Artifact Report

Chapter 229: Fu Tailan: Reasonable

...If only he hadn't woken up.

Fu Tailan was unexpectedly calm—no, perhaps it shouldn't be called calm.

He was more like a piece of paper that had been crumpled and rolled up repeatedly, with its texture and fibers broken. It had no strength to piece together its original shape and could only be spread out in the shape of a human on the hospital bed.

He lay motionless on the bed, watching the doctors and nurses coming and going, checking and asking questions, and he felt so tired that he even couldn't open his mouth.

"Do you remember what happened before you came to the hospital?"

"Ah."

"How does it feel? Can you feel the pressure on your limbs?"

"can."

"Is the pain severe? Do you need more pain relief—"

"It hurts," Fu Tailan said immediately. "Open it a little more, I need it."

After the medical staff left, he lay alone in bed, keeping his eyes closed, trying to hypnotize his brain into a coma again. As long as he fainted, the outside world would have nothing to do with him, and he didn't need to think about anything.

But unfortunately, until Remi returned to the ward, he was still awake and could feel his eyelids trembling slightly - since he couldn't pretend anymore, he might as well open his eyes.

"Mr. Morgan is on his way," Remi glanced at him.

Although the age, occasion and situation were wrong, Fu Tailan still remembered that when a classmate got into trouble and was called to the principal's office, similar expressions would appear on the faces of other students.

He is really not in a state to deal with the boss now.

"Do you have the energy to speak?"

Remi paused, then suddenly shook her head and smiled, her dark brown lips curling up. "Well, even if I don't have the energy, I have to squeeze it out. There's nothing I can do. Is there anything you need? I was just about to go get a coffee."

That being said, he hadn't eaten for over 48 hours, but Fu Tailan didn't feel hungry.

He was about to shake his head when "coffee" suddenly touched a nerve.

"Why don't you go home? I'm already awake."

"Because of the friction between you and Kai's family," Remi shrugged. "Just in case, not only will I be keeping an eye on you here, but I've also arranged for someone to be stationed in your apartment."

She mentioned this just now...

Fu Tailan always felt that he seemed to have overlooked a problem.

But he was extremely tired at the moment, and his mind was numb and blank. If he neglected it, it would be as if it didn't exist, and he didn't have the energy to think about it.

He could only grasp the idea that had just come to his mind and said, "Who's guarding the apartment? Ask him to give me a video call."

"what happened?"

"I want to see what's going on in the apartment."

Remi didn't ask any more questions. A few minutes later, Fu Tailan had already hung up the video call. He asked the resident hunter to hold up his phone and walk around the apartment to film him. He didn't specify where he should go, but in the blink of an eye, he saw that the cat painting on the kitchen wall had disappeared.

Fu Han followed his instructions and took away the kitten painting.

Suddenly, Fu Tailan wanted to know every detail of that night, just like when he was twelve years old; he turned the house upside down, looking for clues, trying to figure out where his father had gone and how long he planned to be gone.

"What time was I taken to the hospital on the 21st?"

Remi thought for a moment. "About ten o'clock in the evening? No later than ten-thirty."

Judging from the timing, Fu Han acted quickly; as soon as he returned to the apartment, he immediately called an ambulance and sent Fu Tailan to the hospital in time.

"Who did Fu Han call when he called for help?"

Remi scratched her head. "It's me," she said.

"What did he say?"

"He spoke in a hurry, saying you were seriously injured at home and that he had called an ambulance. He also said he had a leg injury and was losing blood, and he wanted to go with the ambulance. He told me to go to the hospital immediately and to send someone to guard the apartment. He said these were your last instructions before you fell into a coma."

Fu Tailan didn't even remember that he had given this order - but when he thought about it carefully, he first asked Fu Han to take away the kitten painting, and then asked someone to guard the apartment which was actually no longer worth guarding. This was indeed his style.

It is said that the ambulance arrived earlier than the hunters sent by the family; Fu Han must have brought the kitten painting with him and came to the hospital together.

"What did Fu Han say to you after you came to the hospital?"

Remi shrugged. "I didn't see either of you for quite a while after I arrived at the hospital. You were in surgery, and Mr. Fu Han was also tending to his injuries."

After the injury was treated, Fu Han asked her to continue waiting for Fu Tailan outside the operating room, saying that he wanted to smoke. Ignoring the nurse's objection, he went out with crutches; no one saw him again after that.

When he disappeared, the clock had just passed twelve and the date had just jumped to the 22nd.

Fu Tailan closed his eyes.

His mind was hazy and tired, unable to think, but he couldn't lose consciousness cleanly.

There was no point in asking; he had dug out a bunch of receipts, business cards, internet records and the like, but he could only sit at home and wait in confusion.

Fu Tailan took out his cell phone and stared at the notice of his expulsion for nearly ten minutes.

……that's all?

It's like treating people like clowns.

I give you a hope and a goal, then snatch it away from you, telling you that you never deserved it and that it was your fault that it was taken away from you.

Simply because Fu Han took the key away——

Fu Tailan closed his eyes tightly, choking off his thoughts. But more thoughts kept coming back like weeds.

In the early morning of the 22nd, while he was still unconscious, Shibashi obtained another target artifact, but he was fired without doing anything - "Supervisor?"

Ruimi called him softly, and Fu Tailan opened his eyes.

"Mr. Morgan is here."

He pretended not to hear the footsteps coming in the door.

When Rui Mi said, "I'll go out and get some coffee, you guys chat," Fu Tailan just stared at the ceiling, took a few breaths, and gave himself some time - until someone sat down next to him, he finally turned his head slowly.

Carter Morgan caught his gaze and, in the silence, grinned at him.

Fu Tailan's internal organs suddenly tightened.

Carter Morgan didn't like to tan, so his skin was pink and red, and he always looked like he had a good night's sleep last night and had a few cocktails in the afternoon.

Although he had regular features and a well-maintained body, and there was no physical resemblance between him and Tailan, he always reminded her of a kind, amiable, and well-maintained pig.

Fu Tailan had never seen a real pig; his deepest impression of pigs came from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" on the school reading list.

At this moment, Carter smiled kindly and his eyes were bright.

"Too blue,"

He said kindly, "The doctor said your condition has stabilized?"

"I'm still very weak." said Fu Tailan.

Carter Morgan nodded, having heard it, but did not indicate that he would leave as soon as possible to let Fu Tailan have a good rest.

After saying the polite words, he didn't beat around the bush again.

"You're a renowned and talented hunter in your circle...hunting artifacts is a business, and I thought you should understand it."

Carter Morgan took a close look at the vital signs monitor.

"While our name contains the word 'Faction,' we're essentially a modern business organization focused on profit and efficiency. Engaging in a gang war with other Hunter factions... that's not the original intention of the board of directors in hiring you.

"Although war is the most profitable business, this kind of gang war will only bring us losses." Carter laughed, as if he realized he had told a very humorous joke.

Gang war?

Fu Tailan seemed to be about to come up with an idea, but under the drowsy effect of the painkillers, his brain seemed to be refusing to work.

"Tell me," Carter sighed, as if condoning the willfulness of a teenager. "How did it happen? What caused it to come to this?"

"It's just a misunderstanding," Fu Tailan lied subconsciously.

Lies are one of the few safe havens in the world where he can completely control them.

"Misunderstand?"

"Yes. Actually, it all comes down to a trip I made into the lair. He thought I'd taken a Kai's—"

Before he finished speaking, Fu Tailan suddenly stopped.

Kai family?

He turned his head and looked into Carter Morgan's dark, shining eyes.

Every muscle and every line on the latter's face seemed to be easily solidified into a kind and friendly, but actually expressionless expression due to years of immersion in the environment.

Fu Tailan didn't know why he only thought of this question now.

"How...how did you know that there was friction between the Kai family and me?"

When the Morgan hunters arrived, Chase was no longer in the apartment.

According to Rui Mi's description just now, Fu Han never told her, either on the phone or after arriving at the hospital, that the person who seriously injured Fu Tailan was Chai Si.

What's more, he knew Fu Han.

Fu Han is not stupid, especially when it comes to interests.

He would certainly have guessed that the fake image of Chai Si and Fu Tailan fighting for their lives must be of extremely high value - and it was most likely the kitten painting in his hand.

Once the information about "Chai Si" was leaked, it was inevitable to talk about the reason why the two people were fighting for their lives; when talking about the reason, some sharp-eyed hunters might start to notice that Fu Han was carrying a decorative painting when he entered the hospital.

Carter cleared his throat and smiled.

"You don't know that on the night of the 21st, the gunshots and the fight in your apartment attracted a lot of attention. A passerby recorded a video of the firewood falling out of the window and uploaded it... It was because of the video that we realized that the person you clashed with that night was Kai's firewood."

It turned out to be the case.

That night, there were indeed quite a few people gathered on the road outside the window... If they hadn't called the police, Chai Si wouldn't have fallen on the crash pad.

This explanation makes sense.

But Fu Tailan is a hunter.

A good hunter will always dig deeper and will not stop until he has harvested prey that satisfies him completely.

"Where's that video? I want to see it."

Carter paused, his face and smile suddenly falling; he reached out and touched the non-existent dust on his pants.

　Recently, I have been having a reversed day and night cycle again, and suddenly I can’t fall asleep no matter how hard I try.

　　I fixed a small bug in yesterday's chapter. The day Fu Han sent Fu Tailan to the hospital was not "yesterday", but on the 21st.

　　Actually, from the time Mai Minghe entered the lair on the 17th to now, a total of six days have passed in the Pseudo-Illusion World! One month in the human world is one day in the Pseudo-Illusion World!
　　But on second thought, it's not surprising, mainly because there are so many perspectives. There are 80 billion people in the world, and if I were to write about every single person on the same day, I'd still need ten lifetimes to finish.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)