Chapter 215: Rose Factory

Taville closed her eyes, "Me too."

"You have a choice to make." Taville turns abruptly, releasing Bai Liu, his forehead against Bai Liu's, and asks him softly, "Antidote or poison?"

Bai Liu's hand curled up in frustration.

Taville looked at him calmly, his silver-blue eyes like an underwater mirror, reflecting Bai Liu's emotionless, fluctuating face in the shifting light of the water.

He said, "You should know what the antidote is, make your choice."

Bai Liu's eyes were empty for a moment, his memories passed through Taville's eyes in a flash, drifting far, far away.

It was a summer afternoon in the outdated library of the orphanage, the old grease-stained psalms spread out on Sheta's lap, the sunlight streaming through his hair, which fell across his forehead as if it were a dense, loose branch, scattering the light in a grid of bits and pieces on the yellowed, tattered pages of the book.

There was dust and heat floating in the air, the windowsill of the library was half-open to the green shade of unbuilt weeds, and the pool of water glowed like fish scales in the burning sunlight, like 10,000 diamonds on the surface of the water.

Bai Liu, uninterested in reading, drowsily covers his face with a book and lazily rests on his hands, the sweat from the heat steaming up wetting his collar.

He couldn't remember exactly what the offense was, but in short, they were sent to work as cleaners in a library that hadn't been cleaned once in what seemed like decades - a punishment that was common for both Bai Liu and Sheta.

But fortunately it was a small library, and Sheta was in no hurry, sitting quietly by the window sill, looking through old books buried under the dust, reading in a low voice:

"How can I compare you to Summer?

You're not only cuter than that, you're gentler than that.

......

But your long summer will never fade.

......

Or death boasts that you're adrift in his shadow.

When you grow with the time in immortal poetry.

As long as there are human beings, or people with eyes.

The gods will live long and give you life."

Bai Liu was finally woken up by the sound of Sheta's incessant chanting, he took off the book covering his face, his eyes were lazy and didn't open, but his mouth first asked Sheta a rhetorical question: "The last line isn't like that, is it? Don't just read and change someone else's poem."

"The original line is [This poem will live on and give you life]." Sheta was not annoyed even after being dismantled, and still looked at Bai Liu calmly, with eyes that seemed to be trying to fit Bai Liu in, "I'm not very good at writing poetry, but I see you in this poem."

"The poem suits you."

Bai Liu went over the overly fleshy love poem to his lover in his head, pretended to roll over on his back, not looking at Sheta behind him, and was quiet for a moment before he spoke again:

"Don't just find a poem and molest me."

"There is no random poem." Sheta said without haste, "Your long summer will never fade, this is the poem that describes your future, someone will tell you."

"My future? What about you?" Bai Liu rolled back over again and asked rhetorically, raising an eyebrow in a prickly manner, "Only my long summer won't fade will it?"

He had meant it as a joke, but that day Sheta had been quiet for a long time before she raised her eyes to look at him, her voice as soft as a falling leaf:

"I don't have a summer."

He exhaled softly, "I just ...... secretly shared your summer."

Sheta's eyes look out the window at the lush summer bloom, "This summer is indeed lovely and gentle, the most beautiful summer I have ever seen, but these ...... don't belong to me."

"I always leave."

At the end of that summer, Sheta disappeared into the bottom of that pool.

And at the Rose Factory at the beginning of summer, the May roses bloomed in the first round of their prime.

The moment Taville let go, Bai Liu was like sensing something, he subconsciously grabbed Taville's wrist and looked at him calmly: "You're leaving again, aren't you?"

"We will be reunited." Taville gently lifts her other hand and caresses Bai Liu's eyelids and face, "This isn't your summer and roses, I won't be staying here and neither should you."

Taville's cold hands seemed to be touching Bai Liu's skin, the touch of snow on his face.

"At the time when the sun is three-quarters gone, there will come the deceased to seek the cold and stiff you; do not fear the parting that death brings, do not be afraid of the reverse cross that breaks in the snowy plains."

"Don't be afraid to live, or die for me." Taville cradled Bai Liu's head in her arms and leaned down to kiss his wet, rose-scented crushed hair. "Do not fear the summer I leave you."

"I am a fallen god without a summer, but I have a whole winter waiting for you."

"Now make your choice, antidote or poison." Taville drops his long, snow-colored eyelashes, and while holding Bai Liu, who makes no movement in his arms, but simply buries his head in his embrace, strokes the ends of Bai Liu's dripping hair very gently, "Whatever choice you make-- "

"You're all going to leave, aren't you?" Bai Liu asked in a muffled voice.

Taville stilled and answered him honestly, "Yes."

Bai Liu was quiet again, but Taville felt her waist and belly tighten around Bai Liu's arms - it was exactly the same as when she was a child.

Taville suddenly wanted to laugh.

When faced with a situation she doesn't want to face, when she's angry with another child or a teacher, or when she doesn't want to recognize a difference, fourteen-year-old Bai Liu is outwardly calm and even sarcastic.

But when no one was looking, the skinny Bai Liu would sneak back in and hug the huge, patchy, long, skinny, ghostly doll, burying it in a motionless release of emotion - and in the same pose.

"But no matter what choice you have to make." Taville brushed away the strands of hair pressed against Bai Liu's ear and lowered her head close enough to whisper in his ear, "You will always mean the most to me."

"No matter what else I have to go through, I will, for sure, come and see you."

Bai Liu slowly sits up propped up from Taville's arms as he looks straight at Taville -- he finally remembers why he didn't use the habit of looking straight at people until he was fourteen, but only after.

Because Sheta said, "Don't look at me, I have terrible eyes.

Bai Liu teased him wistfully, [But if I don't look straight at you, how do you know I'm talking to you? In case I'm talking to someone else and you think I'm talking to you, wouldn't that be embarrassing for you?"]

Sheta said after a moment's silence, [But then I could pretend that I could tell myself that you were talking to me when you were talking to all the other people, no matter who you were looking at].

Bai Liu remembers Sheta saying this to him while lowering her head even deeper to shield her eyes, her lips pursed.

--like right now.

"Don't say that you're leaving." Bai Liu smoothed away Taville's hair from her forehead while moving over to her, and said with a grin as if complaining, "While showing such an expression that you're even more reluctant to leave than I am."

Ten years ago Bai Liu said: [You don't have to pretend like this anymore, in essence, you're the only one I talk too, and you're the only one who will really listen to every word I say].

[So whoever I'm talking to is actually talking to you, and I'll always look you in the eye and talk].

[I don't find you scary.

Ten years later Bai Liu says, "I won't be afraid of your death anymore; in essence, death is already the worst thing that can happen to a human being."

"And you're not going to die, no matter who it is that grants you this, whether it's a god or a demon, whether other people think you're a monster god or something else - you're just Sheta to me, and I think it's great that you're going to stay alive."

"I don't find you scary."

Bai Liu paused for a moment, then continued calmly, "The poison is the dried leaf rose that grows out of your body, and the antidote is the Blood Ganoderma that is poured out through your blood, yes?"

Upon seeing that the diary had something to do with the orphanage, Bai Liu realized what the antidote was.

The function of the Blood Reishi prop is explained as stopping all negative buffs, and it's likely that this negative buff includes the addictive state caused by the Dried Leaf Rose, and it just so happens that the Factory Manager purchased the idol from an orphanage - it's quite possible that Taville's body still has the mother of all Blood Reishi's buried in it.

It was just that because it had been split up, it was unable to form intact connected blood vessels and organs, so there was no way to generate blood that could water the Blood Lingzhi.

That plant manager should have known this as well, but he was completely out of control.

Compared to the [antidote] that could save him from himself, it was obvious that the [poison] that was more concentrated and more addictive to his seizures - rose perfume - was more appealing to him.

His inability to stop his desire for rose perfume, much less put the core production tool (the heart) back into Taville's chest cavity and allow Taville to save himself by becoming a blood supply machine producing blood primroses again, completely destroys him.

The principle of this game is the same - after peeking into the core secrets of the entire Rose Factory operation, there are two paths placed in front of the player.

One is to continue to utilize the split Taville to breed dry leaf roses for the production of rose perfume.

One is to suck Taville's blood, like those investors in the third copy, and let the thorny chain of blood reishi grow through Taville's body in a steady stream of blood reishi that can save everyone.

The dry-leafed rose's thornless, leafy, wilted, smooth rhizomes are aptly complemented by the blood primrose's thorny, rose-like, bushy branches - two plants that were designed from the beginning to be a complementary, mutually restraining pair.

"You're running away aren't you?" Taville stares at Bai Liu, "Because you don't want to choose either one."

"But there's no way around it - you should know full well that this game was designed from the ground up so that you could only choose from these two paths."

"The man is forcing you to make a choice - to save the world by torturing me, or to make me feel better by letting the world suffer."

Bai Liu knows.

He knew it the moment he stepped into this game - so he'd been avoiding playing it.

--Someone is forcing Taville to be Bai Liu by torturing him.