Everyone was pitching a small tent, spreading the cloth out in the center of the flower field. Bai Liu climbed out of the pit with difficulty on his own and placed the hand he had been gripping tightly in the middle of the cloth.
To avoid being polluted, everyone kept a certain distance from Bai Liu, but they stubbornly refused to leave. They followed him quietly from that distance like the tide, trailing after Bai Liu’s mud-caked heels, following him and pushing him onward.
Bai Liu continued digging pieces of a broken body out from beneath the ground.
A left hand, a left foot, a lower leg, half a rib cage, and a complete neck from the first to the third cervical vertebrae—Bai Liu dug them out of the soil one by one, deeper and deeper. Then, without the slightest change in expression, he laid them on the cloth and reassembled them according to the structure of the human body.
When the body had been pieced together and only the head and heart were missing, blood vessels began reshaping and growing from the condensed tissue. Torn nerves reconnected along the smooth breaks of the fascia. The empty chest cavity, heartless as it was, began to rise and fall faintly, as though it had begun to breathe.
There was no warm blood flowing. Like a statue, the body joined itself back together in a strange, seamless way, beginning to function again before Bai Liu’s eyes.
Bai Liu remained silent. Without saying a word, he dug, carried, and pieced the body together. Under the combined influence of mental contamination, fatigue, and pressure, he nearly lost his footing several times. Yet no one could step forward to support him—and, of course, he did not need them to. Most of the time, he simply collapsed into the mud himself, took two deep breaths, then staggered back to his feet.
Nothing could be read from Bai Liu’s expression, but for some reason, Liu Jiayi felt that although this man looked wretched and disheveled as he dug, he was actually very happy.
It was the kind of happiness that came from finally reuniting with someone very important after a long separation.
“Mr. Bai, come up! There’s no more field left for you to dig!” a refugee shouted from the edge, cupping both hands around their mouth like a megaphone.
Liu Jiayi glanced from a distance at the statue Bai Liu had pieced together. Although she could not see clearly, the statue did indeed seem to be missing its head. She frowned. “How can the head still be missing? Did I remember the number wrong?”
Bai Liu wrapped the statue in the cloth and tried to shoulder it, but failed twice. In the end, he had a refugee help him bring over a small cart, and only then did he barely manage to push the statue out of the flower field.
The moment he came out, he heard Liu Jiayi questioning him. Bai Liu waved a hand, leaning against the cart and panting for a while before answering her. “It’s not because you remembered wrong. The head shouldn’t be buried in the flower field.”
Liu Jiayi maintained a certain distance from Bai Liu and looked at him in confusion. “Then where would the head be buried?”
“This is a game, after all.” Bai Liu’s gaze turned toward the Rose Factory, where the sound of gunfire continued to ring out, and he smiled. “The best and most beautiful reward has to be obtained after killing the final boss.”
Liu Jiayi suddenly reacted. She muttered to herself in disbelief, “In the Inner World, could it be hidden inside that monster’s...”
“Yeah. It should be inside that monster manager’s enormous body,” Bai Liu said.
He tilted his head back slightly, his eyes half-closed, his breathing very clear after the hard labor. “This manager regards Tawil as a symbol of desire. He blames Tawil as the culprit behind his own frantic slaughter, believing that a demon controlled his consciousness and led him to commit those crimes. He’s a very typical murderer with an overinflated self-awareness and sense of morality.”
“After killing someone, this type of serial killer usually leaves behind a souvenir he subjectively considers the most valuable. For example, his adoptive parents’ inheritance, or his wife’s rose greenhouse.” Bai Liu turned his head and looked at the shocked Liu Jiayi with lifted eyes. “For example, what he considered the most beautiful parts of Tawil—the head and the heart.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Liu Jiayi’s expression grew much more solemn. “That monster is an S-rank monster. If you just want to escape, you only need to exploit its weakness, but you want to kill it! That’s too difficult! For the Kings’ Guild to kill an S-rank monster, it takes the cooperation of at least twenty reserve members.”
“I really can’t do it.” Bai Liu casually pushed the small cart toward Liu Jiayi. “But Captain Tang in an explosive state should be able to. I’ll go find Captain Tang and ask him to help me. You all help me watch this—be careful not to let the monsters snatch it away.”
Bai Liu turned back and smiled until his eyes curved, waving as he ran toward the factory. “If it gets lost, I’ll cry very loudly from sadness.”
“Hey! Wait!” Liu Jiayi frantically tried to catch the cart, but at the critical moment, she remembered that it was best not to get too close to it, or she would be polluted.
In the end, Liu Jiayi could only helplessly use the long tongs of a flower picker to clamp onto the cart’s handle and push it forward.
Looking at Bai Liu’s back as he ran farther and farther away, Liu Jiayi felt somewhat crushed. “I told you to leave some things to me, but I didn’t tell you to dump every mess on me!”
“At least discuss what you’re planning to do with me...” Liu Jiayi pouted unhappily and muttered under her breath, “Captain Tang, Captain Tang. Is he your captain? Calling him so affectionately?”
“I even took a shot from that whatever-Captain Tang for you...”
The more Liu Jiayi spoke, the more depressed she became. Her cheeks puffed out with anger as she stomped her foot. “You really don’t hold a grudge!”
On the other side, the “non-grudge-holding” Bai Liu had not even reached the factory entrance before he cupped one hand around his mouth like a megaphone and waved the other high in the air, calling out in an extremely cheerful voice, “Captain Tang, I’ve come to ask for your help!”
Tang Erda, who was guarding the factory entrance with all his focus, was nearly scared out of his soul by Bai Liu’s sudden, lively shout. His gun almost flew out of his hand. He turned around and saw Bai Liu jogging toward him with a smile that could make anyone’s back go cold, deliberately drawing out each word.
“Cap—tain—Tang—are—you—done—with—your—work?”
For one second, Tang Erda failed to react. He thought this was some trick of Bai Six’s meant to frighten him, and he nearly gave this Bai Liu a shot.
Fortunately, he restrained himself in time. Otherwise, this book would have ended right here.
Tang Erda tucked away his magazine with lingering fear—half because he had nearly shot Bai Liu to death, and half because Bai Liu’s excessively enthusiastic appearance had frightened him.
He straightened his expression and quickly put distance between himself and the approaching Bai Liu, saying coldly, “What are you shouting for?”
“I have something I need your help with.” Bai Liu was all smiles, looking as though he was in an inexplicably good mood.
Tang Erda smoothly raised his hand and shot a monster approaching Bai Liu from behind. The cold expression on his face cracked, and he could not help criticizing Bai Liu. “Watch the monsters around you yourself. What do you need help with?”
Bai Liu briefly explained the situation. After hearing it, Tang Erda frowned with some discomfort—he had seen Bai Liu’s mirror and knew that this God-tier NPC was the person Bai Liu cared about most. Now, going to find the head that had been cut off and hidden inside a monster’s body did not sound like a pleasant task at all.
However, Bai Liu looked quite happy, and that made Tang Erda feel inexplicably complicated, even a little pitying and soft-hearted.
Was Bai Liu using a smile to conceal his sadness...
He was so strong.
“I can go,” Tang Erda said, his tone softening considerably. “But what about the monsters in the factory?”
If Tang Erda were not guarding the factory entrance, the monsters inside would have rushed out and wreaked havoc long ago. If he entered the Inner World with Bai Liu, no one would be left to guard this place.
“There’s no need to worry about that.” Bai Liu did not consider Liu Jiayi’s feelings at all and sold out his teammate without hesitation. “If the monsters get out, the Little Witch and Qi Yifang will handle them.”
Tang Erda pondered for a moment. Liu Jiayi and Qi Yifang were indeed very strong. Both had area-of-effect skills, and in this timeline, they should already be reserve members of the Kings’ Guild who had undergone the Queen of Hearts’ training.
Although there were many monsters, their levels were not high. Once they ran out and scattered, the pressure on those two should not be too great...
Tang Erda put away his gun and turned his head toward Bai Liu. “How do we enter this Inner World you mentioned?”
Bai Liu took out a bloody eyeball. This was the one he had torn from that monster’s face. At this moment, the smile on his face began to turn dangerous, carrying an oppressive edge that made Tang Erda’s back tense.
When Bai Liu smiled like this, he truly looked too much like Bai Six.
It gave off an uneasy, intensely aggressive feeling.
Bai Liu lifted the eyelid and held the eyeball in front of his right eye. “You only need to look at this eyeball with your right eye.”
Tang Erda was more than ten centimeters taller than Bai Liu. He had to lean forward and crouch slightly so that his right eye was directly level with the eyeball.
When both of their lines of sight and the eyeball were aligned on the same horizontal plane, the eyeball began to blink. It opened its eyelid, which was covered in rose-like cracks. At the same time, the rose in Bai Liu’s right eye bloomed its final petal.
The world before their eyes seemed to rotate and shift like a kaleidoscope. Roses reflected repeatedly across the shattered glass of the greenhouse, turning into countless gradient-colored roses that surrounded the eyeball, the greenhouse, and all the land within their sight.
Gradations of deep red and pale pink formed and scattered. Flower buds grew from the eyeball, from the base of the skull, and from the silver-blue desire that humanity could not resist. Then their leaves withered, becoming elegant and beautiful dried-leaf roses that coiled around the heart, absorbing the nutrients supplied by the Evil God and growing with fierce vitality.
After a wave of dizziness that nearly weakened their knees, Tang Erda entered this decaying Inner World.
A monster as large as a small hill stood before them. Its body was enormous, as though it had swallowed an entire rose greenhouse. Large bubbles surged beneath its skin like thick, boiling liquid, with roses faintly growing inside. The people it had swallowed had all become nutrients.
Now, with a thin, yellow, ugly, festering left eye, it stared straight at Bai Liu—the man who had stolen its right eye.
[System Warning: The monster (First Generation Manager) has locked its hatred value onto player Bai Liu! Player Bai Liu has no ability to counter this monster. Please escape the scene immediately!]
If this had been before, Bai Liu would have turned and run without the slightest hesitation. But now, Bai Liu quickly ran to a safe zone behind Tang Erda and hid there, waving at him.
“Captain Tang, I’ll have to trouble you to deal with this monster first.”
Tang Erda: “...”
While Tang Erda once again regretted boarding this sinking ship, he swiftly raised his gun. His gaze sharpened. With a flick of his wrist, he fired a shot, accurately and cleanly blowing out the left eye of the monster that was trying to approach the wardrobe where Bai Liu had hidden.
The giant monster thrashed its tentacles and screamed wildly. The ground trembled from its struggle, and plaster dust fell from the walls. Some spider-like small monsters seemed to be awakened by the commotion, constantly crawling out from every corner of the room, hissing and snarling as they approached Tang Erda.
But these various monsters, which could have chased Bai Liu and that Kings’ Guild member all over the room, did not even have a chance in front of Tang Erda.
His movements were astonishingly clean. One shot, one monster. Aside from the brief moments when he changed magazines and allowed the monsters to close in, he steadily suppressed the monster swarm three meters away from Bai Liu’s hiding place. The areas swept by Tang Erda’s bullets were like an invisible safety line, protecting Bai Liu without letting a single monster through.
Once the first round of clearing was complete, Tang Erda swept a cold glance across the room. After confirming that no small monsters would bite the currently fragile Bai Liu to death, he holstered his gun and said coldly without turning his head, “Come out.”
“The small monsters have been cleared. The big monster can’t see, so even if its hatred is locked onto you, it’s useless.”
Bai Liu moved out from behind the wardrobe. He brushed the dust off his body and glanced at the room full of monster corpses. Almost all of them had been killed with a single shot, neatly lined up three meters away from his hiding place, their death postures almost identical.
Bai Liu could not help raising an eyebrow at Tang Erda, who stood steadily in front of him without a single speck of dust on his sleeves.
This guy really was strong.
His previous feeling had been correct. Tang Erda’s panel stats should far exceed S-rank.
Tang Erda tossed a semi-circular sniper scope to Bai Liu and tilted his head slightly to glance back at him. “Take this prop. I usually don’t use a scope on my gun in games, but this scope has a slow-motion function. You can use it to see what’s inside the monster’s body and the trajectory of my bullets.”
“There are too many human heads inside this monster’s body. I’m not sure which one you want, so I might aim at it during the fight. If you look through this prop and see that I’m about to hit the head of the person you want, remind me, and I’ll shift my line of fire.”
“Will it affect you if I interfere and direct you from the side?” Bai Liu asked politely. He looked up at the giant monster. “This is an S-rank monster, after all.”
Tang Erda gave Bai Liu a faint sidelong glance. “Hardly. In the arena, the interference from a tactician’s commands is much greater than this.”
“Don’t you want to play in the League?” Tang Erda looked up at the giant monster, one leg stepping back into a jumping stance as countless points of light gathered on his silver revolver. “Then start learning what a League player is.”
[System Prompt: Does player Tang Erda wish to equip 《Monster Book State: Withered Rose Hunter》?]
[Confirm]
Tang Erda’s hair floated and drifted among the points of light. The pupils of his ghost-blue eyes suddenly narrowed and became vertical, turning into wolf-like eyes.
The silver handgun in his left hand lengthened to around one meter amid the gathering brilliant light. Equipment belts resembling vines grew and spread rapidly from Tang Erda’s chest, coiling all the way to the end of the firearm. Behind the revolver’s body, a massive rose-decorated floating magazine hovered in the air, constantly emitting the click-clack sound of bullets being chambered.
“Watch my bullet trajectories carefully.” Tang Erda glanced back at Bai Liu. “If you don’t pay attention and I hit what you want, don’t blame me.”
In the next second, Tang Erda seemed only to press his rear leg down lightly. Using the recoil from firing that excessively long, strange revolver at the ground, his entire body leaned back and rose into the air, disappearing before Bai Liu. All that remained was a faint afterimage and a violent gust of wind carrying the scent of gunpowder, blowing Bai Liu’s hair back.
Very soon, Bai Liu understood why Tang Erda had given him a slow-motion sniper scope.
Because Tang Erda moved too fast. Bai Liu could not even see Tang Erda’s exact form. He could only see countless rounds of ammunition and the wind trails created by the fast-moving man crisscrossing before him. Then the monster suddenly began to writhe and struggle violently, letting out bursts of heart-rending screams, as though it were being tortured.
Bai Liu put on the scope.
Under the scope’s red vision, the bullets tumbled forward along strange trajectories, weaving a space before him that resembled a room full of infrared alarm lasers.
A tentacle swung toward Bai Liu, but before it could touch him, it was pierced by a bullet from nowhere and turned into a charred stump that twitched weakly on the ground.
There were countless heads inside the monster’s body, like a claw machine filled with many small dolls that all looked roughly alike. Moreover, this “claw machine” was jumping around, which made identifying the precise location of one specific head even more difficult.
Bai Liu quickly scanned the monster’s body twice. Soon, he confirmed Tawil’s exact location. At the same time, he saw a bright red line of fire that seemed to have already taken aim at Tawil.
“You’re about to hit it, Captain Tang,” Bai Liu said at extreme speed.
Almost the instant his words fell, Bai Liu saw the line of fire shift position, blowing up a head right next to Tawil.
Bai Liu released an almost imperceptible sigh of relief. However, his concentration was too focused, and combined with the influence of the scope’s vision—where everything except bones and ballistic lines had a semi-transparent texture—there was no way to specifically locate every object around him.
Because of that, Bai Liu did not notice that the monster had already crawled above his head, opening its “petals” and preparing to swallow him down.
In the next second, Tang Erda appeared out of thin air in front of Bai Liu with his head lowered. Holding the meter-long gun in his left hand, he aimed at the monster’s head while his back was turned to it. His other hand gripped Bai Liu’s shoulder and spun him around, shielding him, while the rose magazine coiled around the gun continuously emitted crisp da-da-da sounds.
The muzzle aimed at the monster’s head flashed red.
“Bang—bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!!”
The enormous monster slowly collapsed backward under the continuous gunfire, dust filling the air.
[System Prompt: Congratulations to player Tang Erda for killing the S-rank monster—(First Generation Manager)!]
A clean, concentrated firepower assault—practically a one-second kill.
After the monster fell, Tang Erda immediately withdrew and put distance between himself and Bai Liu. He turned his head away somewhat uncomfortably and clenched his fist, seeming dissatisfied with his own instinctive action of protecting Bai Liu just now. Then, as though he had remembered something, he raised his head and scolded Bai Liu in a rather stern tone.
“Didn’t I tell you to watch the monsters around you yourself?”
“If all your attention is on the target, how are you going to play in the League?”
