Chapter 230: Reality

Cen Buming covered his ears and frowned for a moment, then quickly let go: "What were you saying? My ears were ringing and I didn't hear you."

"Nothing." Bai Liu changed the subject, "I've seen what's behind the door and accordingly, I'm going to give you the means to free these two thousand people."

"- There is one thing that can painlessly eliminate the symptoms of contamination brought on by dried leaf roses."

Cen Buming held his breath, "What is it?"

"Blood lingzhi." Bai Liu shrugged, "If I remember correctly, you should have stripped the strain from the few children who survived the orphanage to preserve, or in your words, house, the raw material for the cure."

Cen Buming stared at Bai Liu, his gun raised to Bai Liu's forehead: "Blood lingzhi can only be raised with the blood of certain children, yet there are nearly two thousand adults waiting for rescue - are you encouraging us to use the blood of young children to illegally breed heretics? "

Bai Liu smiled, "- Isn't it often said that the antidote is hidden within five steps of the poison? Perhaps you could also try the blood of the two thousand infected to cultivate the Blood Lingzhi?"

Cen Buming is stunned.

Bai Liu brushes past Cen Buming's shoulder as if he doesn't see a gun being pointed at him, and heads for the outside lift entrance.

Tang Erda held down the gun that Cen Buming continued to aim at Bai Liu, locked eyes with him, and shook her head admonishingly.

Cen Buming lowered his gun, gave Tang Erda a quick glance, then glanced sideways at Bai Liu's back, squinted meaningfully at his intact right eye, then gave the gun a firm wipe and pinned it to the back of his waist.

"You know Captain Tang, this is not the first time I've used the Mirror of Perspective on someone." Cen Buming said coldly, "but this is the first time I've seen someone use the Lens with their left eye - especially if that person is right-handed, which is not in keeping with their eye habits."

"I was almost about to think your ward was mocking the fact that I only have one right eye."

Bai Liu does have the potential and the bad taste to do so.

Tang Erda also saw Bai Liu deliberately switch hands when holding and placing the lenses, and raised an eyebrow to give Cen Buming's left eye a slow glance.

Bai Liu is a man with a vengeance, and when Cen Buming messes with him, although the man won't say anything explicitly, there's no shortage of little details to tease and provoke people.

Cen Buming looked at Tang Erda with a cold, stern eye: "Are you sure you want to let such a clever heretic out?"

"I owe it to him." Tang Erda said and then ran in Bai Liu's direction.

It was a long time before Cen Buming emerged from the gloom, one hand stroking his left eye with the blindfold on it, his right eye looking at the back of Bai Liu and Tang Erda as they left, and murmuring in an extremely grim tone.

"No one owes the monster, it's the monster that owes us."

----------

Tang Erda drops Bai Liu off at the door of the Heretic's Bureau and gets a headache when she sees a pile of Third Squad members at the door, eyeing Bai Liu with hostility.

--These are the debts he owes.

Many of the team members who stayed behind last night had a nasty battle with the heretics Bai Liu had summoned, and with no way to tell them the truth, their hostility towards Bai Liu would continue for quite some time.

Unless it's ...... transferring those resentments to him.

As Tang Erda looked down in contemplation, a sudden shout came from behind her, "Captain!!!"

Tang Erda's pupils fluttered slightly as he stopped walking out the door and slowly turned around.

Su Yang stood in the doorway looking deeply at him, his uniform held up in his hands, his eyes red, and behind him stood almost all the members of the third detachment.

They looked at their former captain as if they had been abandoned, and watched the confused and fleeing hunter.

"Captain, do you really have to go?"

Tang Erda was nailed to the spot by these words, and he clenched his fists, unable to move on any further -

-- these people, these players, these eyes.

The smallest nuances of happiness and beauty, which he had possessed in more than three hundred meaningless reincarnations, were associated with these faces that smiled or slept peacefully.

The faces of these men were as vivid as ever in the sleep of the soundly drunken hunter as he curled up exhausted in a pile of monsters with his gun as his pillow.

-- it was his duty, his mission, his destiny, his inescapable destiny when these men died for him.

Bai Liu also stopped in his tracks, turning his head back to see the scene, and with a not so surprising glance at the stopped Tang Erda, he patted Tang Erda's shoulder as if reassuringly, and gave the motionless Tang Erda a gentle push forward.

"Say your goodbyes to your crew, I'll see you outside."

Bai Liu said, then waved his hand lazily and turned away without looking back.

Tang Erda stumbled forward as he was pushed, looking down at his scruffy old Heretics Authority uniform, at his hands, thickly calloused from shooting monsters and living heretics, and then up, looking deeply, confusedly, and in disbelief, at Su Yang and the team across the room-- -Su Yang.

--suddenly he realised that he was on the verge of losing track of himself and them at first.

Tang Erda only remembers the bad, the mutilated, the images of blood and hatred that cut into each of these people's faces like small knives, and then bit by bit carved Tang Erda's memory into a bloodied and disfigured form.

He couldn't remember the last time he and Su Yang drank from a chipped beer mug, the last time he celebrated with the goofballs, or the time Su Yang leaned over his shoulder and curled her eyes and said, "I'll be waiting for you in the background.

It was so important, it was so important that he had survived so much with these memories, but at this moment they seemed so far away, so far that they were blurred and yellowed and faded, so far that they were like the memories of another third detachment leader, Tang Erda.

Not the memory of him, Tang Erda, who has metamorphosed into a monster.

The more he tried to return to the old days, the further he had to move away from them.

"Captain, please don't go!!!"

Su Yang held Tang Erda's uniform flat in his hands, his whole back straight, and gave him a regular 90-degree bow, his voice forcibly subdued but still audibly choked.

"Captain, please don't go!!!"

Led by Su Yang, an entire third detachment of players bowed their heads to Tang Erda, screaming at the top of their lungs to stay, tears sliding down the faces of a few of them and dripping to the ground.

Tang Erda finally stepped forward, slowing his pace and taking one step towards Su Yang and the third team, taking his uniform from Su Yang in silence.

Su Yang looked up in surprise, "Captain?!"

The other end.

Muke and Liu Jiayi received a text message from Tang Erda and drove up immediately behind them to wait outside the Heretics Authority.

Now seeing Bai Liu emerge unharmed, Muke, who was sitting in the driver's seat, let out a long breath and slumped back in his seat.

Liu Jiayi, who had long ago got out of the car to get some fresh air and was leaning against the door, seemed to hear the sound of someone approaching and looked up in surprise.

She listened sideways several times and then asked incredulously, "You're the only one with footsteps, and you left that stupid big guy at the Heretic's Authority?!"

"Aren't you afraid he'll stay again?" Liu Jiayi hugged his chest and "looked" in the direction Bai Liu's footsteps were coming from, "I don't believe you don't see that he has a stronger sense of belonging to the Heretics Bureau as a group, you leave him where he is and expect him to cut his own psychological ties to the Third Branch, it's like sending a sheep into a tiger's mouth. "

"He won't incorporate a sense of psychological belonging to our side." Liu Jiayi concludes with certainty while shaking his head, "I can sense that he is repulsed, even hostile to us."

Liu Jiayi raised his eyebrows impatiently and criticized Bai Liu: "Aren't you going around in such a big circle to take full control of Tang Erda? What's going on? You're not the kind of person who would drop the ball at the last minute?"

Bai Liu was confronted by Liu Jiayi, but he turned around and leaned against the car door, took a bottle of water from the open driver's window and took a sip before answering Liu Jiayi's question.

"I'm suddenly curious to see what choices this Captain Tang would have made if I hadn't deliberately cut."

"What's so strange about you all of a sudden!" Liu Jiayi said, stamping her foot. Liu Jiayi stomped her foot and said, "The league is in two months, if you don't get your team under control soon, and Tang Erda is of such high quality, you'll be robbed like Hearts!"

Bai Liu looked down at Liu Jiayi: "- so you want to see me control Tang Erda the way Hearts controls you? And have him separated from the people closest to him?"

Liu Jiayi is stunned.

"I had planned to do the same." Bai Liu The conversation took another turn as he unapologetically admitted it.

Bai Liu puts the lid on the mineral water, one hand casually in his trouser pocket, his eyes gazing out over the huge white circular building, the morning breeze and the sun's dew blowing behind him, rattling Bai Liu's shaggy hair and the wide shirt not tucked into his trousers.

The dazzling early sun shines on Bai Liu's side, his pale smile glistening in the fading dawn.

"But at certain times, I think it feels good to channel hearts and minds in a Lu Yizhan kind of way."

The glittering daylight dense into countless bright rays in the foggy morning mist, and then the beams merge with each other, tinting the sky inwards, illuminating the barren, empty, monster-strewn ground, the huge round metal buildings, and the octopus-like shapes of the uniforms in a brilliant gold of reflected light.

Tang Erda looked down at the sun-brightened octopus badge on the team shirt that had followed him for centuries for a long time, then he let out a long, long breath and suddenly let out a soft laugh.

"Captain?" Su Yang asked carefully.

"Do you remember when we started out training as reservists in the Heretic Authority?" Tang Erda brought up a completely unrelated issue.

Su Yang was stunned but answered Tang Erda's question seriously, "...... remember that we all started out as reserves for the first team and trained very hard."

"- it was hard to stop me from being stupid, wasn't it?" Tang Erda eyed wistfully, "I was the most impulsive person in the whole detachment at that time, and when I came across heretics killing people, I couldn't hold my temper and made sure to kill them too, and every time I would be stopped by the first detachment leader, who taught us a lot."

"Yes, at that time Cen Buming was still the vice-captain of the first detachment and was particularly strict with us, but would be particularly good and call the first detachment captain senior."

Su Yang didn't know what Tang Erda was trying to say, but meekly recalled it with Tang Erda, "-at that time you didn't like him, and made fun of him by being shady and imitating what he called the first detachment leader's senior brother, and he scolded you saying that you were so hot-tempered and sooner or later to be tainted with spiritual downgrading."

Tang Erda was in a bit of a trance: "...... Did I even fight Cen Buming?"

"It was over twenty years ago, so it's normal not to remember." Su Yang smiled, "Why are you talking about this all of a sudden?"

"I just, suddenly remembered something the captain of the first detachment once said to me." Tang Erda lowered her eyes to look at the squad badge, clenching and whispering, "-there are no two identical leaves in this world, nor are there two identical timelines-"

"-- When you are chosen by time, no matter how many things you meet and how many people you meet that you want to stop for, you know that they are no longer the real ones, the ones or the things you want to stop for, they have all passed away a long time ago --"

"You can't look back, you can only move on."

"-This is the [future] that belongs to you."

Tang Erda raised his head, looked around at all the players and said in a deep voice.

"I became the [Guardian] as well as the [Binder] of Heretic 0006, and the accidents caused by Heretic 0006 last night and this morning were all caused by my improper judgment of Heretic 0006, which led to its intensification-"

His dark blue eyes were clear and correct: "- for which I am solely responsible."

"Heretic 0006, who is not a wounded type of heretic, controlled himself during two violent riots, did not kill a single person, and both made amends afterwards to save themselves from the consequences, while I misjudged Heretic 0006 and used various means to force him to be the cause of the accident in the first place, for which - -"

In front of the stunned group of remaining members, Tang Erda bent deeply and bowed to them.

"- I am deeply sorry."

"I will do my best to compensate the 67 players who were injured last night and the explosion at the Rose Factory the next day has now been resolved as punishment -" Tang Erda gripped the team badge on her uniform and gave it a firm tug down.

Su Yang snapped at him, "Captain!!!"

But it was still too late.

The team insignia was ripped off intact and Tang Erda took a deep breath, "- I resign as the leader of the third detachment and, as a Binder of Heresy 0006, never return to the Heresy Management Processing Authority until it is fully integrated into society."

Su Yang closes her eyes, her cheeks shaking from the clenching of her teeth.

Tang Erda straightened up and smiled as if he had let go of everything, but his eyes were red and he held the team badge trembling in his heart, then shook off his uniform and draped it over Su Yang's shoulders, patted him on the shoulder with a smile and gently placed the captain's badge in Su Yang's hand.

Su Yang's eyes opened to look at him in dismay.

Tang Erda said in a quiet voice, "- I hereby appoint Vice-Captain Su Yang as the new Captain of the Third Detachment, transferring to him all permissions except for the [Prophet] permission."

"I order you, Lieutenant Su, to pick up the badge!" Tang Erda steepled her tone.

Su Yang held back, but couldn't hold back the tears that swished down his face, and almost gritted his teeth as he took the team badge Tang Erda handed him, "-Yes, Captain."

Tang Erda smiled and said, "You'd make a better captain than me, Su Yang."

Su Yang is holding her badge and team uniform and bawling her eyes out.

For over twenty years, he had never imagined the day when Tang Erda would no longer be his captain, or in such a cruel, self-punishing way.

Su Yang understands what the Heretic's Bureau means to Tang Erda and how scary it would be for Tang Erda to give it up.

Su Yang has thought of a million ways for Tang Erda to leave the Heresy Authority - to be killed by heretics, to commit suicide by contamination, or even to die as a heretic's caretaker.

But he never thought it would be like this. In Su Yang's and every team member's conception, Tang Erda never had the possibility of leaving the Heretic's Bureau alive - which meant that in their perception, leaving the Heretic's Bureau was a worse thing for Tang Erda than dying.

Tang Erda led them into battle and was the acknowledged, ever-present captain of every third unit, righteous, brave, sometimes impetuous, but never absent from a battle of life and death, never afraid of a heretical "game" that never returned.

But when exactly did they drift away from each other?

Su Yang watched tearfully at Tang Erda's back as he left in the sunrise. He waved sagely and didn't seem to be staying, but the dress trousers on this guy, right down to his shoes and socks, were special made by the Heretic's Authority.

Worn to rags and washed to white, but still firmly worn by Tang Erda - as if the old Heretics uniform had grown on him and could never be taken off.

But the crest that "grew" on his heart had been snapped off by his own hand.

Bai Liu leaned against the car and waited for a while, Liu Jiayi could not resist speaking sarcastically to Tang Erda who had not yet come out: " Bai Liu, you will regret your weakness, our captain does not look like he can leave the team without a fight, you wait for him ...... "Turn your back on the team ......

No sooner had Liu Jiayi's words left his lips than a dark spot appeared under the circular building heading their way.

He was walking slowly, draped in a torn and tattered team shirt, but was indeed walking this way.

Liu Jiayi's words stopped short and she looked incredulously over to where the footsteps were coming from.

Tang Erda walked over and Bai Liu looked over his condition from top to bottom, his eyes lingering on his heart-broken team shirt for a couple of seconds as he teased with a smile, "I thought you'd leave the team logo with Su Yang along with the shirt."

Tang Erda was no longer surprised that Bai Liu had guessed where things were going, he nodded and spoke in a slightly husky voice, "That was the plan, the team uniform and the team badge were given to him ......"

Bai Liu's eyes rested on the team shirt that Tang Erda was wearing: "So?"

"But Su Yang insisted on leaving me the uniform." Tang Erda whispers, "He said the team badge was just for me for a while and he would always wait for me to return."

After saying this, Tang Erda was quiet for a long, long time before saying, "- but I can't go back, that's not [the future] that belongs to me."

"I just had to keep moving forward."