Illusion Report

’All I wanted was to trade a bit of information for a favor. How did things suddenly get this serious?’

For so many years, she had been cautious and careful, never having any run-ins with the police... She didn’t even dare to speed while driving, precisely to avoid a moment like this.

’I haven’t done anything since that incident, so how on earth did I end up here?’

Jin Xueli stood there in a daze, as if every muscle had turned into thorns, binding her tightly. It wasn’t until the policewoman shouted again that she snapped back to her senses with a jolt.

"Hey! I’m talking to you, didn’t you hear me? What are you spacing out for? Put your left hand up here for fingerprinting."

Jin Xueli looked at the fingerprint scanner with its glass plate, then at the policewoman behind the desk.

It seemed she had been brought into the Central Police Station building before Chaisi, perhaps because she looked more harmless. Outside the station, it was still noisy and chaotic; they were probably getting ready to bring Chaisi in. He didn’t look like an easy person to deal with, so the police were on high alert, their nerves stretched taut.

If the officer standing beside her could somehow read Jin Xueli’s thoughts right now, he would probably adopt a very different attitude toward her.

"What are you afraid of?" The officer gave her arm a push, urging her on. "Didn’t you say you have no connection to that man, that you were just hitching a ride? Fingerprinting is just for the record. If you haven’t done anything wrong, getting your fingerprints taken won’t affect a thing."

The hitchhiking story was the first excuse she had grasped in her panic. Thinking back, it was incredibly stupid, as it would never hold up under police cross-examination. But that was just a minor detail, not even worthy of Jin Xueli’s concern at the moment.

Jin Xueli glanced at the officer who had brought her in.

’...Could I take him down?’

’Many of the people in the central hall seem to be administrative staff. If I just find a chance to take him down and escape the station, I won’t have to give my fingerprints—ah, no, that won’t work.’

They had already searched her right away and seen her driver’s license in her wallet. Her face, name, and address were all crystal clear to them.

’Then... could I kill him? He’s the only one who saw my license.’

Jin Xueli turned her head and stared at the fingerprint scanner again.

’It’s too difficult. I have nothing on me, they even took my earrings. Trying to take on an officer a whole head taller and broader than me with just my cuffed hands is wishful thinking. Even if I could kill him, my wallet is still in the station’s property storage.’

"Hurry up," the officer urged again.

"I don’t want to," Jin Xueli said, almost like a small child. "I don’t want to give my fingerprints."

She knew she was making a huge mistake, basically announcing to the world that there was something seriously wrong with her.

But sometimes, a person just regresses to a childlike mental state—especially at the height of despair and anger. Even knowing it’s useless, they subconsciously resort to childhood tactics like tantrums and crying as a form of resistance, as if the world might take pity on them and yield.

She could feel the male and female officers exchange a look.

"Why don’t you want to?" the policewoman asked, her tone softening. "What have you done?"

’If I could tell you, wouldn’t I have done it already?’

Jin Xueli swallowed the retort and stood there stubbornly, her fists clenched tight.

"Looks like she’s got something to hide," the officer said with a laugh. He walked over, grabbed Jin Xueli’s wrist, and forced her hand down. "I never really believed you were just innocently hitching a ride... but now, it looks like we’ve hit the jackpot."

"Let go of me!" she yelled, trying hard to pull her arm back. "This is police brutality!"

"Feel free to file a complaint," the officer said with a smirk.

Jin Xueli’s struggles and shouts only made several other police officers in the hall rush over. In the sudden chaos, someone slammed her head onto the desk, someone else held down her shoulders, and a mouse and pen holder tumbled off the table.

Her arm was yanked out, as if it were being torn from her body, nearly flipping her over. A hand pressed firmly against her temple. Besides the various office supplies scattered on the desk before her, all she could feel were the shifting silhouettes of people around her and a cool, hard surface meeting her fingers.

’They got them... They got them after all.’

"You had to do it the hard way," someone said. "Take her directly to the interrogation room on the second floor. The other guy is about to come in, don’t let them see each other."

Jin Xueli was pulled to her feet. As she walked toward the elevator, the pain no longer felt real. Every step was like walking through a fog.

After so many years, she had thought that incident had long since vanished without a trace. Sometimes she felt it was just a distant nightmare; other times, she would even forget that such a scene had ever been a part of her life.

That was why, even after discovering "Candle Tears," Jin Xueli had never thought of using an Illusion to change that part of her past. She was completely unwilling to face that event again, preferring to leave it buried deep in her memory. More importantly, she didn’t dare to tamper with it recklessly—she had no idea what she would become if she changed the event that had been the turning point of her life.

’But, after all these years... has it been waiting for me all along?’

’Will I never be able to escape?’

As the elevator doors closed, she faintly heard the main entrance of the police station open, followed by the hurried footsteps of more than one person. It sounded like Chaisi was finally being brought in.

Jin Xueli was too exhausted to even feel hatred for him.

’What’s done is done. I have to find another way to salvage the situation. As long as I get a chance to jump from a tall building, I can use "Candle Tears" to make it so I never got in Chaisi’s car today. As for what happens to Chaisi, that’s not my problem.’

’But... once I’m locked up, will I even have a chance to get to a tall building?’

So far, the lowest floor from which Jin Xueli had managed to open a Path was the sixteenth. She didn’t dare try any lower. No one could say for sure if the difference of a single floor would leave her a broken corpse on the street instead of landing her in a Nest.

However, the police station, the prison, the courthouse... all the predictable places she might be taken were unlikely to be on the sixteenth floor or higher.

Bail might be her only sliver of hope, but it could still be denied. The possibility was even lower for a major felony suspect.

’What do I do, what do I do, what do I do...’

At this moment, even the screams in her mind felt like they were approaching the state of a Resident. In the dead silence of the interrogation room, Jin Xueli listened to the storm of screams in her head and even began to dazedly wonder, ’Am I really a Resident?’

For the first time, she thought, ’If only I were.’

After all, only Residents could escape this life.

The door was locked from the outside. The soundproofing was good; she couldn’t hear a thing. The camera in the interrogation room glowed with a constant red light.

The red light stared at her, recording her fidgeting as the seconds ticked by. It was as if the police had suddenly forgotten about her. Jin Xueli waited for what felt like an eternity before a sudden noise from the door being pushed open startled her. She whipped her head around and saw two unfamiliar detectives enter the room, one after the other.

Unexpectedly, they didn’t sit down to question her.

"Let’s go," the older detective said to her. "We’re moving you."

"Where are we going?" Jin Xueli asked in a daze.

But no one answered. The younger detective pushed her shoulder, and she staggered up from her chair. Flanked by the two of them, she was led out the door.

Because the entire building had a cylindrical design, the second-floor hallway was a curved arc, dotted with one door after another.

As Jin Xueli stepped out of her interrogation room, her gaze fell directly across the central atrium, with an unobstructed view of the other side. On the opposite walkway, several figures who looked like police officers were escorting a tall, thin figure. They had just stepped through a door, which was shut with a BANG.

Although it was just for a fleeting moment, one could tell that the officers’ attitude toward that person was very respectful and polite. And the door they had entered was next to another interrogation room—outwardly no different from the one she had just left.

"Keep moving, don’t look around," the young detective pushed her again.

"Aren’t you going to interrogate me?" Jin Xueli asked. "My relationship with him, I mean Chaisi Monroe—"

"We don’t need you to teach us how to run a case," the young detective said, completely uninterested.

’Don’t they care at all?’

While Jin Xueli felt that was unlikely, she couldn’t stop the feeling from growing.

"Don’t you want to know if he killed Westley?" she asked tentatively.

"Are you worried about him?" The older detective turned his head and laughed. "Are you two lovers? What, think you’re ’Bonnie and Clyde’ or something? You’ve got time to worry about him, you should be more worried about yourself. We heard all about how much you resisted getting your fingerprints taken."

"Thanks to that Monroe, we’re putting a rush on the both of you," the younger detective added with a smile. "We’ll probably have your fingerprint comparison results in our hands within two days."

Jin Xueli’s heart sank—but at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel a flicker of hope.

’If their only target is Chaisi, and they aren’t interested in my relationship with him, then maybe they won’t hold me for long? After all, there’s a time limit on how long the police can detain someone without a clear charge... I don’t know the specific details, I need to find a chance to ask for a lawyer.’

’As long as I can get home, everything that happened today can be rewritten.’

She didn’t see Chaisi at all on the way. She didn’t know if he had been taken to an interrogation room, and the holding cells were also empty—of course, that was before she herself was pushed inside.

After the detective removed her handcuffs and locked the iron door with a CLANG, Jin Xueli immediately rushed to the bars and asked, "Don’t I get a chance to see a lawyer? I need a lawyer!"

"Sure," the detective said casually. "You wait. When it’s time for phone calls, I’ll come get you."

Just as Jin Xueli was about to argue, a faint, muffled noise came from upstairs—it didn’t sound like a gunshot, but more like something heavy being knocked over. The sound was heavily insulated, but it couldn’t block the deep vibration that ran through the building’s structure.

"What’s going on?"

She heard someone shout from the hall outside. A chair scraped, and hurried footsteps ran past. From upstairs came a yell, "Open the door! Quick!"

"You go first, sir," someone said from a distance amidst the noise, their voice muffled. "He’s made his move, it’s dangerous, you should leave first—"

The next second, a gunshot shattered the noisy clamor, echoing and ricocheting through the Central Police Station building, which was once a mental hospital.

’...Chaisi made his move?’

’Inside the Central Police Station?’