Evan was either a genius or an idiot.
No, Chai Si thought, perhaps he was a mixture of both. They said that when an idiot had a flash of inspiration, even clever people had to admit defeat.
"Are you trying to kill yourself? Leave me out of it!" In her panic, Huang Li forgot to be polite to her superior and shouted, "This isn't a nest, it's the human world! There are consequences to driving like this. You'll go to prison if you hurt someone-can't you hear the sirens behind us?"
Only a few minutes after he began breaking one traffic rule after another, he heard sirens.
The sirens were like several circling knife tips, slicing through the sky behind him again and again. Sometimes they grew distant, making Chai Si think he had shaken off the last police car, only to draw close again as new police cars joined the chase from other directions.
But the police cars never managed to intercept him, because they couldn't barrel off the sidewalk and across the road as recklessly as Chai Si, drive against traffic through red lights, then charge out of intersections as though no one else existed.
Along the way, he had lost count of the pedestrians he saw diving toward the roadside in panic, or the times he heard the shrill screech of tires scraping the road under braking.
Wherever the car went, it left chaos, running feet, blaring horns, and screams. Miraculously, by the time Chai Si finally got back onto the road and sped away, he had only knocked a wing mirror askew and dented a headlight, without causing an irreversibly serious accident.
"Hold on," he said, glancing at the mass of flashing red and blue police lights behind them. "I'm going to speed up."
"Even more? You-"
Before Huang Li could finish, the car's sudden acceleration thrust her back into her seat.
Chai Si turned the wheel, swinging the car around the vehicle ahead before cutting diagonally in front of it, provoking several angry honks. "You've still got those search results I asked for open, right?"
Huang Li sighed and brushed her lavender hair out of her eyes and behind her head.
"They're open." She held her phone within Chai Si's peripheral vision. Sure enough, a map app glowed on the screen. "Fine, I'm not the one in the driver's seat anyway. Where exactly are we going?"
"Brublan Community College," Chai Si answered curtly, roaring between two more cars.
"...Why?"
"Where you sensed the Phantasm flash past, I saw a subway sign for Furlington Station on the D Line. Brublan Community College is the last stop in that direction."
Huang Li blinked several times as she digested this information.
"Wait, are you saying you suspect that bodyguard hid the Phantasm in Brublan Community College subway station?"
"No," Chai Si replied. "I suspect he hid the Phantasm on a subway train."
Huang Li's jaw dropped, and it took two seconds to return to its original position. "The subway? Blackmoor City's subway? Are you-has he-is there something wrong with his head?"
Somehow, it felt as though what she had originally been about to say was something like, "Are you out of your mind?"
Blackmoor City's subway could be called world-famous, but not for being busy and crowded.
Besides ordinary passengers commuting to work or sightseeing, there were always people recruiting for cults, selling fake newspapers, announcing the deaths of public figures who were still alive, warning of the apocalypse, or changing costumes and clothes in public to beg for money... It was forever packed with all manner of bizarre characters.
People often said that to tell whether someone was a true Blackmoor City native, all you had to do was see whether they could board the subway and remain unmoved all the way to their stop.
A place like that would never be anyone's first instinct when looking for somewhere to hide something.
Besides, once the train left, how would Evan retrieve it?
"There's a lot I don't understand." Huang Li thought for a moment, then asked, "Evan stopped his car on the way into Blackmoor City, went into a subway station, and quickly came back out. That part makes sense, and he had time to do it. But how do you know he hid the thing on a train?"
"You said the Phantasm 'flashed past,' right? If your sensing method really is as reliable as you claim, that means it was at the edge of your sensing range when you detected it, moving forward at high speed, and left your range an instant later.
"In other words, before you began sensing, it had already been moving at a certain speed within your range for some time. That was how it happened to reach the edge of your range the moment you began sensing, and ultimately 'flashed past.'"
Her sensing range was too large. Pedestrians, bicycles, even cars obeying the city speed limit couldn't leave it anytime soon if they weren't moving fast enough.
From what they had pieced together, Evan hadn't contacted anyone so far. And within the city, what could keep moving at high speed, unaffected by road conditions, and carry the Phantasm beyond Huang Li's sensing range?
When Chai Si's gaze landed on the "D" sign, he remembered: Furlington subway station was right beside them.
While they searched everywhere without success, deep underground beneath their feet, a subway train was carrying the Phantasm away with a roar.
For the moment, neither of them considered the possibility that another Phantasm had happened to appear along Evan's route-"possibility" and "probability" were, in fact, two different concepts. No matter how many hunters tirelessly tried to bring Phantasms into the human world, there were still very few Phantasms in existence.
Huang Li looked back at the police cars clinging to them along the road behind, resigned herself, and gripped the overhead handle. "No wonder you're cutting across streets, even speeding against traffic... You're racing the subway. Ordinary shortcuts might not be enough. But this really is a little terrifying. If I survive the nests only to die in a car crash, that would be far too ironic."
Chai Si didn't respond. He merely glanced at the time and said, "It was around 10:03 when you detected the Phantasm."
He had a compulsive habit: at all times, he had to know the time, down to the minute.
He had maintained that habit for over twenty years, and now his internal clock was almost perfectly accurate even without checking a watch. Before looking at the time, he already knew it was 10:13. He had been speeding for nearly ten minutes under pursuit and interception by police cars.
Who knew how many more red lights awaited him ahead? Each one meant a choice: stop and get caught by the police, or charge out and get smashed in half by oncoming traffic?
He needed to think of a way-how could he carve out an empty road through Blackmoor City's endless traffic?
Chai Si asked, "How many minutes apart are trains running on the D Line right now?"
Huang Li glanced at the map app on her phone. "Seven minutes," she replied.
"Check your navigation. How many minutes until the next train leaves Furlington Station? How long does it take to reach the last stop?"
"The next train leaves in two minutes. It takes thirty-five minutes to reach the last stop."
As Huang Li said this, she understood too, her eyes gradually lighting up. "Oh, the train with the Phantasm hidden on it will reach the last stop at 10:36! We just need to get to the platform before then."
Anyone who could make "entering nests to hunt" a profession rather than their last hobby before death naturally wasn't slow on the uptake.
The next train left at 10:15, so the previous two had departed at 10:08 and 10:01 respectively. When Huang Li began sensing at 10:03, the train that had left at 10:01 was just about to leave her detection range. By the time it traveled from Furlington Station to the last stop, it would be exactly 10:36.
"But I have another question." Huang Li frowned. "How do you know that train was heading toward Brublan Community College Station, rather than the other way?"
"I don't," Chai Si said.
Huang Li whipped her head around and stared at him.
"I only know one thing." Chai Si was more patient with hunters from his own house than with other people, and explained, "When you go down into Furlington Station, the platform on the first underground level goes toward Brublan Community College Station. The platform on the second underground level goes the other way."
"Oh." Huang Li's brow relaxed, and she nodded. "You're betting that bodyguard boarded the nearest train. Yes, that makes sense. He only took thirteen minutes longer than the GPS estimate. Accounting for the time he spent parking, getting out, and waiting for a train, that means he didn't spend long in the station. He got it done quickly."
Evan only needed to ride one stop-after hiding the Phantasm and getting off at the next station, he wouldn't even have to wait for another train. He could dash across the platform and catch one going the opposite way.
"But you know some random subway station has two platform levels?" Huang Li marveled. "You were born in Blackmoor City, weren't you? You know it so well."
Chai Si didn't answer, only instructed her, "Call the police."
Huang Li blinked twice more and couldn't help looking back at the police cars behind them. One was very close now, its revolving, flashing lights washing the rear window in blue and red.
"We're not short on police," she reminded him.
"Don't waste time." Without slowing at all, Chai Si continued toward the intersection where the light was red. "Call the police. Tell them you're in the speeding car, and have them seal off the area from Columbia Avenue and East 106th Street to Cherry Street within ten minutes."
"Well, you're the boss." Muttering, she opened the dialer.
Huang Li had just tapped in three digits when her eyes shot up from the screen. On the road to their right, a large truck had just entered the intersection and was rumbling straight toward them, about to smash the black Mercedes in half.
"Truck-"
Instead of stopping, Chai Si accelerated, pressing the gas pedal flat against the floor. The engine roared in something close to despair as the car hurtled straight ahead at a speed that gambled with their lives.
Huang Li's involuntary scream filled the car, only to be drowned out by the thunderous crash at its rear-even though the truck had only clipped one corner of the back end, the entire car lurched violently sideways, nearly spinning to a stop across the middle of the intersection.
Two large hands wrenched the steering wheel hard. Amid the shuddering cries of metal and engine, the car escaped the intersection in time and entered the road ahead. Behind them, the truck braked sharply and stopped diagonally across the road. Cars braked and rear-ended one another in succession, forming a long steel queue in an instant and trapping the pursuing police cars on the other side.
"I joined a hunter house because I wanted more security," Huang Li cried out as she recovered from her terror. "Not to risk my life at work! This isn't even a nest-"
"911," a woman's voice asked from beneath the seat amid the noise and chaos. "What is your emergency?"
"Hurry." Chai Si kept his foot on the gas and snapped his fingers in front of Huang Li. "We might not be so lucky at the next intersection."
"Hello, hello!" Huang Li scrambled to pick up her phone. "I'm in that car tearing through Brublan District!"
She quickly relayed Chai Si's demands, paused, glanced at him, then answered, "...You're asking who I am? Um, I was kid-kidnapped and forced into the car. He's making me call at gunpoint. He says if you don't close the roads... um, he'll throw bombs into traffic."
Chai Si glanced at her and broke into a grin, his white teeth flashing.
"I'd like to say it's been a pleasure working with you," he said quietly after Huang Li hung up. "But our partnership is only just beginning."
My stockpile of chapters, aaaaaah! After tomorrow, it'll be gone, aaaaaah!
And I've been rushing around these past few days, so I haven't had a chance to check which new patrons have arrived. My bonus-chapter debt is still seven for now. Ah, as long as I don't look, it's still seven... No, I mean, I'll definitely put in the work and write those bonus chapters.
Today is packed again. I'm going to Qidian in the morning, running errands in the afternoon, and there's an unexpected, last-minute event tonight that I absolutely have to attend... I fucking didn't expect this event. My suitcase only has jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts, so they might not let me in-hey, if they don't let me in, doesn't that mean I can come back and write? Look at me. What a person with my priorities straight.
PS: These prices are going to run me over and kill me... Especially my friends in Shanghai, how do you live? I was dumbstruck by the prices. I circled back and forth in front of a fucking bottle of mouthwash four times, as nervous as if I were about to propose to it. Only after the shop assistant started looking at me did I finally make up my mind and take it. Isn't a small bottle of mouthwash supposed to cost less than ten yuan? What, can you drink Shanghai mouthwash after rinsing to improve your looks and health?!
(End of chapter)
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