Illusion Report

"My name is Mercury. And you are?"

She took the flashlight from her mouth, introduced herself, and cheerfully looped her arm through Jin Xueli’s. "Let’s go, we can look for people together... Oh, right. You and Chaisi aren’t actually friends. You don’t even know each other well, do you?"

Jin Xueli froze. As Mercury started to walk forward, she forcefully yanked her arm back.

She had gone in and out of Nests solo so many times and was still alive today not just because of good luck. Besides being quick-witted, she possessed every bit of the intuition a Hunter should have.

"I... I’ll go look for people with Chaisi," she said in a low voice. "I still have something... something to discuss with him."

Mercury stood in the dim, cluttered hall. The beam of her flashlight pointed down, illuminating a patch of the floor. Her boots and pants were caught in the light, which crept halfway up her body before fading into dim, dead darkness. Her face, along with her tattoo-covered neck, was submerged in the gloom, indistinct.

After a couple of seconds, she slowly began to smile. "Are you scared of me?"

’...Yes.’

Jin Xueli didn’t dare say it out loud.

Back in the holding cell, perhaps because other things were going on, the feeling hadn’t been as strong. But now, she felt that right here, right now, in the Central Police Station, the most dangerous thing wasn’t Chaisi, nor was it the invading residents.

"Honestly, it’s not like I kill every single person I meet," Mercury sighed in the darkness. "Or are you saying you think I’m not as good as Chaisi?"

"Stop saying my name," the tall figure up ahead stopped, sounding surprisingly annoyed. "Get my name out of your mouths."

Jin Xueli seized the opportunity, hurrying to catch up and put him between herself and Mercury. ’If something happens, it’s always better for someone else to die first.’

"Um... I’ll go look for people with you, then." Her words were for Chaisi, but her eyes never left Mercury. "Consider it my way of thanking you."

Mercury let out a laugh, seemingly unbothered, and turned to leave.

As the two of them walked up the stairs in silence, Chaisi said out of the blue, "That was a classic case of picking on the weak and fearing the strong, wasn’t it?"

Jin Xueli wanted to dig the words right out of her ears and shove them back at him.

"Picking on the weak?" It was the first time in her life she had ever met someone like this. "Who’s weak? You? If you’re weak, then the only thing ’strong’ in this world is a dead body."

"Flattery won’t work on me."

"I wasn’t complimenting you," Jin Xueli’s voice rose a pitch. "Have you never been complimented before?"

"Your intuition isn’t bad."

Chaisi seemed to have decided she *had* been complimenting him, and his expression wasn’t unpleasant. "She’s a Hunter who retired about seven or eight years ago. You don’t even know me, so you definitely don’t know her."

"Oh?" Jin Xueli’s ears perked up, and she lowered her voice. "What’s her story?"

"When the ’Nest Communication Network’ took over, it wasn’t just people on calls who were invaded," Chaisi said, motioning for her to follow him up to the third floor. "Anyone using their own phone—whether they were texting, scrolling through social media, or listening to music—couldn’t escape."

Jin Xueli couldn’t help but suck in a breath. "But people these days are glued to their phones 24/7..."

"Exactly," Chaisi said with a faint smile. "That’s why a large number of residents are needed. The only ones who can carry out the invasion are residents who’ve signed a contract with Mercury. Do you know why she can sign contracts with them, but you can’t?"

"Why?"

"Because all those residents harbor a bone-deep fear of her."

Jin Xueli suddenly recalled the dog whistle from before; the policewoman had left obediently without saying a single word.

"Wait, I’ve heard that if a victim feels immense fear toward you when you kill them, then after their corpse dissolves in the Nest, the resident that grows from their body will also be afraid of you—is that actually true?"

"Not entirely."

Chaisi skipped searching the second and third floors, probably because plenty of Mercenaries were already there. "You have to personally force the newborn resident to re-experience its fear of the killer. Only then can you successfully sign the contract."

Jin Xueli almost neurotically glanced back—Mercury wasn’t following them.

"The funny thing about all this is that you don’t dare go near her, yet you came to me," Chaisi said, stopping at the top of the fourth-floor stairs. "Thinking about it, I’m certainly not as crazy or bloodthirsty as she is..."

He held a phone with its flashlight on the entire time. Above the light was a pool of darkness, his deep-set eyes nearly invisible within it.

"Let me ask you a question."

Jin Xueli stared blankly as she looked up.

"What do you think will happen here after the ’Nest Communication Network’ is taken down?"

"I don’t know," she said honestly. "This is the first time I’ve ever encountered this kind of Illusion."

"Well, that’s interesting."

Chaisi leaned against the railing and stretched out his legs as if he wanted to take a break. "You don’t know what will happen after we leave, but a moment ago, you were without a doubt thinking about slipping away early."

"So what if I was?" Jin Xueli waved a hand, gesturing at the Central Police Station around them. "You guys turned this place into a living hell. Isn’t it perfectly normal that I’d want to run?"

"Not normal at all."

As he spoke, Chaisi suddenly turned his phone and flashed it in front of Jin Xueli’s face. Before she could react, he had already turned it away again.

"Is that my phone?"

Jin Xueli took a step forward, but before she could even raise her hand, Chaisi shot her a look. The glance brought her back to her senses, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

"Give me back my phone," she said, trying her best to remain calm. "It’s useless to you."

"I’ll give it back once you’ve answered my questions. Don’t worry, I have no interest in your privacy," Chaisi said, a slow smile spreading across his face. "You seem to have something going on, which is why you were so unwilling to have your fingerprints taken, right? I heard it took several people to hold you down on a table and force you to do it."

"...So what?"

"Well, that’s what makes it interesting."

The phone screen unlocked. Chaisi lowered his gaze, his long fingers swiping across the screen. His hands were so large it seemed the phone would shatter if he just closed his fist.

"Your name, ID, phone, fingerprints, and even the photo they took of you are all on file at the police station. The important information has already been uploaded to the system. But after you left the cell, you didn’t show the slightest bit of worry. You were even wondering why I wasn’t afraid of retaliation from the survivors at the Central Police Station... You don’t even know what will happen to them, yet all you can think about is leaving."

Jin Xueli was speechless.

She wasn’t stupid. She could already see where this conversation was headed.

"What good would running do? All your information was left behind. Where could you possibly run to? But you don’t seem worried at all. It’s as if as long as you can get out, nothing else is a problem."

’He really is a hound... he can sniff out his prey even where there’s no obvious trail.’

"This reminds me of the story you told me about your encounter with Vulture."

As Chaisi spoke, the phone screen flickered under his swiping fingertips, making him look as if he were standing on the edge between reality and nightmare.

"In such a hopeless situation, you were certain that Vulture was the one who was eliminated, and that the one who remained was the real Jin Xueli. Why? Was it just because the other one ’died’?"

He emphasized the word "died," clearly not believing Jin Xueli’s story one bit.

"There’s a missing piece in the middle, a piece that could save your life and keep you from going insane."

Chaisi’s voice was very soft, like a gentle man who didn’t want to startle Jin Xueli by speaking too loudly. "That piece... is also what you’re planning to use to save yourself again after you get out of here today. Isn’t it?"