Chapter 216: Rose Factory

Someone is forcing Bai Liu to do to Taville what those investors, that factory manager, did to him, and then forcing him to be the man he was supposed to be.

Bai Liu doesn't want to do anything, but he's not helpless, he just needs to take a gamble.

But that's an approach Taville would never allow.

Bai Liu quickly lowered his head the moment he thought of this solution.

Taville knows him too well, Bai Liu is hard to hide his thoughts in front of this guy, he can only narrow his eyebrows and pretend to be thinking, and then give an answer:"...... antidote it, I don't have any other choices, I've already made a deal with the others. "

"That only requires my blood." Taville held out his hand, and a thorny, microscopic, blood reishi vine threaded its way through the green veins beneath his pale wrist, the bright red blood instantly sloping down around the sides of his wrist.

The vines greedily encircled the path of the blood flow and began to grow unchecked, bounding inward over Taville's arm, sharp black thorns piercing the porcelain-white skin, and soon more blood gushed from the cavernous wound.

Taville's face rapidly paled as the vines wrapped around him, and the rhythm of his breathing began to slow with the loss of blood, which dripped from his fingertips as he held Bai Liu.

"I ...... need a container for the blood." Taville's eyelids were half-closed, and he said haltingly, "Like a baptismal font."

Bai Liu's eyes look around the room and settle on a glass display case with an upward opening.

Taville consciously slumped into the replacement glass cabinet the factory workers had prepared for his heart-which had just been pulled out when Bai Liu and the others barged in, still intact, unbroken, and about as long as Taville was tall, just long enough for him to lie in.

The blood that seeped out silently quickly soaked the backs of Taville's hands on either side of the glass case.

--This scene is exactly the same as when Sheta was lying at the baptismal font in the church.

Bai Liu subconsciously turned his face away and stood up to turn his back on the scene.

His breathing speeds up involuntarily, his hands keep letting go and gathering together, and he keeps getting close to Taville, the aroma causes his spirit value to slowly drop, and now at this moment, he finally reaches the critical point of hallucination.

A lot of mixed voices started to appear in his head:

[- He's in pain! Can't you see he's in pain! Are you a monster! Do you have no feelings! Stop it!

[Do you know how much he really hurts! Why are you torturing him! [People like you have the most important person in the world!]

[Are you incapable of empathizing with people?]

[He really is a monster, isn't he?

[Bai Liu, you're not in the right state of mind, go see a psychiatrist ......]

[...... severe traumatic stress syndrome, subconsciously repeating the stereotypical actions of the moment when encountering a traumatic scene ......]

[Bai Liu why are you afraid of the water, you're not afraid of the water at all, you're afraid of seeing the body in the water, do you remember who he is?!

The real Sheta died for you!

[...... Some people with PTSD who are not experiencing the harm themselves, but who are more empathetic, will constantly fantasize about the original scenario, simulating themselves taking the place of that person in order to alleviate the guilt ......]

[If only I were the one being tortured, the one in pain, the one dying ...... If only I could replace Su Yang ......]

Everything started to get confused in Bai Liu's mind.

Looking through the narrow slit behind the curtains, Sheta, who was constantly submerged in the baptismal font, drooped blood from the hair that hung down on either side of his face.

From beginning to end, Bai Liu's original childhood fantasies have always been about Sheta - the one who was called a monster by the children, the one who was rejected and badly punished by the teachers, the one who was baptized and confined alone in the church, the one who was drowned in the baptismal font to wash himself over and over again, and the one who couldn't manage to escape from the orphanage... all of them are Sheta! Sheta.

Not Bai Liu. Not Bai Liu. Sheta.

And in Bai Liu's old lost memories, why is the person experiencing all this replaced with himself?

Bai Liu's breath hitched, and a tingling sensation began to appear on his skin as if some kind of vine had burrowed through it.

He covered his neck, a sharp pain in the veins of his neck a sort of vine puncture that made him frown - but there was nothing there really.

Taville's neck was pierced with a one-finger vine, his breathing fading, his long hair suspended in the blood and water, tangled with the vine.

Bai Liu began to be unsteady on his feet, he felt as if every bone in his body was sprouting spikes outwards, and every time he breathed in he felt a sharp pain as his muscles contracted and were cut open, making him unsteady between actions, and making him want to fall to his knees in a daze.

But there's nothing in Bai Liu's body, it's just an illusion, an overly real illusion.

These hallucinations created by Bai Liu's subconscious are putting him and Taville through the same thing.

Taville's voice came from behind him, "Are you leaving?"

"What are you going to do?"

Taville's peaceful voice calmed Bai Liu.

Bai Liu holds onto a rickety cooling pipe and takes two deep breaths so that his muddled brain can maintain a basic level of thought, then replies to Taville, "Go tell the people outside that I've found [the antidote]."

"Lying." Taville says, "Bai Liu, you never dare look me in the eye when you lie."

His tone was as gentle as when he first saw Bai Liu in church: "Will you tell me what you're going to do when you leave me?"

--Would you like to read a book with me?

Bai Liu's body feels like it's being manipulated by some consciousness he's not aware of, and like a malfunctioning robot, he jerks around to see Taville sitting up in a pool of blood.

--Covered in thorns, but still focused, not looking at him with eyes, covered in pinprick wounds, with that very light smile on his face.

Bai Liu's pupils constrict slightly and then dilate.

...... Sheta's body next to the pond is full of pinholes, and Bai Liu, who knelt next to him, not doing CPR for an unknown length of time, is exhausted.

Bai Liu's eyes go limp in disbelief, and then he leans in close to the body, clenching his hand into a fist against Sheta's heartless chest and gently opening and closing it, murmuring softly to mimic the sound of a heartbeat:

"Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang."

"Doesn't it make your heart beat faster? Why doesn't it even skip a beat now ......"

"Dance for me ......"

The words of the crappy psychiatrist that Bai Liu had visited a few times because it was free rang in his ears:

[...... By your friend's words, you have severe ptsd, sort of a witnessed scar type of thing that requires self-regulation ......]

[But your personality is so extreme that if you were to encounter a similar scenario next time, the reaction should be over the top - you'd do everything in your power to prevent something like that from happening in front of you again, even replacing the other person with yourself is possible ......]

"What are you going to do, Bai Liu?" Taville looked up at him with silver-blue eyes.

Bai Liu's fingers hanging at his side moved, summoning a card - the playing card of Heart Aces.

He opened his mouth and finally said, "I'm going to find a mirror."

Liu Jiayi, can this Heart A do a complete transformation of one person into another? Including blood and such?

[Why are you asking this? If you can find the presence of the one who is another person entirely in your heart and get close to the other person, the transformation of blood composition such as the base of this skill card is possible.]

[What about some of those traits? Like blood regeneration rate and tolerance to death?]

What the hell is this? Who are you going to transform into? Who's the most important person in their heart looks like this, huh? Blood regeneration, death tolerance, sounds like--]

[-It's like a monster.]

"What's the point of getting a mirror?" Taville asked.

"Let me see myself." Bai Liu said.

Who's the most important person in their heart is this kind of monster?

[Wow, Bai Liu the look on your face is so disgusting, you just smiled so strangely!

"Why do you want to see yourself?" Taville asked.

Bai Liu dropped his neck and looked down calmly at himself in the reflection of the puddle on the ground, still dazzled by those rosy waves of light like the surface of a former summer pool of water in his pupils, with no emotion on his face.

There was just a long, long moment of silence, while the heart in the center of the Heart Ace playing card he held in his hand spun rapidly.

The person in Momo's heart soon changes from Su Yang to another person.

Bai Liu's hair lengthened, his limbs became as powerful and perfect as a carving, his body was covered with needle holes, his neck was pierced with thorns, his body was bathed in blood, his silver-blue eyelashes fell down, light pink rose liquid mixed with blood dripped down from his jaws and eyelashes, and his curly hair curled at the back of his waist.

"Because this time ...... I want to be the tortured monster." Bai Liu said.