in the Candle Tears will be this very hall.’

‘And in this hall… is me.’

It was in that exact instant that Fu Tailan suddenly realized he hadn’t heard a single sound from Kai Luonan in quite some time.