The form of Chai Si's Phantasm

As Chai Si scrambled onto the platform and hastily rolled away, the subway train roared into the station, barely brushing past his back-

The icy chill of its metal body and the hard gust it whipped up seemed ready to flay a layer of flesh from his entire back; if he had reached up and discovered that the back half of his skull was missing, it would hardly have been surprising.

Chai Si climbed to his feet, panting, as the train gradually came to a complete stop. In the reflection on its windows, he was still in one piece.

...His luck had always been good.

The train departing from this station also rumbled in right behind it, almost as though it had been arranged, blocking the police on the opposite platform. Even if they wanted to follow Chai Si's example and come after him, they would first have to make a long detour, wasting a good deal of time.

Through the train, the shouted orders from the opposite platform were indistinct, wavering and echoing through the station. "You lot, go after him... Go around to the other end and cut him off. Check everyone leaving the station!"

Chai Si couldn't help laughing. He loosened his shoulders and neck, tilted his head back, and breathed out.

For just one second, he allowed himself to revel in the rush of adrenaline, his racing blood making his whole body burn.

When he opened his eyes, all the train doors were opening, and the arriving passengers were stepping out onto the platform.

"Hey!" A man who looked like the driver stepped down from the front of the train and shouted at Chai Si from a distance. "Are you insane? You nearly got yourself killed-"

Before the man could get a clear look at his face, Chai Si turned nimbly and blended into the stream of passengers heading out. The driver muttered a couple of curses and turned back into the train. Chai Si immediately shoved aside the person beside him and darted aboard before the doors closed.

The entire train was empty. There wasn't a soul aboard.

Looking both ways, the carriages ahead and behind seemed to stretch on forever, countless ring handles and plastic seats repeating endlessly. With just the element of "people" removed, the train became a long, narrow, repetitive alien realm, like the belly of a roundworm. It really was peculiar.

The train slowly began moving, maintaining a low speed, presumably preparing to take the turnback track and reverse direction to pick up passengers. Chai Si walked toward the rear over the gently swaying floor and entered the last carriage.

Advertisements, handles, poles, seats, graffiti, food wrappers, and discarded drink bottles on the floor... It looked like an ordinary carriage. There weren't that many places to hide something, but there weren't that few, either.

...The part that required the most patience was about to begin.

That was fine.

Whether in the Nest or the human world, whatever their quarry, a good Hunter needed a great deal of patience. Chai Si happened to have patience in abundance.

"If I were a clever idiot," he murmured to himself, "...where would I hide a Phantasm?"

To guess the answer to that question, he first needed to know what the Phantasm he was tracking actually looked like.

Phantasms came in every bizarre shape and form imaginable, their endless variety extending beyond the limits of human imagination-but fortunately, he didn't have to try his luck searching for a needle in a haystack. Any reasonably capable Hunter in Blackmoor City had heard at least something about Wei Xilai's Phantasms.

What was more, Caironan had been a Hunter for decades, with a deeply rooted, far-reaching network of connections in Blackmoor City. Almost any intelligence concerning Phantasms would inevitably reach his ears.

"I need you to get hold of the Phantasms in Wei Xilai's study. Even one will do."

Caironan had summoned Chai Si as soon as news of Wei Xilai's death arrived. The sky outside the window had still been a pale duck-egg blue, as though veiled in a thin mist. Chai Si later learned that when he sat down at the breakfast table, Wei Xilai had been dead for just three hours.

At that time, Mrs. Wei, who had remained alone in Blackmoor City, was still asleep, unaware that she had become a widow.

And in another hour and twenty-one minutes, Evan would leave the Wei Estate with the Phantasm he had stolen.

"The first Phantasm was one he bought from me back then. It was a black cube measuring ten centimeters on each side."

Caironan's tone was flat, making it difficult to tell whether he now regretted the transaction.

The Phantasms in Wei Xilai's possession had laid the foundation for his world-leading business empire. Considering his subsequent wealth and influence, it was even puzzling that anyone had been willing to sell him those four Phantasms in the first place-perhaps that was what set Wei Xilai apart: his ability to see a future in something that no one else could.

Had they known how valuable those Phantasms were, no one would have sold them to Wei Xilai.

"The second was a set of tailoring tools."

Caironan paused, then said, "I've heard this set of tailoring tools is about the size of a laptop. I don't know whether that's accurate. This Phantasm is said to be the most valuable and most important of the four. If we could get hold of it, I wouldn't hesitate to exchange the entire faction for it."

In his spare time, Chai Si had once calculated a valuation for the Kai Family's faction.

Hunter Factions were difficult to define. They operated like criminal gangs, but their organizational structures resembled modern companies. They were probably something of a hybrid.

Judged by corporate standards, the Kai Family's faction was worth well into the tens of millions-and from Caironan's tone, trading a faction like that for it would actually be a bargain?

"What does it do?" Chai Si asked.

"If you can get hold of it, you'll find out. Until then, the less you know, the better off you'll be."

Chai Si nodded. "He had two others. What were they?"

Caironan sighed and set down his coffee cup.

"The later a Phantasm came into his possession, the less complete my information is... Later on, he shut down many of the channels through which information leaked. The third is supposedly extremely dangerous. Ever since he obtained it, any rival standing in his way whom money, power, the law, and market rules couldn't remove would conveniently and plausibly disappear from the world-even oil merchants as far away as Yemen."

Apart from "extremely dangerous," he offered no detailed description, but Chai Si didn't voice a single objection.

He was the person who solved problems for the Kai Family. Incomplete information was part of the problem being handed to him.

"What about the fourth?"

Caironan fell silent for a few seconds.

"I've only heard one rumor about it," he said quietly. "...It's a rumor that creates rumors."

Chai Si even forgot to chew, leaving the egg sitting on his tongue for a moment.

When he recovered and swallowed the egg, he asked for confirmation. "Uncle Kai, you mean the Phantasm itself exists in the form of a 'rumor,' and its function is to 'create rumors'... and all of that is just a rumor you heard?"

Caironan nodded. "Yes. It goes around in enough circles to keep you thinking for a while."

What would Wei Xilai want with a rumor that created rumors?

Besides, how did you find a rumor?

But when it came to the Nest and Phantasms, no matter how bizarre or uncanny something was, you couldn't simply assume it didn't exist.

If the object of his search was a "rumor," something he couldn't see or touch, then surely it should at least have a sound?

Since a Hunter had managed to bring it back to the human world in the first place, there was no reason Chai Si couldn't find it.

Standing aboard the train, he tilted his head and listened for a while, gradually sorting the ambient noises into categories in his mind: the friction of wheels against rails as the train moved, the wind in the air vents, the noises of materials as the train's components shifted... None of them came close to a human voice.

Since there were no ghostly whispers, did that mean the fourth Phantasm wasn't here?

He hadn't expected to find a Phantasm right away, anyway...

Chai Si sighed and, for the first time, resented his height.

Like an enormous spider trying to fold up its legs, he awkwardly lowered himself to the floor and peered beneath the seats, taking in the floor under an entire row at a glance: a forgotten shopping bag, an earbud, firefighting equipment, stains... There was even a shoe. He wondered whether its owner had left the train with one foot bare.

It sounded like a lot, but in fact, the space beneath most seats was empty. One look was enough to tell that there was nothing that could qualify as a Phantasm-but Chai Si couldn't casually overlook even a piece of chewing gum.

Chai Si drew a deep-black short baton from the small of his back and extended it with several snaps, turning it into a heavy, arm-length rod with a cast-iron T-shaped end and a ridged grip at the other.

Blackmoor State law prohibited citizens from carrying guns in public, so sometimes bringing a gun only invited unnecessary trouble. He hadn't expected this handy, portable weapon, which he always kept on him, to find another use today.

Patient though he was, as Chai Si used his beloved weapon to nudge the assorted rubbish beneath the seats, lift aside that smelly shoe, poke at the chewing gum, then straighten up and scan the advertisements, he still couldn't help feeling that this job ought to have been assigned to a low-ranking newcomer in the faction.

But someone else might not have been as quick and thorough as he was. In just a few minutes, he finished searching one carriage.

Chai Si stopped and glanced out the train window.

The train hadn't returned to the departure platform after entering the turnback track as he had expected. Instead, it had slowed further and further until it finally stopped.

The tunnel outside was dim. Dull yellow lights barely illuminated an open expanse of ground-beneath a vast, cavernous ceiling, several tracks ran parallel and intersected, like a condensed bird's-eye view of a highway interchange.

This clearly wasn't a place intended for passengers... Where had the train brought him?

As Chai Si continued searching the next carriage, he heard footsteps approaching from the other side.

The approaching man's keys jingled as he walked, and he hummed indistinctly. He seemed not to know anything else, repeating the same line over and over: "Baby, please don't go."

Chai Si straightened, holding the T-bar in one hand, and stood quietly in the middle of the carriage, waiting for him.

A man in a subway employee's uniform froze before he even entered the second carriage-it was the same driver who had shouted at him earlier.

"When did you get on?" His face immediately stiffened, barely suppressing the confusion and faint fear beneath it. "What are you planning to do here? This train is going to be held in reserve. You have to get off right now."

Being held in reserve meant it wouldn't be carrying passengers for a while.

At his current pace, he could search the entire train in another forty minutes... Not returning to pick up passengers actually made things easier for Chai Si. But if he wanted to stay aboard, it would be best to have the cooperation of the man before him.

Chai Si had his T-bar, and he also had a wallet stuffed with cash-in this age of electronic and credit-card payments, there was practically only one reason to carry cash.

Just as he was considering which method to use to secure the driver's cooperation, the driver looked at his face, then at the T-bar, and suddenly frowned. A fear he could no longer suppress gradually surfaced.

"You... you're not..." As he spoke, he stumbled two steps backward. "I have a family. Children... Please..."

Who does he think I am?

Now Chai Si was the one taken aback. He had always been careful in his work. Outside Hunter circles, practically no one knew who he was. How had merely driving through a few streets made it seem as though he had a notorious reputation?

Wait... "a notorious reputation"?

A current suddenly shot through Chai Si's mind, like lightning illuminating thick clouds. Though he couldn't see everything clearly, he seized upon the most important thought.

The next moment, the driver murmured, "Are... are you really the Subway Serial Killer from the rumors?"

Chai Si slowly licked his lips.

...He had found the Phantasm.

Friends, folks, I know some people dislike the use of shifting viewpoints, but this is my vision for the new story: different character arcs piecing together a vast world, with the characters influencing one another and their lives intertwining within it. Just thinking about that excites me. Other ways of writing this story don't excite me.

Compared with the traditional webnovel approach of sticking to one character's viewpoint from beginning to end, this will indeed cost me a large portion of my readership. The path I'm taking is getting narrower and narrower. You don't need to remind me again, thanks. This is how I've chosen to write. Nobody's holding a gun to my head. I'm the one who refuses to learn better.

(End of chapter)