Illusion Report

Chapter 216: Chapter 179: Mai Mingle: A Ping-Pong Ball Within Four Walls

The cold, hard, rough pavement pressed against Mai Mingle’s cheek.

She lay on her side by the road, eyes wide open, completely unable to move.

Hai Luwei’s phone screen hadn’t gone dark yet. In its faint light, she could see the tires on the other side of the taxi, the surface of the road, the dim white lane divider...

The screen went dark.

Even after her vision went black, even after she heard the taxi’s rear door being quietly opened, her eyes remained fixed on the same scene.

After all, "completely unable to move" meant that even her eyeballs were frozen in place. Her fingers, still curled around her phone, maintained their grip, which was how she managed not to drop it.

The taxi’s rear door swung open, scraping right past her body. It brushed against her shoulder, making her rock slightly.

From the back seat of the taxi, which should have been empty, a pair of hands—or were they hands?—reached out. They grabbed Mai Mingle’s collar, lifted her upper body, and with a single, powerful heave, flung her toward the trunk.

Her five-foot-seven body seemed no heavier than a toy doll in those hands. A single toss was all it took to send her flying halfway down the length of the car, where she slid to a stop by the rear wheel.

"...Mai Mingle?"

A muffled shout came from across the street. "Wh-Where are you? Say something! That thing on the ground... what is that?"

If Mai Mingle still had the capacity for thought, she would have realized that when she’d inadvertently seen part of the driver’s face, she had been bent over and blocked by the car. That was why Hai Luwei, across the street, didn’t know she’d been taken down and was lying on the pavement.

After her phone’s light vanished, he had no way of knowing that the dark shadow suddenly sprawling out from behind the car was, in fact, Mai Mingle.

"Mai—"

The taxi’s trunk popped open.

Hai Luwei choked on the next word, apparently startled.

In the heavy, suffocating darkness of the night, for a moment, only a rustling sound could be heard:

A pair of hands reached down from the trunk, fumbled for Mai Mingle’s collar, grabbed her, and with a swing of an arm, flung her—like a ragdoll again—to the other side of the car, next to the rear door.

Mai Mingle could feel her leg scraping against the pavement through her clothes, a raw, burning pain. But the sensation stopped at her skin, unable to produce the slightest echo in her mind, which was as blank and hard as a stone.

In other words, her skin felt "pain," but her mind remained completely indifferent to it.

"Mai Mingle...?"

Hai Luwei seemed to have gotten to his feet. He held his flashlight high, but from across the street, he still seemed hazy and unsure. The moment the rear door opened, he immediately jerked the beam away, as if he couldn’t bear to see what was inside.

From the empty back seat, a pair of hands reached out again and flung Mai Mingle toward the front passenger door.

They relayed her from door to door, moving her in a circle around the car as if for a single purpose: to get the front passenger door open so the final pair of hands could drag Mai Mingle inside and prop her up in the seat.

"Mai Mingle!"

The car door slammed shut, cutting off Hai Luwei’s shout from across the street.

Mai Mingle slumped in the passenger seat, her head lolling against the window. The taxi driver sat to her left, with nothing—no distance at all—between them.

It seemed to slowly turn its head toward Mai Mingle.

The only silver lining to this nightmare was that she wouldn’t have to be afraid of seeing its complete face. Her eyes still couldn’t move, so all she could see was the windshield, the glove compartment, and a yellow sticker plastered on it.

Although her ability to think was completely frozen, the language center of her brain somehow still managed to process the meaning of the words on the sticker.

—

Uh oh!

If you’re seeing this warning,

it means you’ve violated Rule #3 of the Passenger Guidelines, "Sit in the back," and have come up to the front.

*Heh.*

Now you can’t escape can’t escape can’t escape can’t escape can’t escape

By now, you’ve probably realized that you’ve lost the ability to think and move—oops, no, that’s a paradox, isn’t it? If you’ve lost the ability to think, you can’t realize anything at all.

In any case, this is the penalty for violating any of the Passenger Guidelines.

As a small parting gift to send you on your way,

you are granted four new thoughts.

Each thought, if converted into words, is only about fifty words long.

Of course, even if one of your thoughts is "count how many words are in this thought," you won’t be able to count them. After all, having a thought and having the ability to act on that thought are two very different things, aren’t they?

I wonder what four thoughts will surface, hmm? Oh, I’m so excited, so very curious!

Aside from these four thoughts, you will be unable to think of anything else.

The four thoughts are four walls, and your powerless, pitiful, futile consciousness,

will be just like a ping-pong ball, bouncing back and forth, over and over between them,

until you finally die, dissolve, and become nourishment to strengthen the Nest.

You can’t escape anymore can’t escape anymore can’t escape anymore can’t escape anymore can’t escape anymore stay here forever hahahahahaha

—

She could understand the warning, but that was all. She could only recognize the meaning of the words.

Mai Mingle was still unable to form any thoughts about the warning’s contents. The words entered her eyes as if from a slide projector, images projected onto a blank white wall.

The only difference was that a slide projector likely didn’t feel a vague, pulsing terror from deep within its core, as if it were locked in a narrow cell—the fear of being crushed by stone walls, with no space, no light.

At some point, the engine had started.

Amid the faint smell of gasoline and the low rumble of the engine, the taxi started moving. It didn’t turn on its headlights, just drove straight into the darkness ahead, a darkness so thick it seemed impossible to tear through.

Outside on the road, a figure holding a flashlight seemed to be limping toward them. But before he could get close, the taxi sped past, and the figure became a rapidly shrinking point of light in the rearview mirror.

"Hey! Let her go!"

Hai Luwei’s faint shouts were left behind in the night, vanishing without a trace as if they were just an illusion.

Mai Mingle couldn’t move. If it could be said she still possessed the concept of "waiting," then she was waiting for the first thought to rise from the arid blankness of her mind.

With each nearly imperceptible jolt of the car, her forehead tapped gently against the windowpane.

After an unknown number of taps, a thought suddenly appeared in her mind.

’The car I’d driven hadn’t vanished by chance, and this taxi hadn’t appeared by chance, either. The residents who wanted to kill the contestants weren’t limited to the Dream Screenwriter... there was also the taxi driver right beside me.’