Chapter 421: The Last World Line

The moment Lu Yizhan heard Bai six's words, he turned his head very quickly and reached out to push open the door of the interrogation room.

Bai six, propped up on the torture table with one hand, snapped his fingers with a smile.

[System Alert: Player Bai six has used a Magic Space on player Lu Yizhan, limiting Lu Yizhan's range of movement to the torture chamber he is currently in].

Lu Yizhan calmed down instantly after realising he couldn't get out, he turned his head to Bai six behind the table: "You broke the rules of the game."

"I never said it was a game between the two of us in the first place." Bai six smiled, "And Lieutenant Sham just agreed to pay the price and join me in the game."

Lu Yizhan was trapped in the magic space, looking at Bai six through the walls of the magic space, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly: "What dare are you going to do this time?"

Bai six twitched his fingers, and Lu Yizhan noticed that several transparent threads were wrapped around the joints of his fingers, stretching from them all the way out to whoever was outside the door.

Lu Yizhan's heart sank, he realised what Bai six was trying to do, and stared straight at Bai six: "Trapping an opponent player is no way to play the game."

"But it's not Team Lu's turn." Bai six smiled and looked up, "It's Deputy Sham's turn."

"It's a skill I've been using a lot lately, puppet strings, and I've just attached all these puppet strings to the suspects that you put out there by Captain Lu."

" Captain Lu, guess what if I were to open the door now and manipulate these suspects to suddenly riot and attack you who are now trapped in [Magic Space] and unable to move or resist-"

Bai six smiled and hooked a silk thread on his index finger as the door to the torture chamber was slowly opened, "- what would your loyal Lieutenant Sham, Mr. Hunter, do with these suspects who have not yet been convicted and do not know if they are innocent?"

"Of course, I promise these suspects won't hurt you."

"But I can't guarantee that Lieutenant Sham won't hurt these suspects."

Lu Yizhan's pupils flinched.

The moment the door was pulled open, there was a sudden clamour from outside, the suspects were pulled by the puppet silk into Lu Yizhan's torture chamber almost in the blink of an eye, their faces greedy and deformed, some of them already in heretical form, raising their weapons high above Lu Yizhan, who was trapped in the magic space.

Outside the door, Cen Buming raised his gun without hesitation, his gaze cold with an extremely sharp, fierce bloodlust.

"Drop the gun, Cen Buming!!!"

"Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang-!!!"

Lu Yizhan watched with lax pupils as the men in front of him, covered in blood, exploded under Cen Buming's fire and then fell motionless to the ground.

Blood was spilled all over the floor, spreading to Lu Yizhan's feet.

Lu Yizhan could not utter a word, staring at Cen Buming in a daze or in a trance, still holding a gun smelling of gunpowder at him.

Cen Buming looked at Lu Yizhan in silence, without averting his gaze, and still did not lower his gun.

"Call a doctor ......" Lu Yizhan hissed out, "Call a doctor-!!!"

Cen Buming said calmly, "There's no need to call a doctor, with these people I hit every shot deadly."

Lu Yizhan closed his eyes as he slowly slid down to his knees.

...... Cen Buming was awake, he heard his orders but still didn't drop his gun, he was fully aware of what he was doing ......

Bai six folded his arms in satisfaction, "Game over, props recovered, players please leave the field on your own."

Lu Yizhan thought he would break down, yell at Cen Buming and even fight with him, but when he stepped out of Bai six's magic space and looked up at Cen Buming, his mind was blank.

He couldn't say anything.

Something that they had always agreed between them, something that they had worked hard to maintain in these three hundred or so world lines, finally shattered.

Lu Yizhan stood alone in the training ground for a long time that day, looking down at the trainees running laps and laps, his mind completely empty, feeling as if he was thinking about a lot of things, but also as if he was thinking about nothing at all.

That is, until Cen Buming appeared at his side.

Cen Buming's voice remained calm: "I killed Bai six."

"This world line is coming to an end soon."

"But we still won't win." Lu Yizhan's eyes looked far, far away, "He must have laid his back game long ago when I caught him, and now there must be some kind of heresy spreading around the world."

Cen Buming Hmmm.

After a while, Cen Buming said, "Five of the six men I killed that day were involved in the heretical smuggling of Bai six."

"There's one more person who doesn't."

Lu Yizhan was quiet for a long, long time, his fingers slowly curled up and he asked softly, "...... If you had to do it again, would you still shoot?"

Cen Buming didn't hesitate: "Yes."

"In my case, the lives of good people are just more valuable than these lives of probable bad people." Cen Buming looks away, " Lu Yizhan, I may not really be able to do what you do, I hate these people who swim on the edge of grey, whose one action and one mistake can take the lives of countless really innocent, trying to stay alive."

"If it wasn't for their own lust and greed, they could have stayed out of contact with Bai six and they wouldn't have been brought to the Heretics Authority by us."

"So one more time, I'll still shoot."

Cen Buming looked out over the training ground at the fluttering flags of the Bureau of Heresy Disposal and said, "Because your life is just more important to me than the lives of these six men."

"My life is no more important than any of these six men." Lu Yizhan says softly, "especially when we are all facing death at the same time."

Lu Yizhan turns to leave.

Cen Buming didn't turn around as he abruptly spoke out, "Brother."

Lu Yizhan's back pauses for a moment.

Cen Buming was quiet for a few seconds and said, "You're not coming for me in the next world line, are you?"

Lu Yizhan didn't answer, he just stayed still.

"Then kill me." Cen Buming chuckled suddenly, "A hunter who can't stand in the prophet's camp, and I'm just a monster wandering the grey fringe."

Lu Yizhan walked away without a backward glance.

Cen Buming, who remained in place, slowly closed his eyes as he watched the laughing trainees running below him.

After that world line ended, Lu Yizhan sat in the temple, and for the first time he took the initiative to propose a game-changing deal with Bai six: "I wish to revoke Cen Buming's hunter status."

"Revoke Hunter status." Bai six raised an eyebrow and he smiled a little, "It can be revoked, but Cen Buming so many world lines have reincarnated with you, I'm sure you've noticed."

"- Cen Buming also paid the price for his involvement in the game, and he has long since become a heretic."

"Each worldline regains the memory of all worldlines with your arrival and loses the memory of all worldlines with your departure; he has become a piece of consciousness that can only keep following you, the prophet."

"If you revoke his hunter status now, then you must ensure that you can reasonably house him and not allow him to interfere directly with my game or meddle in any of my layouts with you."

"- or I would have simply erased this consciousness of Cen Buming."

Lu Yizhan took a deep breath: "I'll shelter him and make sure he doesn't interfere with the game."

"Well then, I will choose the second generation Hunter card for you." Bai six was just about to shuffle his cards when Lu Yizhan called a halt.

Lu Yizhan looked at Bai six with a determined look in his eyes: "I know that you are deliberately interfering with Cen Buming's hunter card, forcing him to break down and mentally descend into a heretic without self-awareness."

" Bai six, don't you want the game to be more interesting? How about I make a deal with you this time that I won't interfere directly with the second generation hunter cards, and you don't interfere directly either, and see how he chooses his camp?"

"Go with the flow?" Bai six smiled softly with downcast eyes, "Interesting, I promise."

"The second generation hunter I have chosen this time is also very hunter-like, I will not directly interfere with torturing him, I will simply give him the qualification to become a hunter and let him start reincarnating the world line with you."

Lu Yizhan said in a quiet voice: "I will also give him my prophetic authority directly, but I will never see him or interfere with him."

"And then we'll see together what this wild-growing hunter will grow into?" Bai six raised his eyes and smiled, "But Captain Lu, you're all that's left."

"There are still over three hundred world lines, are you going to stick it out alone?"

Lu Yizhan said, "I can."

Bai six's choice of second-generation hunter is Tang Erda, a trainee whom Lu Yizhan has met twice.

Tang Erda surpassed Lu Yizhan's expectations and grew up very quickly, even winning a game against Bai six in the later World Series to qualify as a hunter for the start of the round.

But soon Lu Yizhan realises that even if Bai six keeps his promise not to interfere directly with the hunters, Tang Erda is slowly becoming paranoid and irritable as she continues to reincarnate in the timeline and begins to hate those who are about to commit crimes in the previous world.

-- Tang Erda is becoming more and more like a carbon copy of Cen Buming's original.

And Lu Yizhan soon found out why.

Bai six never tortures Tang Erda directly, and even when he catches her, he lets her go on purpose, but he tortures Su Yang, Tang Erda's second in command, and Tang Erda falls deeper and deeper into the trap because Su Yang is tortured and killed by Bai six in front of him again and again.

By the time the countdown of world lines was over, Tang Erda was about to run out of steam.

Lu Yizhan sits next to the stone table and he looks at Bai six flatly: "You've driven Tang Erda crazy."

Bai six smiled and said, "I haven't touched a second generation hunter."

Lu Yizhan said, "But you touched his [anchor]."

Bai six lowered his eyes and the smile on his face became clear: "It seems you have fully understood the definition of [anchor]."

"Yes, the derivatives of each of my worldlines constantly make the hunter who has chosen you mentally descend by torturing Su Yang, who can last at most one more worldline."

"Are you going to change hunters again, prophet?"

Lu Yizhan was silent for a moment: "No more changes."

"And rightly so." Bai six crossed his arms and smiled, "There are only three world lines left and there's no point in changing them."

For the first time in the penultimate worldline, Lu Yizhan checked out the location of Fang Dian in this worldline and went to see her when she wasn't dealing with the Heresy Authority in the first log-in.

It was raining heavily when Lu Yizhan went to see Fang Dian, and he looked for her through the curtain of rain with a black umbrella, which seemed to be a million of them.

He soon found it, for Fang Dian was standing without an umbrella next to a grocery shop, holding up her briefcase to keep out the rain, but she didn't have to wait long before she dropped her briefcase, rolled up her sleeves and blazers, and seemed ready to simply ignore it and dash straight into the rain.

Lu Yizhan, who saw the scene, smiled a little and tried to walk up with his umbrella, but stopped after just one step.

He stared in awe at Fang Dian through the rain, the umbrellas, and the constant stream of people.

Fang Dian ran past him with her briefcase in her hand, her head slightly bowed, a smile on her face, not looking back, and somehow a man appeared beside her who was laughing with her as she dashed into the rain with her briefcase on top.

Lu Yizhan stops in the middle of the crowd with his black umbrella, not looking back at Fang Dian who runs past, rain sliding down his jaw.

Fang Dian's happy smile and the face that hung its head in silent tears as each world line intersected crossed his mind.

[Because Lu Yizhan lost the game this time, the person you love is going to die.

[Because Lu Yizhan lost the game again, so ......]

" Fang Dian ...... " Lu Yizhan slowly lowered his umbrella and let the rain wash over his face, murmuring to himself, "Am I really right to choose this way? "

"If you were still there, wouldn't you have already won?"

"I really do suck at this."

Time and time again, losing the game, all of them suffering because of his presumptuous choices.

Water beaded down Lu Yizhan's face and his voice was so soft that the rain could have broken it: "If only the people who met you hadn't been losers like me."

"Just one last world line left." Bai six smiled and asked Lu Yizhan, "I can give you all the cards you got your hands on before all over again."

Lu Yizhan raised his eyes: "What's the price?"

Bai six laughed softly, "The price is that if you lose this game, then the souls of all these cards are destroyed."

"Of course, if you don't want to, the souls of these cards will be destroyed by me, and I don't accept such worthless things as the loser's cards here."

Lu Yizhan said, "I pay that price, let the game continue."

"The game continues with the consent of both you and the other player." Bai six stood up, he looked sideways at Lu Yizhan, raising an eyebrow, "Wanna go see her?"

Lu Yizhan was quiet: "Good."

Seafloor.

Through the watery wall, Lu Yizhan sees Fang Dian, her hands hanging, her head still hanging, and Bai Six walks up to her, crouches down and says, "The last world line."

"The first 657 world lines, your players, Lu Yizhan all lost."

"The last world line, are you going to continue to pay the price and keep the game going?"

Bai six looked down at Fang Dian: "If you choose to stop now, you can still walk out of the temple, and if you lose the last world line as well, then all your games are lost."

"The soul is at my disposal."

"The way things are going, Lu Yizhan is unlikely to beat me on the last line."

Fang Dian suddenly lifted her head, her long, loose hair falling from her face and covering half of her face, which made her look haggard and frail, but her face still held a smile and her eyes were still bright: "He will win against you."

Lu Yizhan, behind the watery wall, looks at Fang Dian incredulously.

Bai six asked, amused, "Where does this unwarranted trust of yours come from?"

"It doesn't cost anything to believe in Lu Yizhan, so why not." Fang Dian arched her eyebrows, "Let the game go on."

"I believe he can beat you, it's like believing-"

Fang Dian's gaze was steely: "- good will triumph over evil in the end."

Bai six stood up and he smiled and said, "As you wish then."

He snapped his fingers and Lu Yizhan plummeted backwards, just as he had done the 657th time he landed on the world line before, thinking that he would be in the Heretic Authority this time, just like before, as soon as he landed.

But as he descended, it was as if a mermaid-like creature with a silvery-blue tail brushed past him in the sea, causing Lu Yizhan's descent to lurch so violently that he landed in an orphanage.

And in this orphanage.

Lu Yizhan looked incredulously at Bai six, sitting in the far corner of the table, thin, dark-eyed and with only a small plate of food in front of him.

--He met Bai six, who was only fourteen years old.

A Bai six who has not yet logged into the game.

It's a whole new, strange world line with incredibly few heretics, as if it had been removed from the interference of the evil gods.

-- it's like a bug, a miracle, a line of the world that hasn't been tainted yet.

And Lu Yizhan, after a few days of furtively observing the skinny and ostracized Bai six -

--He could not contain himself at all from moving to kill.

In this world line, this miraculous world line, if he kills this Bai six now, he wins.

Lu Yizhan follows the strange Bai six to the small pond he visits every day and is calmly preparing himself to kill the 14-year-old Bai six when he comes up from the water.

But he waited for a long time, and Bai six did not come up.

Lu Yizhan jumped into the pond with a head full of questions and found that Bai six, who hadn't come up for so long, had actually drowned at the bottom of the pond!

Lu Yizhan, now in a child's body, had to struggle to pull out the Bai six, together with the object at the bottom of the lake that he was holding on to.

Lu Yizhan's pupils flinched at the sight of the object - it was the body of a very beautiful and delicate looking teenager.

But that was not what startled Lu Yizhan the most. What startled him the most was the fact that the corpse was talking to him in his head without speaking.

"My name is Xie Ta and I am the corpse before you."

"I used all my powers to pull you into this world line early, and I know you're a good person and I know you've been through a lot."

"But you're the only one who can save Bai six, he can't keep spending any more time here, he's really going to die."

The light teenage voice pleaded with him very sincerely, "Please believe me, this Bai six in front of you is not like all the other Bai six, he is a good boy."

"Please don't kill him."

Lu Yizhan's hand slowly tightens around the knife hidden behind him, and he stares in silence, without saying a word, at Bai six, who is on his knees, deflated.

Bai six is choking with his head down, his face almost transparently white, and he is clutching the body of Xie Ta in his arms in this situation.

--seems almost powerless to resist any attack.

Lu Yizhan slowly steps forward, clutching the knife tighter and tighter, all the information in his head rushing frantically, his expression a blank state of overcarriage.

Tang Erda, who spat at the instructor, Fang Dian, who ran in the rain, Cen Buming, who looked cold, Wu Ruishu, who accidentally fell, Yu Fu, who was mummifying someone with a gentle smile, and Dong Chenglong, who scolded him with a black face.

--As long as he killed the 14-year-old Bai six now, the painful sacrifice of all these people would not have been in vain.

Bai six was holding Xie Ta in his arms, he was on his knees, his face was in a state of unconsciousness similar to drowning, he just looked up at Lu Yizhan, a tear fell very softly from his eyes, his voice was soft and hoarse: "...... Whoever you are, please You, please save Xie Ta."

"I'll pay any price for that."

Bai six's voice overlaps with the voice in Lu Yizhan's head from Xie Ta -

"Please, help Bai six."

"I'll pay any price for that."

--This is the first time Lu Yizhan has seen Bai six cry.

Lu Yizhan stood silently in front of the weeping, fourteen-year-old Bai six for a long, long time, as if dazed, before his hand, hidden behind his back, finally let go, leaving a red mark on the hilt of his knife from an overly firm grip.

The knife smashed into the grass without making a sound.

Lu Yizhan heard his voice reply clearly, "Yes."