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The bullet shot past Bai Liu’s eye and hit the wall behind him. There was a strong bang that caused everyone outside to knock on the door and ask what was wrong. Su Yang opened the small window and warned Tang Erda severely.
“Tang Erda, shooting in a narrow room is an act of looking for death. The bullet fragments can go through your head.  You better not play this suicide game of accidentally killing yourself in front of me again and again. You have a gun, not a toy.” Su Yang spoke coldly. “I won’t collect your body if you play yourself to death.”
Tang Erda put the gun down on the table carelessly. He turned his head and raised his hands to Su Yang with a fake smile to show he wasn’t playing with the gun.
He seemed to be joking around as he glanced at the unmoved Bai Liu sitting opposite him. “I was just trying to scare him.I didn’t expect you to be frightened. Vice-captain Su, you don’t have to care so much about comrade Bai Liu (6).”
“After all, both of us don’t care much about death.” Tang Erda smiled and approached Bai Liu. He raised his eyebrow and lowered his slightly hoarse voice. “It isn’t like we’ve never died before. Right, Bai Liu (6)?”
Su Yang didn’t hear Tang Erda’s later words. Hear just gave Tang Erda a warning look before putting down the small window and saying nothing to the team members outside.
“You have to die but not now or in the Heretic Bureau. It will be very troublesome for you to die here.” Tang Erda raised his wrinkled eyelids.”This isn’t the first time I killed you, Bai Liu (6). If you don’t want to die so early and stop making money, you should obediently tell me the solution to the rose dry leaf gas on the table.”
Tang Erda tapped the glass bottle with the muzzle of his gun. His face showed the familiar, disgusted expression. “After appearing for a period of time, this thing soon became popular all over the world. Everyone had roses in their eyes.”
“People who don’t have money to buy it will wither on the streets. The slums and low-rent housing areas are full of withered flesh and bloody petals. Meanwhile, the roses in the eyes of the rich can grow vigorously. In the end, everyone is selling and making this thing. We can’t find the source. This time, it appeared so inexplicably.”
“I hate this thing but you should like it very much, Bai Liu (6)?” Tang Erda stared in a fixed manner at Bai Liu.
“Why do you think I have something to do with this rose gas?” Bai Liu asked slowly. “In addition, why must I have a solution to this thing?”
“It is because I caught you in several timelines and you did help the bureau solve this matter.”
Bai Liu quickly grasped the key point of Tang Erda’s voice. “I wouldn’t help you for free just because you caught me and wanted to kill me. Did you give me money?”
Tang Erda showed an expression like he swallowed a thousand flies. Finally, he waved his hand and admitted somewhat sullenly, “Yes, I gave a lot. In that timeline, you made the outstanding contribution of solving this rose dry leaf gas and you were finally acquitted.”
He looked down at Bai Liu with no emotions in his eyes. “We knew that you must have something to do with this matter but we had to let you go because there is no direct evidence that you are profiting from it.”
“All we could get was indirect evidence of your connection with the rose dry leaf gas. We clearly knew that you were the source of this thing and you didn’t deny it. However, we didn’t have direct evidence of you profiting from this thing. In the end, Su Yang insisted that you were innocent. You couldn’t be arrested and was released.”
“A year later, the seller of this thing even opened a retail store outside the Heretic Bureau. The whole world was filled with withered bodies because of this thing.” Tang Erda was quiet for a second. “In that timeline, Su Yang’s parents died at home because they couldn’t buy the rose dry leaf gas. Su Yang entered the game in order to revive his parents.”
Bai Liu’s eyes fell on the rose-colored perfume. “This really doesn’t fit my idea of profit making.”
Tang Erda glanced over sharply and he had a sneer on his face. “You still have an idea about profit making? Don’t you just want money? Since you were acquitted, it was somehow in the gray area and legal.”
“Those manufacturers claimed that this perfume is the same thing as cigarettes. There is no fatalness apart from the small number of people allergic. Your acquittal brought great convenience to their marketing and promotion of this perfume. They also gave you a lot of money and I didn’t see you refuse it.”
“Yes, I shouldn’t refuse money that is sent to my hand. However, if I had the status and resources that you said then I wouldn’t have introduced this addictive perfume.” Bai Liu reached out to the glass bottle and observed it. “This perfume is too addictive and human resources aren’t renewable. They are disposable, like roses that can only wither once.”
“It is the lowest level of capital exploitation. It is stupid.” Bai Liu looked up lightly at Tang Erda. “I prefer leeks to roses because leeks are renewable.”
“If I was an existence that could permanently exploit the lower class, I wouldn’t harvest them so easily and thoroughly. I would train them and give them the space and resources to grow. This way, they can regenerate forever. Turning them into roses is too extravagant and not my preferred way of making money.”
Tang Erda, “......”
No matter how many times he saw Bai Liu, this man’s nonsense and brainwashing skills weren’t reduced at all.
“I don’t care if you like roses or leeks. You had better give me an honest explanation of your solution to the rose gas.” Tang Erda smiled in a hypocritical, polite manner. “In addition, I used an item in this room to isolate all evil things, including the coin. Even if you swallow the coin, you can’t enter the game.”
He slowly patted Bai Liu’s face with the gun. “I have plenty of time and means to spend with you, old friend.”
“Captain Tang, as a prisoner of time and space, am I qualified to ask you one last question?” Bai Liu stared straight into Tang Erda’s eyes. “You successfully killed me in the other timelines. I am just an ordinary person in this timeline. Why didn’t you kill me the moment you came to this timeline? Why wait until the gas appeared to come to me?”
“It is because I thought you were dead.” Tang Erda stared deeply at Bai Liu. “I wanted to kill you before you grew up. Thus, I followed the clues from other timelines to the welfare home where you should be and where you hadn’t grown up yet.”
“In every timeline I’ve experienced and verified, you grew up in the welfare home where children are abused. I found traces of your existence there almost every time. Yet this time, the dean told me that Bai Liu (6) died swallowing a coin when he was 14.”
Tang Erda stopped here for a few seconds.
“After you grew up, you dragged all the investors and the dean of that welfare home who caused your childhood tragedy into the game. They died very miserably. You didn’t personally kill them with your own hand but you induced them to enter the game in various ways, letting them die at the hands of monsters. Bai Liu (6), you have always been smart when doing bad things. It is difficult for us to catch any handles and traces to verify that you are the one.”
Tang Erda had a slightly distracted expression and his fingers unknowingly tapped on the table. “You can’t die so easily. I didn’t believe you were dead. Once you enter the game, it would be other talents who suffer. Committing suicide after being tortured by the investors isn’t something you will do.”
“Yet every trace I found proved that you are the child who committed suivide for no reason.”
Tang Erda lit a cigarette. He didn’t look at Bai Liu and his eyes moved around the room. “I didn’t think there would be a you in this timeline.”
He moved his gaze slowly to Bai Liu’s face.
Tang Erda and Bai Liu stared at each other through the smoke. “In this timeline, there is another one who grew up in a public welfare home. He changed his name and didn’t touch any evil things at all. It seems he hadn’t done anything bad in his 25 years of life. He lived to become the current laid-off worker version of Bai Liu.”
“This is impossible for a bastard like you. You won’t tolerate staying in such a low-cost and unprofitable position for so long.” Tang Erda took a deep breath of smoke before exhaling it and shaking the ashes from his fingertips. “Working for others as a social animal and receiving a low salary? If I dreamt that a bastard like you had such a day, I would’ve woken up with a smile.”
“This is a torture tailor made for you. It is worse than killing you. I don’t know how you put up with it.”
Tang Erda continued to speak. “If you are given a chance, you will become a conscience free money-grabbing machine. You will domesticate and own the world’s most terrible and loyal criminal gang, training them to become a gold-swallowing group. The wealth of the world will fall into your open hands like an old wallet with a gap.”
Tang Erda sat at the table. He took a deep breath of smoke and exhaled it again.
Smoke rings floated in front of Bai Liu’s eyes. Bai Liu turned his head imperceptible and his breathing frequency slowed down a bit.
Tang Erda suddenly let out a very strange and very happy laugh. “Oh yes, you hate the smell of cigarettes. Seeing you being forced to stay in this environment for so long is really—”
“—It is better than killing you with my own hands.”