Free Web NovelTang Erda stared at Bai Liu through the drifting haze of nicotine smoke, his figure flickering in and out behind the gray clouds.
“So you really stayed in some ordinary company, honestly working as a game designer for several years, only to end up getting laid off because your supervisor disliked you.”
When Tang Erda said this, he couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“When I first investigated you, I genuinely thought I’d found the wrong person. I wondered whether this timeline simply happened to contain an ordinary man named Bai Liu, while the real Bai Six had already died somewhere after swallowing his own game coin.”
“Maybe this timeline’s Bai Six just had bad luck. Before he could grow into the terrifying trader who makes everyone tremble, he died inside the game, so the game simply let him die here in this so-called real world.”
Tang Erda flicked ash from his cigarette.
“Who knows?”
“But it didn’t take long for me to realize I was wrong.”
“Because I appeared in the game?” Bai Liu looked at him calmly. “You confirmed my identity through my skill?”
“Yes.” Tang Erda bit down on the cigarette filter. “That soul-stealing skill of yours—I’d recognize it even if it were burned to ashes.”
“You used that method to gather a pack of lunatics just like yourself.”
“And more than once, you nearly wiped out our entire base.”
“A pack of lunatics like me?” Bai Liu repeated with interest.
Tang Erda gave him a sidelong glance.
“In every timeline, I’ve wondered how you managed to find so many people with absurd talent and completely abnormal mental states to form your so-called Wandering Circus.”
He tapped the tabletop lightly with his index finger.
“And only in this timeline...”
Tang Erda lifted his eyes toward Bai Liu.
“...am I seeing the formation of Wandering Circus from the very beginning.”
“In other timelines, by the time I met you, you were already powerful.”
“I had to risk my life digging through dozens of timelines just to uncover your background, and even then, all I learned was that you grew up in that private welfare home.”
“I knew almost nothing about the mad dogs around you.”
Tang Erda narrowed his eyes.
“One reason was because those lunatics, despite acting arrogant, were extremely cautious. Tracing their real identities was nearly impossible.”
“The second reason...”
“You protected them too well.”
“Before this timeline, the Bureau only knew their titles and habits. Everything else was practically impossible to investigate.”
“Whenever we got too close to uncovering something, our people would start dying.”
Tang Erda leaned back lazily against the sofa and began counting on his fingers.
“You should’ve met them already.”
“The monkey thief who steals secrets for you.”
“And the Little Witch—that little female assassin who enjoys poisoning men to death.”
“The only one whose identity we managed to confirm was Mu Ke, the inland investor who inherited his father’s business and helped you promote evil artifacts.”
Tang Erda snorted.
“But that Mu Ke was slippery as hell.”
“Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, he hid in a sanatorium claiming he needed treatment for his heart condition. The moment we asked more than two questions, he’d clutch his chest, cough up blood, and start pretending to die.”
“Then the doctors would chase us out.”
“But now...” Tang Erda lowered the hand holding the cigarette onto the table as ash drifted onto the floor. He leaned close to Bai Liu and lowered his voice.
“Now I know who they all are.”
“And then I realized something.”
“They weren’t born mad dogs.”
“They only had cracks in them.”
Tang Erda stared directly into Bai Liu’s eyes.
“Only you were born insane, Bai Liu.”
“You found those cracks and personally trained them into your hunting dogs.”
“You ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) made them bite everyone except you.”
“Is that so?” Bai Liu asked without the slightest ripple in his expression.
“Then tell me, Captain Tang.”
“Do you think I’ve successfully tamed them now?”
“Do you think they’ll tear you apart because you captured me?”
Tang Erda narrowed his deep blue eyes.
Then he pressed the burning tip of his cigarette against Bai Liu’s pale neck.
Sizzle.
The cigarette went out instantly, leaving a fresh burn along Bai Liu’s collarbone.
Bai Liu’s breathing quickened slightly from the pain.
But at such close range, he also noticed the scar hidden beneath Tang Erda’s half-open shirt.
It was hideous.
Like claw marks left by a wild beast.
The wound still carried traces of corrosion. freewёbnoνel.com
It resembled the combined damage of Mu Sicheng’s monkey claws and Liu Jiayi’s poison.
And for a scar carried out of the game to remain visible—
The victim’s mental value must have dropped dangerously low.
Mu Ke’s dagger.
Tang Erda buttoned his shirt again, covering the scar.
“How do you know I haven’t already been torn apart by them before?”
He leaned close to Bai Liu’s ear and smiled coldly.
“I’ve killed you.”
“And you’ve killed me, Bai Six.”
“But unfortunately...”
Tang Erda exhaled smoke beside Bai Liu’s ear.
“...neither of us stayed dead.”
Bai Liu coughed lightly as Tang Erda laughed like a madman.
“We were both resurrected by someone.”
***
Tang Erda stepped out of the room.
Su Yang immediately walked over.
“How was it? Did he tell you how to solve the Dried Rose Leaf Gas situation?”
“Not yet.” Tang Erda hung a cigarette from the corner of his mouth, looking vaguely disreputable. “He won’t talk that easily.”
“It’ll take time.”
“Keep watching him carefully.”
Su Yang frowned tightly.
“How long is ‘time’ supposed to mean?”
“Captain Tang, are you certain he can solve this?”
Tang Erda casually flicked the cigarette butt into a trash can with perfect accuracy before glancing at Su Yang.
These people didn’t understand his ability.
Nor did they understand why he could predict where heretic objects would appear.
Even if they had watched the interrogation through the monitors, they likely still wouldn’t have understood the conversation between him and Bai Liu.
Because any discussion involving the system or the game would automatically be censored when spoken by a player like Tang Erda.
This was one of the game’s restrictions.
Only players could understand one another.
And because Tang Erda was a timeline traveler, every timeline he entered contained slight differences.
People changed.
Families changed.
Relationships changed.
Even personalities shifted subtly.
Only Bai Liu never changed.
Forever greedy.
Forever evil.
Like an anchor buried deep within the river of time.
No matter how many timelines Tang Erda crossed, Bai Liu would always appear before him exactly the same.
Steady.
Unchanging.
And unlike everyone else, he never reacted with shock when hearing Tang Erda discuss timelines or parallel worlds.
He merely listened with calm interest, as though thinking:
So the other versions of me are this interesting too.
To Bai Liu—
This entire world was merely a game.
And Tang Erda was simply a stubborn player endlessly reloading saves in pursuit of a perfect ending.
Ironically enough, Bai Liu was the only person Tang Erda could actually speak honestly to.
As for everyone else—
His colleagues.
His friends.
Su Yang.
Tang Erda had already lost them too many times.
The reunions had become unbearable.
He couldn’t even bring himself to get close to them anymore.
Because players contaminated people around them.
Anyone who became too closely connected to a player would eventually be dragged into the game as well.
Tang Erda had learned that lesson through countless timelines.
A department like the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau, constantly exposed to evil artifacts, naturally produced players far more easily than ordinary places.
There were many players inside the Bureau besides Tang Erda.
But the player-members who understood the truth could never explain it to the ordinary members.
The game restricted them.
They could not say:
These aren’t mysterious evil objects.
They are products of a game.
And the game will never end.
Run.
Every time a player died inside the game, the ordinary members watched those same people die horrific deaths in reality after logging out.
Some committed grotesque suicides.
Some died in bizarre accidents.
Some simply rotted away.
The fear and despair of the ordinary members only deepened.
And eventually, influenced by the players around them, they too developed an overwhelming desire to survive.
Then they entered the game themselves.
In the timelines Tang Erda remembered, by the later stages, most members of the Bureau had already become players.
And afterward—
One by one—
They all died inside the game.
Including Su Yang.
Tang Erda’s gaze drifted far away, crossing countless cigarettes, corpses, and shattered timelines before finally settling on Su Yang’s frowning face.
Su Yang had died protecting him.
He died during the league semifinals.
The Bureau members who entered the game eventually reunited there.
All of them struggled desperately to stop more people from entering.
They wanted to continue protecting reality from inside the game itself.
Whether that reality was real or fake no longer mattered.
They still wanted to protect it.
Protect their teammates.
Protect their families.
Protect the friends still waiting for them outside.
But there always seemed to be some invisible hand pushing everything toward ruin from somewhere beyond their sight.
They already lived like sewer rats.
They avoided meeting relatives.
Avoided speaking to friends.
Avoided kissing lovers.
They could only hide in distant shadows, silently watching over the people they cared about while fearing that their identity as players would drag those same people into the endless nightmare of the game.
When Tang Erda first entered the game, he didn’t even dare go outside to buy food or cigarettes.
He ordered delivery and had everything left outside the door.
Then he waited one or two hours before retrieving it.
He sat alone in rooms filled with beer cans and cigarette butts, waiting for the next seven-day cycle to begin.
Every time he barely survived, he dragged himself through another seven days.
He lived like a self-aware virus terrified of infecting others.
But no matter how careful you are—
The people you cherish still walk toward the future you fear most because of you.
Su Yang eventually came searching for Tang Erda after he locked himself inside his apartment, stopped working, and cut off all contact.
Tang Erda immediately began running.
He changed hotels.
Changed logout coordinates.
Kept moving constantly.
But Su Yang stubbornly chased after him from place to place.
Tang Erda could rely on the game to disappear.
Su Yang couldn’t.
After realizing ordinary methods didn’t work, Su Yang started searching in the dumbest possible way.
He walked the streets carrying Tang Erda’s photograph and asked strangers one by one:
“Have you seen my captain?”
Meanwhile, Tang Erda would stand in some nearby alley, silently lighting a cigarette without smoking it while waiting for Su Yang to leave.
Only after the cigarette burned down to his fingers would he finally step out.
But in the end—
Tang Erda still met Su Yang inside the game.
The moment Su Yang saw him there, this vice captain—much younger than the man standing before him now—smiled until his eyes curved into crescents.
As though he wasn’t afraid at all.
“Captain,” he said.
“I finally found you.”
