Chapter Fifteen: Disguise

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Jiang Si closed her eyes.

Rules for Dealing with Hallucinations: When you realize that you have provoked a hallucination observable only to yourself, while everyone around you remains utterly unaffected, as long as you still possess the will to protect yourself, immediately begin pretending to be an idiot.

This presumes that your connection with the hallucination has only just been established and remains unstable. Under such circumstances, the hallucination will attempt to confirm your awareness and lure you into responding by every means at its disposal.

All you have to do is play dumb and convince yourself that you merely saw something wrong, that you experienced a trivial auditory hallucination.

Then you can…

Then you can try your luck and see whether you can escape with your life.

“Don’t do this. Your situation is pretty bad. You’ve been shot so full of holes that you look like a sieve, but aside from the massive blood loss, the bullets don’t seem to have affected you at all. You’re practically a superhero. Still, these people seem intent on trading you for some kind of bounty. Do you have enough strength left to escape on your own?”

Jiang Si opened her eyes, but instead of answering Zheng Fan, she swept her gaze across the people in the room.

Every one of them bore the marks of having been steeped in violence for years. Among ordinary people, they could all be considered capable fighters. Yet if Jiang Si had not been so badly wounded, none of them would have lasted a single exchange against her.

That was the problem: she was seriously injured.

Although a few bullets were no longer enough to inflict a fatal wound on her current body, being shot full of holes still had its consequences.

She would not recover anytime soon. All four limbs were bound, and if she made any suspicious movement, the others could simply put a few more bullets into her and finish the job.

Most importantly, she had just heard them say that some family wanted her head. The reward would be doubled if she were delivered alive—but even if they killed her, half the bounty was guaranteed.

Things could hardly have been worse.

Seeing that she was completely impervious to persuasion, Zheng Fan could only feel helpless.

While Jiang Si had been unconscious, he had already experimented. He could now touch her, and a single response from her had been enough to make that possible. Judging by the standards of hallucinations Lin Yilin had described, the efficiency of his intrusion was remarkably high.

But to achieve possession, he would either have to drive Jiang Si into complete collapse or make her willingly surrender her body.

That was troublesome. The girl had been tormented to this point, yet she had shown no obvious abnormalities. She appeared quiet, but she had not given up struggling in the slightest.

Her desire to live was extraordinarily strong. Breaking her would be difficult, and Zheng Fan was not skilled at such things to begin with. He was a simple-minded man; apart from direct physical torture, he could not think of any convenient way to make someone collapse.

As for the willing approach, it seemed he could only take things slowly.

The present situation was an opportunity, but it also carried enormous risks.

If the girl did something reckless and was shot dead, all the effort he had put into this hard-won discovery would go to waste.

Jiang Si remained silent. From time to time, the gang members in the room exchanged a few words, but their conversations were empty and vulgar, occasionally turning into crude remarks about Jiang Si.

That was only natural.

Violence was often bound up with desire. Those skilled in violence tended to possess powerful appetites in other respects as well. But Jiang Si was valuable cargo, and they would not dare lay a hand on her.

If the filthy blood were wiped from Jiang Si’s face, there was no question that she would be a rare beauty. Her well-proportioned, graceful figure possessed far more substance than Lin Yilin’s thin, fragile air.

In the eyes of certain people in the Grand Capital, there would surely be no shortage of men willing to pay for her.

But whoever had placed this bounty on her did not seem to be motivated by lust.

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Jiang Si pondered for a long time before confirming that unless something came along to break the deadlock, she had truly fallen into a trap this time. She was spectacularly unlucky.

If anyone she knew found out about this, they would laugh at her mercilessly.

Still unwilling to accept it, she darted a glance ahead—and unexpectedly discovered that the figure sitting atop the pile of desks and chairs had vanished.

Had he left?

Was she relieved, or disappointed?

It seemed to be both.

She had witnessed how terrifying hallucinations could be: a familiar person transforming before her eyes in an instant, becoming an inhuman monster and wreaking wanton destruction.

Jiang Si felt that such an existence was far more violent than even the violent inhabitants of this world.

And before that familiar person underwent such a transformation, she had watched the gradual process of their collapse with her own eyes.

Mental breakdown. Complete despair. Final surrender. Their body taken from them, until they became a devil that should never have existed in reality.

Jiang Si, who had considered herself fearless since childhood, had felt fear after witnessing that scene. She had been frightened into cowardice.

That was why she did not want to become like that.

But…

Those things possessed power—stronger, more wondrous power. They came from a world deeper than the world of violence, power drawn from that abyss.

If the hallucination she had encountered possessed such might, perhaps her current predicament could be resolved with ease.

Her thoughts were growing chaotic. Jiang Si no longer knew what she should do.

“Looking for me?” the gentle male voice suddenly sounded again.

Jiang Si’s pupils widened. Beneath the light shining in through the window, her shadow slowly lengthened and split in two. Beside it, on the wall, a male shadow that did not belong to her appeared in the posture of a man sitting cross-legged.

Her body stiffened, unable to move. Jiang Si felt as though she had fallen into an icy abyss.

Damn…

“You were the one who called for me first. If I am a devil, then you are the one who sought something from the devil of your own accord. I have heard of cunning people who enjoy a devil’s conveniences and then refuse to pay the price. But someone who sees a devil and becomes so frightened that she tries to renege on the deal is simply a coward.”

The shadow split its mouth into a sinister grin, the corners stretching upward in an exaggerated curve until they nearly reached its ears.

“You were the one peeking under my skirt first!” Jiang Si complained inwardly.

A “devil” who enforced the law by fishing for victims through peeking up girls’ skirts was far too pathetic!

“Tch. You saw that too?” Zheng Fan clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“You’re the one getting upset? I was the one being watched! What’s wrong with a young woman wearing black lace?!”

“You dress far too much like an anime character. It’s the quintessential Japanese high-school-girl look. Seeing someone dressed like that while fighting knee-deep in blood moved me deeply and brought back certain memories, so it would have felt like a loss not to look.”

Zheng Fan’s shadow folded its arms and spoke with utmost seriousness.

“What possible connection is there between those two things?”

Jiang Si’s face had gone blank.

What a terrifying hallucination. It was disrupting her very principles!

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“There might be one. In any case, I’m here to save you, and the only price is that you surrender your body. Isn’t that a bargain?” Zheng Fan argued reasonably.

What on earth was this thing talking about?

Jiang Si’s mind was in disarray.

It seemed that she had been speaking directly with the hallucination from the moment they began talking. The voice sounded as though it came from beside her ear, yet it also seemed to echo inside her mind. Even her thoughts appeared to be caught by him.

Her body was unable to move. The thing had already become entangled with her.

She was finished.

“No.” Zheng Fan spoke with amused emphasis. “Meeting me means you can be saved.”

“…Save me? I don’t need a hallucination to save me. In fact, from the moment you began speaking to me until now, I haven’t even been able to determine whether the person speaking with you is still myself, or whether you’ve already done something to me.”

Jiang Si remained silent for a long time, as though allowing her thoughts to cool.

Zheng Fan studied her. This time, she no longer avoided his gaze. She stared straight at him.

Then Zheng Fan slowly said, “You’re much more timid than you appear.”

Jiang Si’s hands, bound behind her back, trembled faintly.

“Violence can be either your nature or your disguise. You don’t seem to be as red as the clothes you’re wearing. Did you dye them yourself?”

Zheng Fan’s gaze seemed to pierce straight through Jiang Si, making her feel that nothing about her remained concealed.

Jiang Si said nothing. She lowered her head, and no one could tell what she was thinking.

Zheng Fan began to feel bored.

The Binary Girl was more interesting.

The abnormality concealed beneath Lin Yilin’s rationality had raised Zheng Fan’s threshold for this world considerably after he had sampled it in moderation.

He had not expected to find such a disguised pretender within the red world of violence.

The disguise was quite good, but there was nothing interesting beneath it.

If there was no other choice, he had no reason to waste time. He might as well spend it wandering around. Perhaps he would find someone whose wavelength matched his own.

The extra shadow gradually faded, as though it were about to detach itself from Jiang Si and depart.

“Mr. Devil.”

Jiang Si suddenly spoke, her head still lowered.

“Hmm?”

“Would you be interested in watching a coward’s revenge play?”

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