Illusion Report

"What, did you really think I’d let him fall completely into the trap?"

Chaisi squatted on the floor by the door, like a giant spider forced to curl up its long legs.

The back alley was still lit by the same single motion-sensor light, but he felt his senses sharpening, the corners of his vision starting to glow faintly.

...’This feels good.’

It was as if fate had suddenly decided to be considerate, to yield and let him have his way for once.

The more Chaisi looked at the scene before him, the more absurd he found it. He was even interrupted by his own laughter a few times as he spoke, "...After all the trouble of you delivering someone to me, how could I let it go to waste?"

If anyone saw him now, they’d most likely think Chaisi was murdering and dismembering someone.

One knee on the ground, he leaned forward slightly, his arms stretched out—but he didn’t dare extend them fully into the night outside the door.

In his hands, Chaisi was tightly gripping a pair of a man’s lower legs.

The man’s lower legs were motionless. The pant legs were askew and rolled up, revealing coarse leg hair and black socks underneath. Following the legs up past the knees, they abruptly vanished into thin air halfway up the thighs.

There was no blood, no wound, only a clean, smooth dividing line. The cross-section was invisible.

On one side of the dividing line was the dark alley; on the other was Chaisi, trying to stifle his laughter and not daring to let go.

When he’d flipped the man over and shoved him into the alley, the man had naturally struggled, his arms windmilling as he tried to grab the doorframe.

That was when Chaisi decided to give him a hand, kicking him in the ass. The moment the man’s feet left the ground, Chaisi moved with lightning-fast reflexes, bending to grab his lower legs and yanking them back. This sent most of the man’s body tumbling into the trap, leaving only his legs from the mid-thigh down.

’Lucky my hands are big.’

"Can you hear me through this square thingy?"

Chaisi asked, not expecting an answer. "I wonder what it looks like from your perspective... His upper body got disassembled, right? Can he still be alive if he’s only half-disassembled? Oh, are you wondering why I left his legs? The reason is, of course—"

He cut himself off.

Chaisi vaguely suspected the amphetamines were making him talkative.

’Why am I so eager to share?’

There was, of course, a reason for leaving the man’s legs, but there was no need to say it out loud—though the person on the other side of the square trap might not be able to hear him clearly anyway.

He had originally thought the square trap was flush against the doorway.

Without leaning out, he couldn’t see the sides of the doorframe. Since the door opened outwards, the rain was more disturbed the closer it was to the doorway, which made it difficult to judge the trap’s exact distance from the entrance by observing the downpour.

But now, thanks to the person the assassin had delivered, everything was crystal clear. The man’s thighs lay just half a step outside the door, with everything above them gone—it was as if the man’s vanished body had drawn the trap’s boundary line for Chaisi.

...’So that’s where the trap begins,’ Chaisi mused, sizing up that patch of ground.

It was like trying to park a car; one couldn’t always stop perfectly in the center between two other cars. For the square Illusion to activate only half a step from the door was already a demonstration of considerable precision.

To others, that tiny bit of distance might seem useless and insignificant, right?

The bar door was recessed into the wall. This meant that while there was a small gap between the trap and the door, the trap was almost completely flush with the wall, not even leaving enough room for someone to press against it and sidle out. Even if one managed to get a foothold in the space between the door and the trap, what could they possibly do?

But... of all things in the world, the hardest is to push open the door.

Chaisi could now see the sliver of light from the exit; he just needed to think a little more.

Taking random drugs was a terrible thing. Before he knew it, he found himself talking again, "...If his entire upper body was shredded, his only fate would be death."

The pair of lower legs hadn’t moved for a while. He let go, and the legs fell to the ground, insensate, the ankles turning limply.

He pressed a hand behind the man’s knee joint and felt it for a moment.

"But this Illusion of yours is truly remarkable... His popliteal artery is still pulsing."

Chaisi looked up at the dim, rainy alley outside the door and said in a low voice, "His upper body should have been completely disassembled... Does this mean ’dismantling’ isn’t life-threatening?"

Han Liuyue was thrown out intact. So it wasn’t because she’s no longer human and can’t be killed, but because a person can be reassembled after being ’dismantled’?

’Does that mean Jin Xueli might still be alive?’

Fortunately, he managed to hold his tongue and didn’t say this last sentence out loud.

Chaisi wanted to save someone unconnected to the Kai Family—as long as he never said it himself, probably no one in the world would ever guess, nor would they believe it.

"This thing isn’t a one-hit kill, yet you still went to such great lengths to make me step into it..."

Without a doubt, it was to get the "Rumor" out of his mouth.

The "Rumor’s" special method of transfer meant it couldn’t be taken by ordinary means.

He didn’t know how that bodyguard, Ivan, had gotten his hands on it, but you couldn’t dig the "Rumor" out of the mouth of a dead man who couldn’t speak.

As if sensing itself in his thoughts, the "Rumor" chose that moment to shift in his mouth, pressing a bulge against his cheek before settling back down.

"Setting the trap right at the door and waiting for me to walk in was indeed a viable plan. But after I saw through it, you chose to adopt the idea of an idiot who doesn’t even know how to drink water, having someone push me in from behind... That part is very interesting."

When Han Liuyue was thrown to the other side of the alley, he had seen clearly that the square trap was also some distance from the opposite wall—enough for a person to stand there.

Even if the square trap only accepts living things, if the assassin stood on the other side and shot him in the leg, then wouldn’t Chaisi be unable to escape the fate of being dismantled, regardless of whether he fell forward or backward?

There should be only one reason for not shooting from the other side: it’s impossible to shoot from the other side.

Why is it impossible to shoot from the other side?

Can’t the strands of rain pass through the square trap?

His phone started vibrating with a BUZZ. Chaisi glanced at the screen and saw it was a call from Han Liuyue. After a moment’s thought, he let out a low laugh.

Chaisi hung up the phone.

"First guess... you were worried I had a gun. That my bullets, like Han Liuyue, would be thrown out, creating a spray of stray shots that would end up getting you killed instead. This guess, well, it seems reasonable at first glance."

But after Han Liuyue turned on them, the assassin should have known very well that he was unarmed.

"Second guess... requires a bit of wild imagination, a willingness to shed the constraints of reality’s laws."

On the side facing him, a line of text had once flashed by in an instant:

"Character command input error; Reason: Not fully human"

When he first saw it, Chaisi’s attention had been entirely focused on "Not fully human"—which was understandable—but now he realized the key point was actually somewhere else.

"Input."

That word was very interesting.

’If there’s an input... is there an output?’

Thinking about it... Han Liuyue had gone in through this side and, without exiting from any other, had been thrown out from the opposite one.

Was the side that threw her out the corresponding "output" side?

Could the reason they didn’t shoot at him from the opposite side be that it was impossible to input anything into the "output side"?

If his theory was correct, then the top side, the one the falling raindrops touched, must also be an "input side."

Input side, output side, a cube, Westley.

Chaisi let out a low laugh.

"...I think I know what Illusion you have."