Chapter 153#
The Hunt 04#
The silver-haired man stood quietly in the cold night wind of the alley.
Noble. Otherworldly. Distant. Only the hand holding onto Yu-Ge betrayed any trace of something human.
In an instant, like lightning splitting a rainy night, like a dog chasing its own tail finally catching it, Bai Song felt something click — and a string of similar figures flashed before his eyes.
Commander Anfield. Pope Ludwig. Bishop Tang Po. And that pretty man who had come to the Giant Tree Inn looking for someone.
“This is… Bishop Tang Po…?”
Windsor said, puzzled: “Yes, didn’t you recognize him?”
Bai Song turned his gaze to his Yu-Ge. “Then all those times before…”
The look Yu Feichen gave him — the look one reserves for someone of severely diminished capacity — made everything immediately, devastatingly clear.
So it turned out — it had always been the same person!
Dumbstruck didn’t come close to capturing it. He was utterly, completely shaken.
On top of being shaken, Bai Song felt a wave of shame. His proudly honed powers of observation had somehow failed to see through all those pretty men — and Windsor had spotted it at a glance.
Bai Song couldn’t catch his breath. He stood there like a petrified statue.
As Bai Song stared at them, Yu Feichen was also watching Bai Song.
Yu Feichen found himself with a rare flicker of confusion. An Fei’s bearing was distinctive enough — recognizing him as Tang Po shouldn’t have been hard. There was no reason for Bai Song to be reacting this dramatically.
Then Bai Song finally moved.
“I only knew Yu-Ge liked this type of man…” Bai Song’s eyes went glassy. “I didn’t know they were all the same person. Oh — and not just the older ones, there’s also the little An Fei brother…”
Yu Feichen: “……”
Now it was Yu Feichen’s turn to be shaken — by the direction of Bai Song’s reasoning.
He couldn’t help but wonder what exactly his image was in Bai Song’s mind.
Windsor glanced between Bai Song and Yu Feichen, his expression shifting into something strange. He raised the back of his hand to his lips to muffle it, but peculiar, suppressed laughter escaped anyway.
“Pfhehe hehe heh……”
The moon hung at its zenith. The night breeze moved through the eerie little alley. Dead leaves scraped along the ground and skittered from the middle of the road to the base of the walls — the only sound in that place that wasn’t somehow strange.
The three of them all wore entirely different expressions. Only An Fei remained as he was — out of the loop and quietly composed — standing in place watching Bai Song and Windsor with an air of detachment. Yet when Yu Feichen turned to look at him, he could make out a faint trace of curiosity and confusion in those ice-crystal eyes.
The confusion lasted only a moment. An Fei’s lashes curved, a smile there and gone in an instant.
He didn’t know what was happening. But they all seemed to be happy about it.
If that was the case, then he felt happy too.
Watching that brief smile, Yu Feichen felt the situation become a fraction more difficult.
“An Fei,” he said.
An Fei looked up at the sound of his name, meeting his gaze.
“Who am I?” Yu Feichen asked.
“Little Yu,” An Fei said.
A brief pause, then he added: “Yu Feichen.”
Yu Feichen gestured toward Windsor and Bai Song. “Who are they?”
An Fei looked over at the two of them with mild disinterest. After a moment: “Children.”
Good. He remembered more or less.
“What am I to you?” Yu Feichen asked.
An Fei looked at him quietly. Above, the crescent moon cast its pale glow into his eyes.
“Mine,” he said. Two words.
“Your what?”
An Fei’s tone was as calm as ever, as though reciting something universally understood: “Mine.”
Bai Song had only just surfaced from the storm of his emotions. Listening to this exchange, he thought silently — was this really something he and Windsor were supposed to be hearing?
“Do you remember what we talked about before?” Yu Feichen asked.
For the first time, An Fei looked uncertain.
His brow furrowed slightly. “You’re asking me…”
But the words wouldn’t come. After a moment, as if in pain, he quietly closed his eyes.
Yu Feichen laced his fingers through An Fei’s. “Don’t try to remember.”
An Fei nodded and returned to his usual state, the faint crease in his brow slowly smoothing away.
During previous instances, An Fei would occasionally drift off, but nothing had ever been quite this complete a disconnect.
Even Bai Song could tell something was wrong.
“What happened to him?”
Yu Feichen glanced back at the department store building behind them.
Firelight lit half the sky. The blaze had spread from inside the building to the exterior walls; a full half of the structure was now swallowed in roaring flames.
Guests and NPCs were streaming out in a chaotic, desperate rush. The nearby alleyways were already filling with the sound of hurried footsteps and shouted curses.
“Let’s find somewhere safer,” he said.
They moved away from the block under the cover of moonlight and settled at a secluded inn. Bai Song with his black wig on drew no attention from the NPCs, and An Fei’s apparent age didn’t trigger any hostile responses either.
Through the whole journey, An Fei was led along by Yu Feichen without a word — but he cooperated perfectly with everything they did. When he sensed ill intent from a passerby at one point, he and Yu Feichen stepped aside at exactly the same moment.
“He seems present, but not entirely there,” Windsor said.
The inn’s décor was ornate and vintage, rugs and layered drapery playing off each other in warm tones, classical relief carvings covering even the door frames.
Windsor picked up a silver snuffbox from the corner cabinet and regarded his own reflection in the mirror, and the room behind him.
“Lavish to the point of vulgarity,” the Duke Windsor sighed. “Only when Tang Po and I are staying here does it all start to feel harmonious.”
Bai Song twitched at the corner of his mouth.
So that was what a self-absorbed Alpha looked like.
In the warm candlelight, An Fei had independently found the most comfortable armchair in the room and settled into it with effortless, innate elegance.
On the wall across from the armchair hung a black message board.
Everyone was active out in the field, so messages came slowly — mostly complaints.
“Which absolute disaster burned down the department store?”
“What the HELL, my wig!!!!!”
“Did someone set a fire? I thought the fireworks section just exploded.”
“Isn’t the fireworks section supposed to go up with just a spark?”
“Explode. Explode louder.”
“Is someone trying to stop us from getting wigs??”
“Could this be a City of Mist conspiracy?”
Windsor read through the messages with a peculiar smile on his lips. Bai Song thought it looked strangely familiar — it was almost exactly like the smile Windsor had worn back at the amusement park when he’d realized he could run a lending operation.
As the outrage built and people moved from cursing to open threats, Windsor picked up a pen and wrote on the board.
[Definitely Not An Alpha]: All of the above have been added to the blond hair list.
“……”
“……”
After a while, a familiar ID appeared on the board at last.
[Diamond Four]: I was in the middle of killing someone earlier and didn’t get a chance to express my gratitude. Who was the generous soul who took out Spade Five this time?
Yu Feichen walked over with a cup of warm milk just in time to see this message.
If he remembered correctly, when he’d shot the boy who had tried to ambush An Fei, the system notification had read: “Good night, Spade Five.”
**[Diamond Four]: My gratitude is beyond words — can’t thank you in person, so I’ll do a little charity instead!
**[Diamond Four]: Besides the department store, the theatre and the circus might have performance costumes, and presumably wigs too~~ Though I haven’t been there myself, so you’ll have to check for yourselves~
**[Acri]: Ugh, I was just about to do that charity. You beat me to it.
**[Acri]: Guess I’ll have to offer everyone a different reminder — I passed by the circus just now, and there’s a terrifying woman there. Everyone stay away~~~
**[Little Frog]: After the free-for-all ended, you two almost seem like good people now…
**[Brain Doctor]: Don’t come near the casino either. Just got chased four blocks by some ghost in a black raincoat.
**[Patient 071]: Hehehe, Doctor, how careless. Now I know where you are~
**[Patient 103]: There’s a crazy little girl at the canal bridge, Doctor — want to go zap her together~?
**[Best At Lying Low]: Hoping the rabbit person from the department store got blown up.
At this peculiar label — “rabbit person” — Bai Song and Windsor both looked toward Yu Feichen simultaneously.
Even An Fei, cradling his warm cup of milk, shifted his gaze from the message board to the metal rabbit on Yu Feichen’s shoulder.
An Fei finished the milk, and Yu Feichen took the cup from him and set it aside. After this sequence of actions, An Fei’s eyes hadn’t moved from the rabbit, so Yu Feichen took it off his shoulder and placed it in An Fei’s hands.
An Fei closed his fingers gently around it, looking very pleased.
If a believer were holding a crucifix in this same way, it would be a scene of extraordinary devotion and purity.
Even if it was only a lame little rabbit, one instinctively wanted to breathe more softly around it.
Noticing that An Fei seemed quite at ease, Yu Feichen looked into his eyes and asked: “Do you know that something is wrong with you right now?”
An Fei gave a small nod.
“Do you know why?”
An Fei neither nodded nor shook his head. After a moment, he looked up from the rabbit and extended his hand toward Yu Feichen.
Yu Feichen placed his right hand into An Fei’s palm. At the point of contact, a vivid green vine crept out from the wide sleeve of the black robe, wound its way along the joined fingers, climbed up to Yu Feichen’s wrist, and stretched itself lazily.
At the sight of that familiar vine, Yu Feichen understood An Fei’s intent.
The Aphorism Vine — it curled when it heard a sound maxim, laughed when it heard a senseless one, shook its leaves when it heard a lie, and bloomed when it heard the truth.
An Fei had once mentioned that this vine was still too young to bloom.
Yu Feichen said to the vine: “He has been affected by the City of Mist.”
The vine sat there looking half-dead, as if deciding whether to bother reacting.
Taking Murphy as his model, Yu Feichen made his tone as theatrical and oracular as he could, approximating the manner of one delivering great wisdom.
“An Fei has been affected by the City of Mist.”
The vine’s leaves curled. Like a wayward youth hearing a proverb and feeling, for just a moment, ashamed.
“An Fei’s consciousness is fragmented and intermittent.”
The leaves curled.
“An Fei is lucid.”
Curl.
Yu Feichen’s gaze lingered on An Fei.
His tone dropped, suddenly cold: “An Fei is resonating.”
The vine curled until it could curl no further.
“I saw Vincent mention resonance on the board,” Bai Song said.
“But Vincent said resonance only lasts a moment in the real world,” Windsor said. “It shouldn’t affect normal functioning. How is it like this?”
The vine, worn out from over-curling, had taken advantage of their exchange to slowly unfurl its leaves — and then Yu Feichen spoke again.
His tone was cold enough to unsettle.
“An Fei is deep in resonance. Every moment. Without cease.”
The vine had no choice but to curl up once more.
Yu Feichen stared at An Fei.
Countless single instants, strung together, made a stretch of continuous time.
How long had An Fei been in the City of Mist? Five days? Seven? Even longer?
“Yu-Ge…” Bai Song said carefully.
Yu Feichen had already been holding An Fei’s hand.
He closed his eyes and drew An Fei into his arms.
An Fei remained quietly settled against his shoulder as before — but when he felt the arms around him tighten almost unbearably, he reached up and patted Yu Feichen’s back, slow and gentle.
It’s all right, Little Yu.