Artifact Report

Chapter 409 Fu Tai Lan - Valid Question

"Handbag!"

This was the first word Carter blurted out after calming himself down.

He was sitting with his buttocks pressed between the thighs of the bodyguard's corpse, unsteady and afraid to sit down. He grabbed the handle of the car with one hand, propping himself up to keep his distance from the corpse, and shouted, "Handbag—did you take the handbag? So many target decoys are in the handbag. What if they get caught by Chai Si... Fu Tailan, what are you laughing at?"

Fu Tailan finally caught her breath, gradually stopped laughing, and reached out to wipe away her tears.

When he put the steering wheel back on, he noticed that besides tears and lingering rain, there were also several streaks of diluted blood on his hands.

He didn't rush to answer Carter; instead, he checked his face in the rearview mirror first.

Fu Tailan didn't even notice when Chai Si had slapped her in the face.

A cut was visible on my cheekbone, whitish from being soaked in rainwater, swollen high, and a pale pinkish-red color like dead fish flesh. Hopefully, it won't leave a scar.

Thinking about it this way, it seems my ribs are also aching in the distance, maybe they're cracked...

"Fu Tai Lan!"

Carter's sharp shout brought him back to his attention. "Where's your handbag? Don't tell me you didn't take it with you when you left, I won't believe you."

His main activity just now was lying on the road pretending to be dead. He knew that Fu Tai Lan had hidden the pistol, ambushed Chai Si, and even unloaded the bullets in advance. So Carter certainly didn't think that Fu Tai Lan would be so flustered as to forget his handbag when he escaped.

Fu Tailan's gaze shifted, passing over the bodyguard's waist.

Without answering a word, he suddenly turned the steering wheel, and the SUV swung at a sharp angle, throwing Carter, who was half-standing between the corpse's thighs, out of the car and crashing headfirst into the door.

Amid Carter's screams and curses, Fu Tailan leisurely reached out and pulled a gun from the waist of the bodyguard's corpse.

By the time Carter regained his balance, the SUV had resumed a steady ride, and the gun was lying on Fu Tailan's lap.

Carter looked at the gun, then at Fu Tailan.

“You know, guns are useless against me…” he said with a slight hesitation.

“I pulled you into the car, of course I know,” Fu Tailan said lightly. “Don’t worry, I’ve taken the handbag.”

After "shooting" Carter, Han Liuyue quickly glanced at the handbag on the ground—at that time, Carter had his eyes closed to pretend to be dead and did not notice that Han Liuyue immediately lost interest in the handbag and turned away.

It's understandable to lose interest, since it's all garbage.

Or rather, while all those billboards, disposable phones, and even bricks were indeed trash—among all those pieces of trash, there was something Han Liuyue should have been very familiar with, but had just missed.

Fu Tailan picked up her handbag from beside her feet, drove with one hand, and reached into the bag with the other to take out the power strip she had obtained from Chai Si in the ward.

He lost his blank ID and mouth doll, and in return he got this power strip.

Whether he lost out or not, he couldn't say for sure, but no matter what he had on hand, Fu Tai Lan always managed to make the most of it, even finding unexpected uses for it—such as vulture particles.

Carter's initial surprise at seeing the handbag was quickly replaced by confusion when he saw the power strip.

"Huh, is this also a target illusion?"

He licked his lips, still gripping the handle, half-bent over, crouching in front of the passenger seat, his eyes fixed on the leather handbag. "You should give it to me, Fu Tailan. I'm not afraid of you hitting me, but you'll have to consider your father..."

Fu Tailan tossed the handbag to him—a sharp pain immediately shot through her ribs. It really was cracked, wasn't it?
Carter hadn't expected him to be so quick to agree; he immediately placed the bag on the bodyguard's legs and began digging around in it.

When he looked up blankly, his curly hair was plastered to his forehead, his eyes were wide open, his mouth was half open, and his lips were red and shiny from being soaked in water. He looked more like a pig than ever before.

"The target artifact was switched?" he murmured, seemingly trying to recall. "No...no...this is what you gave me in the beginning. But these aren't the target artifacts. I clearly remember you giving me target artifacts...what happened?"

Fu Tailan, holding the power strip, had carefully read the words on the back and turned to smile at him.

"So rustic?"

"Huh? What?"

"Your self-defense avatar is actually called 'All-Around Life Safety Shield 360,' how tacky is that?"

Carter was startled. "How did you know—"

Fu Tailan's finger found the "No Dead Angle Life Safety Shield 360" and pushed the small switch.

The next moment, he grabbed his pistol, his gaze still fixed on the road ahead, and fired a shot into Carter's foot. Carter, really, there wasn't a single thing about him that was original.

He had only been shot in the sole of his foot, yet he burst into tears, cursing and screaming, his whole body trembling, tears streaming down his face... He even tripped and fell onto the corpse, demanding to know how Fu Tailan had done it and where the fake image on his body had gone.

Is it that rich kids can't tolerate pain, or that all humans are intolerant of pain?

To drown out the noise, Fu Tailan turned on the car radio and tapped the gun barrel against the steering wheel in rhythm. After several dozen seconds of this, Carter finally caught his breath and regained some of his composure.

"I...I understand."

He sniffed hard, wiping away the snot and tears on his face. "Yes... I admit defeat. I was wrong, I shouldn't have targeted your father, I underestimated you. You lied to me, didn't you? With that dream? You made me think the bag was full of decoy targets... Now I admit defeat, I'll give your father back to you, and whatever else you want, I'll give it to you."

Being able to assess the situation and change course accordingly is a skill in itself.

“Just let me go, let me go to the hospital—no, no, just let me call a doctor.” Carter could speak earnestly and sincerely after all: “Ever since you saw your father last time, I’ve been a bit cunning, I’ve been wary of you and moved your father to a different place. But don’t worry! Everything is in place, I haven’t treated him badly. I’ll take you there, and once we’re there, you can let me call a doctor…”

To show his sincerity, he even entered the address into the car's navigation system—as he entered it, he repeatedly assured him that he would definitely cooperate.

Fu Tailan smiled, glanced at him, and said, "Didn't expect that?"

Carter mumbled something, like an employee unsure how to respond to his boss.

"You still don't understand when and how I transferred the passage to Fu Han, right?"

“You are a first-rate genius hunter,” Carter said almost sweetly. “The methods and illusions you can use, combined with your intellect, are beyond my imagination…”

Fu Tailan grew tired of looking at his face, so she turned her head to look at the road ahead under the rain.

"In truth, it's not difficult at all," he said softly. "As long as you have the right deception, and you can use a calculated attack on someone who isn't paying attention, then no matter who it is, they won't be able to defend against it. Isn't Kaironan the best example of that?"

"Yes, yes, that's amazing," Carter gasped for breath despite the pain, but that didn't stop him from praising her.

“When I was still the hunter supervisor, I sold two fakes.” Looking back now, Fu Tailan felt that the Mouth Doll and the Blank ID had really gone all out for him. “You all thought they were sold to old customers, but actually they ended up in my hands.”

With those two false identities, he could constantly change his identity and always be the person with the most convenient way to act at the moment, step by step walking into the county jail where the Morgan family imprisoned Fu Han. Yes, even though he was not arrested as a murderer and was not sentenced, the Morgan family could still find a way to put Fu Han in prison and let him taste a bit of the future among serious criminals.

When Fu Tailan wanted to meet Fu Han, Carter was actually eager to.

When Fu Han was in prison, he was like a slug meeting salt. When he saw his son, he collapsed onto the table and almost burst into tears. Carter must have thought that seeing Fu Han like that would make Fu Tai Lan feel even more upset and stressed.

Indeed, it's not wrong.

"You moved him away the day after we met, but I went back the same afternoon I saw him. Seeing him once, knowing where he is, and then going back to find him under a different identity—what difficulty is there? This facade of changing identities was sold to me by your Morgan family. Isn't that interesting?"

Carter listened blankly, his eyes slowly widening.

"Just those two illusions?" he muttered. "No... wait, that's not right. When the Morgan family sold those two illusions, I had no idea about Dominion Game, and I considered you a hunter talent I had painstakingly recruited. You... you can't predict the future, so how could you have started buying illusions from the Morgan family so early on, preparing to deal with me?"

Returning to the matter of the train ticket from November 16th, Fu Tailan did not intend to explain—not because he had any reservations, but simply because explaining it would be too troublesome and complicated, and he was too lazy to do so.

“The problem of invalidity,” he said calmly.

"what?"

“There’s no point in asking this question,” Fu Tailan smiled and said, “Do you know what a truly effective question is?”

After he finished speaking, he glanced at the car's navigation system.

The second place where Fu Han was detained was in the city center, not far from them; if nothing unexpected happened, they would arrive in a little while.

Along the way, he had seen many things that defied common sense, most of them people whose human forms had been lost. However, none of them had yet bothered the vehicle.

"What constitutes a truly effective question?" Carter asked blankly.

Very simple.

Looking at the hazy, dark shadows of buildings in the distant rain, Fu Tailan whispered, "...Why didn't I take Fu Han away when I could have found a way to do so secretly?"

Why did he go to such great lengths to give the passageway to the Han people?
"The final scene..."

Fu Tailan smiled slightly, her mind somewhat dazed, whether from blood loss or injury. "I've been waiting for so long."

(End of this chapter)