The bullet passed by Bai Liu's eyes and hit the wall behind him. There was a very loud "bang" sound, which made people outside start knocking on the door to ask what happened. Su Yang even opened the small window and sternly warned Tang Erda.

"Tang Erda, firing a gun in such a narrow room is simply courting death. The shrapnel can even penetrate your head. You'd better not play this kind of suicide game in front of me again and again, where you can kill yourself accidentally. What you have in your hand is a gun, not a toy." Su Yang said coldly, "If you kill yourself, I won't collect your body for you."

Tang Er put the gun on the table carelessly. He turned around and raised his hands to Su Yang with a fake smile to indicate that he was not playing with the gun.

As if joking, he glanced at Bai Liu, who was sitting opposite him and was equally unmoved, and said with a sigh, "I just wanted to scare him, but I didn't expect you to be scared. Captain Su, you don't have to worry so much about Comrade Bai Liu."

"After all, he and I probably don't care much about life or death." Tang Er approached Bai Liu with a smile, raised his eyebrows, and lowered his voice a little hoarsely, "It's not like I haven't died before, right, Bai Liu?"

Su Yang didn't hear what Tang Erda said next. He just glared at him with a warning, lowered the small window, and said "it's nothing" to the team members outside.

"You do have to die, but not now, and not in the Bureau of Heresy. It will be very troublesome if you die here." Tang Erda opened his wrinkled eyelids, "This is not the first time I have killed you, Bai Liu, so if you don't want to die so early and not be able to make money, you'd better tell me the truth about the solution to the dried rose leaf gas on the table."

Tang Erda said as he poked the glass bottle with the muzzle of his gun, with a familiar and disgusted expression on his face: "After this thing appeared for a while, it quickly became popular all over the world. Everyone has roses growing in their eyes."

"People who don't have the money to buy this stuff wither on the streets, and the slums and low-rent housing are full of withered flesh and blood petals, while the roses in the eyes of the rich can flourish. In the end, everyone is selling, making and producing this thing. We can't find the source at all. This time it appeared so inexplicably."

"I hate this thing, but you like it very much, right, Bai Liu?" Tang Erda looked at Bai Liu steadily.

"Why do you think I have something to do with this rose gas?" Bai Liu asked calmly, "Is there a way to solve this problem?"

"Because in a certain timeline when I caught you, you did help us in the Bureau of Heresy to solve this matter." Tang Erda said.

Bai Liu quickly grasped the key point of Tang Erda's words: "I won't do things for you for free just because you want to kill me if you catch me. Did you give me money?"

Tang Erda showed an expression as if he had swallowed a thousand flies alive. Finally, he waved his hands and admitted with a bit of frustration: "Tsk, yes, I gave a lot, and in that timeline, because of your outstanding contribution in solving this Rose Gan Yewas, you were finally acquitted."

He looked down at Bai Liu without any emotion in his eyes: "Even though all of us knew that you must have been connected to this thing, we still let you go because there was no direct evidence that you used this thing to make a profit."

"All we could get was indirect evidence of your connection with Rose Dried Leaf Vat. We knew clearly that you were the source of this thing, and you did not deny it. But because there was no direct evidence that you used this thing to make a profit, in the end, at Su Yang's insistence, he believed that you were innocent in this matter, so you could not be arrested and you were released."

"A year later, the manufacturer of this thing even opened a retail store outside the Heretic Administration, and the whole world was filled with corpses withering because of this thing." Tang Er paused for a second, "In that timeline, Su Yang's parents died at home because they couldn't buy dried rose leaves. Su Yang entered the game to revive his parents."

Bai Liu's eyes fell on the bottle of rose-colored perfume: "This is indeed not in line with my view of profit."

Tang Erda glanced at him fiercely, with a sharp sneer on his face: "Do you still have a profit-making perspective? Don't you just want the money? Because you were acquitted, this thing has become legalized to some extent."

"Those manufacturers claim that this perfume is the same thing as cigarettes, and it is not fatal except for a small number of people with allergies. Because your exoneration brought them great convenience in the early marketing of this perfume, they also gave you a large sum of money for this, and I didn't see you refuse it, did I?"

"Yes, I probably wouldn't refuse the money that was sent to me, but if I already had the status and resources you mentioned in that timeline, I wouldn't have introduced this addictive perfume." Bai Liu reached out and picked up the rose-colored glass bottle, observing it with her fingertips attentively, "Because under the addictive exploitation of this perfume, human resources are non-renewable and disposable, just like a rose that can only bloom once and then wither."

"This is the lowest form of capital exploitation. It's so stupid." Bai Liu raised his head and looked at Tang Erda calmly. "I prefer leeks to roses because leeks are renewable."

"If I were a being that could permanently exploit the lower classes, I would not easily and completely harvest them. I would nurture them well, give them space and resources to grow, and allow them to regenerate forever. Turning them into roses is too extravagant, and this is not the way I like to save money."

Tang Erda: "..."

No matter how many times I see Bai Liu, his ability to lie and brainwash people remains the same.

"I don't care whether you like roses or leeks, you'd better tell me the truth about how you solved this rose gas." Tang Erda smiled hypocritically and politely, "Also, our room here was specially made by me using props to isolate all evil things including that coin. Even if you swallow the coin, you can't enter the game."

He slowly tapped Bai Liu's face with his gun and smiled more kindly: "I have plenty of time and ways to waste time with you, old friend."

"Captain Tang, do I, a prisoner of this time and space, have the right to ask you the last question?" Bai Liu looked directly into Tang Erda's eyes. "If you succeeded in killing me in other timelines, then in this timeline, I am just an ordinary person. Why didn't you kill me as soon as you arrived in this timeline, but waited until the gas appeared before coming to find me?"

"Because I thought you were dead." Tang Erda stared at Bai Liu deeply, "I wanted to kill you before you grew up, so I followed the clues I got from other time lines and found the private welfare home where you should be, which is where you stayed before you grew up."

"In every timeline I've experienced and verified, you grew up in that private orphanage that abused children. I was able to find traces of your existence there almost every time. But this time, the director there told me that Bai Liu died of swallowing coins at the age of fourteen. You actually died?"

Tang Er paused here for two seconds.

"When you grew up, you dragged almost all the investors and the director of the orphanage who caused your childhood tragedy out and dragged them into the game. They died miserably. You didn't kill them yourself. You just lured them into the game in various ways and let them die in the monsters. Bai Liu, you are always so smart when doing bad things. It is difficult for us to catch any handles and traces. It is quite difficult to verify you."

Tang Erda was a little absent-minded when he said this. His fingertips tapped the table unconsciously twice. "You can't die so easily. I don't believe you died at all. If you entered the game, it should be other people who suffered. You actually committed suicide after being tortured by these investors. This is not something you would do at all."

"But all the evidence I found proves that the child who committed suicide for unknown reasons is you."

Tang Erda lit another cigarette. He didn't look at Bai Liu, but his eyes were fixed on a certain spot in the room. "I never thought that there would be another you in this timeline."

He slowly moved his eyes to Bai Liu's face.

Tang Erda and Bai Liu stared at each other through the smoke. "In this timeline, there is actually a person who grew up in a public welfare home, changed his name, and was not involved in any evil things. It seems that he did not do any bad things in the past 25 years and lived to the present day as the laid-off worker version of Bai Liu."

"This is impossible for a bastard like you to happen. You simply won't tolerate yourself staying in such a low-cost, money-making position for so long." Tang Erda took a deep breath of smoke, then exhaled in a daze, shaking off the ash on his fingertips. "Working for others as a social animal for a low salary? If I dreamed that a bastard like you would have such a day, I would wake up laughing in my dreams."

"This is a torture tailor-made for you. It's more painful than killing you. I don't know how you can endure it."

Tang Erda continued, "Give you the slightest chance and you will become a conscienceless money-making machine. You will tame and possess the most terrifying and loyal criminal gangs in the world, and then become a well-trained money-eating group. All the wealth in the world will fall into the open hands of a homeless man like you, like an old wallet with a hole in it."

Tang Er sat sitting on the table. He took a deep breath of smoke and exhaled through his nose.

One by one, smoke rings floated in front of Bai Liu's eyes. Bai Liu's face tilted slightly and his breathing slowed down a little.

Tang Erda suddenly laughed in a strange and happy way: "Yes, you hate the smell of cigarettes. Seeing you forced to stay in an environment you don't like for so long, it's really-"

"—It feels better than killing you myself."

The author has something to say:

The 6 in other timelines is very bad, really bad. He doesn't use means that don't fit his aesthetics to save money. But in itself, the 6 in other timelines is a chaotic, evil, and immoral person. He doesn't think there's anything wrong with other people using money. Of course, our 6 is not like that! He is a law-abiding, dedicated worker who is still resigned!