Chapter 218: The Rose Factory

Muke moved unobtrusively behind Charles.

Even if he was completely unaware of the identity of this sudden appearance of Charles, Muke could sense that Bai Liu was being helped by Charles in a situation that was now so explosive.

"I don't think it's the same thing to have been obsessed with a man and to have fallen head over heels for a betting horse every year according to the season." All the scowl on Hearts' face was very deeply hidden, and his burgundy eyes darkened, "Don't compare your animal nature to mine, Charles."

"Then I apologise for my indiscretion." Charles leaned back, his smile widening, "but to me, animalistic is a positive word, and I admire people who are animalistic."

Hearts was quiet for a second, realising that Charles had to get Bai Liu out, a man who sometimes has a gambling streak that no one can stop.

Hearts didn't hesitate as she turned to Titan: " Titan, surround them."

A huge black orb descended from the sky, like a black hole, to swallow Charles and the group behind him, Wang Shun and Muke.

Charles, however, did not panic at all, and raised his staff of civilisation against the falling black ball.

As the black ball swallowed its way along the end of the staff of civilisation, it was about to touch the tip of Charles' nose when he removed his black top hat, dragging it back to the end of the staff of civilisation where it was stuck, Charles flipped it over and pressed it against the huge black ball.

As if by magic, the huge black ball was constricted by the brim of his bowler hat, pressed into Charles' white glove and transformed between flips into a black bouncing ball in his hand.

[System Alert: Player Charles uses skill (Phantom Devourer)]

[This skill swallows the opponent's skill the instant it attacks, and transforms it into a magic item for storage.

"It's useless to use your skills on me, Queen." Charles waved the bouncing ball in his hand twice in amusement before taking off his white gloves and wrapping them around him, slipping them into the pocket of Wang Shun next to him, "It's dirty, you can have it."

Wang Shun: "????"

He had long heard that Charles was a very cockney man, but he hadn't expected it to go this far - just to be bounced twice by himself on a not-at-all dusty floor, and then not to be.

Charles, who had somehow managed to conjure up a pair of white gloves and put them back on himself, raised his hat in salute to Titan and Hearts and smiled a reserved smile: "May I be excused, Empress?"

With that, Charles turns, raises his elbow to Wang Shun, raises his jaw slightly in a polite gesture and taps his index finger twice on his elbow.

Wang Shun reacted confusedly for a moment before he realised that Charles was asking him to hold him.

...... == This is really a lot of personnel ......

But even after a couple of spiteful comments, Wang Shun took Charles's hand, and Charles was satisfied to move on.

He walked up to Muke and smiled, "I believe you have seen my sincerity towards Bai Liu and would not mind going with us to [No Man's Land] with you?"

Muke had been waiting with bated breath for the President of Charles for a long time, but at this point he steadied himself and, instead of panicking and being rude, offered his hand in an unassuming manner and thanked him very sincerely: "I don't mind at all."

"You are very welcome to come with us."

No manned area.

After Charles intervened in the matter, regular spectators who had been afraid to come and watch the action under the strong siege of foreign guilds now leaned in.

And because of the flip-flopping of the [Siege Bai Liu] thing, the heat that had been squeezed on the forums reached a limit and finally broke out in a huge amount of discussion, which now made most of the regular players curious about the matter.

A large number of regular spectators followed Muke and the others, pretending to pass by, all the way to No Man's Land.

You can't blame them for pretending, because the King's Guild people followed them over and the crowd who came to eat the melon didn't dare to be too flamboyant.

The two camps were facing each other at the entrance to No Man's Land, where there was never a ghost in sight, with Charles and Hearts standing in front of the guild members, feeling ready to fight.

The crowd was both impressed and silent - the league hadn't even started yet, and the supporters had been eating one melon after another.

In the unoccupied area, snowflakes and noise flickered on the stacked old TV sets, and every now and then the distorted shadow of a man would appear under the black and white stripes tapping the screen crumblingly, mostly for help.

A hoarse, desperate voice came through the damaged stereo on either side of the TV, stretching and jamming into an inaudible, eerie tune that had an indescribable eerie quality.

These gamers, trapped in no man's land, appear intermittently on black and white television sets, like an unidentified video they use to remember their lives after death.

The no-man's-land is flanked by smooth walls of blinding white, and old, large FM television sets are stacked horizontally, forming a mountain of TVs that stretches as far as the eye can see into the deepest reaches of the no-man's-land.

No one knows if there is an end to No Man's Land, because no one has ever reached the end of it.

The full name of [No Man's Land] is [No Man's Land], but this place is not no man's land, rather it is piled high with the end of these people who have exhausted everything and are still trying desperately to survive.

These people have lost their names in this game and their right to exist as human beings, only to be transformed into one monster after another who have forgotten where they came from in the nuisance of old television.

It was Muke's first time in the place and he was struck by a kind of heartfelt shock, especially when Wang Shun told him with a sigh that many of the players in No Man's Land were new to the game for the first time.

"Newcomers to the game who don't get the recognition of the audience and don't get reward points from the audience, they can't afford to buy props and it's very difficult to get through the game."

There is a deep compassion in Wang Shun's eyes: "They will fall into [no man's land] very quickly, and the only thing they can do is to stall for time as they are gradually alienated, so that they try not to die so quickly."

"It was very painful, they didn't see any hope and just struggled through the game on instinct, waiting for who would get them out."

Muke stared blankly at the mountain of television and asked softly and rhetorically, "Is ...... just like me in Siren's Town?"

"Yes." Wang Shun said, "If Bai Liu hadn't saved you at that time, this place would be your grave."

"A lot of times these people don't need a lot, just give them a little bit of credit and it's enough to bring them back to life and crawl out of this graveyard-like no-man's land."

Wang Shun turned to Xiang Muke and he let out a long sigh, "But sadly, few people in this game have such kindness."

"Not everyone is as lucky as you are that a Bai Liu forced his way through the dimension to save you." Wang Shun let out a long breath, a small smile finally appearing on his face, "But perhaps many, many people will now be saved because of Bai Liu."

Onlookers whispered and discussed what Charles and Hearts were up to.

Hearts glanced sideways at the endless mountain of TVs and then turned his head over to a smiling Charles, "Are you sure you want to waste so many points on Bai Liu to get him out of this dump?"

"It's not a waste." Charles retorted with a grin, "Anything I can spend to please me, I call reasonable entertainment, Bai Liu is funny isn't it?"

Hearts was noncommittal: "You are an unbelievable man."

Charles bent over to take up the task: "Thank you for your kind words."

"How many points are you going to spend until you stop?" Hearts asked.

Charles straightened up as he turned to look out into the pure white to blinding backdrop of No Man's Land, turning down the diamond ring on his thumb and narrowing his eyes, "-until he sees Bai Liu reappear in front of me."

Muke took a deep breath as he stood in front of the guild members and gave the order in place of Charles, "Wait Charles will now transfer a million points to each of you, but there are restrictions on this amount of points that you cannot divert."

"The only purpose of this credit forwarded to you is to charge the player next to you, in No Man's Land, with 5 to 10 credits per small TV, and to collect likes while charging until you see the small TV go out."

"Mark the location of the small TVs that are heavy enough to reach 10 points and still not go out, forward them to me and we will run a secondary analysis of the players inside and if it is determined that there are suspected Bai Liu players inside, we will run a secondary charge at our discretion."

Muke took a step to his left and introduced Wang Shun behind him, "This is our union's data analyst, Wang Shun, to whom all the data from the small TVs you get are handed over.

"And God Mu, fourth on our prestigious Rising Star list." Muke swept a glance at Mu Sicheng, who had kept his head down since just then, "and will guard the gates of No Man's Land to protect our operations from the King's Guild."

Mu Sicheng raised his head and Muke locked eyes with a pyromaniacal aura.

He took a deep, annoyed breath and tsked away, not retorting or agreeing, but did get up and stand in the doorway of the no man's land, his chin slightly raised to meet the foreign guild members.

Mu Sicheng senses Muke's hostility towards him, which upsets Mu Sicheng, but what upsets him even more is that this Muke guy is really much more organised than he is at this point!

With that, Muke looked around at the guild members in front of him, "Is there anything else you don't understand?"

The guild members below had listened dumbfounded.

They had never seen a million points in all the time they had been members of the Scavenging Guild, and now they were going to have to spend it per person to save someone they hadn't even met yet - something so exciting that they had never imagined in several lifetimes, and each of them was so dizzy that they could hardly stand up.

The onlookers were dumbfounded to hear this, they looked at Charles, who was wiping his cane as if nothing had happened, and gazed in a daze at the mountain of TVs in No Man's Land that looked like the length of a train without a tailgate, and their eyes glazed over.

-- Charles is joking at ...... right?!

To find one person in such a long mountain of TVs, it's going to cost tens of millions of points at the very least!!!

But as they soon found out, Charles really wasn't kidding.

The Guild players in turn went up to Charles, raised their system panel warily and waited for the transfer, then muddled on after the transfer was successful.

Tens of millions of points turn up and Charles doesn't even change the curve of his smile from start to finish.

He gently patted the delirious guild members on the shoulder, "Now, go and find your hidden president."

------

Shrine.

In the middle of the table is a card that has suddenly been flipped over, and the figure on the card is a mysterious magician who is gently pulling his hat down to cover his smiling face.

The man with the hood over his face tapped his fingers thoughtfully on it, and spoke with a smile, "Interesting, a magician card has appeared that is neither in the werewolf camp nor in the gods' camp, and the tables have turned."

"Do you still want to devolve the cards, prophet?" He asked with a smile.

The prophet was silent for a moment, "Not out."

"This scene is already in such a mess ......" Under the hood, the man's eyes darted over the Hunter card that had turned into a werewolf, the Witch standing by, the Rose card that was flickering and about to disappear, and the Magician card that had suddenly appeared, before suddenly giving a light smile that was only a little more chaotic, "More chaos, then."

A brand new card emerges between his forefinger and middle finger, which he holds down to the right of the werewolf card.

The prophet's eyes changed imperceptibly the moment he saw the card.

It's a card that's not quite like all the others, it doesn't quite follow the rules and the moment it lands on the table, the character in this card hovers like a three-dimensional book, holding up a fancy flappy toy gun tootling all over the table.

It is wearing a pair of overstuffed pom-pom spiked boots, fluffy bright red turnip trousers and a top half with puffy sleeves and a lace stacked neckline that wraps around the entire neck.

A two-horned, two-coloured hat with a bell at the end tinkles as it runs.

It is covered from face to neck in heavy white oil paint, its mouth outlined and enlarged in bright red, while its eyes are two painted in black, huge forks with turquoise eyes hidden beneath them, and small golden curls glisten on the top of its head.

This is clearly a, or rather a sheet of, clowns.

And now this joker is holding up its trumpet gun, biubiubiu all over the table, shooting wildly at the faces of the characters on the cards almost whenever he sees them, and emitting a creepy, shrill, ear-splittingly delightful laugh.

Eventually this joker made a mess around the table, padded its short boots and stood with its head cocked on the werewolf card - the only character card that it didn't destroy by shooting with its flare gun.

"King!" leaps the Joker in delight as he opens his bright jewel-like green eyes under his fork, then plops down on the werewolf card and curls up clingingly on its surface, pressing his face against the werewolf and chanting with nervous playfulness, "King! Find my king! "

"What did you do to the Joker?" The prophet's tone became rare and strained, "This is not the normal state of the initial character cards when they first appear in the game, the Joker appears to remember Bai Liu - but in this timeline, the Joker and Bai Liu have not met once yet."

The man sitting across from him folded his hands on the table as he raised his eyes and smiled, "Are you afraid? Afraid that the clown's influence over Bai Liu will turn him into Bai six ?"

The prophet retorted coldly, "You're breaking the rules of the game."

"I never break the rules of the game." The man uncrossed his own folded hands and smiled unabashedly, "I just delegated the Joker card early, but didn't let it make an appearance."

The prophet was just about to speak, "What ...... does that mean?

But before he could ask, the prophet paused violently, looking incredulously at the man sitting across from him, "You ...... put him in no man's land?!"

"Yes, the first single game I had the Joker log into the game was a Level 3 game, which he naturally got trapped in and couldn't get out of, and then soon the audience lost interest in the poor, unskilled, and unpassable Joker, leaving him stranded in No Man's Land." The man spoke with pity.

The prophet's voice was a little shaky: "...... How long has he been in the game, for how long?"

The man said carelessly, "He's been living with those monsters ...... for almost ten years, I think, and I wouldn't really let him die, but he's certainly pretty much out of his mind by now."

The prophet straightened his eyes and looked across the table, "Why would the Joker remember Bai Liu ?"

The man leaned forward and leaned close to the seer: "Because I decided to give him hope in order to keep him going in this horrible, torturous third level game that was torturing him to the point of suicide, I made him dream every night."

"The clown in the dream would see a man called Bai six come to his rescue like a god and take him on a killing spree, invincible and a champion."

"The man understood him completely, agreed with him, appreciated him, was the only person in the world who let him follow him, he was the most loyal clown in his hands, and he was his KING."

The man lowered his eyes to the clown on the table: "That beauty dream has kept him going so far."

The prophet closed his eyes as his breathing began to fail: "You had the Joker ...... dreaming about the rest of the timeline ...... but now this timeline has gone completely wrong and Bai Liu wasn't even at that point to save him ......"

"Joker waits alone in the game for Bai Liu who will not even appear, waits for ten years ......"

"Congratulations, now he's finally waiting isn't he?" The man's smile grew more and more pleasant, " Bai Liu will be in No Man's Land soon to get him out."

"Have you ever heard of a fairy tale?" The man abruptly brought up another topic, but he was clearly interested in talking to the prophet about this fairy tale and continued without waiting for the prophet to answer, "The story is called The Fisherman and the Devil."

"A long, long time ago, there was a clownish demon sealed by God in a bottle; he suffered so much that he could not escape, and no one could see or sense his pain, but survived only by visions in his dreams."

"So he made a wish in his heart that if that person got him out in the first year, he would give that person more money than he could spend in his lifetime."

"Unfortunately that man didn't turn up, and in the third year, Joker thought that if that man got him out at this time, he'd enter the league for that man and become that man's man."

"But still the man did not appear, and in the sixth year the Joker thought that if the man got him out at this time he would be willing to become a dog of the man and sell his soul to him."

"But the man still hasn't turned up."

He looked to the prophet, the curve of his mouth slim and unchanging: "After waiting for the tenth year, when the Joker finally waits for the one, what do you think the Joker will do to Bai Liu, the King he has waited ten years for?"

The prophet opened his eyes, "He will kill Bai Liu."