Illusion Report

Chapter 155: Chapter 123: Jin Xueli · Lightning Tableau

’...Did the rain wash away the soil and make my phone slide into the pit?’

Jin Xueli thought that was unlikely. The phone had been behind her feet. No matter how hard it rained, how could it have possibly circled around her before falling into the pit?

She groped around in the gloom. The spot where her phone had been, and the area around it, were completely empty. She couldn’t feel a thing.

"Hey, Han Liuyue."

Unable to find it, Jin Xueli grew anxious and annoyed. Wiping the rain from her face, she said, "You should help me look, too. It has to be around here somewhere."

"That... I’m afraid I can’t."

"Huh?" Jin Xueli turned back, about to question her, but she froze when she got a clear look.

Han Liuyue was moaning softly, sliding down the side of the excavator to sit on the ground, curling into a ball.

"When I was lying down, I didn’t feel anything... but as soon as I stood up, I suddenly felt really nauseous."

"Nauseous?" Jin Xueli hurried back to the excavator and crouched beside her. "What’s wrong? Are you dizzy?" freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

"Yeah," Han Liuyue said. "A little."

’This is bad,’ Jin Xueli thought. ’She must have hit her head during the accident... The symptoms flared up the moment she stood up.’

Jin Xueli felt her head. She couldn’t feel any blood, but she still couldn’t relax.

"We can’t stay on the edge of the pit. If the collapse gets bigger, we’re screwed."

Even though Han Liuyue had taken quite a hit, her mind was still clear. "Nowhere near the excavator is safe. It’s best to stay away."

Jin Xueli draped Han Liuyue’s arm over her own shoulder and asked, "Can you still stand?"

"I can," Han Liuyue replied, catching her breath. "It’s probably not serious. I’ll be fine after a little rest. I’ve taken worse hits than this before."

’Being a Hunter sure isn’t easy.’

"Alright then. I’ll help you up. Go sit on that tomb over there and rest for a bit." Jin Xueli helped her to her feet and warned, "And don’t you dare throw up on me."

"I’m injured. I need warmth and compassion,"

Han Liuyue retorted weakly, "the kind of compassion where you’d comfort me even if I threw up on you."

"Sorry, I wasn’t born with that feature. Guess the crash didn’t affect your mouth, huh?"

She supported Han Liuyue, walking far away from the excavator before helping her sit down on the stone base of a tomb.

Seeing that her condition seemed stable, Jin Xueli relaxed a little and suddenly had an idea.

"You still have your phone on you, right? Call my phone so I can look for it."

"Yeah. Luckily my phone didn’t fall out during the accident. Otherwise, it would be a pain to contact the Kai Family later."

Han Liuyue took out her phone, keyed in the number Jin Xueli gave her, and put the call on speaker. The ringing tone started almost immediately, which meant the phone still had power. But when Jin Xueli strained her ears to listen, she heard nothing but the downpour.

It was so quiet...

She felt it shouldn’t be this quiet... It wasn’t just the lack of a ringtone; a persistent feeling that something was missing lingered in her mind.

"Did you put it on silent?" Han Liuyue asked, bringing Jin Xueli’s attention back to the problem at hand.

’Did I put it on silent?’

Jin Xueli couldn’t even remember herself. "Well... sometimes I turn it on when calls get annoying... I forget if I did today."

Han Liuyue stared at her with a look of profound disappointment. "A Hunter as careless as you is a rare breed. Even if there’s no ringtone, the screen should still light up, right?"

"Oh, right. Let me see—"

Reminded, Jin Xueli turned her head, only to see the curtain of rain falling endlessly in the pitch-black darkness.

Perhaps she was too far away. The world was shrouded in darkness, and she couldn’t see the faint light of a phone screen anywhere.

If the phone landed face down, it would be even harder to spot. But either way, she had to find it.

’Qiao Yuyue was right, this is no different from losing a child. Maybe I should start wearing it on a lanyard around my neck.’

"I’m going to go look. You keep the call going, stay seated, and don’t wander off," Jin Xueli instructed.

"Why would I run off?" Han Liuyue said. "You’re the one who needs to be careful not to get too close to the excavator."

’That’s easy for her to say,’ Jin Xueli thought, ’but the most likely place for the phone to be is near the excavator.’

Jin Xueli walked back to a spot not far from the excavator and found a branch. Like a blind person feeling her way, she swept the branch back and forth across the ground. The excavator had collapsed right between two rows of graves. She painstakingly swept every inch of the ground there, but after a considerable amount of time, she still hadn’t seen the phone.

’How strange. There are only two people and one... resident... around here.’

When the phone disappeared, only Jin Xueli had been able to move. Han Liuyue was trapped in the driver’s cab, and Vulture was locked in the coffin.

There was no one else. How could the phone just vanish into thin air?

’Looks like I’ll have to head back for now...’

After all, Han Liuyue couldn’t stay on the phone forever.

In this situation, it was impossible to pull the excavator out of the collapsed ground by hand and keep going. They had to call the Kai Family for backup to take away the coffin and Vulture.

’Oh well. When they send people, they’ll probably bring flashlights. Maybe there’s a better chance of finding it then.’

In that case, she should just have Han Liuyue call the Kai Family now. The rain was getting heavier, like a thunderstorm was rolling in. She’d already heard thunder rumbling in the distance several times—

A bolt of lightning split the dark, heavy sky. For a split second, the world turned snow-white.

Jin Xueli stopped dead in her tracks.

Her vision plunged back into darkness. It took a full breath before the shapes of her surroundings became faintly discernible again.

Han Liuyue had been resting on a tomb about ten meters away from the excavator.

But now, as Jin Xueli squinted through the gloom, she saw that the tomb was empty.

’...Where did she go? Wasn’t she dizzy?’

’No, wait. That’s not right.’

’That’s not what I should be focusing on right now.’

Jin Xueli slowly turned her head toward the excavator, not far from her side.

The momentary flash of lightning had revealed everything in minute detail, as if peeling back a layer of the world.

She hadn’t meant to look; her gaze had just unconsciously landed on the excavator...

The driver’s cab was not empty.

The place where someone should have been was empty; the place that should have been empty was not.

The visibility was terrible, and she had no flashlight. It wasn’t until that blinding flash of light that Jin Xueli suddenly realized that under the driver’s seat, in a spot almost buried in the earth, there seemed to be... a person.

She looked up.

The tomb where Han Liuyue had been resting was still empty.

Jin Xueli walked toward the excavator one step at a time, recalling Han Liuyue’s warning not to get too close. ’Was she afraid the ground would collapse further?’

She reached out with the branch and gently prodded the shadow wedged under the seat.

Judging by the feel of it, it was definitely a person...

This person was right under where Han Liuyue had been, pinned tightly beneath her.

’How could Han Liuyue not have noticed someone lying underneath her? Or did she notice and just not say a word?’

Accompanied by a dull roll of thunder, another bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, searing the illuminated scene into Jin Xueli’s vision like a camera flash.

"Han Liuyue?"

Her mind was a chaotic mess, but she unconsciously lowered her voice, as if afraid of being overheard. "Did... did you come back?"

Even as she said it, she knew it was impossible.

Half of Han Liuyue’s body was stuck under the seat. If you weren’t looking closely, you wouldn’t have noticed someone was hidden there.

She seemed to be unconscious, completely still. An unidentifiable part of the excavator seemed to have come loose and fallen on her. It was still pressing against her face.

"Wake up."

It all clicked for Jin Xueli in an instant. A wave of cold, colder than the last, washed over her. She kept her voice low and shoved at Han Liuyue’s leg. "Wake up! This is bad, it’s Vulture—" freewёbnoνel.com

It was only then that she finally understood why everything had felt so quiet earlier.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard "Westley’s" voice in a long time.

Han Liuyue let out a low moan and finally stirred.

"It hurts..."

Her every movement was so heavy and slow it was agonizing. Jin Xueli kept glancing over her shoulder, terrified that while Han Liuyue was slowly waking up, another person would appear beside her.

"You’ve been here the whole time?" Jin Xueli asked in a breathy whisper. "You never got out?"

She didn’t know if it was from the cold, from fear, or from the dark memories of the last attack welling up, but her every word trembled.

"Huh? What?" Han Liuyue seemed dazed. "Did I... just pass out? What happened to the ground?"

"Just get out first, we’ll talk later," Jin Xueli said, not daring to waste any more time. She grabbed Han Liuyue’s hand and tried to pull her up, but the tug hurt her.

"I’ll do it, I’ll do it," she said, sucking in a sharp breath. "I’m stuck."

In the vast darkness, Jin Xueli could only make out her blurry form. She seemed to push herself up with one hand, slowly freeing herself from the space under the seat and the dirt, finally managing to sit up.

Han Liuyue sat in the cramped driver’s cab but then froze, no longer trying to climb out.

’...What’s wrong?’

She seemed to be staring behind Jin Xueli, trying to make out something in the gloom.

The roar of the rain overwhelmed the world, squeezing out almost any other sound.

A second or two later, Jin Xueli felt it. Someone was standing right behind her.