Lu Yizhan had never run so fast before. He was gasping for breath, breathing the oxygen that Dong Chenglong had given him. On his back was the unconscious Cen Mingming.

With a blank mind, I ran madly in the flower field filled with rose-colored smoke.

Until I saw the figure carrying the heavy sword again.

Lu Yizhan's knees went weak and he almost stumbled and fell to his knees in front of Fang Dian, but Fang Dian caught him steadily with one hand.

He was panting, tears rolling out of his eyes unconsciously, and he couldn't utter a word.

He heard Fang Dian give a clear order in his ear: "Lu Yizhan, a member of the Third Detachment, led by Dong Chenglong, a member of the Cross Inquisition, successfully rescued the members of the First Regiment of the Second Detachment!"

"Next..." Fang Dian looked towards the Rose Factory in front of her with a determined look. She drew out her heavy sword and stabbed it into the ground. Other members of the Judiciary walked out from behind her, "Transfer of mission!"

"【Crusader】Clear the battlefield!"

Lu Yizhan had forgotten how he got back to the Bureau of Heresy. He seemed to be in a coma, but also seemed not to be. He clearly remembered everything that happened afterwards, but he was like a stiff shell, unable to move as his soul was sucked away.

Someone pulled Cen Mingming off his back and put them on stretchers one by one. Lu Yizhan only lay on the bed for half a day before he forced himself to get up and returned to the headquarters.

The entire Bureau of Heresy was in chaos, with members everywhere being transported back with roses reflected in their pupils, withering in pain.

With every step Lu Yizhan took while leaning against the wall, he felt as if he was stepping on a petal that had withered from his flesh and blood. His ears were filled with heart-wrenching howls and cries, as if it were purgatory on earth.

It seems like the end of the world is about to come.

And Fangdian is the one who prevents the end of the world from coming.

She was like a stabilizing force. After she came back, she calmed everyone down. Fang Dian stood in the center of everyone's sight, holding up the bloodstained heavy sword, raised her head and said, "We have dealt with the rose factory, and now we have found a way to contain the dried rose gas."

"Send a few members with high psychological quality who won't be easily influenced by heresy and go crazy. We need to quickly pick the antidote to relieve the dry rose gas."

More than a dozen team members raised their hands to sign up, and Lu Yizhan was the first to raise his hand.

Lu Yizhan followed Fang Dian, who was walking briskly with his head down. He opened his mouth several times, and finally asked the question he had always wanted to know the answer to: "Captain Fang, Captain Dong...is he back?"

Fang Dian tightened her grip on the heavy sword. She lowered her head, her hair hanging in front of her forehead, and her expression could not be seen clearly: "I'm back."

Soon Lu Yizhan found out how Dong Chenglong came back.

There was no expression on Lu Yizhan's face. He stared with a dazed look at the corpse of Dong Chenglong in the heretic storage room he had just fought. The corpse was pierced through the heart by thousands of thorns. His usually angry eyes had turned gray and his mouth was wide open.

"Heretic 6071, Rose Leaf Vas, Contains: The body of [Crusader] member Dong Chenglong."

Fang Dian paused for a moment and continued, "Weakness and mitigation method. The weakness is the heart. The mitigation method is to peel off the rose thorn segments that grow from its corpse and let the team members contaminated by the rose stem gas swallow them. This will alleviate the problem."

"There are 112 members of the Heresy Handling Bureau who have been contaminated by rose water. Please cut open Captain Dong Chenglong's body, remove the thorns from his body, and send it to the hospital for the contaminated members to swallow."

Fang Dian paused for a moment and said, "Don't tell the team members where this thorn came from. I will classify the rose perfume file as top secret."

"Now, please speed up your movements."

Fang Dian was about to leave after he finished speaking.

Lu Yizhan lowered his head and tightly grasped the oxygen mask in his uniform pocket. It was the one that Dong Chenglong had pressed on his face before he escaped. Now it was almost deformed because of his fingers squeezing it too hard.

"Team Fang," he suddenly asked in a hoarse voice, "If you were asked to choose between me and Captain Dong to survive, who would you choose?"

Fang Dian paused as he was leaving: "I have no right to make this choice for you."

"Besides," she said, "Hasn't Dalong already made his choice?"

"Don't question his choice in front of his corpse. Be careful that he will come back to life and scold you. He thinks you are worth dying for—"

"—You are worth it."

Lu Yizhan gritted his teeth to hold back the tears that were about to fall. He raised his red eyes, and was the first one among a group of team members who were standing stiffly in place to pick up a knife to cut open Dong Chenglong's skin and cut off the thorns that were still twisting in his body.

"Come and cut your hair quickly!" Lu Yizhan turned around and yelled at the team members who were still standing there, "You have no energy!"

Three days later, the Rose Factory incident was settled.

Lu Yizhan hesitated for a long time at the corner. When he saw Fang Dian passing by after dinner, he finally plucked up the courage to walk up to her, held out his file and handed it to her: "Team Fang, I want to join the first team!"

Fang Dian raised his eyebrows in slight surprise: "But this year's enrollment season has already passed."

"I won't take the enrollment route." Lu Yizhan slowly raised his body, "I want to apply directly to join the [Cross Inquisition] and take over Captain Dong's vacant position."

"It's really strange. The [Crusader] didn't receive any application reports in previous years, but this year it received two." Fang pointed to the other file in his hand and smiled, "And they are all excellent students with good qualifications."

Lu Yizhan was stunned.

Fang Dian said, "Besides you, Cen Mingming from the second team has also submitted his application. Even if we want to recruit someone, we can only recruit one person at most this year. Do you want to discuss this with each other first?"

So Lu Yizhan came to Cen Mingming's ward.

Before entering Cen Mingming's ward, Lu Yizhan heard a conversation coming from inside. First, a young man's voice was a little hoarse: "...Among the people from Team 2 who went there, I am the only one who came back?"

——This is Cen Mingming’s voice.

The other voice sounded more mature, probably from the second team. After a pause, the other party replied, "...the others couldn't stand the test of the perfume paper. They were transformed into monsters before we could reach them, and were killed by the [Crusader]."

After a suffocating silence, the other party seemed to pat Cen Mingming on the shoulder and said, "Cheer up." Then he opened the door and walked out.

After Lu Yizhan waited for the man to come out, just as he was about to go in, he heard extremely suppressed and heart-wrenching shouting and crying coming from the ward, as if someone had buried his head in a cup, pounding the bed madly and desperately to vent his emotions while screaming hoarsely, and then after venting his emotions, the sound turned into very quiet sobs.

Lu Yizhan, who was waiting outside the door and was about to knock, said: "..."

He could understand this emotional change process very well. After all, he had just experienced it a few days ago, and the sound of his crying was much more energetic than that of classmate Cen Mingming.

But after 20 minutes, when the noise inside had not stopped, Lu Yizhan began to seriously think whether he had come at the wrong time today. As a result, he just turned around to leave and accidentally stepped on a piece of porcelain tile. There was a crisp sound, and then he heard Cen Mingming inside ask vigilantly: "Who is outside the door?"

Lu Yizhan: “…”

Lu Yizhan pretended to have just arrived and pushed open Cen Mingming's door: "Hello, Cen Mingming, I am the other person competing with you for the reserve spot of the Cross Judge Army. I am Lu Yizhan from Team 3."

Lu Yizhan extended his hand to Cen Mingming in a friendly manner.

Cen Mingming glanced at him coldly and did not take Lu Yizhan's hand: "You are the one who scored two points higher than me in the written test."

Lu Yizhan was quick to detect a hint of hostility from the other party's words. He felt that he had come at the wrong time, so he sighed in his heart and replied, "Yes, it was just a coincidence."

"That's really a coincidence." Cen Mingming glanced at him and said coldly, "It just happened that you passed me in the written test just that one time, and you also happened to get a full score. You are usually unlucky enough to only get 70 or 80 points--"

Lu Yizhan answered Cen Mingming seriously: "It's just a coincidence. If it wasn't a coincidence, I should be able to beat you in every exam."

Cen Mingming: "..."

Seeing that Cen Mingming's eyes were red from crying, and that he was about to burst into tears after being so angry at Lu Yizhan, Lu Yizhan scratched his head and sincerely comforted him, "Hey, I really didn't mean to put you down on purpose. I thought the questions were so simple, you could get full marks on them."

"Don't you usually get full marks? Why is it only 98 this time?" Lu Yizhan was genuinely confused.

Cen Mingming, who happened to lose two points in the written test, was so angry that his eyes began to turn red. He retracted his gaze coldly and said, "Get lost."

Lu Yizhan also felt that today might not be a good day to discuss things, so he said to Cen Mingliang, "You should have a good rest," and turned around and prepared to leave.

"Wait." Cen Mingming suddenly called out to Lu Yizhan, his voice suddenly sinking, "Just now, the people from the Second Detachment told me that you were the first one to run out of the factory, and you left Captain Dong behind."

"Captain Dong rescued me. I was an incompetent waste. I was unconscious and couldn't help him. But you, you are obviously capable, why did you run away at that time?"

Cen Mingming stared at Lu Yizhan with red eyes, and clenched his fists tightly: "If you had stayed, you might have been able to rescue one more person from the Second Detachment."

"Captain Dong wouldn't have spent so much effort to protect me and die in a place like that!"

Lu Yizhan opened his mouth and wanted to say something. He realized that Cen Mingming thought that it was Captain Dong who rescued him, so he wanted to join the [Cross Inquisition].

But seeing Cen Mingming gritting his teeth, his face full of tears, extremely unwilling, hating his own incompetence to the point of wanting to kill himself, Lu Yizhan finally swallowed the words of explanation - [I carried you on my back at the time and couldn't save anyone else].

"Because I'm just an ordinary piece of trash." Lu Yizhan scratched his head and laughed, "I'm greedy and afraid of death, so I ran away."

Cen Mingming's eyes turned completely red, and he screamed, "Coward! Deserter! Get out of here!!"

Lu Yizhan quickly closed the door of the ward to block the cup of water that Cen Mingming was throwing at him. He patted his chest with lingering fear and left.

A long time later, Cen Mingliang asked Lu Yizhang, "Senior Brother, why didn't you tell me that you carried me out?" Lu Yizhang recalled for a moment and just smiled. He didn't answer Cen Mingliang and said he couldn't remember why he didn't tell him.

But at that time, after listening to Cen Mingming's heart-wrenching cry outside the door, Lu Yizhan just thought -

——Looking at the way you look, I feel that if you continue to hate yourself, you won’t be able to hold on any longer.

Then you might as well hate me.