Chapter 205: The Rose Factory

Tang Erda raised her fist and slammed it down on Bai Liu's face, who choked and coughed up blood and looked away, his fist grazing his face and cracking on the ground.

Bai Liu wanted to play some tactics and tricks with the captain, but his opponent's panel suppression was so horrific that he couldn't move under Tang Erda's close combat, not even to tap on the system panel - Tang Erda was moving too fast.

Even though the man's mind didn't feel right anymore, his physical reflexes were superb, and almost any attempt by Bai Liu to resist, if he moved one of the muscles involved in the action, he didn't even have time to move before Tang Erda quickly removed his bones from the counter-pressure.

Bai Liu feels the phrase "one power to rule them all" very deeply in Tang Erda.

Experience, technique, ability, skill, speed - the limits of the various criteria used to judge a player are now on full display in Tang Erda's case.

Although it was just a feeling, Bai Liu had a vague feeling that Tang Erda's panel value might have exceeded 50,000 by now.

This was not a match of the same calibre as any of Bai Liu's previous opponents, and Tang Erda's frenzied intensity left no room for Bai Liu to play.

He was indeed pinned down and, in a rare instance, Bai Liu found himself at his wits' end when Tang Erda hadn't even moved a single shot.

If Tang Erda hadn't gone berserk and tried to torture Bai Liu, he would have been two metres tall by now - it would have been so easy for Tang Erda to kill him.

--This situation might be considered some kind of bad luck, but for Bai Liu, it might also be some kind of good luck if you just look at the results.

Bai Liu has long since outgrown his Liu Jiayi appearance.

After his encounter with the red-eyed Tang Erda, he quickly deactivated his Hearts A skill card - it was not a wise choice to use the appearance of an eight-year-old girl with Tang Erda, not to mention the fact that it cost him a certain amount of stamina.

So now Bai Liu is physically wrestling with Tang Erda, or rather being beaten unilaterally, with blood spattering between the two of them as Bai Liu watches Tang Erda's twisted, brutal face, his breathing fading.

--then suddenly and inappropriately smiled.

[System warning: Player life value drops below 3!

But it's not like there's no chance at all of winning this one.

Tang Erda is now like an S-class monster, becoming unbelievably strong due to her madness, but also exposing her weaknesses to Bai Liu.

Just have to gamble for once, lose the bet and it might drive this Tang Erda guy completely insane, then he's really dead.

But as long as the bet is won -

Bai Liu stares down at Tang Erda who drops his fist high in the air - now!

Bai Liu, who had been relaxed and unconfronted, caused Tang Erda's muscles to inertia, and at the moment his opponent landed his fist, Bai Liu opened his eyes and fluently sidestepped, unlike the weakness of his previous attack.

And Bai Liu caused a brief one-second gap between attacks, enough for him to tap out of the system panel quickly.

[System Alert: Does player Bai Liu re-use the skill Poker (Hearts A)?

[OK.]

The heart in the centre of the card spins rapidly as Tang Erda approaches, and the person in the centre of the heart gradually changes from Liu Jiayi to Liu Liu Jiayi.

Tang Erda took a giant step with her fist raised and flew close to the back of Bai Liu's head, hissing and roaring, " Bai Liu --"

Bai Liu turned slowly, his protective clothing fading into the uniform of the Heretic's Authority, his dark eyes becoming light and transparent, his stature plucked up half a head, his hands covered in snow-white is gloves, his hair changing from short, shredded hair to semi-long hair that reached his neck.

He turned back around with his eyes arched and his mouth bloodied, seemingly unconcerned by Tang Erda who was about to attack him, instead his voice was husky and gentle as he softly recited, "Captain."

--Exactly the same as Tang Erda's initial memory of Su Yang.

Tang Erda's fist stopped at the tip of Bai Liu's nose, blowing the wind out of Bai Liu's bloodstained hair on both sides of his face.

Bai Liu's face is covered in the scars of Tang Erda's attack, and there is something oddly incongruous and fitting about the way these scars are superimposed on Su Yang's gentle face.

Tang Erda's fist clenched and trembled in front of Bai Liu's face, and his pupils trembled as he looked at the face of Su Yang, a man he knew so well.

--This is the Su Yang of the first world, this is the Su Yang of the beginning, this is the--

--The real one, hidden away in his heart, his Su Yang.

--The only one, the one that will never return, the Su Yang whose soul is annihilated.

"How dare you appear in front of me with his face!!!" Tang Erda's eyes were scarlet, almost dripping with blood as he looked at Bai Liu with a creepy look in his eyes, a gun growing out of his clenched fist almost in the blink of an eye, which he placed viciously against Bai Liu's forehead before firing without hesitation.

"BANG--!!!"

Su Yang was hit straight through and slowly fell to the ground, motionless - not as Bai Liu, but as Su Yang, looking at his captain with eyes that had not yet returned, and died.

No matter what skills and props, they cannot last until after the person dies, if Su Yang is still like this after death ......

Tang Erda realised what was happening and, dumbfounded, he let go of the gun in his hand and fell to his knees in front of Su Yang's body.

--This is not Bai Liu's Su Yang, this is Su Yang.

Bai Liu's voice rang out from nowhere, lazily, annoying as ever: "Captain Tang, what you have just shot, as you can see, is not the Su Yang that I have become, but the Su Yang that you fear to see in your heart - you Look up and see what's in front and behind you."

Tang Erda seemed to cassette, her eyes hollow as she raised her head.

In front of him, at the end of the corridor, was a huge mirror, which reflected a mirror placed at the other end of the corridor.

The two mirrors are placed at one end of the corridor, facing each other and reflecting each other, each mirror reflecting a new mirror which in turn continues to reflect the mirror, the mirrors constantly refracting and reflecting between them, forming an endless corridor of mirrors.

Tang Erda knows this mirror - it's the Murphy's Theorem Magic Mirror, which is specially protected by the Heresy Authority.

-- This is a heresy extraordinaire, hard to break, intact in an explosion, and when you look squarely into this mirror, the longer you look squarely into it, the more things you don't want to see, the more you will see and be born out of this mirror.

Bai Liu had just placed two mirrors in front of and behind the corridor when Tang Erda wasn't looking, creating such a mirrorless cloister - in fact he only had one mirror originally, a monster book reward for Exploding Last Train, and the other when he was imprisoned in the Dangerous Heresy Treatment Bureau when he caused a riot taken at random.

However, the real world mirror cannot be brought into the system and used in the game without the interference of the evil gods.

Bai Liu had no way to bring another mirror into the game, but he did so in a slightly different way, to make a mirror corridor to trap Tang Erda.

-- For a hunter with a very sick heart, there is no better prison than his own most feared past.

Various Su Yang's began to appear in the mirror, smiling as they crawled out of the mirror, approaching Tang Erda and calling to him softly.

"Captain ......"

"Captain, look at this heretic ......"

"Captain! Have a drink after work! Second detachment's treat!"

"Captain, do you prefer a son or a daughter?"

It was such a relaxed, warm, happy routine, with smiling, long-lost friends, but Tang Erda was so scared that every finger trembled as he watched these real-life cast-offs, dreamy fragments of memories, stumbling backwards while holding onto the wall and shaking his head with a blank expression.

"Don't-!"

"Don't go on any further-!!!"

Unfortunately, he could not retreat, and Su Yang emerged from the mirror behind Tang Erda.

Su Yang said to him with a smile, "Captain, if we win this final, we'll have won Bai six, it's all over - "

Before his brain could respond, Tang Erda subconsciously covered Su Yang's temple and he screamed in pain as if something had cracked his bones: "Stop saying that! I don't want to win!!!"

"---I want you to live !!!!"

A bullet fired from nowhere strangely passed through Tang Erda's palm covering Su Yang's temple and entered Su Yang's skull with uncanny precision, making a crunching sound.

A steady stream of blood oozes from Tang Erda's fingers covering Su Yang's temple.

"Team, Captain ......" the intermittent voice once again caused the trance-like Tang Erda to turn her head.

Su Yang, who had just turned his head to laugh and ask Tang Erda whether she preferred a son or a daughter, was now twisting his limbs at a bizarre angle, as if something invisible was stepping on him, grabbing his hair and forcing him to look up at Tang Erda.

This Su Yang's face is half bloody, his uniform dirty and torn, but with a very determined smile on his face.

"Captain ...... must save those who are contaminated ......"

"Bang-!"

A shot went straight through the back of the head to the eyebrow, and Su Yang didn't even finish his sentence, falling straight back down, blood pouring out.

Su Yang, who had asked him if he wanted to have a drink with the second detachment after work, had been tied up by Bai Liu as soon as he got off work and was now curled up in a ball on the ground, as if something invisible was twisting every bone in his body, while he could no longer scream and could only shake with a pale face each time he was tortured.

Something has clamped down on this Su Yang's jaws and a tape is being shoved into the dead Su Yang's mouth out of thin air.

"Don't...!!!" Tang Erda crumbled to her knees in front of Su Yang, trying with all her might to pull out the cassette tape that had been shoved raw and hard into Su Yang's stomach, "Don't make him eat this! He's in pain! He really hurts!"

The tape was covered in goo and Tang Erda couldn't get a firm grip on it, so he finally bit down on the tape in a gut wrenching grip and dropped to his knees to pull at it, trying to swallow it himself.

Tears slipped from his ghostly blue eyes.

The non-existent person stuffing the tape inside also seems to have realised that Su Yang's mouth was too small to race into, so he dislodged it easily downwards, forcing off Su Yang's jawbone and forcing him to swallow the angular piece of tape.

Tang Erda could do nothing but watch as Su Yang spasmed and shuddered on the floor, covering her stomach as she swallowed, and then gradually stopped breathing, her mouth full of black blood -

-- exactly the same as when he was dissected open.

Tang Erda knelt in place with her soul out of her body, her hands falling back as if she had died along with Su Yang.

The Murphy Mirror, a mirror that reveals everyone's innermost fears, is now recreating Su Yang's death in every timeline in front of Tang Erda.

Every frame, every scene in front of Tang Erda's eyes, those daily routines that once made him feel so happy, all happened before Su Yang's death and he had recalled them countless times, so the moment he saw Su Yang's smiling face before she died, he couldn't help but start to get scared.

No matter how many times he tried, how long he ran with all his might, not even once had he saved Su Yang from Bai six.

Time and time again, I had to watch Su Yang being tortured to death in various guises, while being subjected to Bai six's unhurried lectures and rhetorical questions.

[It's true that I don't suffer because of other people's suffering, but you see, when I do a random bit of work, it must be you, the empathic good guy, who suffers more than me, the bad guy].

He smiles slowly on the tape and asks Tang Erda: [So Captain Tang, having come this far, can you still tell me what it means to be a good person?

Tang Erda staggered to his feet, the real dead Su Yang now overlapping with his consciousness, as if he were answering Bai six through time and space, and as if he were talking to himself.

"It is indeed thankless and pointless to be a good person."

"But I don't care to be the bad guy, disgusting, even if I already want to die, even if it's just an illusion ...... but as long as I live, I'm going to save him!"

Tang Erda gritted her teeth and pulled out her gun and pointed it at her head, "Because I'm his captain!!!"

"Stop this, Bai Liu!" Tang Erda's eyes pinpointed one of the Su Yang who was behaving strangely and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The one in front, Su Yang, slowly turns around, his eyes a dark, dark colour - it's indeed Bai Liu!

[System Alert: Player Tang Erda has a mental breakdown, panel is in full swing!

[System Alert: Player Tang Erda has activated the Burst skill (Russian Carousel - Suicide Bullet)]

[Target: An anthropomorphic representation of the player Bai Liu

[System Alert: The reels are starting to spin, the gamble is about to begin ...... Gamble failed, suicide bullets in effect -]

The bullet passed through Tang Erda's skull with a violent thud and the blood burst from half of Tang Erda's still stunned face as he fell to the ground with the rest of the Su Yang, dying and immobile in a pool of blood.

In a trance, Tang Erda sees the 'Su Yang' he saw before, suddenly transformed into Liu Jiayi.

"How do you run away ......" Tang Erda was facing upwards, her eyelids drooping, but a relieved grin eventually appeared on her face, "Never mind, there's always a way he can win the game."

Tang Erda's eyes drifted closed: "I've finally lost the bet and can leave ......"

"Hey, wake up." Liu Jiayi breathlessly half-crouches in front of Tang Erda.

Bai Liu had just teleported her directly by activating her telepathy, and before she knew what was going on, she saw the big, stupid guy shoot himself, scaring her into thinking that old times were about to repeat themselves and rushing to drink the antidote.

Liu Jiayi was dumbfounded when the big guy shot himself in the head.

--How can you give it away like that?

While Liu Jiayi is looking at Tang Erda, who is lying on the floor and looks like she is going to die, the mirror disappears and the corridor outside the door suddenly opens.

Bai Liu came through the door, seemingly anticipating what was going on inside, and saw Tang Erda lying on the floor, but he just glanced at her and turned to Liu Jiayi: "Save her first."

As Liu Jiayi poured the antidote into Tang Erda, she looked at Bai Liu in disbelief: "How did you do this to her?"

Tang Erda is at least an S rank player with a ridiculously high panel value, and no monster in this game can take him, so you could say that the only person who can beat him in this game is himself.

Bai Liu then actually managed to induce Tang Erda to shoot himself - with a burst of panel fire, completely penetrating Tang Erda's shield and reducing him to a layer of skin.

Now this guy is only breathing, and Liu Jiayi was one step too late, and he would have been dead.

"Oh yeah, I've been studying that skill of his, Russian Roulette." Bai Liu explained methodically, "It's a luck skill, whoever has a high luck value will not be hit, so he should be able to beat me every time, just in the nick of time, I first changed the image stored in Hearts A to become you, and then used Spades A to activate telekinesis and teleport you over. "

"Now it's you and him, I thought you'd have better luck than me, you'd have a better chance of winning the bet." Bai Liu looked at Liu Jiayi innocently, "It looks like you did win the bet."

Liu Jiayi: "......"

Liu Jiayi took a deep breath: " Bai Liu your father's sakj (*&@*&# what a pitcher!"