Illusion Report

Emily hadn’t described this street in detail. Thinking back now, she probably had no idea how to describe it at all.

Human language often seemed inadequate inside a Nest.

Mai Mingle stared for a while. What gradually crept up on her wasn’t adjectives, metaphors, or plain descriptions, but waves of dizziness and nausea.

The entire street was only a few dozen meters long; calling it a "street" was generous. Yet, it was crammed with sixteen and a half Tourist Information Centers. It was "sixteen and a half" because the back half of Tourist Information Center No. 17 was also on the same street.

It was like a car that had been rear-ended, its back end smashed in by another tangled, competing mass of Tourist Information Centers.

At a point roughly three hundred and fifty meters along their path, Mai Mingle and Emily stopped in unison.

The street was short, and they had now reached its end. Ahead was a crossroads. Starting from the intersection, everything became calm and orderly again. There were no more of the twisted, clamorous, car-crash-like Tourist Information Centers to be seen.

The two of them exchanged a look from across the narrow road.

Emily first glanced at her phone, likely reviewing the rules from the warning poster to avoid making a mistake. Then, she pointed to a half-crooked door beside her, indicating she would check the "Tourist Information Center" on her side.

Mai Mingle nodded, signaling that she would also start searching for clues from her side.

She took a step forward, avoiding the doorway on the other side of the road, before turning toward the "Tourist Information Center" on her right. As she turned, she carefully made sure her back wasn’t facing the entrance.

The wall’s surface seemed to peel away in layers, and the display window was sunk deep within it, almost like a tunnel.

She tore her gaze away. Emily was standing inside the information center’s doorway, staring at her.

Mai Mingle sucked in a sharp breath, nearly crying out. She took half a step back before she realized what she was looking at.

The doorframe was barely standing upright, but it still held the shape of a door despite the pressure from the surrounding Tourist Information Centers.

But the door itself was gone. In its place, a huge theater troupe poster completely blocked the opening. It had been pasted onto the frame from the inside, as if to perform the function of a door. In the corner, it even said "No. 1."

Mai Mingle didn’t know what was on the poster before her eyes fell on it.

When she saw it, Emily was already printed on the poster. In the image, Emily stood behind a set of iron bars, half her face squeezed through the gap, her expression still blank as she stared at Mai Mingle with one calm eye.

A thin poster, a flat Emily... Of course, it wasn’t the real person, just a 2D image.

Beneath the poster was a line of text: The Imprisoned Woman

Performance Date: 2026.11.24

That was today.

Mai Mingle immediately looked back over her shoulder. Across the road, her back wasn’t facing a doorway, nor was any doorway stealthily creeping up behind her.

Emily, however, was even more cautious. She hadn’t turned around at all and was facing the Tourist Information Center sideways.

Her head was turned, and she was crouching on the ground, peering between the display windows of two stacked "Tourist Information Centers." Mai Mingle could only see the back of her head and her long hair spilling over her shoulders. The front of Emily’s body was still facing the crossroads ahead, with only the sidewalk behind her.

Only then did Mai Mingle breathe a sigh of relief.

’There’s no need to tell Emily her picture is on a poster. It would just make her needlessly anxious—though that girl has such a steady personality, she doesn’t seem like someone who gets worried easily.’

Mai Mingle’s gaze returned to the poster.

’Was this poster here when we walked by just now?’

’Even if it was, it definitely didn’t have Emily’s picture on it, or I would have noticed sooner. Humans are very sensitive to being watched, even by an image.’

’Especially a life-sized one.’

The Emily behind the iron bars extended a hand through the gap, as if guiding Mai Mingle to look at the phone screen in her hand.

The screen was divided into two parts: the top two-thirds was a white background with a floating green dialogue box, and the bottom third was a keyboard.

Mai Mingle had seen this interface before, when Hai Luwei was teaching her how to send a text message.

But she couldn’t make out the specific text in the message.

’...Since it’s not a "program list," it should be fine to look, right?’

Mai Mingle first reviewed the rules, then pretended to glance casually at the phone screen on the poster. She herself didn’t know who she was trying to fool with that act.

I’ve been locked up by the Tourist Information Center, please save me

Tap the letters on the keyboard in order to spell RELEASE

and you can let me out

Mai Mingle shot upright and took a large step back, almost stumbling into the road.

She twisted her head to look across the street. Emily hadn’t noticed a thing happening on this side. She was still crouching in place, her head turned, peering into the space between two crammed-together windows. Between the windows wasn’t a wall or a frame, but a deep, black crevice.

’...What is she looking at in that crevice?’

Mai Mingle didn’t call out to her, nor did she reach out to touch the keyboard on the poster.

She did a half-turn, her back to the nearby crossroads, and walked toward the next Tourist Information Center. In truth, all the buildings were like a shattered, chaotic Picasso painting, with fragments haphazardly stacked and squeezed together. If not for the fact that each Tourist Information Center had managed to retain a doorway by the street, each with a number on it, it would be impossible to tell them apart.

For example, as she walked past a wall, she discovered a display window set horizontally, wedged inside a narrow, horizontal crack in the middle of the wall.

It wasn’t just a window frame or a piece of glass, but a real window connected to a room. When Mai Mingle tilted her head to peer inside, she could even see a performance ad in the window, and behind it—or rather, below it?—a corner of the room.

The entire room seemed to have been turned upside down and buried in the wall.

"...Where’s the door?"

Almost as if in response to her gaze, the moment Mai Mingle got a clear look at the room below the window, she heard a thin voice from near the window.

It sounded like someone was hiding behind the window—no, the voice was too close, as if it were hidden inside the wall itself.

It was clearly a man’s voice, but he was putting on a high-pitched, reedy falsetto to imitate a woman. "Isn’t it ironic? I came in here looking for the Old Port Map. I found the map, but now I’m lost inside the Tourist Information Center and can’t find the door. Where’s the door? I want to get out. Here’s what you do: just keep walking, and as soon as you look at the door, I’ll know where it is, and I can open it myself and get out."

’...Old Port Map?’

Mai Mingle’s heart seemed to skip a beat. ’If there was a local map of Old Port, then the location of Annie’s Warehouse should be on it, right?’

Of course, she had absolutely no intention of letting that thing out. Just knowing that the Old Port Map might exist was enough to give her a great deal of hope.

Mai Mingle didn’t know which numbered Tourist Information Center that room belonged to, so she kept her eyes glued to the paving stones, not daring to glance at the doors along the road. She silently walked past what seemed like three or four doors before she finally felt it was safe to look up again.

The door she was about to pass was made of glass. It was clean and whole, glowing as a bright rectangle from the light inside, something that simply shouldn’t exist on this jumbled, twisted street.

"...Mai Mingle?" a muffled voice said, as if its mouth were covered by the glass.

Mai Mingle whipped her head around.

Behind the glass door, Li Stan was raising a hand, as if about to knock on the glass to get her attention. Mai Mingle’s eyes immediately shot to his chest.

Li Stan had a lanyard around his neck, but where the fluorescent orange tag should have been, it was blocked by a brass plaque on the glass door.

No. 07 Tourist Information Center

"You made it here too? Looks like nobody knows where Annie’s Warehouse is, huh."

Li Stan’s voice was muffled by the glass. He seemed happy to see a familiar face. "Do you want to come in?"

Even if there were no rules, Mai Mingle wouldn’t have just boldly pushed the door open. She hesitated for a moment, then lifted her own tag and gestured toward him with her chin.

Li Stan understood.

He lowered his head, pulled up the lanyard, and showed her a fluorescent orange tag.

Through the glass door, his clothes and appearance were exactly the same as before. He even had a supply bag from Kai Jiafa hanging from his arm.

Mai Mingle let out a small sigh of relief, but her heart immediately tensed up again. "Get out here, quick!" she said in a low voice. "We can’t just go in. It could be dangerous."

But Li Stan shook his head.

"No, I can’t leave yet. Next to the door of this tourist center, there’s a digital screen, you know, the kind that cycles through photos? When I first came in, I thought I saw a building with ’Annie’ something in the name... I’m waiting for that photo to show up again. Why shouldn’t you come in? I’ve been in here for several minutes already, and nothing’s happened."

As he spoke, he kept glancing to the side, staring at a spot blocked by a wall that Mai Mingle couldn’t see. ’That must be the digital screen, right?’

’Does that mean... Tourist Information Center No. 07 isn’t the real thing, which is why Li Stan is okay?’

"Emily and I found a poster with rules on it," Mai Mingle said. "The poster said we can’t enter the real ’Tourist Information Center’... I took a picture, I can show you."

As expected of a Hunter, Li Stan was only momentarily surprised before he understood.

"So you’re saying this isn’t the real ’Tourist Information Center,’ and that’s why I’m fine?"

That strange, cloud-like feeling—shapeless and difficult to put into words—rose up again, hazy and indistinct.

Mai Mingle had no idea where this strange feeling was coming from, but she nodded.

Li Stan’s gaze was once again drawn to the spot behind the wall that she couldn’t see.

"You keep looking, then," Mai Mingle said, already preparing to leave as she remembered the first rule: don’t follow acquaintances. "If you find anything—"

Li Stan’s eyes, fixed on the corner, suddenly lit up, and he drew in a breath.

"There it is! That’s the one! So that’s what Annie’s Warehouse looks like," he said, his eyes still glued to the digital screen. He quickly waved her over. "Quick, come in and see! Have you seen this building before?"

Mai Mingle’s heart leaped—’Great, there’s finally hope of finding Annie’s Warehouse!’—but just as she placed her hand on the door to push it open, she froze.

...Looking closely, she saw Li Stan’s expression was anything but relaxed.

The hair at his temples was slightly damp with sweat. A faint vein throbbed on his forehead, betraying the speed of his heartbeat.

Through the glass door, Mai Mingle couldn’t hear any subtle sounds, but she clearly saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.

Another question surfaced.

’Why isn’t Li Stan opening the door himself?’

’Is it like everything else she’d seen so far, unable to be opened?’

As Mai Mingle quickly backed away from the glass door, putting several steps between herself and Tourist Information Center No. 07, a long, drawn-out howl erupted from behind it.

"Don’t go! DON’T GO, DON’T GO, DON’T GO! Open the door for me! OPEN THE DOOR!"