Chapter 70: Chapter 51: Fu Tailan: Oriole... More Than One

Longzhen had one hand resting on the steering wheel. When Fu Tailan climbed into the car, she gave him the briefest sideways glance from the corner of her eye.

That thin sliver of cold scrutiny vanished the moment she dropped her gaze — she was a consummate professional. Whatever doubts or reservations she harbored, she wasn’t about to let them show on her face in front of a new superior.

Longzhen simply leaned forward to peer down the road ahead and said, "Mr. Fu, there are no surveillance cameras in this area. With no cameras, how are we supposed to figure out which way they went?"

"Don’t call me Mr. Fu. I’m not him."

Fu Tailan opened the map on his phone and replied, "Even if there were cameras, by the time we pulled the footage it’d already be too late. We were never going to be able to count on that."

"Then can I call you Tailan?" Longzhen paused, and in the end couldn’t quite hold her tongue, tacking on a pointed remark: "...reserving ’Mr. Fu’ for your father?"

An eleventh-grader who had parachuted into the Hunter Chief position on the strength of a name alone — and who’d walked into the Family Faction with his daddy in tow, no less. Fu Tailan was young, not stupid. He knew perfectly well what people said behind his back.

"Call him whatever you like, I don’t care."

Every second that passed was precious right now, yet Longzhen made no move to start the car. Instead she dropped a question squarely at his feet: "So where are we going?"

Though not much time had elapsed since the incident, tracking Westley’s retrieval of the Illusion was an enormously thorny problem. For one thing, the convoy had scattered in all directions the instant things went sideways — a deliberate measure to shake any tails.

And beyond knowing that "Westley was on the road twenty minutes ago," they had absolutely nothing else to go on. Where would they even begin?

"We don’t know his destination. We don’t know who he’s handing it off to, or when..."

Longzhen methodically ticked off each unfavorable factor, stopping just short of saying outright that catching up to them was impossible. "I don’t understand why we need to tail him during the pickup at all. If we’re spotted, it’ll cause a serious falling-out with him."

Carter Morgan’s plan was naturally not something he’d broadcast to the entire Family Faction. What was remarkable was that Longzhen, operating without any knowledge of Carter’s intentions, had still seen fit to report tonight’s events to Fu Tailan right away.

She was sharp and highly capable — no wonder she’d managed to land the Hunter HR role despite not being a Hunter herself. And no wonder she’d been watching Fu Tailan with such a cool, appraising eye.

Fu Tailan studied the map.

Longzhen wasn’t wrong, really. There was no conventional way to determine which direction Westley might have headed.

"Didn’t you mention you’d been in talks with a Hunter who can detect Illusions?" he asked, out of nowhere.

Longzhen blinked and glanced at him.

"Yes. Her name is Huangli Roslin. Her detection range is very wide but highly imprecise, so after meeting with her once I hadn’t finalized anything yet."

"A wide range has its advantages," Fu Tailan said, closing the map. "Call her. Whatever terms she wants, it doesn’t matter — we need her here right now."

Longzhen furrowed her brow and didn’t move.

"Fu — Tailan. We can’t just drive her around block by block searching for an Illusion. Without knowing the destination, that’s like looking for a needle in the ocean."

"Who said anything about going block by block?"

Fu Tailan didn’t press her to make the call. Instead he picked up his own phone, glanced at a text that had just come in — it was from Carter Morgan.

"Figuring out where Westley is — how hard can that be?"

"How do you propose to do that?" Longzhen stared at him steadily.

Fu Tailan already had the phone pressed to his ear. When the call connected, he flashed Longzhen a grin and tilted the phone toward her, gesturing for her to listen in.

"...Mr. Green?"

He reclined his seat and half-lay there with his legs curled up, speaking into the phone: "This is Fu Tailan, Hunter Chief for the Morgan Family. Mr. Morgan should have already given you a heads-up just now. Could you put me through to your boss? I have an urgent matter — I need to speak with Mr. Westley immediately."

Longzhen’s eyes went wide — Fu Tailan had put the call on speaker.

"What sort of matter?" Green, the secretary on the other end of the line, sounded slightly hesitant — but notably, he didn’t say that Westley wasn’t nearby.

"Tell him it’s about ’Time,’" Fu Tailan added. "It’s urgent."

While waiting for Green to patch the call through, the moment Fu Tailan hit mute, Longzhen immediately demanded, "What exactly are you planning? Don’t tell me your idea is to —"

"Exactly. We don’t know where he’s headed, so why not just ask the man himself?" Fu Tailan said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

Westley had no idea that Carter Morgan was quietly setting up an ambush to swoop in from behind.

Longzhen stared at him, slack-jawed. "This is... completely reckless. What information about the ’Time’ Illusion could we possibly have?"

She was refreshingly straightforward — though sometimes the truth wasn’t exactly convenient to share. Making up some supposed urgent intelligence, on the other hand, was a matter of pure imagination. He could work with that. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Westley couldn’t personally descend into the Nest to verify anything.

If Fu Tailan had one particular talent, he’d say it was his ability to spin something out of thin air and make it sound completely airtight. Even Westley — who was at that very moment en route to collect an Illusion — couldn’t help but waver after hearing him out: "...Right now? I’m on the road, it’s not a good time."

"That’s perfectly fine."

Fu Tailan said, with great consideration, "Why don’t you give me a location and I’ll head over and wait. As long as Mr. Westley can make a brief stop on his way back — just five minutes — that’ll be more than enough for us to lock in our next move on this end."

That last part, at least, wasn’t a lie.

Westley was as cautious as expected. Even dealing with an allied Hunter Family Faction, he hadn’t let slip his current whereabouts — likely because the inexplicable attack on one of his escort vehicles earlier had put him on high alert.