Free Web NovelThe bullet grazed past Bai Liu’s eye and slammed into the wall behind him with a deafening bang.
Outside, people immediately began pounding on the door and asking what had happened. Su Yang even opened the small observation window and warned Tang Erda in a cold voice.
“Tang Erda, firing a gun in a room this cramped is suicidal. A ricochet could pierce your own skull. I’d advise you not to play this kind of accidental-suicide game in front of me again and again. The thing in your hand is a gun, not a toy.”
Su Yang’s expression was icy.
“If you manage to get yourself killed, I’m not collecting your body.”
Tang Erda casually set the gun down on the table. He turned his head, gave Su Yang a perfunctory smile, and raised both hands to show that he was no longer playing with the weapon.
Then, as if joking, he cast a sideways glance at Bai Liu, who sat across from him just as unmoved as before, and clicked his tongue.
“I only wanted to scare him. Didn’t expect you to be the one frightened, Captain Su. You really don’t need to be so concerned about Comrade Bai Six here.”
“After all, I don’t think either of us particularly cares whether he dies or not.”
Tang Erda leaned toward Bai Liu with a smile, raised an eyebrow, and lowered his voice into a rough murmur.
“It’s not like you haven’t died before, right, Bai Six?”
Su Yang didn’t hear that last sentence. He only gave Tang Erda a warning glare, then shut the small window and told the team members outside that everything was fine.
“You will die,” Tang Erda said, lifting his creased eyelids. “But not now. And not inside the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau. It would be very troublesome if you died here.”
He looked at Bai Liu.
“And it’s not the first time I’ve killed you, Bai Six. So if you don’t want to die this early and lose your chance to make money, you’d better honestly explain how to solve the Dried Rose Leaf Gas sitting on this table.”
As he spoke, Tang Erda nudged the glass bottle with the muzzle of his gun. A familiar look of disgust appeared on his face.
“After this thing appeared, it spread across the world in no time. Everyone had roses growing in their eyes.”
“People who couldn’t afford it withered to death on streets and roadsides. Slums and cheap rental districts were filled with petals made of dried blood and flesh, while the roses in rich people’s eyes bloomed brighter and brighter.”
“In the end, everyone was selling it, manufacturing it, producing it. We couldn’t find the source at all.”
Tang Erda’s eyes darkened.
“And now, this time, it has appeared again for no reason.”
“I hate this stuff.”
He fixed his gaze on Bai Liu.
“But you love it, don’t you, Bai Six?”
“Why do you think I’m connected to this Rose Gas?” Bai Liu asked calmly. “And why are you so certain there must be a way to solve it?”
“Because in one timeline where I caught you, you really did help the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau solve this matter,” Tang Erda said.
Bai Liu immediately caught the key point.
“I wouldn’t help you for free just because you caught me and wanted to kill me. Did you pay me?”
Tang Erda looked as if he had swallowed a thousand flies.
After a while, he waved a hand in irritation and admitted reluctantly, “Tch. Yes. We paid a lot.”
“In that timeline, because of your outstanding contribution to resolving the Dried Rose Leaf Gas incident, you were eventually released without charges.”
His gaze lowered toward Bai Liu, empty of emotion.
“Even though all of us knew you were definitely connected to it, we still let you go because there was no direct evidence proving you profited from it.”
“All we had were indirect clues linking you to the Dried Rose Leaf Gas. We knew perfectly well that the source was you, and you didn’t even deny it.”
“But because there was no direct proof of profit, Su Yang insisted that you were innocent in the matter.”
“So you couldn’t be arrested.”
“And you were released.”
“A year later, the manufacturers of this stuff even opened retail stores right outside the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau.”
“The whole world was filled with corpses that had withered because of it.”
Tang Erda fell silent for a second.
“In that timeline, Su Yang’s parents died at home because they couldn’t afford Dried Rose Leaf Gas.”
“To resurrect them, Su Yang entered the game.”
Bai Liu’s gaze fell on the rose-colored perfume bottle.
“That really doesn’t fit my views on profiteering.”
Tang Erda’s eyes cut toward him sharply, and a mocking smile appeared on his face. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
“You have views on profiteering? Don’t you just want money no matter what?”
“Because you were acquitted, this thing gained a gray-market legality to some extent.”
“Those manufacturers claimed the perfume was no different from cigarettes. Aside from a small number of allergic users, they said it wasn’t lethal.”
“And because your acquittal gave them enormous convenience in early marketing and promotion, they even paid you a huge sum of money.”
Tang Erda sneered.
“I didn’t see you refuse it.”
“I wouldn’t refuse money delivered to my door,” Bai Liu said.
He picked up the rose-colored bottle and examined it between his fingers.
“But if, in that timeline, I already had the status and resources you described, I wouldn’t have introduced this sort of addictive perfume.”
“Under the exploitation model created by this perfume, the resource called ‘human beings’ becomes non-renewable. It is a one-time consumable, like a rose that blooms only once before withering.”
“This is the lowest form of capital exploitation.”
“It’s too stupid.”
Bai Liu calmly raised his eyes to Tang Erda.
“Compared to roses, I prefer leeks.”
“Leeks grow back.”
“If I were an existence capable of exploiting the lower classes indefinitely, I wouldn’t harvest them completely so easily. I would cultivate them properly, give them space and resources to grow, and let them regenerate over and over again.”
“Turning them into roses is far too wasteful.”
“That is not my preferred method of accumulating wealth.”
Tang Erda: “...”
No matter how many times he met Bai Liu, this man’s ability to talk nonsense and brainwash people never diminished.
“I don’t care whether you like roses or leeks,” Tang Erda said coldly. “You’d better tell me how to solve this Rose Gas.”
He laughed with hypocritical politeness.
“Also, the rooms here were specially modified by me using items. They isolate all evil objects, including that coin of yours.”
“Even if you swallowed it, you still wouldn’t be able to enter the game.”
He slowly tapped Bai Liu’s face with the muzzle of the gun. His smile grew increasingly kind.
“I have plenty of time and plenty of ways to grind you down, old friend.”
“Captain Tang,” Bai Liu said, lifting his eyes to meet Tang Erda’s, “does a temporary prisoner like me have the right to ask one last question?”
“If you successfully killed me in other timelines, then in this timeline, I’m just an ordinary person.”
“Why didn’t you kill me as {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} soon as you arrived here?”
“Why wait until this gas appeared before coming to find me?”
“Because I thought you were already dead,” Tang Erda said, staring deeply at him.
“I originally planned to kill you before you grew up. So I followed the clues from other timelines and found the private welfare home where you should have lived as a child.”
“In every timeline I experienced and verified, you grew up in that private welfare home where children were abused. I could almost always find traces of your existence there.”
“But this time, the Dean told me Bai Six had died at fourteen after swallowing a coin.”
Tang Erda paused for two seconds.
“You actually died?”
“In your adult life, you dragged almost every investor and Dean responsible for your childhood tragedy into the game.”
“Those people died miserably.”
“You didn’t kill them yourself. You only guided them into the game through various methods and let them die in the jaws of monsters.”
“Bai Six, you’ve always been clever when doing evil. It’s hard for us to catch any evidence or trace. Verifying your actions is extremely difficult.”
At this point, Tang Erda’s expression became slightly dazed. His fingertips unconsciously tapped twice against the table.
“I never thought you could die so easily.”
“I didn’t believe you were dead at all.”
“If you entered the game, other people should have been the ones to suffer.”
“For you to be tortured by those investors until you committed suicide...”
“That simply wasn’t something you would do.”
“But every trace I checked proved that the child who committed suicide for unknown reasons really was you.”
Tang Erda lit another cigarette.
He didn’t look at Bai Liu. His gaze drifted toward some unfocused point in the room.
“I never expected there to be another ‘you’ in this timeline.”
Slowly, his eyes returned to Bai Liu’s face.
Through the smoke, Tang Erda stared straight at him.
“In this timeline, there is actually another Bai Liu.”
“A laid-off worker version who grew up in a public welfare home, changed his name, avoided evil objects completely, and lived until now as if he hadn’t done a single bad thing in twenty-five years.”
“That is impossible for a bastard like you.”
“You would never tolerate staying in such a low-profit job for so long.”
Tang Erda inhaled deeply, then slowly exhaled smoke and flicked away the ash.
“Working as a corporate slave for a pitiful salary?”
“If I’d ever dreamed that a bastard like you would have a day like this, I would’ve woken up laughing.”
“This is practically torture tailor-made for you.”
“Worse than killing you.”
“I don’t know how you endured it.”
Tang Erda continued, “As long as you’re given the slightest opportunity, you will turn into a heartless money-making machine.”
“You will tame and possess the most terrifying, most loyal criminal gang in the world.”
“And then you will become a perfectly trained gold-devouring conglomerate.”
“The world’s wealth would be like an old wallet with a hole in it, spilling straight into the hands you already had open.”
Tang Erda sat on the table, took another deep drag, and blew smoke out through his nose.
One smoke ring after another drifted before Bai Liu’s eyes.
Bai Liu turned his face away almost imperceptibly, and his breathing slowed slightly.
Tang Erda suddenly laughed.
It was strange.
And deeply pleased.
“Right.”
“You hate the smell of smoke.”
“To see you trapped for so long in an environment you hate is truly—”
His smile widened.
“—even more satisfying than killing you myself.”
