Chapter 219: The Rose Factory

May Rose Day.

The piazza of the Rose Factory was decked out with thorny rose canes and dried flowers, and none of the employees had roses in their eyes as they came and went, happily carrying unwanted perfume-making equipment out the door.

Bai Liu sat pale beside a field of fading flowers, still recovering from the previous sacrificial ritual that had sucked so much of his blood.

Liu Jiayi and Tang Erda are standing behind Bai Liu, left and right.

"I didn't think you'd be so self-sacrificing as to get yourself involved." Liu Jiayi sat down next to Bai Liu, swaying on her two feet, sighing, "- so many blood lingzhi grew, and now you've come up with the idea of making it into a perfume spray, which could save a lot more people. "

"But not all." Tang Erda interrupted Liu Jiayi stiffly.

Liu Jiayi rolled her eyes and was just about to speak back when Bai Liu spoke up with a smile, his gaze looking far away, "I've given them the solution, they've chosen [the poison] themselves, and if they want to go back to the path of [the antidote], they always have to pay the price."

"You're going to let them cultivate the blood lingzhi themselves?" Tang Erda quickly understood Bai Liu's implication as he knelt down and frowned in retort, "But the way the Blood Lingzhi is cultivated, it's too dangerous and requires the blood of special children to water ......"

"If there were no dried leaf roses, then indeed." Bai Liu curled one leg in a half bend, resting her chin lazily on her knee, "but the dried leaf rose and the blood lingzhi are companion plants, and those who have been contaminated by the dried leaf rose, their blood is wondrously effective against the blood lingzhi."

Tang Erda asks rhetorically, "How do you know."

Bai Liu squinted comfortably at the breeze blowing through the flower field, "Haven't you noticed that when the blood lingzhi grows, it absorbs the rose essence as well? And it grows extraordinarily well."

"The implication of the game is clear enough." Bai Liu turned back to Tang Erda, lifting his jaw and raising his eyes, "- like Tavel, the poison grows from the desires of these people's hearts, but the antidote is also hidden in their own bodies."

"It's just a matter of seeing how they choose." Bai Liu turned his head away again and said faintly, "-to see if they have the courage to endure the [antidote] path of choosing thorns around their bones and piercing their hearts to save themselves."

Bai Liu was helped to his feet by Liu Jiayi, who patted the mud and grass clippings on his trouser legs.

"Good or bad, people always pay for their choices." Bai Liu turns over to a baffled Tang Erda and smiles, "It's just that they never had a choice and it's become me giving them one more choice, essentially, it's not up to you or me to decide how the world goes."

Bai Liu looks behind Tang Erda, at the people who are running to him with joy: "- it's the people who make the choice, other than you and me, who decide."

" Mr. Bai ---!!!"

" Mr. Bai - we got the May Rose Festival display ready!"

"---! Slow down, Mr. Bai! You're not fully recovered yet!"

Having witnessed Bai Liu's bloodletting to save their lives, these men now hold Bai Liu in high esteem and make a fuss of him whenever he walks.

"We held the May Rose Festival as you ordered, as promised, and we destroyed all the perfumes in the rose factory, leaving only those that were to be auctioned off at the festival in the Extravaganza."

"--The people who come to the Rose Festival this time are all top wealthy people who have made their fortunes from some link in the chain of dried leaf rose production and are heavily promoting rose perfume around the world, and every year they come over and auction off one or two bottles of the special perfume for their own enjoyment-- -"

"Now they are all waiting in the piazza, waiting for you to pass."

This was another point that Tang Erda could not understand Bai Liu and he stepped up to his side: "You have already destroyed most of the roses and perfumes, why do you want to keep these special perfumes?"

Bai Liu straightens his shirt on his chest and smiles sideways at Tang Erda with a meaningful Buming smile and a scattered tone, "- it's only fair to always give everyone the same choice."

The man at the front led Bai Liu from inside the factory around to the back of the square, opening the back door to reveal a small flight of steps to help Bai Liu ascend the stage, excited, and honoured to bow his head and pull back the curtain for Bai Liu.

"Sir, they are waiting for you to make your entrance at the front."

Bai Liu stepped onto the dais without hesitation, the sunlight pouring over his face, which was almost transparent white from the loss of blood.

In front of him was a small wooden lectern, custom-made for him, with a microphone standing upright at his mouth and a crowd of well-dressed dignitaries waiting almost impatiently below.

Bai Liu smiles, his eyes drooping as he approaches the microphone, his voice a little hoarse as it is amplified through the speakers in the piazza.

"A long wait, distinguished guests."

"I'm the new agent for the Rose Factory, Bai Liu."

After a short introduction, Bai Liu waved his hand to the left and, pointing courteously to a pile of mother blood lingzhi strips, cut into 1 to 2 cm lengths, placed on a wooden board, he methodically presented.

"On your left is a new product we have just developed, a by-product of the rose perfume, so to speak, a fresh branch of it cut off and dried, with the spikes on it still retaining their vigorous life."

Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked around the room, "I'm sure you're all wondering why I'm introducing a section of thorn like this, and I'm going to tell you what it's worth - this little section of thorn can undo the addictive effects of rose perfume on the human body. "

There was an uproar from below and after a brief discussion, a man sitting in the front row raised his hand and said sternly, "Agent, I'm willing to pay for a patent on this thorn, you can't promote it on a large scale!"

"Yeah yeah yeah! If this stuff gets widespread, perfume won't sell ......"

"I have just controlled a high official by perfume and can be promoted on this ......"

"There is no need to be so worried, everyone." Bai Liu interrupted the chatter on stage with a smile, "This thorn has to be used and the side effects are strong - it needs to be swallowed and then endure the pain of the thorn growing in your body every now and then, sucking blood to make you feel weak, before you can eventually boil down to a full-fledged antidote to the drug. "

"And only because this thorn has a blood purity requirement, like an organ transplant, where only your own blood can raise the medicine that detoxifies you."

"So everyone who comes to buy the Thorn Antidote must be prepared to die from the pain."

The crowd below fell silent again.

Liu Jiayi, standing behind the curtain, lifted a small piece of cloth to look at Bai Liu on stage and couldn't help but giggle: "Bai Liu, this guy, he's so unethical."

Although scolding Bai Liu, Liu Jiayi's face was clearly beaming with amusement: "The blood lingzhi, which is obviously used by investors to exploit children, was transformed by this guy into self-torture for these investors by virtue of the purity of the blood."

"Thorns, Bai Liu actually thought of using thorns to plant and cultivate in the human body." Liu Jiayi sighed repeatedly, "He's such a tortured genius."

"What the hell is he going to do?" Tang Erda was becoming increasingly unreadable.

Liu Jiayi looked up at the big idiot speechlessly, "Can't you see that?"

Tang Erda wrinkles her brow in thought: "...... What do you see?"

Liu Jiayi put his eyes close to the slit behind the curtain, a nasty smile hiding his face: "He's taking the choices the man behind the curtain made him make and passing them on to others -"

" - he's letting these people make their own choices."

Bai Liu swings again, this time to his right.

On the display table to the right are neatly stacked mountains of exceptional perfumes, their beautiful diamond-shaped glass bottles glistening in the sun and the pale pink liquid flowing inside them like a dream.

"Of course we have prepared, as is customary, a special perfume for the auction for all our guests, and this time I have made it all myself, a very concentrated special perfume."

Bai Liu pointed to the left and right at the same time, then said with a smile, "Antidote or poison, which one does everyone choose to auction?"

The sound of a frenzied auction rises and falls.

Some swallowed the thorns, others breathed in the dark scent, and they were soon transformed into all manner of strange objects on the piazza floor, thorns piercing their hearts and spines, roses burning away their sanity and pain.

People began to turn into monsters beyond their control.

As the first of the monsters hissed and rushed towards Bai Liu, who stood motionless on the stage, a silver bullet was fired from behind into the monster's brow, and Bai Liu slowly lifted his eyes from the struggling beauty of the humans on the ground to look at Tang Erda, who stood at the entrance to the factory, panting vigorously with her gun raised.

Killing a monster is unlikely to make Tang Erda gasp like this; what really irritates him are these people on the ground rolling around in pain from the thorny growth or addicted to perfume.

Ten minutes ago these people were a bunch of well-dressed, dusty, symbols at the top of the world - and ten minutes later they were languishing in front of Bai Liu with no dignity.

And Bai Liu didn't even force them to do anything.

Tang Erda looked laxly at Bai Liu on the stage, and he opened his mouth to say that you could have saved them, and then to say that you could have simply killed them if it was for punishment -

--You're torturing them, why?

Bai Liu seemed to read his eyes as he smiled imploringly, "It's not exactly torture, they do know the consequences of their choices, I've told them to watch out for the roses, both the thorns and the flowers."

"I'm just making them choose and then pay the price of that choice - it's a trade off between you and me."

Bai Liu stepped off the stage, walked unhurriedly to Tang Erda against a backdrop of blood and wreckage, then tilted his head to look at him, no roses or light in his dark eyes:

" - like someone did to me, to Tavel."

Bai Liu absently tapped Tang Erda on the shoulder and brushed past him to walk out of the piazza without looking back: "Help me clean up."

Tang Erda stood silent, as if she wanted to say something, but eventually pulled out her gun without saying a word to clear Bai Liu of the monsters he had created.

Or rather, these monsters choose to become monsters themselves.

After such a gory scene, Bai Liu actually starts walking around the field of flowers directly opposite Tang Erda - a field of faded flowers that he seems to enjoy.

Liu Jiayi follows him, backwards with her hands behind her back, chattering to him, not knowing what she is saying, and every now and then Bai Liu curls her eyes and smiles.

If Tang Erda hadn't had a pile of monster limbs in front of his eyes, he wouldn't have been able to tell that Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi had passed through here - it's such a homely scene.

Tang Erda looked stunned for a moment, and when he wasn't paying attention, he let a monster slip out from behind him and run towards Bai Liu, whom he quickly ran up and shot.

Bai Liu glanced up at Tang Erda with a breezy look, "Finished cleaning?"

"It's over." Tang Erda squeezed the gun in her hand, let out a breath and said without a thought, "You didn't have to."

"Torture?" Bai Liu instantly grasped Tang Erda's meaning, and he turned his head to look at her with amusement, a look that sent a chill down the back of her neck.

Bai Liu asks, "I actually have a curious point, also about the torturing bit, I see in the mirror that I'm not the only one who prefers to torture people, there's also a team member called Joker."

"But your hatred is mainly focused on me." Bai Liu smiled seemingly, "Again, you did something excessive, but you have an inexplicable forgiveness for the Joker - you don't seem to hate him that much, why?"

Tang Erda cupped the gun in her hand and said hoarsely, "I don't know where you get the impression that I'm forgiving the Joker, and I hate him."

"But unlike your hatred for me, your hatred for the Joker is for the accessory, and your hatred for me is for the main culprit; there is a clear relationship between primary and secondary in your hatred." Bai Liu rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "-you are not an unjust man, but there is something that makes you subconsciously feel that he does not need to be punished so severely, and that such a thing is in keeping with the judicial process- -"

"- you feel that I am in a position of absolute control, inducing him to commit a crime -"

Tang Erda couldn't resist stabbing Bai Liu: "You're tempting everyone to commit a crime -"

"This clown-" Bai Liu looked straight at Tang Erda, "-is there some kind of special relationship with me? "

Tang Erda was just about to say that they hadn't found anything, but when Bai Liu reminded him of this, his brow furrowed and he started to think back: "...... We had speculation."

"Because the clown has the strongest following relationship with you, he only obeys you and is very exclusive of the others in the wandering circus."

"In ...... one of our attempts to capture you." Tang Erda seemed to be thinking of something bad as he took two deep breaths to calm down, "He even shot and wounded Mu Sicheng out of nowhere during the sparring session and then dumped Mu Sicheng on us and told us to kill him."

"We've researched and psychological profiled him and found that he doesn't have a gang feeling towards the others in the wandering circus, and there's a strong animosity that comes from the fact that these people share you." Tang Erda looks over at Bai Liu, "- he's your one-man clown."

Bai Liu raises an eyebrow, "The formation of such overly loyal psychological relationships takes a very long time to cultivate."

"It's domestication!" Tang Erda seriously corrected Bai Liu's choice of words.

Bai Liu accepted Tang Erda's correction with good grace: "And it must have been an intense domestication from pre-teen years, I can probably see why you have a filter on him - how old is the clown?"

Tang Erda paused: "Our guess is that he would have been only fourteen when he first met you, when you were twenty-one."

"The following year his father died, and at the same time you initiated contact with him in reality and assisted him in seizing his father's inheritance - a smuggling chain of enormous proportions, encompassing many things, such as arms."

"He worships you madly, sees you as a god, calls himself your sole believer and is the first member of your circus."

Tang Erda looked up, "The Joker calls you King most of the time, but there have been a few times when he has called you something else, and we suspect that after the death of his father, you most likely became his God father - that is, the godfather. "

"Now I'm 24 ...... " Bai Liu said softly, "If this clown is still alive, then he should- "

Tang Erda gave Bai Liu a complicated look, "The day before you enter this game, The Rose Factory, is his seventeenth birthday, and the Bai six in the other timelines give him a really huge birthday party every year."

"You coddle him."

-------

No manned area.

A steady stream of small TVs went off and left the area, and members carefully explored further into No Man's Land, circling the towering mountain of TVs, their hands constantly charging and tapping their favourites, relieved to see one go down.

There were members running back and forth within the different divisions, broadcasting news of whether the small TV that had just gone out was Bai Liu or not.

A large number of small TVs from unfamiliar players flooded into the general section, and the dumbfounded viewers seemed to realise something big was happening, and after glancing at the forums and understanding what was happening, they flocked to the No Man's Land to see what was going on.

At the same time, some of the No Man's Land players who had received financial support had successfully cleared the game, and the flow of people boarding the exit gradually increased - these players, who had been struggling alone in the game for who knows how long, began to slump to the ground and howl in vain as soon as they left the game.

Most of these players were newcomers, who cried out in anger and then wandered around the boarding gate in a daze.

They have been drained of emotion and motivation by the game and have no idea what to do or where to go, and are now just walking shells of flesh and blood.

At this point the small murmur of people around them looking at them in awe caught their attention.

"Really got out, huh? Saved so many people?"

" Bai Liu is making a bigger splash than ever ......"

"Damn, I really don't understand the rich man's game! Cleaning up no man's land for Bai Liu is outrageous too!"

The men seemed to realise that they were being spoken to and waited a long time before a man with a tear-stained face came forward to ask these older players, "Excuse me, did this comrade Bai Liu just save us?"

"...... can't say that he saved you guys either." This player also had a complicated look on his face, "But if it wasn't for him, you guys definitely wouldn't have made it out."

The man's eyes lit up alarmingly as if he had easily found a backbone: "So, where do I go to find him then?"

The man sighed, "No man's land, where you come out."