The iron gate swung open, and Tang Erda, who was standing in front of the gate, did not move.
He seemed to have turned into a wooden sculpture in an instant, or rather, at this moment he hoped that he was just a wooden sculpture.
The factory worker pushed him twice in confusion, but Tang Erda was too tall and strong for him to move. At this time, the "fragrance test paper" in the cage suddenly moved its fingers and moved slightly towards him.
The "scent tester" leaned against the wall and tried to focus his scattered eyes on Tang Erda. He uttered a very weak, questioning, hoarse voice: "...Captain?"
It was just such a light sound, but Tang Erda, who had been lying there, felt as if he had been hit hard by a gun. The pain was so severe that he had to grit his teeth and look horified in order to control his expression.
Tang Erda's eyes were bloodshot and he had to hold on to the wall to steady himself. He was staring at the person in the cage, or the scented paper.
Something drained Tang Erda's strength, leaving him exhausted, covered in wounds and unrecognizable. He had no choice but to rely on external objects to support his body, and stumbled step by step into the cage that had trapped him and Su Yang.
Tang Erda walked to the front of the perfume test paper. At this moment, he could clearly see the other person's full appearance.
Su Yang's whole face was "blooming", the roses in his eyes were as lush as those in a flower field, his face was covered with bloody lines, he was wearing the uniform of the deputy captain of the Dangerous Heresy Handling Bureau, even with his work badge.
The work photo of Su Yang on his work badge was stained with blood, making it look dirty.
This face and this work photo reminded Tang Erda of the time when Su Yang was shot by Xiao Chou. The heart-wrenching screams of the team members at that time seemed to still echo in his ears.
Tang Erda seemed to have lost his soul. He stared at the videotape recording Su Yang's death with a blank expression. His brain seemed to have malfunctioned and only one sentence kept echoing in his mind - If only I were next to Su Yang.
——I wish Su Yang and I were arrested together, I wish I was arrested instead of Su Yang, I wish I were Su Yang.
It would be great if it was me who was tortured, felt pain, and died.
——Why does it have to be Su Yang every time, every time?
Must he be such a coward that he has not dared to speak out about it, has not dared to look squarely at it, has not dared to look at it more, has not dared to say a word to the most important person in so many timelines?
Tang Er closed his eyes, the veins on the back of his hand that was holding the wall bulged, and he almost couldn't stand steadily.
There was a very faint light in Su Yang's eyes. He didn't seem to feel that he was in so much pain. His face with uneven skin was pure. Seeing Tang Erda's trust and joy in the captain, he seemed to want to laugh.
But the torn skin and muscles prevented Su Yang from smiling.
The corners of his mouth bent halfway and then fell down helplessly, but his tone was still cheerful: "It's really you, Captain!"
Su Yang wanted to raise his hand to grab the corner of Tang Erda's clothes, but failed several times. Instead, his hands began to tremble from exerting too much force.
When Su Yang raised his hand again and it was about to fall, Tang Erda finally half-knelt down silently. He used his trembling hand to lightly, at a distance, cover the back of Su Yang's hand.
Su Yang gasped weakly twice, leaning against the wall, dying. He looked at him with half-closed eyes and smiled, then suddenly turned around and held Tang Erda's hand.
Tang Erda took a deep breath to suppress his surging emotions. For the first time in this timeline, he did not reject Su Yang's approach, but shook Su Yang's hand. His voice was hoarse and harsh: "Well, the captain is here to rescue you."
"No, can't...save me out! Cough cough cough——" Su Yang's face showed an angry, helpless and funny expression.
Just like every time he worked with Tang Er, he seemed to be troubled by his captain's rough decision, but in the end he still patiently persuaded the other party.
Su Yang's voice sounded a little intermittent due to his rapid breathing: "It's useless for you to save me. I'm really dying."
Su Yang's eyelids drooped, and his tone became depressed: "My family, parents, and teammates all failed to hold on. They all withered away. Now I am the only one left, but I can't hold on for much longer."
"I just can't accept it. I can't accept that I can't do anything in front of this thing. I'm such a waste." Su Yang's tone was light and dazed. He raised his head, and the roses in his light-colored eyes were particularly clear. He clenched Tang Erda's hand as he tried to pull it away, "But Captain, you are different! You are the one chosen by the prophet! You can definitely change everything!"
At this moment, it seemed to Tang Erda that all the memories in the timeline were concentrated on this sentence.
[Captain! You can do it!]
[Captain, I believe in you!]
[Captain, ahem, as long as you are alive, we have hope! ]
Countless, all, different Su Yangs, with bloody, broken, pale, scarred, or bloody faces, all looked at him with bright eyes of relief and hope, calling him Captain.
Then the next moment she died for him with a smile, and her soul disappeared in the light in an instant, leaving no trace.
Tang Erda looked at Su Yang anxiously staring at his face in a daze. For a moment, he felt that what he accepted was no longer Su Yang's entrustment and trust, but a desperate curse and alienation.
Su Yang moved forward with difficulty. He leaned on Tang Erda's shoulder and said in a low voice: "Captain, listen, there is no point in saving me. You have made it here, so you should be promoted to factory worker, and then to perfumer. There is an antidote for rose perfume, but only the factory director knows the antidote."
"As long as you are promoted from perfumer to factory manager, you will know what the antidote is." Su Yang was a little out of breath when he said this. He leaned on Tang Erda's shoulder and raised his head to rest. Then he continued quickly with a smile in his tone, "Then you can save these polluted people."
Tang Erda couldn't tell how long he had been silent before he spoke hoarsely: "...What about you?"
Su Yang didn't say anything, but just leaned quietly on Tang Erda's shoulder, closing his eyes and his chest rising and falling slightly.
Their tacit understanding did not require them to say anything more. Both of them understood what decision Su Yang had made - Su Yang decided to sacrifice himself for Tang Erda's testing, so that Tang Erda could be successfully promoted to factory worker.
This is equivalent to letting Tang Erda kill Su Yang personally to save other people in the game.
Even though this Su Yang was just a character in the game, a fake Su Yang, Tang Er couldn't bring himself to do it.
"But Captain..." Su Yang leaned on Tang Erda's shoulder and opened his empty eyes, whispering as if mumbling to himself, "It's impossible to save me. I'm addicted."
"Captain, you have to be more open-minded. Death... all humans have to die." Su Yang's tone was a little casual and nonchalant, as if he was coaxing Tang Erda, "If I have to die, I hope my death will be meaningful to you."
"I'm actually really happy that I can see you before I completely wither, because this at least means that my self-torture of struggling and suffering like a fool for so long and not wanting to succumb to rose perfume is meaningful." Su Yang turned his head on Tang Erda's shoulder and looked at him tenderly, "My meaning is that I have waited for you, Captain."
Tang Erda could see that the cracks on Su Yang's face were gradually deepening and fading, with blood oozing from the edges. Su Yang reflected in his pupils looked more and more like a rose.
More and more like a monster.
He had never seen so clearly how quickly life slipped away from a person's body.
Su Yang looked at Tang Erda leadingly.
Tang Erda slowly loosened Su Yang's hand, then shook the hand he had loosened. He lowered his head, his expression was unclear, and his voice was so hoarse that it was almost inaudible: "...Testing, how do I do it?"
Su Yang smiled from the bottom of his heart: "Thank you, Captain."
"Oh, right." Su Yang seemed to have remembered something important, his face became serious, "Captain, do you still remember the living heretic Bai Liu that you caught and then escaped? When you leave here, if you have a chance to find him, please kill him."
"This is the man who blew up the factory we went to inspect the same day he escaped from the dangerous Bureau of Heresy."
——————————
In another cage separated by a wall.
At Lu Station, he finally figured out that the person in front of him was really Bai Liu who had transformed into Liu Jiayi. The two of them were not nervous at all and started chatting casually.
Bai Liu opened his eyelids and glanced at Lu Yizhang who was sitting opposite him: "I blew up the Rose Factory?"
"Yes." Lu Yizhan didn't seem to think he was talking about something very important. His body and tone were very relaxed. He lay on the bed with his hands behind his head. "I and other staff members of the Bureau of Dangerous Heresy saw it. I can guarantee with my ten years of knowing you that the person standing on the Rose Factory and claiming that he was going to blow up the factory was definitely you."
"You said you wanted to cause an explosion, leak rosehip gas, and destroy the world. I talked to you for several sentences, and finally confirmed that you were the you I knew." Lu Yizhan said with his face up.
The timeline of the game "Rose Factory" is ten years after the real world.
Bai Liu sorted out the timeline that Lu Yizhang had told him.
The explosion that caused Rose Leaf Gas to spread around the world occurred the day after Bai Yanagi escaped from the dangerous Bureau of Heresy.
On the same day, Lu Yizhan and Su Yang, deputy captain of the third detachment of the Dangerous Heresy Processing Bureau, both came to the Rose Factory to investigate the factory that had been forcibly sealed off but secretly reopened. This was what Bai Liu saw in the newspaper of this factory, and it was basically consistent with the reality deduced by Bai Liu, and it was also consistent with what Lu Yizhan had just told him.
As for what Lu Yizhang described afterwards, Bai Liu raised his eyebrows after listening to only a few sentences.
Lu Yizhan said that when they arrived at the factory, they searched everywhere in the factory for containers that seemed to contain dried rose gas. The entire factory was very strange. All the instruments were there, but the people seemed to have disappeared out of thin air and no one knew where they had gone.
They searched tirelessly until dawn, but found nothing except some iron pots and distillation devices containing rose-forging residues.
At this time, Bai Liu appeared out of nowhere on the roof of the Rose Factory, holding a large lama that he got from nowhere, with one hand in his pocket, and lazily shouted to the crowd below -
Lu Yizhan said, while making the gesture of a great lama with his hands to imitate the situation at that time: "I am the anti-social element Bai Liu. I have been unemployed for more than a month. I can't find a job and I have no money. I am very sad and think that the world and I will be destroyed together. So I will blow up this factory and let the rose stem gas leak, and let everyone die with me."
Bai Liu was strangely silent for a while, then asked, "And then the Rose Factory exploded?"
Lu Yizhan nodded honestly: "Yes, and then you disappeared completely. Because of this incident, there was a time when the Dangerous Heresy Bureau offered a wanted warrant for you with a reward of 16 million, and I was a little tempted."
Bai Liu glanced at Lu Yizhan who was lying on the bed and said, "Don't you think I was the one who caused the explosion?"
If Lu Yizhan was really sure that Bai Liu was responsible for the explosion, as long as he was still able to move, as soon as Bai Liu walked in, he would definitely jump up from the bed and kill Bai Liu on the spot.
But now Lu Yizhang is still lying on the bed and chatting with Bai Liu calmly, which proves that Lu Yizhang thinks the explosion has nothing to do with Bai Liu.
Lu Yizhan was silent for a while before speaking: "I am sure that it was you who shouted on the roof of the Rose Factory that the factory should be blown up. I am also sure that within fifteen minutes after you finished speaking, the Rose Factory exploded and the perfume leak occurred, endangering everyone."
Then Lu Yizhan made a very stupid guess: "But I don't think you did it."
Bai Liurao asked back with interest: "Why?"
Bai Liu rarely doubted Lu Yizhan's assumptions about him. Lu Yizhan was probably more familiar with him than he was, and would never lie to him.
Lu Yizhang said that the person standing on the roof was him, Bai Liu, and Bai Liu guessed that it was really him.
Lu Yizhan looked up at the top of the cage for a while as if in a daze, and then responded to Bai Liu: "It's a very unprofessional and subjective speculation. I believe you would not do such a thing."
Bai Liu glanced at him and said, "I never knew that you would actually trust my character?"
Lu Yizhan said "eh" slowly, turned around and glanced at Bai Liu: "It's not because of this, I don't dare to trust your character."
If it weren't for the strange lines on Lu Yizhan's face, their conversation would have been as calm and peaceful as any other joke.
Lu Yizhang looked at Bai Liu and said, "But I believe in your business ethics. You made a ten-year hotpot deal with me yesterday. There is no need to destroy the world before you even have a meal. It would be such a loss. I don't believe you can do such a thing."
"Yeah." Bai Liu glanced at Lu Yizhan, "Although I think so too, others may not think so, right?"
Lu Yizhan smiled and turned his head back, saying with emotion: "Indeed, I was the only one who thought so among the people who went to the factory that day. My reasoning was too subjective and I couldn't convince them, so there was a high bounty for you later."
"It's a pity that they couldn't hold on and left one by one." Lu Yizhan's expression finally became complicated. He sighed deeply, "It seems that there is only one person left in this world who still believes in you and hates you."
The person who believed in Bai Liu was obviously Lu Yizhang. According to the bad taste of the game designer, if Bai Liu guessed correctly, the person who hated him should be Su Yang - at this time, the perfume paper that Tang Erda corresponded to was most likely Su Yang.
Lu Yizhan continued, "In the past ten years here, I have been thinking about the ten years I have known you, trying to find clues about who you are, so as to prove my guess that you would not blow up the Rose Factory. However, another person kept emphasizing the evidence, emphasizing that he saw you blow up the factory with his own eyes."
Lu Yizhan stared at the ceiling, his voice became very soft, as if he was talking to himself: "Who on earth are you? You have become the only reason for our survival."
"Looking back to the later period, I began to doubt whether you existed. Were you just a friend that I imagined because I was too lonely here? A murderer, a kind of self-compensation to stay sane? Knowing that you existed, I at least had some hope."
Bai Liu tilted his head calmly: "So?"
Lu Yizhan rolled his eyes at Bai Liu in a complaining manner: "Please at least sympathize with me. I'm in such a miserable state."
After that, Lu Yizhan was silent for a moment, and he smiled: "So for a while, whenever someone came in to test the perfume, I would ask them - do you know Bai Liu? What do you think of him?"
"Maybe it's because I cooperated well with the fragrance testing and they basically answered. I got many answers about [White Willow], but none of them could convince me that you really exist, and none of them could describe the person I know."
Lu Yizhan sat up with great difficulty, propped up the edge of the bed, took two deep breaths, and looked up at Bai Liu: "Now it's your turn to answer my question. Do you know Bai Liu?"
He looked straight at Bai Liu who was standing beside the bed: "——What kind of person do you think Bai Liu is?"
"I know Bai Liu." Bai Liu looked at the weak and gasping Lu Yizhan calmly and said, "He is a shameless, despicable person with no empathy, who will do anything to get what he wants. He has no conventional social awareness, no common values, and does not accept the universal moral unspoken rules. In short, he is a complete jerk, and he has a strong desire for money. In every way, he is a very dangerous person."
"Yes." Lu Yizhan nodded seriously, "Yes, it's the Bai Liu I know. Go on."
Bai Liu stared at Lu Yizhan for a long time before saying, "He is indeed your friend, so even if he is such a jerk, he will keep his deal with you - I will not blow up the factory. If the person standing on the roof of the Rose Factory is indeed me, then there must be some circumstances that forced me to say such words and make such a choice, but I will not do anything that violates the deal."
Lu Yizhan was stunned for a moment, then he smiled sincerely: "Yes, I believe so too."
Bai Liu stepped forward and said, "Okay, I'm done with my nonsense. Now teach me how to test it."
Lu Yizhan was stunned for a moment, then smiled helplessly: "You are too cruel, Bai Liu. I just heard from that factory worker that your talent is likely to kill me in one test!"
"You may die here." Bai Liu glanced at Lu Yizhan, "But the real you will not die. Do you want to make a deal with me? I can stop the explosion that has already happened and save you and others."
Lu Yizhan stared at Bai Liu for a long while. Although he didn't seem to understand what Bai Liu was talking about, he didn't know how Bai Liu could stop this from happening.
——But he knew that at least 50% of the deals Bai Liu mentioned were things he could do himself.
"Yes!" Lu Yizhan answered immediately, his eyes shining. "What is the content of the transaction?"
Bai Liu: "Please treat me to twenty years of hot pot."
"Adding the previous ten years, it's already thirty years! That's too much!!" Lu Yizhan screamed, "Look at me now, I may not be able to live that long!!"
Bai Liu glanced at him and said, "Then try your best to live until that time in order to make this deal with me."
Lu Yizhan was stunned for a moment. He looked at Bai Liu, who had an indifferent expression, and couldn't help laughing.
I care about people so much and I am so roundabout - it's really me.
————————
Su Yang grabbed Tang Erda's hands, a look of regret rarely appeared on his face: "Captain, every day that we are here, I and other team members regret not following your orders seriously. If we could have killed Bai Liu on the day we captured him, so many people..."
His pale eyes were filled with tears, and his voice was hoarse and broken: "So many people would not have died because of Bai Liu's revenge and because of the leakage and spread of such things!!!"
"Captain, if only I could have stopped all this from happening, it's all my fault..."
Su Yang seemed to be crushed by some extremely heavy responsibility and emotion. He slowly bent down in front of Tang Erda.
He seemed to have aged several decades in an instant because of regret and self-blame. The joints on his spine bulged like beads on his overly thin back, making him so skinny that he could not stand upright.
Tang Erda clenched his fists - it was too late for Su Yang in front of him.
But for him, it's still not too late.
As long as he passes the level in time, finds the antidote, and kills Bai Liu—everything he saw, Su Yan who was in so much pain that he wanted to die, all of this, will never happen again.
Tang Er calculated in his mind the time when the game ended in reality, as well as the time when Su Yang told him that Bai Liu caused the explosion. His eyes involuntarily flashed - this meant that Bai Liu went to the factory and caused the explosion immediately after completing the game.
You have to kill Bai Liu in the game!
He already knew that he would be able to get the antidote after becoming the factory director, so Bai Liu could not stay any longer!
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