Chapter 199: The Rose Factory

In the room, which has a lustre close to a dull red, cold water pipes come from all sides and cluster in the centre like twisted, hideous, coiled snakes, which wrap around some of the wooden, narrow-beam-like support structures at the top of the room, and twist and fall down to the centre of the room.

In the centre of the room stands a huge, once seen by Bai Liu, glass, brass and iron-clad display case, filled with an unknown viscous liquid.

That was the display case he had used to house Tavel when he first met him in the museum in Siren, and at this moment, in this game called The Rose Factory, that same display case no longer holds a beautiful decaying mermaid, but a bright red, beating heart.

Cold metal pipes of cold water were drilled through small openings in the top of the display case and attached to the openings in the aorta, pulmonary artery, pulmonary vein, main vein and upper and lower vena cava of the heart, which were then fixed to the walls of the vessels with some kind of staple-like device.

The tubes are transformed into steel veins, "veins" that gush with a rose-scented pink liquid, the colour of blood after carbon monoxide poisoning, while the heart, the colour of a branding iron, is suspended in the centre of the display case by the hard veins, beating regularly and calmly, one after the other.

--It was the heart of an old friend of Bai Liu's, given the name of the evil god, the monster called Tavel.

Bai Liu's blurred memory is clear for a moment before this bright red heart.

He remembers when he was Bai six, not long after he met Xie Ta, he leaned over the front table of the church with a mischievous grin, nudged Xie Ta's heart and asked Xie Ta nastily - [You say you're a monster who can't die, what if someone, like me, deliberately ripped out your heart, would you would die?]

And Xie Ta answered him without a ripple - [No, my heart will beat in your hands].

He has never lied to Bai Liu that Tavel is indeed not going to die, except that his heart is no longer beating in the palm of Bai Liu's hand, but in a game of roses and destruction.

Tavel's heart, like the vanishing thorns of a dried leafy rose, appears out of nowhere at the moment Bai Liu is searching for it, stabbing the man who once claimed he was going to rip it out with his own hands.

The factory worker who had led Bai Liu up to the heart display led the unresponsive Bai Liu up a wooden ladder to the back of the heart display.

Standing on the first rung of the stairs, Bai Liu can reach the openings where the pipes reach into the exhibition cabinets.

The factory worker explained to him the next steps: "Be respectful of the apparatus, use it carefully, do not touch those pipes above, inside are extracted and distilled perfume raw liquid, or boiling hot, to go through the heart cycle to become a perfumer can use the raw material, but this raw material is not strong, and low-level perfume is still far from the difference, to have the talent of perfumers It is only after the configuration of a gifted perfumer that it becomes stronger in terms of holding fragrance."

"Next we will give you a raw uncirculated perfume to drop in this glass cabinet, if the raw liquid has some degree of discolouration, then you have the talent to use this instrument, the darker the colour, the stronger your talent as a perfumer." The factory worker looked to Bai Liu, "If you are sure that you have the talent, you can be promoted to factory worker."

The factory worker placed a vial of the original perfume in Bai Liu's hand, carefully plucking away the clustered tubes to reveal a tiny opening, and gave him a gentle nudge: "Now go and try it."

Bai Liu gripped the original perfume in his palm and looked down at the heart with a motionless gaze, no emotion in his eyes.

His heart was pounding under his eyes as if it were still inside Xie Ta's chest.

The factory worker looked suspiciously at Bai Liu who was not moving: "Processor number 70365, why aren't you down yet?"

I don't know if it was an illusion on his part, but he always felt as if the processor, who had always been calm, had started ...... to get angry the moment he saw the instrument.

Although there was little change in expression, the aura suddenly became terrifying.

It was clearly the appearance of a little girl, but it made him, a grown man, afraid to prod him in a loud whisper, only daring to remind him politely - if it had been the usual time for someone to be so inked up during a test, he would have broken into a tirade.

Instruments are valuable and should not be exposed for long periods of time as this will contaminate them.

Bai Liu stepped forward at the urging of this factory worker, raised his hand expressionlessly and flat, then turned his hand and dripped the original liquid down through that opening.

A drop of the original rose-red liquid lands in the glass cabinet, and as it washes over the surface of that viscous liquid in ripples, the rose-red colour turns deeper and expands.

The factory worker's eyes widened in shock as he stared at Bai Liu in disbelief.

But this is just a prelude to change.

Soon, a wind from nowhere swept through the confined space, and the drops of the original liquid that dripped from the display case were like an extremely concentrated pigment that began to spread and thicken in a bizarrely pigmented curvature, gradually becoming darker layer by layer.

The liquid spreads outwards from an almost pinkish rose to a deep rose, then to a lighter red, and finally to a positive red of a ripe rose by the time the original liquid has spread to the heart.

At the same time, as the colour in the glass case thickened, the heart began to beat faster, accelerating the rate at which the liquid was pumped out.

The pipes fixed to the wall began to fail to withstand the pressure pumped out by the heart, the joints of the pipes began to ooze "blood" and shake as if they would soon fall off, and the thick glass "cracked" as the colour turned red.

The factory worker panicked and called out to the employee guarding the apparatus, who was also in this situation for the first time and was a bit confused.

This is all thickened metal piping and bulletproof glass!

"Release the water for the tank!" The employee yelled, violently pulling down the gate at hand.

At once, the lid beneath the glass cabinet opened, while a spout underground opened and the reddened liquid inside poured clean, and almost simultaneously, this outside case was lifted and pulled away, and a newer, more solid case rose from below, filling it with liquid and suspending the heart once more.

Bai Liu was carried away by the factory workers to the next room while the water was being changed, a scene where not many people were allowed to be present to avoid contamination.

As the factory worker was trembling with fear at what had just happened, he overheard Bai Liu smiling.

--That was a smile of demonic satisfaction as if he had received a response from that living-dead heart instrument that gave him the creeps.

The smile looked particularly unnerving on the grey-eyed, blind little girl's boyish face.

He didn't even dare ask what the little girl was laughing at, just recalled what he had just seen and vaguely judged that the factory had welcomed the most talented perfumer ever.

That colour, which is already only available in extravagant perfumes.

This factory worker swallowed nervously as he trembled and, in the small room next to this apparatus, with his hand still stained with the original liquid, he put pen to paper and wrote an application form -

--One of the three processors selected today to test the perfumer's talent caused a very serious accident when she accidentally cracked the glass cabinet holding the instrument during the test, which sounds like an unforgivable act and must be punished by death. ......]

[...... but allow me to argue for this processor that this is indeed an extenuating circumstance and I hereby write a petition asking you not only not to put her to death, but to specifically promote her to perfumer ......]

[...... This time the test, the instrument gave a red colour that I had never seen before, a ruby, blood-like, deep and beautiful red, and if I am not presuming to guess, the processor who had inadvertently made some mistakes, would be the most talented perfumer we have had at the Rose Factory since its foundation].

We know how unfortunate it is to be a perfumer in this world, how close to death a profession, chosen by the organs of the dead, producing the perfume of death, and ultimately going to hell in a fragrance full of death].

[This processor is the person with the most death in her that I have ever seen, bar none, she was born for it and is the genius of the profession - apparently both I and the apparatus think so, and as such, I ask you to consider my offer with care.]

[The May Rose Festival is approaching and we have never needed a perfumer who can produce an exceptional perfume as much as we do now].

After writing this application, the factory worker hurriedly took Bai Liu up to the office on the third floor to begin the process of converting the processors to factory workers.

At the same time, Tang Erda, who had changed into her sterilised protective clothing, was brought in by another factory worker and entered the freshly tidied instrument holding room.

Tang Erda stares at the room with a frown - he recognises, as does Bai Liu, the incongruity of its construction.

The room inside this game looks exactly the same as the room numbered [0001] in the artificially constructed institution known as the Dangerous Heresy Bureau.

His gaze swept across the entire dark red, cooling-piped apparatus storage room, finally settling on a bizarre, disembodied heart linked to these cooling pipes - a heart that was still beating - in the middle of the room, in a huge glass display case.

Tang Erda has years of experience dealing with dangerous heretics, and the memory of having cleared countless games, but he has never seen such a strange heretic, or monster, either in reality or in the game.

It was as if by allowing this heart to beat for just one more second, his heart rate would be compelled and gradually beat in unison with this evil heart.

He looked at the beating heart and his brow knitted deeper and deeper as his hand reached behind him and the tiny dots of light converged to form a silver pistol in Tang Erda's palm.

The gun was aimed at that heart at an unnoticeable angle.