Illusion Report

Chapter 173: Chapter 141: Fu Tailan - He Won’t Be Tempted

In the first autumn of his life, the air was crisp, cool, and faintly sweet.

The colorful leaves on the trees, layered upon one another, were etched against the vast, azure sky.

A cool breeze rustled his thick, glossy red fur. It felt like a thousand gentle scratches against his skin, making him want to open his mouth and let out a tiny, sharp cry.

The nearby warrens of wild rabbits had recently swelled, just like his own fur had thickened. He ate his fill every day until his belly was round. When he had nothing else to do, he liked to lie in the grass, using his nose to identify the greetings of other animals carried on the wind.

’Ah, stretching feels so—so good.’

The tip of his ear twitched. Xiaotai suddenly pulled back, his dark eyes darting around.

He shot up into a sitting position, his pointed ears swiveling like two detectors, aiming at the grassy patch ahead.

Something had just burrowed through the soil in front of him, making the clumps of dirt tremble. ’A gopher? Or a giant earthworm?’

Xiaotai’s eyes lit up. All sleepiness vanished, replaced by sharp alertness. In his mind, he had already planned out this major hunting operation.

The movement was happening just two meters ahead, under the ground. His four paws rustled as he crept closer to the patch of grass. ’First,’ he thought, ’I’ll have to leap high into the air, then dive headfirst, landing right on top of that thing.’

That’s what his mother had taught him—

Fu Tailan jolted and stopped dead in his tracks, leaning back so abruptly that he almost lost his balance and fell over.

He blinked. The grass, the woods, and the sky vanished from his vision. A cold sweat broke out on his back.

He was still standing in the second-floor hallway of the apartment building. Ahead, doors stood open on both sides. The interplay of light and shadow from within the rooms made the corridor seem to breathe.

The television in Room 202 was now, somehow, right in front of him, only two or three steps away.

’If... if I had really jumped at that "gopher"...’

He would have plunged headfirst into the television and entered the reality of the red fox, Xiaotai.

Fu Tailan realized he was facing the TV in Room 202. He quickly took a few steps forward and stopped beside the door of Room 203. He had been there for less than thirty seconds, and no one had come out of the TV to greet him yet. Only then did he dare to glance back.

On the screen, Xiaotai had also stopped.

It looked left and right at the grass, its moist, dark eyes filled with a hint of confusion and disappointment, as if wondering if the gopher had gotten away.

With just one look, Fu Tailan felt as if he could once again sense the cool breeze, like a clear mountain stream, and remember that life of open freedom beneath the high heavens, where he could come and go as he pleased.

He sighed softly, broke his gaze, and turned away.

"I’m sorry, Xiaotai."

Fu Tailan said in a low voice.

’If I had been born as Xiaotai, living a pure, free life like a wild animal wouldn’t seem so bad.’

’But alas, I’ve been human for so many years.’

’Being human is clearly filled with suffering, yet I don’t seem willing to give up the part of me that can perceive that suffering.’

’Perhaps Xiaotai the wild fox can only be a dream a prisoner uses to comfort himself in his cell.’

Fu Tailan stood by the wall and glanced at the doorway of Room 203. He had learned his lesson this time and immediately looked away.

’The woman from 201 sounded nice, but she was clearly up to no good. She only told me half the story, hiding the most crucial information to set a trap.’

’She never said that before you enter the TV, you first experience the reality inside it.’ freewebnovёl.ƈom

’So if you stare at the TV for too long, you fall into a hallucination, get mesmerized by the "new life," and walk step by step into the screen... Huh? But did I really watch Xiaotai for that long just now?’

’It felt like just a little while, didn’t it?’

’If even a few seconds of watching is enough to drag you into a hallucinatory experience, then the safest course of action would be to not look at all and just walk past...’

But Fu Tailan didn’t move.

’A path to survival that seems so obvious and reasonable on the surface is exactly the kind of thing that makes you wary, isn’t it?’

To be honest, he couldn’t think of what kind of trap walking straight upstairs might trigger. It was less about caution and more about an intuition honed by years of experience as a Hunter.

’Besides, even if I’m not going to choose another life and reality, I can’t help but want to see what my options are.’

Fu Tailan took a stopwatch from his backpack and set a fifteen-second timer—about the same amount of time he’d watched Xiaotai before falling into the hallucination.

Once fifteen seconds were up, it would buzz softly. It wasn’t as jarring as an alarm clock, but he had no better option at the moment. He could only hope it would be enough to jolt him out of the illusion.

’After all, I can’t count on that one element from the "Xiaotai reality"—the one that alerted me that something was wrong—to show up every time.’

Fu Tailan raised his eyes, his gaze falling on the television screen in Room 203.

Although the content of the TVs were all parallel realities, they were adapted to fit the format when displayed, taking the form of a TV show or film. The television in Room 203 seemed to be showing an interview about the life of a rich man’s son.

"Today, Tailan has brought us to his family’s private island for a tour..."

The voiceover, tinged with excitement, said, "We’ve just gotten off the helicopter. As you can see, the Fu Family’s luxurious manor is built on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the entire island and the magnificent Pacific Ocean..."

Calling it a luxurious manor was no exaggeration. If you wanted to go from the main house’s dining room to the home theater after a meal, you’d need to take a golf cart. The swimming pool you passed on the way was as huge as a water park, complete with a waterfall and a bar.

Fu Tailan had seen his share of wealth, but he was still dumbfounded.

’...Fu Han would probably jump in without a second thought, wouldn’t he?’

’In this reality, Fu Han seems to have become quite an impressive person.’

Strangely, however, the fifteen-second timer had already buzzed, yet he remained a spectator outside the TV. He hadn’t entered any hallucination of being a rich man’s son at all.

To test it, he watched the TV in 203 for a while longer. He ended up watching for a full five minutes, but he remained perfectly lucid, standing right where he was. ’Seriously, all that precaution for nothing.’

"Could it be..."

Fu Tailan tentatively stepped past Room 203, muttering to himself as he walked, "Only the realities that I’m actually tempted by turn into a hallucinatory experience for me?"

At this thought, he couldn’t help but glance back.

"Compared to being the son of a world-class billionaire, I’d rather be a fox?"

’Whoops, I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.’

’The apartment heard me now. Does that mean the next few TVs are all going to be cute, free-spirited ani—’

The word "animals" hadn’t even fully formed in his mind before Fu Tailan stopped in his tracks.

Because the "him" on the next TV was a far cry from a cute animal.

"...Is this supposed to be an insult?"

He pointed at the TV inside Room 204, not knowing who he was protesting to. "Who would want to be a resident in this rundown apartment of yours?"

And not just a resident, but a resident who had to work.

The Fu Tailan on the TV in 204 was a short, plain-looking man with a perpetually wooden expression, working as the building’s manager.

The residents on the TV weren’t very polite to him, and when they looked at him, their faces showed none of the dazzled fascination he was used to seeing.

"Mr. Fu,"

A round, chubby female resident knocked loudly on the manager’s door and complained, "The garbage chute is back, this time on the fourth floor! Can you go take care of it? What’s going on? Wasn’t it just expelled a short while ago? Mr. Fu, did you even teach it a proper lesson...?"

Fu Tailan was furious.

"What is this?" he said to the hallway wall, pointing at his own face. "If you had my face, would you want to trade it for a face like that? Besides, he doesn’t even look smart!"

The short manager on the TV, his face a wooden mask, picked up a stun baton from behind the door and dutifully went to the fourth floor to capture and expel the garbage chute. The chubby resident wasn’t wrong; he really didn’t seem very good at his job. The garbage chute was fine, but he managed to shock himself until he was hopping around.

After finally finishing the job, he trudged down to the first floor, covered in soot and sporting a head of hair that had been shocked into an afro, just in time to see the resident from Room 607 coming home.

The manager’s face instantly turned red, and he became visibly nervous.

After a moment of internal struggle, he finally shuffled a couple of steps closer to the resident from 607 and stammered, "M-Miss Xing, you’re back... Waiting for the elevator?"

The resident, who was perhaps quite beautiful by the standards of a Nest, turned at his words and gave a noncommittal "Mhm."

"Um, you seem to be coming home pretty early lately..."

"Oh, the elevator’s here," Miss Xing said, already stepping away as if eager to escape his presence. "I’m leaving."

Before her voice had faded, she lowered her head, aimed it at a piece of paper on the wall, bent over, and ducked through, vanishing completely. All that was left was a dazed Fu Tailan standing in the lobby, dejectedly running a hand through his hair.

"Being average in looks and ability is one thing, but they also throw in a doomed crush plotline? How is this any different from just insulting me?"

Fu Tailan even felt a surge of frustration, like a parent disappointed in their child. ’He’s so pathetic! Right now, *I’m* the one people have crushes on. If I were living his life, I definitely wouldn’t be so spineless—’

’...Oh? Could this be another way of luring people in?’

’Using reverse psychology, trying to provoke me?’

’If that’s the case, the apartment is naively mistaken.’

A reality this unappealing wouldn’t drag him into a hallucinatory experience, no matter how frustrated he was with his alternate self’s lack of ambition. He could walk away without a second thought, with no lingering attachment whatsoever.

Next, Fu Tailan saw several more realities. The content of the TV in Room 206 nearly managed to trap him again—in that reality, he was the underground king who ruled Blackmoor City.

At nearly thirty years old, this Fu Tailan had become a mob boss so feared that people dared not speak his name. His wealth was considerable, his reach extensive. He had practically turned Blackmoor City into a kingdom within a kingdom.

All the Hunter Family Factions had become branches under his control. As for the likes of the Kai Family and Chaisi Monroe, they were nothing but bones he had stepped on during his ascent to the top.

"That reality is pretty great, but just walking into it like this... it doesn’t feel right."

Fu Tailan pulled himself out of the hallucination and turned off both his phone and the timer—a double insurance system. He gave a slightly embarrassed smile.

Now that he was mentally prepared for the apartment’s methods, escaping was much smoother.

"It’s like saying I can’t achieve this in my own life, so I have to go pick the fruits of someone else’s labor in another reality, right? Mmm... not very classy." freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

The apartment building wasn’t large. From Room 206, it was just four more rooms to Room 210, the end of the hallway.

’Hm...?’

Fu Tailan felt a flicker of strangeness, but the feeling was gone in an instant, and he couldn’t grasp it.

’From the looks of it, as long as I’m not tempted by the TV’s content and don’t get dragged into a hallucination, I can just walk step by step to the end of the hall and get upstairs smoothly.’

Up to Room 208, there hadn’t been much to tempt him. He wondered how full of itself this apartment was to present three realities in a row set within the building itself. The TV in Room 208 even showed a scene of Fu Tailan walking down the stairs and entering Room 208.

"Even if I get to keep my looks, I don’t want to live here,"

he muttered as he walked past Room 208. Just like before, he stopped by the door of Room 209 and raised his eyes to look inside.

"...Xiaotai," a woman’s voice called out softly from the TV in Room 209.

Fu Tailan didn’t even get a clear look at the TV’s content. The moment the voice reached his ears, he plunged straight into a deep hallucination.