Illusion Report

Chapter 157: Chapter 125: Han Liuyue: Can the Vulture Read Minds?

The dead of night, a torrential downpour, a sudden ground collapse...

Everything was just too coincidental.

Han Liuyue looked up, shielding her brow from the rain with one hand as she squinted at the overturned coffin in the distance.

In the darkness, it was just a hazy, indistinct behemoth. It was as if a coffin-shaped hole had been carved out of the night, coalescing into an even deeper blackness.

Her phone was still dialing, ringing with a BEEP... BEEP... Other than that, the only sound was the pouring rain.

She turned her head to look at Jin Xueli’s receding figure.

The girl had said that when she went to check the coffin, she had tried to pull the lid but couldn’t move it. That meant the coffin hadn’t broken open, and the Vulture should still be inside.

’Once I feel a little better, I’ll go take another look.’

The fall just now had hit her hard. As she sat on a cemetery ledge, her consciousness felt like a fallen leaf on the water’s surface, spinning slowly, endlessly.

The first call went unanswered and disconnected automatically. Han Liuyue raised her phone and pressed redial.

"BEEP—" The dialing tone sounded from her phone again.

This time, the tone was abruptly cut off before it could ring a second time. For a moment, Han Liuyue didn’t even realize what had happened.

"Hello? Hello, who is this?"

Jin Xueli’s rushed, breathy voice was almost completely drowned out by the rain. "Are—Are you Han Liuyue?"

"...Jin Xueli?"

Han Liuyue froze, looking up at the figure in the distance.

The Jin Xueli who had just left didn’t seem to have found her phone. Instead, she had picked up a branch and was sweeping it across the ground, like a blind person feeling their way.

Which meant...

Han Liuyue’s eyes shot toward the coffin, her body frozen stiff. freewebnovёl.ƈom

...The Vulture was out.

Once it transforms into a target, a Vulture becomes identical to the original person in every way—appearance, body, thought processes, memories, and emotions. There’s no difference at all.

Jin Xueli had also told her that it would even believe with all its heart that it was the real person—

"It really is you,"

the Jin Xueli on the phone said, sounding rushed and anxious. "The one with the phone is the real one, so you must be the real Han Liuyue, right? Ugh, my head is all fuzzy right now..."

"Where are you?" Han Liuyue asked, fighting off a wave of dizziness as she scanned her surroundings.

"I’m behind the coffin."

Jin Xueli let out a low gasp of breath and said, "The ground suddenly collapsed just now, and the coffin almost rolled over me. I dove out of the way to avoid it... but not only did my flashlight roll away, I also hit my head."

’Why has everyone hit their head? Is that the new trend?’

"I think I was unconscious for a bit. When I got back up, I hurried over to check on the coffin and found the lid had been knocked open. The Vulture had escaped."

At this point, Jin Xueli added a tearful complaint, "Seriously, running into a Vulture once is bad enough, but twice in a row..."

After a pause, she collected herself and continued, "I was just about to come get you when I saw two people approaching... I couldn’t see clearly, but I figured it must be you and the Vulture, so I hid. Did it disguise itself as me? How come you’re calling me? Did you realize it was the Vulture, too?"

Han Liuyue stared at her phone, her brow furrowed slightly.

’Vultures are such a pain...’

The simplest way to solve a problem is to destroy the problem itself, but that tactic was useless against a Vulture.

"...The Jin Xueli from before was using her phone as a light on the ground while helping me out of the excavator. But the light suddenly went out, and the phone was gone. I called her, and now she’s gone to look for it."

"I see..." Jin Xueli murmured. "So that’s the excuse the Vulture came up with."

"What do you mean?"

"A Vulture can copy our appearance, but it can’t copy a phone. To explain why it doesn’t have one, it had to say its phone went missing—that must be the only explanation."

"But when she was helping me out, the light really did go out all of a sudden."

"Huh?" Jin Xueli was surprised too. "Are you sure it was the phone that went dark?"

Han Liuyue herself hesitated for a moment.

The light had indeed gone out abruptly, but at the time, she hadn’t actually seen if the source of the light was a phone.

Jin Xueli had been leading the way, and she’d had a flashlight in her hand the whole time.

’What if the thing that suddenly went dark was actually that missing flashlight?’

’The heavy rain has made the ground soft and slick. It wouldn’t be hard to stick a flashlight into the mud, bulb-up. Then, at the right moment, it could just smash the bulb to create the illusion that the "phone suddenly disappeared."’

She glanced over—the Jin Xueli who had left earlier was already quite far away. It was unlikely she would turn back anytime soon.

"I’m coming to you now. Don’t move," Han Liuyue said in a low voice. "I’ll check the coffin on the way."

To avoid another bout of dizziness from moving too quickly, she slowly got up from the ledge and walked toward the coffin, one step at a time.

The Vulture’s goal had to be to transform into a human and blend into Blackmoor City; there was no doubt about that. As for what it would do after infiltrating the Human World, that was another question entirely.

’But if that’s the case, why didn’t it take the opportunity to slip away after escaping the coffin? Why did it stay behind and transform into Jin Xueli to muddy the waters... What’s the reason?’

’Is it afraid of being hunted?’

’But if it escaped the cemetery and randomly transformed into a stranger, even if the Kai Family wanted to hunt it down, they’d have no way to find it in a sea of people.’

’I’ll probably never figure that out on my own. I’d have to catch the Vulture and ask it directly.’

"Over here,"

a figure quietly stood up from the shadows behind the coffin, calling out softly to Han Liuyue. "The Vulture didn’t see you coming, did it?"

’Who the Vulture is, well, that’s not so easy to say...’

’Hmm, I wonder what Brother Chaisi’s relationship with Jin Xueli is really like. If I just use an axe to tell them apart, will Brother Chaisi get mad?’

Using the light from her phone screen, she carefully studied the Jin Xueli in front of her.

"Vultures are really something! You two look exactly alike," Han Liuyue said, genuinely impressed. "Even your clothes are the same... Can Vultures replicate clothes now?"

"The clothes are the same?"

Jin Xueli paused, thinking for a moment.

"The last time I ran into a Vulture, our clothes were different... Hmm, but maybe that was because it was just me and it back then. Whether it copied my clothes or not wouldn’t have stopped me from attacking it."

"But aren’t Vultures unable to replicate objects?"

"I don’t think this counts as replicating an object," Jin Xueli said hesitantly. "The Vulture was already wearing clothes to begin with. It just made its own clothes look like the target’s clothes... It’s like how a Vulture already has a body, it just makes its body look like mine."

’I see... That explanation actually makes sense.’

Things the Vulture didn’t have to begin with, like a phone or a Hunting Knife, couldn’t just appear out of thin air.

’But even if I become an expert on Vultures, I still can’t tell which one is the real Jin Xueli!’

Han Liuyue sighed to herself and said, "Is the cut on your forehead serious? Let me see."

"Huh? Oh, okay..."

Holding the phone in one hand, Han Liuyue’s other hand discreetly pinched up a bit of mud from the ground.

She moved closer to Jin Xueli, so close they could hear each other breathe.

’Do Vultures even need to breathe?’

In the light of the phone, there was indeed a shallow gash on Jin Xueli’s forehead.

"Tilt your head back, I want to see how deep the cut is."

As Han Liuyue spoke, she lifted Jin Xueli’s chin; her mud-stained index finger pressed right underneath it.

"Hmm, it looks pretty shallow," she said, pulling her hand back.

As she retracted her hand, she lightly smudged a streak of mud.

Jin Xueli didn’t seem to notice she’d been marked. "I didn’t know you could be so gentle."

’With the rain coming down this hard, a mark anywhere else would be washed away in moments.’

’After thinking it over, the spot under the chin was the only place where a mark was likely to remain, even if it got wet. It was also a spot I could touch without seeming unnatural.’

"What do we do now?" Jin Xueli asked.

"You stay put. I’m going to check the coffin."

Han Liuyue took a few steps around to the front of the coffin and examined it carefully, using only the light from her phone screen.

A human head was hanging lopsidedly from a hole in the coffin lid.

Perhaps because he hadn’t been dead long and the embalming had been done well, if you ignored the broken neck and the caved-in forehead, he looked like a pale man merely in a deep sleep—it was the real Westley.

Just as the marked Jin Xueli had said, the coffin lid was indeed open.

Han Liuyue stared at the gap in the lid, lost in thought for a moment. Suddenly, she stuffed her phone in her pocket, walked up, and grabbed the coffin lid. Though she was strong, she was still dizzy and nauseous from her recent fall, so it took her several tries before she could budge it.

But even using all her strength, she couldn’t close it completely.

Han Liuyue took out her phone again and looked closely at the spot where the lid was getting stuck. Only then did she realize that the bottom of the lid had warped, either from the fall or from being soaked in water. Once opened, it couldn’t be closed again.

Panting, she let go and stood there, thinking for a moment. ƒгeewebnovёl.com

’If I sort through what I know...’

’One, the coffin lid is warped; once opened, it can’t be closed again.’

’Two, the marked Jin Xueli said the lid was open, while the Jin Xueli who helped me said it was shut tight.’

’Three, the real Westley’s head is hanging out of the hole.’

With that, the answer was crystal clear—

Han Liuyue’s heart skipped a beat. She immediately whipped around the coffin and sprinted toward where Jin Xueli had been standing.

She ran so fast that the world started to spin. For a moment, her legs almost gave out, and she nearly collapsed to her knees.

Han Liuyue managed to steady herself against the coffin just in time. When she looked up, she froze.

The spot where Jin Xueli had been was now empty.

’When did she slip away?’

Ordinarily, Han Liuyue would never have failed to notice someone slipping away right beside her.

But the downpour, the darkness, the blow to the head inside the fallen excavator...

Something Jin Xueli had said suddenly echoed in her mind— "It’s almost like the environment itself is helping the Vulture."

Han Liuyue took a deep breath, strode past the coffin, and headed in the direction the other Jin Xueli had gone.

Despite her dizziness and discomfort, she did her best to sort out two key questions in her mind.

’First, why did the Vulture run away?’

’The moment I saw the coffin lid and drew my conclusion, I realized the Vulture had already sensed trouble and vanished.’

’Did it sneak off because of my deduction just now?’

’But it can’t read minds.’

’Assuming it can’t read minds, it shouldn’t have known that I suspected it—so why did it run?’

’The second question is, what will the Vulture do next?’

That question, at least, was not hard to answer.

The Vulture had realized that Han Liuyue had discovered its identity, so of course it couldn’t stay put. It had to move to another location and pretend to be the Jin Xueli who was "looking for her phone" in order to confuse Han Liuyue.

Unfortunately, she had long since lost sight of the real Jin Xueli who was looking for her phone. In this environment, a person only had to walk a few steps away to vanish into the dark, rainy night.

...It was almost as if the environment itself was helping the Vulture.

Han Liuyue stopped in her tracks.

’...Is this Jin Xueli up ahead, bent over and peering into the excavator, the one who was looking for her phone, or is it the Vulture who just arrived?’