Chapter 51: Futailan · Mantis Stalks the Cicada... And There Are More Than One

Long Zhen kept one hand on the steering wheel, casting a sideways glance at Fu Tailan as he got into the car.

That trace of subtle, icy judgment vanished completely as soon as she lowered her eyelids. She was a woman of high professionalism; even if she harbored doubts and reservations, she would never wear them on her face in front of her new superior.

Long Zhen simply leaned forward to peer down the road ahead and said, "Mr. Fu, there are no surveillance cameras around here. Without cameras, how are we supposed to know where they went?"

"Don't call me Mr. Fu. I am not one."

Fu Tailan opened the map application on his phone and replied, "Even if there were cameras, it would be too late by the time we pulled the footage. We couldn't count on them anyway."

"Then, may I call you Tailan?" Long Zhen paused, finally unable to resist twisting the knife just a bit more, and added, "...while only addressing your father as Mr. Fu?"

An eleventh-grade student, armed with nothing more than a title, had parachuted into the position of Head of Hunters, and on top of that, brought his father along into the family faction. Fu Tailan was young, not stupid; he was well aware of what people said behind his back.

"Call him whatever you want. It doesn't matter."

Every second passing now was critical, but Long Zhen was in no hurry to drive. Instead, she dropped a question right at his feet: "Then where are we going now?"

Although not much time had passed since the incident, tracking Vesiley to intercept the artifact remained an extremely tricky endeavor. For one thing, the convoy had shattered and scattered in all directions the moment the trouble began precisely to prevent anyone from following them.

Furthermore, apart from the single piece of intelligence that "Vesiley was on the road twenty minutes ago," they had zero additional information. Where were they supposed to start tracking?

"We don't know his destination, we don't know who he's meeting, and we don't know what time the handover is..."

Long Zhen listed the unfavorable factors one by one, stopping just short of saying, "Catching up to them is impossible." She continued, "I don't understand why we have to track him to acquire the artifact. If we get caught, we will deeply offend him."

Carter Morgan's plan naturally wasn't broadcasted to the entire family faction. What was remarkable was that, even without knowing Carter's true intentions, Long Zhen had still promptly reported tonight's events to Fu Tailan.

She was highly capable and fiercely perceptive—no wonder she wasn't a hunter herself yet managed to serve as the Hunters' HR director, and no wonder she had been coldly observing Fu Tailan all along.

Fu Tailan glanced at the map.

In truth, Long Zhen was right. Using conventional methods, it was utterly impossible to determine which direction Vesiley might have taken.

"Didn't you recently interview a hunter who can detect artifacts?" he asked out of the blue.

Long Zhen was startled and glanced at him.

"Yes, her name is Huangli Roslyn. Because her detection range is too wide and lacks precision, I only had a preliminary interview with her; nothing has been finalized."

"A wide range has its advantages," Fu Tailan closed the map and said, "Call her. Whatever her conditions are, it doesn't matter. Make her come right now."

Long Zhen frowned and didn't move.

"Fu... Tailan, we can't possibly drive around with her, searching street by street for an artifact's signature. Without knowing the destination, that's no different from searching for a needle in a haystack."

"Who said anything about searching street by street?"

Fu Tailan didn't urge her to make the call. Instead, he picked up his own phone to check a newly arrived text message sent by Carter Morgan.

"Finding out where Vesiley is—how hard can it be?"

"How?" Long Zhen stared at him fixedly.

Fu Tailan already had his phone pressed to his ear. As the call connected, he smiled at Long Zhen, signaling her to listen in as well.

"... Mr. Green?"

He reclined his seat, half-lying back with his legs drawn up, and said into the phone, "I am Fu Tailan, the Head of Hunters for the Morgan family. Mr. Morgan should have contacted you just now, right? Please transfer the call to your boss. I have an urgent matter and need to speak with Mr. Vesiley immediately."

Long Zhen's eyes widened—Fu Tailan had turned on the speakerphone.

"What matter?" asked Green, the secretary on the other end, sounding a bit hesitant, though he didn't say that he wasn't by Vesiley's side.

"Tell him it's about 'Time'." Fu Tailan added, "This is extremely urgent."

While waiting for Secretary Green to connect the call, he quickly hit the mute button, and Long Zhen immediately demanded, "What are you planning to do? Is the method you mentioned—"

"Right. Since we don't know where he's planning to go, why not just ask the man himself?" Fu Tailan replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Vesiley had no idea that Carter Morgan was secretly plotting to be the hawk waiting behind the mantis.

Long Zhen stared at him blankly. "This... this is too reckless, isn't it? What on earth do we know about a 'Time' artifact?"

She was quite honest—sometimes the truth was inconvenient to tell, but making up a so-called emergency message left plenty of room for him to unleash his imagination.

Vesiley couldn't personally step into a nest to verify it anyway.

As for his own special skills, Fu Tailan believed his greatest talent was making completely baseless fabrications sound utterly convincing. Even Vesiley, who was on his way to collect an artifact at that very moment, couldn't help hesitating upon hearing it. "...Right now? I'm on the road; it's not convenient."

"It doesn't matter," Fu Tailan said obligingly. "You can give me a location, and I'll go wait there. If Mr. Vesiley can just spare five minutes on his way back, that will be enough for us to determine our next step."

The last half-sentence wasn't even a lie.

True to form, Vesiley was extremely cautious. Even as a partner within the hunters' family faction, he refused to leak his current location. Perhaps the unexplained attack on one of his escort vehicles earlier had heightened his vigilance.

Yet, despite being startled, he was still dead-set on pushing through with the transaction tonight, which only proved the immense importance of that artifact.

"I'll have Green send you an address. In thirty minutes—"

Just as Vesiley reached this point, someone beside him seemed to whisper a reminder, causing him to change his tune. "No, in one to two hours, I'll be there."

Fu Tailan suspected the voice in the background had said something like, "We need to verify it first."

Verify what?

The only thing requiring verification seemed to be the artifact he was about to get his hands on.

In other words, he hadn't actually secured the artifact yet, which was why he needed to carve out a chunk of time for verification... and the time required for that verification would likely be much longer, far longer, than Vesiley had initially estimated.

Once they had an address, the rest would be easy to handle.

"Take that address as the center, draw a thirty-minute driving radius around it, and dispatch a helicopter right now to circle the area. Look for his security convoy and heavy security presence. We'll drive over too."

Fu Tailan's instructions this time were swiftly executed by Long Zhen—even though she still didn't understand why the Head of Hunters was tracking a client.

"What about Huangli Roslyn?" After dispatching the helicopter, Long Zhen proactively picked up her phone and asked, "I'll call her right now. How should we arrange things?"

"She's just a backup plan. Just have her come," Fu Tailan said, failing to foresee at that moment that he was making a mistake. "Even if we don't use her tonight, the family faction will need talent like her in the future."

Long Zhen quickly connected the call, faithfully relaying all of Fu Tailan's instructions, and even added, "Our Head of Hunters thinks particularly highly of you"—after all, flattery never hurts.

"Huh? Yes, we can meet whatever terms you ask for... Correct. Double is fine."

At that, Long Zhen emphasized, "But our condition is that you must arrive here within thirty minutes. There's a situation that may require your expertise."

The speakerphone inside the car broadcasted Huangli Roslyn's voice, which always sounded perpetually cheerful. "Where is the address?"

Long Zhen glanced at Fu Tailan, who thought for a moment and nodded.

After she gave the location, there was a two-second silence on the line before Huangli spoke up: "Ah, I'm sorry, I can't make it."

Long Zhen immediately frowned. She gave a sharp honk at the car ahead before saying into the phone, "Where are you right now? I can send a helicopter to pick you up."

"Ah, apologies, I really can't spare the time right now," Huangli paused, sounding genuinely regretful. "...Does the job offer really have to be tied to tonight?"

Before Long Zhen could speak again, Fu Tailan pressed a hand onto her arm.

She turned her head, and Fu Tailan shook it, mouthing the words: "Hang up."

"What's wrong?" Long Zhen asked hurriedly after cutting the call.

Any hunter who managed to survive inside a nest had to possess the ability to glean warnings and hints from the faintest traces. This skill, which began as logical analysis, long ago refined itself into pure intuition; the better the hunter, the less likely they were to ignore even a hair-thin anomaly.

"Someone is with her," Fu Tailan stated with near-absolute certainty.

Long Zhen was stunned. "...How do you know?"

That was hard to explain.

A hunch was something ethereal and hazy, like mist that dispersed the moment you touched it. It was terribly difficult to anchor it in concrete language and dissect it strand by strand.

Perhaps it was the slight hesitation before Huangli answered both times; perhaps it was her momentary pause in refusing to disclose her location.

Or perhaps Fu Tailan had heard the subtle rustle of her collar as she turned her head, as if looking at someone else. All these illusion-like clues might have been unconsciously captured by him, though bringing them out into the light might make them sound a bit like chasing shadows.

"...Because I'm very good at lying," Fu Tailan finally offered by way of evasion, "so I have a feeling she wasn't telling the truth either."

He didn't know whether this explanation convinced Long Zhen, but she accepted it for the time being.

"Then what should we do next...?"

"It's fine. Keep driving."

Fu Tailan curled back into his seat like a large cat, his voice loose and drifting. "Having someone with her doesn't necessarily mean anything. Not to mention our line of work... people living in this world never truly know what's happening out there in the vast expanse, or what might suddenly show up to turn your life upside down. But it doesn't matter. When soldiers come, we block; when water comes, we earth-fill."

Long Zhen fell silent for a moment before letting out a dry chuckle. "You... really don't look like someone of your age."

"Is that so?"

Fu Tailan raised his head and smiled at her profile. "They say the human brain doesn't fully develop until age twenty-five; maybe I'm still an idiot right now. Want to see what I'm like at twenty-five? If you want to see it, you aren't allowed to resign."

For the first time in nearly two months of employment, he saw Long Zhen laugh out loud from the bottom of her heart.

"You know what?" she said while driving. "Actually, I also have a path."

"Oh?"

Long Zhen adopted the tone of a chatting friend. "Unlike you, though. The moment I caught a single glance of a nest, I knew I couldn't be a hunter. I fear the nests, I loath them, and I have no confidence that I could walk out alive next time. That's why I chose to only handle work inside Black Molar City.

"This world is truly strange," she lamented. "Things like paths don't necessarily go to the people suited for them."

Fu Tailan involuntarily thought of Vesiley—and his pending, gold-bounty request to acquire a path.

Regardless of Carter Morgan's plans, Vesiley remained the Morgan family's most crucial client and one of the last people in Black Molar City anyone should provoke.

Even if he found Vesiley's location, it didn't mean Fu Tailan could interfere with this transaction or try to intercept it. The timing was still far from ripe.

However, if they merely wanted to find out what he had bought and what purpose it served, that wasn't an impossible feat.

To find the answer, they didn't even need to alert Vesiley himself.

After all, every transaction had two parties in the know.

"Found it,"

The helicopter pilot's reply reached Fu Tailan's earpiece a dozen minutes later—so quickly that it caught him slightly off guard. "The place Vesiley went to is a private marina where his yacht is docked."

If not for tonight's transaction, whose details had leaked out as if driven by some invisible force, this meeting spot would have been exceptionally safe and convenient. Almost forgetting that billionaires operated in a world of their own.

"No need to follow anymore," Fu Tailan checked the time on his phone. "His transaction is probably taking place right on the yacht. Station a few people on the road outside the marina, watch to see who comes out after him, and give me their license plate and car model."

Barring any accidents, the other party in the transaction should be the first to leave the yacht.

In other words, as long as Fu Tailan waited by the marina like a stump waiting for a hare, he would spot the hunter leaving after concluding business with Vesiley. Once he confirmed their identity, he could rush ahead to the location Vesiley had agreed upon and continue spinning stories for the billionaire.

Fu Tailan got out of the car and pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, casting shadows over half his face.

He sat on the hood of the engine, gazing out at the undulating high-rises and lights of Black Molar City across the sea, while a wisp of white smoke curled from his fingers and dissipated into the dark night.

Now, it was just a matter of waiting.

However, the person Fu Tailan ended up waiting for first was not the one he had anticipated.

When another black Mercedes slowly came to a halt in the middle of the road beside them, Fu Tailan merely glanced over, not even having time to clearly see the person who had just pushed open the car door—yet a kind of physiological disgust surged through him like an electric current, making his eyebrows twitch.

A tall figure in a suit straightened up from outside the car door and slammed it shut with a heavy thud.

Chai Si Munro stood in the dark night, looking toward the distant marina. Without sparing Fu Tailan a single glance, he cracked a faint, effortless smile.