Artifact Report

Chapter 404 Fu Tai Lan - Headless Pair

Fu Tailan kept carefully observing Carter Morgan, who was trapped in a dream.

For Carter Morgan, of course, the whole world was not as precious as his own life.

Since Fu Tailan took the initiative to request a meeting, it was impossible for him not to be wary—he brought several hunters and bodyguards who were clearly well-trained and fully armed elites; there must have been surveillance and protective decoys in places where Fu Tailan couldn't see.

"There's no need to be so serious," Fu Tailan thought to herself.

Didn't we already meet once before? Last time, he didn't do anything to Carter Morgan.

He only asked to see Fu Han to make sure Fu Han was still alive; after seeing him, he obediently left.

But Carter Morgan remained extremely cautious this time.

He stood far away at the other end of the underground parking garage, as if the car containing the Futai Blue was a giant virus. When the car door opened, Carter's bodyguards immediately stepped forward, each holding a weapon, and half-shielded him behind them.

"What is that?" Carter squinted and glanced into the car from behind the bodyguard. "Is that... a dream in your hand?"

Fu Tai Lan still had a heavy sleepiness on her eyelids. She gave him a vague smile and raised her left hand.

A dream without form, without description, and even more indescribable, drifted out of the car door like clouds as he raised his hand—the unfulfilled desires of hundreds of humans floated in hundreds of colors and scenes, slowly flowing past the black car body—in that instant, all the hunters protecting Carter Morgan became alert, raising their weapons and revealing their illusions.

Whatever, let's just be on guard.

Those "powerful artifacts" in the usual sense are generally just to prevent the protected target from being attacked or damaged.

Dreams are something everyone has while sleeping at night, so how can they be considered an attack or harm?
“Don’t be nervous,” Fu Tailan slowly put one foot out of the car and said, “This is one of the things Carter wanted… Look how happy he is.”

Professional bodyguards are professional bodyguards. There were four of them, and three of them didn't even turn around to look. Only one quickly stepped forward and called out to Carter, "Mr. Morgan."

See, the leader himself came out.

Even if the captain looked at Carter's face, he wouldn't be able to see anything—it might sound a bit shameless of him to say that, but the current situation was completely unexpected by Fu Tailan.

Carter and those around him will certainly be on guard; after he falls into a dream, those around him will also notice something is amiss.

So, in order to prevent the bodyguards from noticing anything amiss, all we need to do is adjust the content of the dream so that Carter can react at the right time, right?
As if it had been rehearsed, Carter Morgan indeed murmured, "Yes...yes, this is exactly what I want. You all move aside."

The bodyguard captain immediately glanced at his boss again.

Was it because Carter had previously said not to let them leave his side?
However, there shouldn't be any reason to suspect anything.

At this moment, Carter's eyes were blank and lifeless, but they were fixed on only one thing: the dream in Fu Tailan's hands.

He stared into the dream and walked forward step by step. In order not to block his way, the bodyguard could only step back a step or two, but still followed closely by his side.

Knowing the truth, one could easily see that Carter Morgan's expression seemed somewhat sleepwalking.

But if you didn't know the truth, he clearly looked like he had been waiting for a long time and finally got what he had been dreaming of today—it's normal to look a little dazed when your desire is about to come true, isn't it?

“What are you worried about? My dad hasn’t come home yet,” Fu Tailan said. “Don’t just stand there. Did you bring towels? No? And you didn’t prepare any water for me? You really don’t know anything about hospitality.”

The bodyguards didn't move; several burly men stared silently at Fu Tai Lan with expressionless faces.

“Is this it?” Carter walked a few steps in front of Fu Tailan, stopped, and asked, “So that’s how it is… So that target illusion really was like a dream.”

...It would be too easy to create a dream for him.

All you need to do is plan ahead and turn the things the two of you will say and the events that will happen when you meet into a dream exactly as they are—in this dream, the "dreamscape" in Fu Tailan's hand is one of the target illusions.

When people are dreaming, they don't question their dreams at all.

No matter how absurd or fantastical the thing is, in a dream it is a reality that a person is completely immersed in and believes in; so even though Carter Morgan had clearly seen the illustration of the target's illusion, and the dream did not match any of them, he still became breathless and his face gradually turned red.

Carter raised a slightly trembling hand, about to touch the dream, but then stopped.

Because Fu Tai Lan was the conductor of this performance.

He had already set the beat, intending to make Carter Morgan stop there before he could deliver his lines.

“Mr. Morgan, only a dominant player can catch this,” Fu Tailan said in a low voice. “Where are you going to put it? I’ll have to deliver it.”

The bodyguards around them kept a close eye on the two men's every move, their professionalism befitting their salaries—but they clearly had no idea that everything they saw, including their boss's excitement and surprise, was an illusion, an act, a lie.

...If you're going to take action against Fu Tailan, you should be prepared to be trapped by lies, shouldn't you?
"Only players? You mean—" Carter's face lit up with ecstatic joy in his dream. "You really were re-recruited?"

“Yeah,” Fu Tailan shrugged. “After all, just as you predicted, once we got our hands on the target artifacts, the Nest Domination game had no choice but to revert to my player status.”

“Okay, okay,” Carter replied naturally, as if the two were having a real conversation. “Great. What about the other artifacts? Let me see them.”

Fu Tailan first looked at the bodyguards.

“What I’m about to bring out is what your boss wants,” he said with a smile. “Don’t get too alarmed and shoot me.”

"and many more,"

Carter's words came a little late, but the timing was still good. Well, one can't be too demanding of perfection. He waved to Fu Tailan and said, "Don't move. Tell them where it is and let them take it."

Fu Tailan sighed deeply, raised both hands, and let a bodyguard take out the things he had prepared beforehand.

The bodyguard, also a hunter, put everything into a brown leather handbag. Before handing it to Carter, he couldn't help but glance at it again, his face full of suspicion. It's understandable that he was puzzled.

Experienced hunters can more or less sense the "aura" of the decoy—but at this moment, the leather handbag only contained some disposable cell phones, billboards, and other ordinary odds and ends; to make up the numbers, Fu Tailan even found half a brick from the roadside.

But no matter how much they doubted, when Carter looked into the bag and was immediately overjoyed, they had no room to object.

“Great, fantastic! I never expected you could actually do it.” Carter clutched his bag tightly, as if the junk inside was his life. “This dream, can it go into the vault?”

Although the dream didn't speak, perhaps because Fu Tai Lan was pinching it, he could almost feel that the dream seemed to "look" at him after hearing what he said.

It has nothing to worry about; how could he possibly lock such a useful resident in Carter Morgan's vault?

“Of course,” Fu Tailan said with a smile, “I can send it over.”

“Okay, once we get there, add me on board, and I'll let you take Fu Han with you.” Carter nodded immediately. “Let’s go now. Go get the car.”

One of the bodyguards immediately turned his head away and gave an order into his earpiece—the car Carter was going to get in would naturally not be the one Fu Tailan had just gotten out of; this was not hard to predict, and it wasn't too risky to have pre-set this order in his dream.

The only tricky thing is that Fu Tailan doesn't know where Carter has locked Fu Han up, nor can he have Carter bring Fu Han out in his dream—because he doesn't know who Carter should call.

For this reason, Carter's dream had to end after the others got on the bus.

When Fu Tailan fired the gun and shattered his dream, he had no transition; the dream and reality were worlds apart.

What about considering it from the other extreme?
If the transition between dreams and reality is natural enough, for example, if Carter gets into a car in his dream and gradually wakes up in the car, will he still notice anything unusual?

Even dreams couldn't provide an answer to this question—according to them, they've never tried to smoothly transition people into reality. Once the goal is achieved, who cares whether the dreamer lives or dies?
“It’s worth a try,” Fu Tailan said to Mengjing at that time, “After all, there’s no other way.”

"Aren't you afraid that once he wakes up, he'll look at the 'target illusion' you prepared again?" Dream asked.

Despite being a coerced character, it seems to be experiencing this trap for the first time and is quite enthusiastic.

“I’m scared,” Fu Tailan said. “Once he’s sober, he’ll know at a glance that everything I gave him is garbage.”

"What about you?"

There's no good way, but there is a clumsy one.

During the few minutes he waited for the car to arrive, Carter Morgan looked as if he were crawling on ants—he kept muttering questions to Fu Tailan about how she had managed to get her hands on all the target artifacts, while repeatedly opening his handbag and scrubbing and examining the "target artifacts."

Of course, he was still dreaming, and every examination filled him with joy.

“Mr. Morgan,” the head bodyguard reminded him after he opened his bag again, “the car is almost here, let’s get in and take a look.”

"Haven't you seen enough? How many more times do you want to see it?" Fu Tailan's words were sincere. "It's all what you wanted, right?"

“Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted,” Carter Morgan murmured, repeating the phrase several times.

"Then you must remember this feeling," Fu Tailan prayed silently in her heart.

In the distance of the underground parking garage, the sounds of engines and tires rolling over the ground rose up; soon, headlights pierced the air, bright beams of light like straight ropes, pulling in two wet SUVs.

Including Fu Tailan, there were a total of seven people in the group; Fu Tailan naturally had to share a car with Carter.

After the bodyguard captain opened the car door for Carter and got in after his boss, he gestured for Fu Tailan to sit next to him and pulled out a pair of handcuffs—"Excuse me, you don't mind wearing these for now, do you?"

Fu Tailan was stunned.

He glanced at the bodyguard captain, not at Carter who was still asleep, and then at the other bodyguard in the passenger seat.

He took a half step back, his gaze sweeping across the open door of the second SUV.

“…Mr. Fu?” the bodyguard captain called out. “What’s wrong? Please get in the car.”

Fu Tailan turned around when he called her, and stared at him for a few seconds.

"Sorry, handcuffs are necessary." The bodyguard captain had clearly misunderstood.

So... he really couldn't tell?
Fu Tailan walked step by step toward the SUV, stopped by the door, and finally couldn't help but glance at the driver.

Yes, this one too.

Two cars, two drivers, but neither of them has a head.

On their shoulders was only a wisp of black mist that kept floating and drifting... just like the Black Abyss Belt he had seen in the Wei family manor.

What's going on? How could the Black Abyss Belt swallow a person's head and appear on their shoulder?
Why were the others completely unaware?

Why were those two drivers still able to drive?
"Mr. Fu?" The bodyguard captain's face had completely darkened, one hand on his hip. "What are you going to do?"

Fu Tailan thought for a few seconds, slightly bewildered.

"Nothing,"

He sighed softly, dragging his dream along, and slowly got into the car. "...Thinking about it now, it's not important."

(End of this chapter)