Chapter 211: The Rose Factory

"You're taking to the idea of playing in a league with us pretty quickly." Bai Liu looked thoughtfully at Tang Erda, "I recruited you in other timelines?"

Tang Erda, who was crouching and searching for the head inside the dead creature's body, froze in her back, as if remembering something extremely unpleasant, and her eyes began to turn violent again.

"Hmm." He exhaled with a slight sneer, "But not in the mild way you are now."

Mild?

Bai Liu does not feel that he has recruited Tang Erda in a gentle manner.

He stuck to Tang Erda's weaknesses, almost completely penetrating Tang Erda's physical and psychological defences, verbally and seductively reshaping perceptions and opinions of herself at a time when Tang Erda's sanity was very weak.

Bai Liu also exploits the empathetic nature of Tang Erda, a righteous public official, by making Tang Erda watch her own similar painful experiences, thus creating a psychological attachment and sense of belonging to Bai Liu by the essentially good captain.

It is the instinct of a normal, socially conscious human being to gravitate towards a familiar group that can accept him or her.

Tang Erda, as a captain who was already suspected of being ostracised, even isolated, by his former group, the Heretics' Bureau, was indeed homeless.

Tang Erda is also unable to approach other normal people like him to establish stable social relationships in a group because his sense of morality does not allow him to spread the bad luck called "game" to other innocent people.

If one chooses to connect with people in the game, such as the major gaming guilds, who simply use Tang Erda and ingratiate themselves with her, one cannot empathise with a person of Tang Erda's idealistic nature, so Tang Erda has to accept being employed by these people rather than forming a regular group and making an emotional connection.

In the long, endless blackness of time, Tang Erda has been forced to wander alone.

And he is in need of group contact.

In this case, Tang Erda was close to not feeling guilty, and not being responsible for it, even because the wandering circus had a degree of mutual understanding in the long-standing hostility, from Bai Liu's cold, unadulterated consideration of Tang Erda's personal feelings-

--He felt that the travelling circus was really a good group choice for Tang Erda.

The question is how to turn Tang Erda's hatred of the circus into empathy - the angle Bai Liu chooses to cut through is [similar].

[There are people in this world who are as miserable and lonely as I am, and we can understand and accept each other].

[We are all the same kind of people who are abandoned after being played with by fate and keep wandering.

Such an awareness can be a lifesaver for normal people who have been wandering alone for a long time in all timelines and who are on the verge of not being able to hold on.

The whole process of transformation was not at all gentle for Tang Erda, and could be described as a death sentence.

But Tang Erda actually thought it was gentle? This really raised Bai Liu's interest a little.

Tang Erda's small TV is always on a pay-per-view service that mutes all conversations between Bai Liu and him, which is why Bai Liu spoke to him so openly and directly, without any concern for anything.

Bai Liu knelt down and began to search for Tavel among the bodies of the monsters that had been torn apart by Tang Erda's gun, pretending to mention it offhandedly as he did so, "Can I ask what the Bai six in the other timelines did to you?"

Then Bai Liu quickly added, full of guilt, "Of course you don't have to say anything if it brings up something sad about you - I'm sorry you're going through this because of [me]."

Tang Erda paused in the movement of her hand for a moment, then continued, "You don't have to apologise, those things have nothing to do with you."

"That timeline, Joker wasn't growing to your, Bai six's, expectations and Bai six wanted to find an output rotation for the league." Tang Erda paused, "Then Bai six saw my little TV and took an instant liking to me ...... Anyway, he tried a lot of ways to latch on to me, but I was very hostile."

Tang Erda took a deep breath, "At that time you had a prop in your hands, which Bai six used to lure me in and then found out that the most important person in my ...... life was Su Yang."

" Bai six was trying to use Su Yang to get me on the team, but ...... Bai six's abandonment of Joker angered Joker, who hated me so much that he felt it was because of me that Bai six dropped him."

"When Su Yang went abroad on a field trip, Bai six ordered Su Yang's kidnapping and used Su Yang as leverage to negotiate with me again, which I still didn't agree to - and Su Yang wouldn't allow me to join an organisation like that because he agreed to do so. "

"But after two rounds of negotiations Bai six lost patience and simply gave up on having me on the team, he felt it was too cost effective to keep going with me and moved on to other players."

Tang Erda closed her eyes, "- Bai six threw the useless Su Yang to the clown."

"You've seen what happened next in the mirror."

Bai Liu was politely silent for a moment before reaching out to pat Tang Erda's shoulder in reassurance - he felt that the Captain Tang needed that normal encouragement at the moment.

Tang Erda's eyes snapped open, he seemed to be in some kind of mood that had not yet come out, the pupils in his deep blue eyes contracted and stood erect.

The moment before Bai Liu's hand was about to touch his shoulder, Tang Erda opened Bai Liu's hand almost fiercely with a grimace and hissed a threatening low growl from her throat, "Don't touch me!"

For a moment Bai Liu thought he saw a wolf bending down to bite and tear at his throat, showing its teeth.

Tang Erda's chest rose and fell violently, and he took a moment to calm his breathing, opening his mouth as if to say something.

But in the end Tang Erda didn't say anything, and without a word, he looked away from the corpse and continued to search for the head Bai Liu had asked him to find.

Very severe post-traumatic stress.

Bai Liu made a brief mental judgment and, having got the information he wanted, Bai Liu withdrew his hand, not feeling the least bit embarrassed, but taking kindly and very considerately changing the subject and handing over the steps.

" Captain Tang, you could see Tavel's head without a scope in the fight, why did you give me a scope?"

Tang Erda was quiet for a moment, but replied back to Bai Liu: "The field of view for attacking is not the same as the field of view for finding something, and when I use my skill gun to speed attack an object, I don't deliberately pay attention to the rolling heads inside."

"That's when I need a sidekick to help me position myself." Tang Erda paused for another second or two, "That head is to you what Su Yang is to me, it's much safer to use a scope and not get hurt."

Bai Liu smiles: "Yes, he's very important to me, thank you very much for thinking of me, Captain Tang."

"...... just ......" Tang Erda's palm tightened at Bai Liu's thank you, and he shook it hard, rolling the knot in his throat up and down a bit before exhaling a hot breath, "...... sorry."

--This is an apology for just hitting Bai Liu.

"Never mind." Bai Liu took it calmly, then raised his hand.

This time Bai Liu's hand finally landed on Tang Erda's overly tense shoulder and he arched a very shallow smile, "I can understand how Captain Tang feels, it's not your fault that you're angry and furious because someone important was hurt, I would be too."

Tang Erda's back, which had been as straight as a steel plate, melted away involuntarily after Bai Liu's hand patted it - and he was inexplicably relieved.

Tang Erda looks at the side of Bai Liu's face, somewhat entranced, as he turns and continues to search through the remains of the head.

-- Bai Liu said he could understand how he felt.

Bai six ...... can actually be angry and furious too ......

Tang Erda has never seen Bai six angry in all his timelines, he is always sane and has no weaknesses, that's why he is so invincible.

But just now - Bai Liu's attention was so focused on finding Tavel's head that he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings and was almost eaten by the monster.

Before that, the guy comes running up to him, smiling and waving, calling him Captain Tang, and Tang Erda now looks back on Bai Liu's smile with the mischievous sense of a child taking someone better and going back to get back at the bad guy who bullied his significant other.

Tang Erda watched in awe as Bai Liu rummaged through the pile of bodies, his face covered in mud and blood, but he himself didn't care -

-- This is Bai Liu with feelings and weaknesses, not a complete monster.

Not Bai six.

"Found it!" Bai Liu moved very gently to pluck away a jumbled pile of skulls, and underneath the bones and roses, a sleeping head was buried.

Bai Liu's breathing began to lighten as he stepped forward on his knees and very, very gently cupped the head and placed it on his knees, drifting rose crumbs hanging from his drooping eyelashes and condensed mud on his chin and nose as he bowed slightly and bent his body into an extremely cherished arc to protect the head in his arms.

"Found you." Bai Liu arched the corners of his eyes and he lowered his head to his skull with a completely unconcealed, very pure, happy smile.

Tang Erda almost thought she was crazy to see such a smile on Bai Liu's face.

But the laugh was so infectious that Tang Erda watched for a moment, unable to resist relaxing as he spread his arms and leaned back against the rummaged pile of bones, tilting his head back to look wearily at the dull grey sky of the inner world, and also humming a laugh very softly out of his nose, muttering to himself, "It's good you found him."

"Intact, found him."