Tang Erda stared at Bai Liu vaguely in the lingering nicotine smoke.

"But you actually just worked honestly as a game developer in an ordinary company for several years, and you were fired because of your boss's prejudice."

Tang Erda couldn't help laughing when he said this: "When I found out all this, I wondered if I had recognized the wrong person. Was there really an ordinary person named Bai Liu in this timeline, and the real Bai Liu had inexplicably swallowed his own game coins and died?"

"Perhaps the Bai Liu in this timeline was unlucky and died in the game before he had the chance to grow into a feared trader. So the game let him die like this in this so-called real world. Who knows?"

Tang Er shook off the cigarette ash: "But I soon realized that I was wrong."

"Because I appeared in the game, right?" Bai Liu looked at Tang Erda, "You used my skills to determine my identity?"

"Yes." Tang Erda bit the mouthpiece of his cigarette. "I would not be mistaken for your skill in buying souls even if I turned into ashes. You gathered a bunch of psychopaths like you in this way. Several times, we almost destroyed our base."

"A bunch of psychopaths like me?" Bai Liurao asked with interest.

Tang Er glanced at him and said, "I have been wondering in every timeline how you were able to find so many people who have outstanding talents and abnormal mental states like you to form your so-called wandering circus."

"Only in this timeline." Tang Er tapped the table with his index finger. He looked up at Bai Liu. "This is the first time I've seen the formation process of your [Wandering Circus]."

"In other timelines, when I met you, you were already very powerful. I risked my life to dig through dozens of timelines to find out your origins. And I only found out that you lived in a private welfare home. I know nothing about the personal information of those crazy people around you."

Tang Er narrowed his eyes and said, "One is that although these crazy dogs under your command act recklessly, they are very cautious in doing things, and it is difficult to trace their true identities. The second is that you protect them too well. Before this timeline, the base only knew their names and habits, and could not find out the rest. Once they are found out, our people will be in trouble."

He leaned back on the sofa and lazily counted on his fingers: "You should have seen all these people before, the monkey thief who helped you steal all kinds of secrets, and the little killer witch who liked to kill men with poison."

"The only person whose identity we can confirm and who has some connection with you is Mu Ke, a mainland investor who inherited his father's business and helped you promote evil things. But Mu Ke is particularly cunning. He hides in a nursing home 356 days a year, saying that he needs to recuperate from a heart disease. If we ask him a few more questions, he will cover his chest and pretend to be sick and spit blood, and the doctor will start to send us away."

"But now I know who they are." Tang Erda put his cigarette on the table, and the ashes fell to the ground. He leaned closer to Bai Liu and said in a low voice, "Then I found that they were not born crazy dogs, but they just had some psychological gaps."

"You are the only one who is born crazy, Bai Liu, and you seized these loopholes and tamed them into crazy dogs under your command, letting them bite anyone except you."

"Really?" Bai Liu looked at Tang Erda calmly, "Do you think I have successfully tamed them now? Do you think they will bite you to death because you caught me, Captain Tang?"

Tang Er narrowed his narrow, dark blue eyes, then extinguished the still burning cigarette butt that he was holding with his fingertips on Bai Liu's fair neck.

With a "hiss", the cigarette butt went out, leaving a burn wound above Bai Liu's collarbone, which made Bai Liu's breathing slightly quickened. However, such a close distance also allowed Bai Liu to successfully see a very ugly scar on Tang Erda's collarbone through his casually opened collar - it looked like a scar that had been scratched by a beast, and there were traces of corrosion on it.

It's a bit like the scar left by the combination of Mu Sicheng's monkey claw and Liu Jiayi's poison - and the scar in the game requires the person's spirit value to be extremely low and the will of the person being attacked to be shaken, so that the scar can be left.

——Mu Ke’s dagger that reduces the spirit value.

"How do you know I haven't been bitten to death?" Tang Er buttoned up his shirt to cover the wound. With a chilling smile, he whispered in Bai Liu's ear, "I killed you, and you killed me, Bai Liu."

"But it's a pity that none of us died." Tang Er blew a puff of smoke into Bai Liu's ear. He laughed nervously amid Bai Liu's coughs, "We were all resurrected."

————————

Tang Er came out of the room, and Su Yang went to meet him: "How is it? Did he tell me how to solve this rose gas problem?"

"Not yet. He won't say it that easily." Tang Erda held a cigarette butt in his mouth, a little nonchalant, "It will take a while. Keep an eye on him."

"For a while, how long is this period?" Su Yang frowned, "Captain Tang, are you sure he can solve this problem?"

Tang Er threw the cigarette butt into the trash can very accurately and glanced at Su Yang.

These people didn't know what his abilities were, nor did they know why he could predict where many heretical things would appear, including the conversation that Tang Er had just had with Bai Liu in the house. Even if these people were standing in front of the surveillance camera, they probably wouldn't be able to understand what they were communicating.

Because this kind of conversation and ability will reveal the existence of the system and the game, when Tang Er says it to such game players, it will be blocked.

This is the restriction of the game on players. Tang Erda can only communicate these things with players like Bai Liu. In addition, Tang Erda is a timeline traveler. Other people or things in each timeline will undergo subtle changes, in terms of personality, family, and emotions.

Only Bai Liu is unchanging. He is always evil and greedy. He is like an anchor that will not let Tang Erda, a sailor drifting in the torrent of time, lose his way. He appears in front of him steadily and unchangingly. He will never be surprised by his time travel arguments, but just looks at him calmly with an interested smile, as if to say, it turns out that the other parts of me are so interesting.

The world is just a game to this guy.

Tang Erda is a player in the game who is unwilling to give up and wants to have a perfect ending, so he keeps reloading the game.

It is actually quite ironic that Bai Liu, this strange anchor, is the only person Tang Er can tell anything to.

As for the others, Tang Erda's colleagues, friends, and Su Yang, he had lost them countless times, and because the reunion was too painful, he couldn't even touch them easily anymore.

Because he is a player, he cannot contact anyone, which will bring them into the game - this is a truth that Tang Erda understood after countless reincarnations.

The Dangerous Heresy Processing Bureau, a special department that fights against evil, has always been a place where players breed easily. There are far more game players in the base than just Tang Erda.

However, these players who know the origin of the evil things are unable to tell other players who are not players because of the restrictions of the game. You are not fighting against something with no origin, you are fighting against a product in the game. These things will never end, so run away.

When a team member dies in the game, team members who are not game players will watch these team members who died in the game log out of the game and die miserably in reality in various weird ways. The despair and fear of these evil creatures of these normal team members become more and more profound. They are influenced by those team members who are also players, and thus develop a strong desire to survive and throw themselves into the game.

In other timelines where Tang Erda was, in the later stages, most of the members of the Bureau of Heresy became game players, and then died one by one in the game - including Su Yang in front of him.

Tang Erda's gaze was absent-minded and long, passing through a lot of smoke, death and unknown time, and slowly fell on Su Yang's face with frowns and questioning.

Su Yang died trying to save him, in the league's semi-final match.

The members of the Bureau of Heresy who entered the game met each other in the game, and everyone tried their best to stop others from entering the game, wanting to continue to perform their duties in the game - to protect the precarious real world that they didn't know whether it was real or fake, and to protect their teammates, relatives and friends in reality.

But it's as if an invisible giant hand is pushing all of this, and they have been living like rats in a sewer, afraid to meet their loved ones, talk to their friends, or kiss their lovers. They just stand in the shadows, unable to be found, and watch from afar what they are protecting, for they are afraid that their identities as game players will affect the people they cherish, and drag them into this vicious game that will never end.

When Tang Erda first entered the game, he didn't even dare to go out to buy food and cigarettes. He ordered takeout and had someone leave it outside the door. He didn't go to pick it up until an hour or two later. He sat alone in a room full of cigarette butts and beer, waiting for the next seven days to come. After surviving a near-death experience, he lingered on for another seven days, living like a virus that had the self-awareness to not go out and infect others.

But sometimes, no matter how careful you are, the people you cherish will inevitably move towards a future you don't want to see because of you.

Su Yang came to find Tang Erda, who had been staying at home, not going to work, and not contacting anyone.

Tang Erda began to run around to avoid Su Yang. He changed different hotels and changed different logout coordinates, but Su Yang kept pestering him and looking for him in one place after another. Tang Erda had the cheating method of the game to run around, but Su Yang did not. When he realized that those methods could be avoided by Tang Erda, Su Yang began to use stupid and deadly methods to find Tang Erda.

Finally, Deputy Captain Su held up Tang Erda's photo and went around the street asking people one by one, "Have you ever seen my captain?"

Tang Erda was standing in an alley not far from Su Yang, with a cigarette lit but not smoked. He waited until Su Yang left and the cigarette burned his hand before he came out.

But in the end, Tang Erda still met Su Yang in the game.

The moment Tang Er saw Su Yang in the game, this deputy captain, who was much younger than he is now, smiled with his eyebrows curved, and did not seem to be afraid at all. He said, "Captain, I finally found you."