Chapter 78: Chapter 56: Fu Tailan: An Ordinary Retired Hunter

...No matter how he looked at it, the situation was not in his favor.

A large part of that was because tonight, Westley was being unusually cautious.

On their way into the Westley Building, Fu Tailan and his group had passed through at least three metal detectors. And it wasn’t just handguns — even a slightly oversized metal hair clip in Longzhen’s hair had been flagged and scrutinized.

In all of Blackmoor City, Westley was probably the only one with the power and standing to openly frisk his business partners for weapons and get away with it.

But the metal detectors were only the beginning.

As they were being escorted toward the elevator bank, the bodyguard leading the way made a point of asking Fu Tailan to hand over the alarm clock Illusion. The group was then directed to cross a footbridge that spanned the lobby’s koi pond — beneath them, the water shimmered like jade-green gauze, and the long, plump shadows of golden, red, white, and yellow fish drifted lazily through it, trailing slow, rippling folds in their wake.

When the bodyguard followed behind them carrying the alarm clock Illusion, Longzhen — waiting on the other side to take it back — couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath.

"You’re actually keeping Nest creatures in here?" Fu Tailan murmured, eyes fixed on the koi pond.

The bodyguard had no time to answer him just then.

He was gripping the clock with both hands, inching his way across the center of the bridge one tiny step at a time, every ounce of his focus locked on his feet, not daring to drift even a fraction from the middle.

The water on both sides of the bridge broke apart, and a dense forest of mouths rose from the surface.

The pond, which had held no more than five or six koi just moments ago, was now carpeted with countless gaping holes, each one roughly the size of a fist, packed together in a tight, heaving mass. The water itself had been swallowed up — all that remained was a writhing expanse of openings puckering toward the bodyguard, as if something composed entirely of scales and mouths was straining to suck him in, along with whatever he was carrying. It was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

An uncountable number of mouths rose and fell, opened and snapped shut in rippling, uneven waves — one glance was enough to make your skin crawl. By the time the bodyguard finally stepped off the bridge and handed the clock back to Longzhen, a thin sheen of sweat had broken out across his forehead.

The moment his foot left the bridge, every last mouth plunged back into the water with a collective splash. The koi pond churned with spreading ripples and rings of foam, and once again, only a few smooth, unhurried fish shapes drifted beneath the surface.

"My apologies," the bodyguard said. "We have to make sure no one brings an Illusion into Mr. Westley’s room. An Illusion is far more dangerous than any weapon — I hope you understand."

"Don’t people come and go through this lobby every day?" Fu Tailan asked. "There must be quite a few people who cross that bridge."

"As long as no one’s carrying an Illusion, it doesn’t matter if someone falls in."

The bodyguard’s smile hadn’t fully steadied — it sat thin and hollow on his face. "That’s also why we asked you to hand over the clock before crossing. It was for your own safety."

That last part, naturally, was the kind of thing nobody believed for a second.

What exactly was Westley so afraid of?

When Fu Tailan had met with him back in May, he hadn’t been nearly this jumpy, this ready to see danger in every shadow.

Westley’s caution had crossed the line into something closer to paranoia — he’d refused to show his face even for a deal. And yet that same set of rules, applied so rigidly to everyone else, clearly didn’t apply to a billionaire himself.

The two bodyguards standing across from Fu Tailan both had a hand resting on their hips. Beneath their slightly open suit jackets, the shadows of holsters were plainly visible.

And they weren’t the only firepower in the room. There were two entrances to the meeting room — the one Fu Tailan’s group had come through, and another door, firmly shut, that led somewhere unknown. It didn’t take much imagination to picture more men ready to pour through it at any moment.

"What’s going on with my phone?"

Fu Tailan kept his eyes fixed on Green as he slowly drew the phone from his pocket — but he didn’t hand it over.

He held it at his side, the last chime of the Amber Alert having just faded — if it had even been an Amber Alert at all.

"As your partner, I’m not opposed to letting you look at my phone. But you’d at least owe me a reason. Something to tell me you don’t have bad intentions. Otherwise, this is a pretty serious slight to the Morgan Family."

Green shook his head — the slow, patient shake of a teacher confronted with a particularly stubborn student.

"Fu Tailan, I’ve heard a great deal about you. A Hunter of your caliber — why resort to that kind of deflection? You know perfectly well that if I could tell you the real reason, I wouldn’t be refusing to let you see your screen. You’re trying to push me into telling a lie, because a lie is information too, isn’t it?"

Fu Tailan paused. "...Is Green your surname? What’s your first name? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you before."

"George Green. I’m an entirely unremarkable retired Hunter — no particular talents, no notable history. It would be strange if you had heard of me."

Green raised one hand as he spoke. "Come on, hand over the phone. Screen-down, please."

...Was there really no way to read that "Amber Alert" before handing it over?

Fu Tailan had always prided himself on being quick-witted, but with no weapons, no preparation, and hostile firepower staring him down, every idea that came to mind felt like a bad one.

Even as the Morgan Family’s Hunter Chief, he wasn’t willing to gamble — if he and Longzhen died here tonight, would Carter Morgan avenge them?

Carter Morgan would make a phone call, express his regrets, say the last Hunter Chief had been too young, too reckless, and hope it wouldn’t affect future opportunities for cooperation.

If Green actually killed him, and Westley gave his blessing, there would be virtually no consequences afterward.

Fu Tailan knew it. Green knew it too.

If only Green wore glasses, Fu Tailan thought, with something close to despair — at least he could try to read a reflection in the lenses. Though in the soft lighting of this meeting room, that was probably a fantasy too.

He let out a quiet sigh.

"Fine."

As he turned the phone over and held it out screen-down, the two bodyguards across the room had already drawn their guns, hanging them loosely at their sides. "I’m very curious... but I honestly can’t think of a way out of this."

"Good boy." Green smiled gently, took the phone, and the screen’s glow lit up his distinctly feminine features.

His eyes dropped to the lower portion of the screen — the area where notifications appeared — and stayed there, unmoving, for a moment.

If this were a movie or a sci-fi novel, Fu Tailan thought, I could read the text reflected in his pupils. Sadly, no one could actually do that in real life.

Green didn’t ask for the passcode. He simply swiped and tapped, and cleared the notification.

He was a meticulous, careful man.

Even after clearing it, he found the buttons on either side of the phone and pressed one — a crisp shutter sound rang out as the phone took a screenshot.

The screenshot was a test: he wanted to hear whether Fu Tailan’s phone was on silent, to check whether Fu Tailan had silently screenshotted something while pulling the phone out of his pocket.

But that wasn’t enough. He also pressed the button on the left side of the phone.

That was to confirm whether Fu Tailan had assigned the side button to a "silent toggle" function — after all, Fu Tailan could have taken a silent screenshot first, then switched the sound back on before handing it over.

Fu Tailan’s phone, it seemed, was set up with only the most basic functions, with no multi-shortcut configurations on any single button. Green turned it this way and that, testing it twice each way, and appeared satisfied.

"That should do it."

Green smiled as he said it, then paused, as if something had crossed his mind — he let his thoughts drift for a moment before finally returning the phone. "Thank you for your cooperation. I genuinely appreciate it. The Morgan Family’s Chief really does know how to read a room."

For a seventeen-year-old, keeping a straight face at a moment like this was genuinely hard — and Fu Tailan had no intention of performing the composure of an adult. Why should he? He was half-tempted to grab a megaphone and scream "you’re insufferable" directly into Green’s face.

He took his phone back with a scowl, eyes downcast and expression making no effort to hide his irritation, signaled to Longzhen to pick up the clock, and swept his gaze across Green’s face.

"...You received an ’Amber Alert’ too, didn’t you?" Fu Tailan said, out of nowhere.

Green’s eyelids lifted briefly in his direction, then dropped again, lashes veiling his pupils.

The words had come from instinct, but thinking back over it now, a number of small details converged to confirm it.

When Green had realized only Fu Tailan’s phone had received the alert, he’d reacted too fast — he’d already signaled the bodyguards to close in before Fu Tailan had even pulled the phone from his pocket.

Fu Tailan had also kept his eyes locked on Green the entire time he was looking at the screen. Faced with an "Amber Alert" that couldn’t possibly be a real Amber Alert, Green had remained completely composed — he hadn’t even taken a second look before clearing the notification, as if he had already known exactly what it would say.

"Most things in this world have nothing to do with me," Green said, smiling pleasantly. "Why would I go sticking my nose into other people’s business and come away smelling like fish? Not knowing what’s happening in other people’s lives — doesn’t my own life run just fine all the same?"

He personally escorted Fu Tailan and his group down the elevator, across the koi pond bridge, and watched until they got into their car.

Before closing the door for Fu Tailan, he gave a small wave — a light, offhand gesture, like something a young woman might do. "Looking forward to working together again."

The car door closed with a solid thud, and the engine hummed low and steady, laying out the road home beneath them.

Fu Tailan sat with his phone — now stripped of every last clue — and didn’t speak until the Westley Building had completely disappeared from view, his expression dark and set.

He rarely let anyone get the upper hand on him. What made it worse was that it hadn’t come down to ability or intelligence — it was because he’d been kept in the dark, missing critical information at every turn, always one step behind. That made it sting all the more.

"Longzhen, tomorrow morning, let Remy and Jonah know that starting this month, they’ll each be leading teams into the Nest twice."

"Understood. Why?"

"Have them do everything they can to keep searching for a substitute — something similar to the alarm clock, something connected to time."

Even though the notification was gone for good, he still stared at the notification center on his phone as he spoke. "Besides the team going in on the 13th to keep looking for what Westley wants, the other three runs should focus entirely on finding a substitute. Bring extra people if needed — whatever it takes. For the next few months, this is our top priority. Everything else takes a back seat."

"Tailan..." Longzhen leaned forward from the back seat, her seatbelt snapping taut. "What did you figure out?"

Fu Tailan put his phone away and looked down at his fingertips, turning them slowly.

"I have a theory I need to verify," he said quietly. "And to verify it, I’d need to go through tonight’s exchange one more time... which means we’d need to bring Green another Illusion."