Chapter 228: Reality

Headquarters of the Bureau for the Treatment of Dangerous Heresies.

Bai Liu was transported here under heavy guard, and this time he was welcomed through the gates in a dignified manner.

Everyone lined up on either side of the main entrance, looking with fear, hatred and disbelief at the heretic who had escaped from here last night and was welcomed back this morning on his own initiative.

The huge glowing white ball slowly turned, opening its entrance to him.

Bai Liu walks in without a glance, with his second detachment leader Cen Buming on his left and Tang Erda on his right, followed by a large contingent.

If Bai Liu's hands were not still cuffed behind his back, he would look like the leader of the two teams - the former leader of the first detachment.

But in reality, he was just a fugitive who had to send out two detachments before he could be apprehended and brought back to justice.

Bai Liu was guided into the lift, Cen Buming swiped his card and lit the operation button, Tang Erda stepped forward, took a deep breath and pressed the bottom button.

The lift with the three people in it descends through the levels and plunges into the ground.

The smell of the sea began to permeate this narrow lift at some point.

"I'm surprised you guys would agree to my terms so readily." Bai Liu looked sideways at Cen Buming, who was standing behind him on his left side, "After all, Heretic 0001 seems to be very important to you."

Cen Buming glanced at him: "No more important than two thousand lives, just more important to the captain of the first detachment, who is its guardian, and the one who decided to seal it up, a heresy we don't even know what it is."

"And you just said you'd take a look, it's not our problem." Cen Buming snaps the back of Bai Liu's head coldly and spins it back with a click, "Look ahead and don't look at me, the dossier says your eyes have a compelling effect on humans."

Bai Liu, who was caught off guard by the spin: "......"

Tang Erda, who provided the information for the archive: "......"

The lift stops steadily, the doors open smoothly and Bai Liu steps out.

Stepping into the bottom of the Dangerous Heresy Bureau again, the situation is very different from the last time, but the scenario is the same -

--A long, dark tunnel of the deep, with no light at all, the scent of seawater floating in the air from nowhere, and the door that stands quietly at the end, forever closed.

"Just to be clear, we don't mean to open this door for you, after all, this heretic is who knows how dangerous it is." Cen Buming looked sideways at Bai Liu, "We just promised to let you use Heretic 7061 [Mirror of Perspective] and take a look at what's behind the door."

"Watch a minute to be exact."

Cen Buming held up a black box with the number [7061] on it and he waved a strangely shaped watch on his wrist in front of Bai Liu's eyes, "If you confirm, I'll unlock the handcuffs, hand you the [Mirror of Perspective] and start the clock."

Bai Liu turned to Cen Buming to uncuff him without any objection.

Cen Buming looks down and uncuffs Bai Liu: "- adding that, as far as I know, everyone who has seen Heretic 0001 has gone mad and committed suicide."

He paused, "-including my former captain and the greatest captain of the Heresy Handling Bureau, the inaugural First Detachment Captain [Prophet], it's not too late for you to backtrack."

As soon as the handcuffs were removed, Cen Buming put a gun to Bai Liu's head.

Bai Liu raises his hands in a natural manner to show that he is harmless, then rubs his wrists, which are bruised by the handcuffs, and turns his head to face Cen Buming behind the gun and asks, with interest.

"And this great captain, did he say anything else related to Heresy 0001?"

Tang Erda, standing by, shakes her head: "Most of it is sealed in top secret files and no one has access to it."

"But there is also a small part that I know." Cen Buming looked at Bai Liu, "[The prophet] said that everyone would be so afraid of what Heresy 0001 presented that they would go crazy when they saw it."

Bai Liu raises an eyebrow: "Like Murphy's Magic Mirror?"

"No, Murphy, the mirror is fake, but what Heretic 0001 is showing you is real." Cen Buming moved closer to Bai Liu, his gun resting against Bai Liu's forehead, the metallic muzzle as cold as Cen Buming's eyes at the moment, "All heretics have names, do you know what Heretic 0001's name is?"

Bai Liu asks, "What is it?"

Cen Buming: "[The Future]."

Bai Liu scanned Tang Erda's disoriented expression with a glance and realised that, like him, the third detachment leader was hearing the name Heretic 0001 for the first time.

"[The Future], why does it drive so many people mad with fear?" Bai Liu raised his eyes to the captain of the second detachment who seemed to be harbouring many secrets.

"Maybe the very reason [the future] exists is to make people feel scared and go crazy about it." Cen Buming forced Bai Liu forward with a gun to the back of his head, his tone and expression calm to the point of abnormality, "Fear comes from the unknown, is there anything more unknowable, more frightening than [the future]?"

Bai Liu holds his hands up and walks forward, "It sounds like Captain Cen has seen his [future]."

"I haven't seen it, and the known [future] would take away both my fear and my motivation to chase it on." Cen Buming paused, "But you're about to decide whether to see your [future] or not."

Bai Liu looked up and there in front of him was the heretical 0001 welded shut door.

The door was tall, cold, hard, impregnable, without entrance, without key, withdrawn as if it had been born that way, thickly standing between the scent of Xie Ta that Bai Liu smelt and him.

Bai Liu smells Xie Ta in the [future] where he belongs.

"Thinking?" Cen Buming looked at Bai Liu, "Want to see your scary [future]?"

"Maybe sometimes [the future] isn't so scary?" Bai Liu replied softly, "When you know there's someone in your [future]."

Without turning around, Bai Liu calmly held out his hand to Cen Buming, who, after a moment's silence, placed the box containing Heretic 7061 in Bai Liu's palm and then unlocked it with his fingerprint.

The heavy stainless steel box folds over in all directions and opens to reveal a single piece of well-made, old-fashioned spectacles, wrapped in a fine velvet cloth.

"Hold it up until it is flat against the line of your pupil position, like when you have glasses for nearsightedness and the doctor measures your prescription, and adjust the position until this iron door in front of you becomes transparent."

Tang Erda directed Bai Liu in a hushed voice how to use this monocle, his tone uncontrollably complex: "...... then you can see the ...... [future] inside. "

At the same time, Cen Buming pressed the chronograph button on his watch.

At the ticking of the second hand, Bai Liu sees through the half-convex, old, scratchy lens the iron door fade away and behind it appears an empty, silent, white void.

The pure white light keeps spreading inward without a trace, as if no matter how one looks inward, one can only glimpse these emotionless white lights in vain.

Finally, as Bai Liu's eyes began to glaze over, a small television with a snowy screen appeared at the end of the white light.

The small television seemed to realise that Bai Liu was watching it and the buttons on the edge pulsed spontaneously as if searching for a station, the snowflake screen flickered twice and changed to the black and white letters of an old film beginning with a blinking dot of light and a row of subtitles in large letters right in the middle.

[Last World Line Game]

[Player: Bai Liu and his friends (?) We]

[Set Mode: Very Hard Mode (Hell Mode)]

[Setting the main game part 1 - The tragedy of parting love]

The captions fade and the bar on the small TV flickers twice, and a very unclear, first-view scene appears like a single-player horror game from the 80s or 90s.

Bai Liu saw on the small TV the bobbing water, the fine floating ice, and the constant bubbles rising from his mouth and nose; it appeared that he had fallen into the water, and judging by the limbs floating helplessly at the edge of his vision, he must have been drowning for more than four minutes and appeared to be about to drown.

But he seems to be scratching his arms and legs weakly at the moment and still seems to have some consciousness.

Strangely, instead of paddling towards the surface, he continued to dive deeper below the surface - as if trying to get at something that had fallen into the water.

As the screen shifted and the gaze perspective shifted, Bai Liu saw what he was grasping at - it was a heart that kept falling deeper and deeper into the sea floor of the ice field, still beating.

And just as Bai Liu was about to grab it, a hand passed through his chest and grabbed the heart before he did, and as that hand drew back, it seemed to crush Bai Liu's heart without mercy in order to cut it off.

A mist of blood burst from his body and spread to all that the waters reached.

Bai Liu saw himself slowly turning around, spreading his limbs and sinking, his eyelids closing feebly in a sea of red and blue, and the picture on the small television beginning to waver uncomfortably black.

But Bai Liu did see the man who crushed his heart, with a face identical to Tavel's.

He held the still beating heart in his cold, impassive grip, suspended in the water like a god, watching from above as Bai Liu froze in the zero degree water.

The thin light of the sky perishes and disappears, the sun in the sky is left incomplete, only a quarter of it remains, and the bottom of the sea engulfing Bai Liu is colder.

The image fades out and a new line of captions appears on the small TV.

[Setting up the main game part 2 - Ten year old friends who went their separate ways]

This time the small TV screen shook even more, as if someone was holding Bai Liu by the collar and shaking his head violently, shouting at him hysterically.

"Bai Liu! You can't go on any further! You've done enough to win!!!"

Bai Liu recognises the voice.

Bai Liu also recognised the face of the man who was beating him up on the small TV with tears streaming down his face, red and bruises on his neck - it was the first time in ten years that he had seen that look on his face.

Lu Yizhan stood in front of him, squeezed his shoulders and arms and wrestled him to the ground over and over again - his method of dealing with prisoners.

Bai Liu's body is drenched in blood, his arms and legs are covered in bruises, but Lu Yizhan is no better, his nose is bruised and battered, and his eyes, always distressed or gentle, are filled with some unprecedented intensity as he stares at Bai Liu, motionless and dead, as if ready to charge.

They seemed to brutally and unmercifully wrestle with each other.

Bai Liu heard his own violent, ragged breathing, he must have been the more seriously injured - Lu Yizhan was trained in grappling and Bai Liu was no match for him in a physical fight.

But Lu Yizhan, who was much less severely wounded, finally seemed to be unable to hold back the tears that were leaking from his eyes, and he raised his hand to wipe his eyes, making his whole face a bloody mess, before looking up and asking him with a choked sob, "Bai Liu, what is the meaning of your existence?"

"- just to be the monster standing opposite me?"

"Aren't you alone?"