Illusion Report

Chapter 159: Chapter 127: Han Liuyue’s Whac-A-Mole 2026 Edition

Frankly, Han Liuyue wasn’t omniscient, so she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure before she swung.

There was, after all, a small chance she might kill the real Jin Xueli with that swing.

However, Han Liuyue only needed to land the first blow to know for sure who she was hitting.

If the skull cracked like a watermelon and something red oozed out, that would be Jin Xueli.

If it felt elastic to the chop, resilient and satisfyingly yielding, and sank into the mud along with the axe, that would be the Vulture.

And the reason she was so familiar with the sensation of hitting the Vulture was, of course, that she had indeed hit the Vulture.

It even reminded her of a candy she once ate. It had a thin, hard outer shell that, once cracked, revealed a chewy, soft center—’The feeling is exactly the same.’

"Huh? This is pretty cool. It’s surprisingly fun to hit!"

Han Liuyue swung her axe again and again, actually getting into the swing of things. She laughed. "You could turn this into a game. Depending on the force, each hit stuns for one to three seconds. You can’t let the mole get a chance to pop back up—hey, Jin Xueli, want to give it a try?"

The Jin Xueli on the left stared blankly at Han Liuyue. She only watched a few swings before she couldn’t take it anymore, quickly turning her head away as if fighting the urge to vomit.

That made sense. After all, the Vulture was still wearing her face.

Who could feel good watching their own face get pummeled out of shape by an axe, sinking into the mud, neck shattered, yet still blinking and begging for mercy?

"Stop hitting me," the Vulture cried out, its voice muffled and indistinct in the mud.

A crater had been smashed into the ground, and its twisted, deformed head lay flat at the bottom like a potsticker.

Forget its teeth—even the bones in its jaw were shattered. It took some imagination to deduce that it was trying to say, "It’s not easy for me to revert to my original form, you know! Just tie me up! I was wrong, isn’t that enough?"

"Get rid of my face first!" Jin Xueli leaped to her feet, furious.

"No way," Han Liuyue shot back instantly. "If it turns into me, it won’t be this easy to hit."

"Then make it turn back into itself! Of all the people I know, you’re the one I hate listening to the most."

"How many people do you know?" In the span of a few sentences, Han Liuyue had nearly beaten the Vulture’s head into porridge. "Go get the rope. You can count on your way."

Jin Xueli didn’t seem to realize she’d been tricked into running an errand. She was quick on her feet, pulling the rope out of the pit in no time.

Han Liuyue still wasn’t satisfied and came up with an idea.

She dislocated and smashed each of the Vulture’s limb joints, one by one. Only then did she motion for Jin Xueli to tie it up, working the rope deep into the shattered areas. This way, even if the Vulture could regenerate its joints, the rope would block the bones from reconnecting properly.

"How did you know this one was the Vulture?"

After the two of them worked together to securely bind the Vulture, she couldn’t help but ask, "You were so confident, swinging that axe down without a second thought. So decisive!"

...Han Liuyue couldn’t quite bring herself to admit, ’Well, there was a chance I could have been wrong.’

"When the Vulture was in the excavator, it must have seen me kick you," she said, gesturing toward Jin Xueli’s leg.

Jin Xueli blinked twice and asked, "And then?"

"From its perspective, my demand to see your legs wouldn’t have seemed random. It would assume I had thought of some way to tell you two apart based on something on your legs. So, after I kicked you, what’s something the real Jin Xueli might have that the Vulture wouldn’t?"

"Oh, so that’s why it mentioned a bruise."

Jin Xueli suddenly frowned. "Hey, but if I had a bruise, wouldn’t the Vulture have one too when it transformed into me?"

"That brings up an interesting question."

Han Liuyue planted a foot on the Vulture to keep it from trying any more tricks and replied, "The ’you’ that the Vulture copied—which version was it, exactly? The you from before I kicked you, or the one from after?"

Jin Xueli froze.

"I’ll tell you. It was the you from before the kick."

"How do you know?"

"It had already turned into you by the time it leaped out of the excavator."

Han Liuyue pointed to her eyes, indicating she had seen it herself.

"In other words, it never got close to you *after* I kicked you. A creature like the Vulture has to get near its target to copy its appearance, right? It’s not a phone’s operating system; it can’t just connect to a network and update automatically."

"Right," Jin Xueli said, understanding now. "Because of the timing, it could only turn into the me *without* a bruise."

"Correct. But that demand I made actually contained two traps."

Jin Xueli gave her a suspicious look. "I thought your motto was ’when in doubt, use an axe.’ You set traps, too?"

’When you can solve a problem with brute force, who wants to waste time thinking? The only reason I had to use my brain was because I couldn’t just use force.’

After complaining internally for a moment, Han Liuyue said, "One, it thought I was looking for a bruise. But it had only been a minute or two since I kicked you—a bruise wouldn’t show up that fast. If it had actually simulated a bruise, that would have been more suspicious."

"What if it had faked some redness and swelling?" freewebnøvel.coɱ

"That would’ve been useless too. The second trap was that between the dark and my speed, I figured it probably didn’t get a clear look at which leg I kicked."

Before Jin Xueli could pick up on the word "probably," Han Liuyue quickly continued her explanation. "Your reactions back then proved my point. It knew I was looking for a bruise, but it hesitated to roll up its pant leg. You, on the other hand, instinctively glanced at your left leg the second I mentioned a bruise.

"The Vulture was waiting for you to do just that. Whether it faked a bruise or just some swelling, it had to do it on the correct leg."

The moment she noticed the Jin Xueli on the left look down at her leg, while the "Jin Xueli" on the right shot a quick glance in her direction, Han Liuyue was basically sure which one was the Vulture.

"I have to admit, you’re actually pretty reliable."

Jin Xueli remarked with a sigh, picking her phone up off the ground. "So, what now?"

"There’s so much I want to ask," Han Liuyue said, looking down at the creature. "But we’ll have to wait a little while."

The Vulture’s current state was so gruesome it would probably be censored even in an underground film...

But a resident was a resident. Not only was it still alive, but it had somehow managed to maintain a vaguely humanoid shape.

Its skull, smashed to smithereens and far beyond reassembly, lay in pieces on the ground along with bits of skin, blood, and hair.

And yet, when they dragged the Vulture, these bits of skin and bone fragments still maintained the rough shape of a head, getting pulled along with the body—no matter how pulverized the flesh was, it seemed nothing could stop the pieces from acting like "asteroids" orbiting a "Vulture core."

Jin Xueli’s tolerance for the grotesque was much higher than an average person’s, but even she kept her head twisted away, refusing to spare the Vulture a single glance.

Han Liuyue had no choice but to keep an eye on the Vulture herself—she found it a bit nauseating as well. ’Seriously, if I’d known it would look this bad, I would’ve hit it a few less times.’

"Can you talk now?"

When the Vulture’s face had regenerated enough to look human again, she said, "Don’t try to turn into either of us. Turn into Westley."

They had specifically dragged the Vulture over to the coffin precisely so it could turn into Westley again and regain access to his knowledge from before he died.

"Can’t... can’t do it," the Vulture said indistinctly, some unknown part of its mouth still managing to move. "He’s been dead too long."

Han Liuyue froze.

"Who do you think you’re kidding? The original Vultures could transform by pouncing on a Hunter’s dead body—" For the first time today, she was genuinely angry. She cut herself off mid-sentence when she noticed Jin Xueli give her a look.

"Why do you think they call us Vultures? It’s because we trail people who are on the brink of death, isn’t it?"

The Vulture showed no fear of her anger, saying weakly, "The whole reason we wait for the moment someone dies is that the corpse is still fresh and warm. When I was stuffed in that coffin, Westley had only just died, so I could still become him. Now he’s no different from a piece of cured meat. You want me to turn into cured meat? You’re asking the impossible."

Han Liuyue wiped the rain from her face and deliberately took a deep breath.

’It doesn’t sound like a lie, and the Vulture has no reason to make one up... In that case, there’s no point in taking it back with us.’

’Looks like we’ll just have to stick to the original plan... Thankfully, we still have the real Westley’s corpse, so we won’t return empty-handed and fail to complete Brother Chaisi’s mission.’

’But no matter what, I can’t leave this Vulture in the human world.’

"What were you trying to do in the human world?" Han Liuyue asked.

"To live," the Vulture said passionately.

Han Liuyue couldn’t resist kicking its slowly reforming head.

"You don’t want to stay in this condition, do you?"

The kick scattered the Vulture’s mouth again. "NGH," it grunted.

"The way I see it, you just wanted to kill someone. Otherwise, you would’ve taken the chance to escape earlier. You could have run, but you didn’t. You stayed here, changing from me to her, all because you wanted to see a dead body, didn’t you?"

The Vulture waited for its mouth to mend a bit before it spoke. "You’re smart, but you’re only half right. The person I wanted to kill was her. I stayed behind specifically to find a chance to do it."

Jin Xueli froze, pointing at herself. "Me?"

"Not just you," the Vulture said, its mangled lips twitching. "Chaisi, Fu Tailan, and that... Brianna..."

The two exchanged a look.

’Brother Chaisi did mention a competition taking shape in a Nest, and that both he and Jin Xueli were participants in it...’

’All the more reason not to let this thing stay in the human world.’

"You talk big for someone with so little power," Jin Xueli commented. "Who could you possibly kill?"

The evolved Vulture, seemingly unable to tolerate having its professional skills questioned, got so angry it sputtered a few blood bubbles. "Says who? Didn’t I just have you two running in circles?"

Speaking of which, that did remind Han Liuyue of something.

"You have a new trait now. It seems that when you’re preparing to attack someone, the environment itself tries to help you out, is that right?"

The Vulture just grunted, neither confirming nor denying.

Jin Xueli reached out a hand, feeling the rain. Not even ten minutes had passed since they’d exposed the Vulture, yet the torrential downpour from before, complete with thunder and lightning, had already subsided into a fine, drifting drizzle.

A single Vulture could apparently create its own perfect conditions—favorable weather, terrain, and human error—all within a small radius.

"That part makes some sense... but how exactly are you able to ’have people running in circles’?"

Han Liuyue crouched down beside the Vulture, looking at it as she asked, "After you transform into one of us, can you still retain your own consciousness as a Vulture?"