Chapter 228: Reality

Dangerous Heresy Directorate Headquarters.

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

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

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

Bai Liu walked in with an unblinking eye, with Cen Buming, the leader of the second detachment escorting him, on his left, Tang Er fighting on his right, and a huge team behind him.

If it weren't for the fact that Bai Liu's hands were still cuffed behind his back, he would have looked like the leader of the two teams - the former captain of the first detachment.

But in reality, he's just a fugitive who had to send out two detachments before he was apprehended.

Bai Liu was guided all the way to the elevator, Cen Buming swiped his card and lit up the elevator buttons, Tang Er stepped forward, took a deep breath and pressed the bottom button.

An elevator with three people in it descends to the ground.

The smell of the sea began to fill the narrow elevator at some point.

"I'm surprised that you guys would agree to my terms so readily." Bai Liu sidles up to Cen Buming, who stands behind him on his left, "After all, Heretic 0001 seems to be very important to you."

Cen Buming glanced at him, "No more important than two thousand lives, only more important to the First Detachment Captain, who is its guardian, and the one who decided to seal it away, a heresy we're not even sure what it is."

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

Bai Liu, who was caught off guard and turned into a toothache: "......"

Tang Er provided information on the dossier typed in: "......"

The elevator stopped steadily, the door opened smoothly, and Bai Liu walked out.

Once again at the bottom of the Dangerous Heretics Bureau, the situation is very different from the last time, but the scenario is the same--

--A long, dark, tunnel-like aisle in the deep sea, with the scent of sea water floating in the air from nowhere, and the door standing quietly at the end, closed forever.

"First things first, we didn't mean to open this door for you, after all, who knows how dangerous this heretic number is." Cen Buming sidled his eyes over to Bai Liu, "We only promised to let you use Heretic 7061 [Mirror of Perspective] to take a look at what's behind the door."

"Watch for 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 just open the handcuffs for you, hand you the [Mirror of Perspective], and start the clock."

Bai Liu had no problem turning around and letting Cen Buming uncuff him.

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."

The moment the handcuffs were removed, Cen Buming put a gun to Bai Liu's head.

Bai Liu raised his hands in a natural manner to show that he was harmless, then rubbed his wrists, which were bruised by the handcuffs, and turned his head to face Cen Buming, who was behind the muzzle of the gun, and asked with amusement:

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

Tang Er, standing by, shook his head, "Most of it is sealed in top secret files that no one has access to."

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

Bai Liu raises an eyebrow, "Like the Mo Fei magic mirror?"

"No, the Mo Fei magic mirror is fake, but the things Heretic 0001 lets you see are real." Cen Buming moved closer to Bai Liu, his gun muzzle was pressed against Bai Liu's forehead, the metallic muzzle was 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 asked, "What is it?"

Cen Buming : "[Future]."

Tang Er Ta was also stunned, Bai Liu swept a glance at Tang Er Ta's disoriented expression and realized that this third detachment leader, like him, was also hearing the name of Heretic 0001 for the first time.

"[Future], why does it drive so many people crazy with fear?" Bai Liu raised his eyes to the second detachment leader who seemed to be harboring a lot of secrets.

"Perhaps the very meaning of [the future]'s existence is to make people feel fear and go crazy over it." Cen Buming pressed a gun against the back of Bai Liu's head to force him forward, his tone and expression were calm to the point of abnormality, "Fear comes from the unknown, is there anything more unknowable and frightening than [the future]?"

Bai Liu held his hands up and stepped forward, "It sounds like Captain Sham has already seen his [future]."

"I haven't seen it, and a known [future] would simultaneously take away my fear and my motivation to chase it on." Cen Buming stops dead in his tracks, "But you're about to decide if you've seen your [future] or not."

Bai Liu looks up, and there in front of him is the heretical 0001 welded door.

The door was tall, cold, hard, impenetrable, with no entrance, no key, withdrawn as if it had been born that way, thick and heavy, standing between the scent of Sheta that Bai Liu had smelled and him.

Bai Liu smells Sheta in his [future].

"Thinking about it?" Cen Buming looks at Bai Liu, "Wanna see your scary [future]?"

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

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

The heavy stainless steel box folded and flipped open in all directions, containing a well-made, old-fashioned monocle wrapped in a fine velvet cloth.

"Hold it up until it's level with your pupil line, like a doctor taking your prescription when you're nearsighted and getting glasses, and adjust the position until this iron door in front of you becomes transparent."

Tang Er hit a hushed voice commanding Bai Liu how to use this monocle, his tone uncontrollably complicated, "...... 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, all-scratched-up lenses the iron door fading away, and a silent, empty, pure white appearing behind it.

This pure white light kept spreading inward borderlessly, as if no matter how much one looked inward, one could only glimpse these emotionless white lights in vain.

Finally, when Bai Liu's eyes started to get sore, a small TV with a snowflake screen appeared at the end of the white light.

The little TV seemed to realize that Bai Liu was watching it, and the buttons on the edges jumped spontaneously, as if searching for stations, and the snowflake screen flickered twice to a black-and-white alphabetical beginning of an old movie, with dots of light flickering on it, and a row of subtitles in large letters right in the center:

[Last World Line Game]

Bai Liu and his friends. [players]

[Setting Mode: Extreme Difficulty Mode (Hell Mode)]

[Setting up the game's main line part 1 - the tragedy of love between life and death]

The credits faded, the bar on the small TV flashed twice, and a very unclear, first-view scene like a single-player horror game from the eighties or nineties appeared.

Bai Liu saw in the small TV the bobbing water, the fine ice floes, and the bubbles that kept rising from his mouth and nose, as if he had fallen into the water, and judging from the limbs floating helplessly at the edge of his vision, he must have been drowning for more than four minutes, and appeared to be on the verge of drowning.

But he seemed to be paddling his arms and legs weakly at the moment, and appeared to have some degree of consciousness.

Strangely, instead of paddling toward 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 shook and the eye view shifted, Bai Liu saw what he was grasping for-it was a still-beating heart that kept falling deeper and deeper into the icy seabed.

And just at the moment when Bai Liu was about to grab it, a hand went through his chest and grabbed the heart before him, and at the same time when this hand drew back, it seemed to be in order to cut off the roots and crush Bai Liu's heart without mercy.

The mist of blood exploded from his body, spreading everywhere the sea water reached.

Bai Liu saw himself turn slowly, sinking down on all fours, in a sea of red and blue, his eyelids closing weakly, and the picture on the small television beginning to blacken and waver uneasily.

But Bai Liu did see the man who crushed his heart, with a face exactly like Taville's.

He was that cold, indifferent, holding the still beating heart, suspended in the water like a god, looking up at Bai Liu freezing in the zero-degree water.

The subtle light of the sky perished and disappeared, the sun in the sky was broken, only a quarter of it remained, and the bottom of the sea, which engulfed Bai Liu, was even colder.

The image faded and a new line of captions appeared on the small TV:

[Setting up the game's main thread part 2 - Ten years of old friends going their separate ways]

This time the little TV screen shook even more, as if someone was holding Bai Liu by his collar and shaking his head violently, yelling at him in hysterical rage:

"Bai Liu! You can't keep going! You've done enough to win!!!"

Bai Liu recognized the voice.

Bai Liu also recognized the face of the man who was beating him up on the little TV with tears streaming down his face, his face red and bruised on his neck-the first time I'd seen that look on the guy's face in ten years.

Lu Yizhan stood in front of him, squeezed his shoulders and arms, and slammed him into the ground over and over again - the tactic he used on his prisoners.

Bai Liu's body was drenched in blood, his hands and feet were covered with bruises, but Lu Yizhan's body wasn't much better, his nose was knocked out of alignment, his face was bruised and swollen, and his pair of eyes, which were always bitter or gentle, were filled with a certain kind of unprecedented intensity, staring at Bai Liu with a deadpan stare, seemingly ready to charge at any moment.

They seemed to savagely, unmercifully wrestle with each other.

Bai Liu hears his own violent, ragged breathing, he should be the more seriously injured one - Lu Yizhan is professionally trained in grappling, Bai Liu can't beat him in a physical fight.

But Lu Yizhan, who was much less injured, seemed to finally be unable to hold back his tears, and he raised his hand to wipe his eyes, wiping his whole face to a bloody mess, and then raised his head to ask him in a choked voice: "Bai Liu, what is the significance of your existence?"

"--just to become the monster standing across from me?"

"Aren't you alone?"