Chapter 421: The Last World Line

The moment Lu Yizhan heard Bai Liu's words, he quickly turned his head and reached out to push open the door of the interrogation room.

Bai Liu, propped up on the torture table with one hand, smiled and snapped his fingers.

[System alert: Player Bai Liu has used props (Magic Space) on player Lu Yizhan, restricting the range of movement of player Lu Yizhan to the interrogation room he is currently in.]

Lu Yizhan calmed down instantly after realizing he couldn't get out, he turned his head to Bai Liu behind the table : "You broke the rules of the game."

"I didn't say from the start that this was a game between the two of us." Bai Liu smiled, "And Vice Team Cen just agreed to pay the price and join my game."

Lu Yizhan was trapped inside the magic space, looking at Bai Liu through the wall of the magic space, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly: "What kind of dare are you going to do this time?"

Bai Liu shakes his fingers, and Lu Yizhan notices several transparent threads wrapped around the knuckles of his fingers, stretching from them all the way out to whoever is outside the door.

Lu Yizhan's heart sank, he realized what Bai Liu was trying to do, so he stared straight at Bai Liu: "Trapping opposing players is no way to play a game."

"But it's not Lu's turn." Bai Liu smiled and looked up, "It's Lieutenant Cen's turn."

"This is a skill I've been using a lot lately, puppet strings, and I just connected all these puppet strings to the bodies of those suspects that you released by Captain Lu."

"Captain Lu, guess what if I open the door right now, and manipulate these suspects to suddenly riot to attack you, who are now trapped inside the [Magic Space], unable to move and unable to resist-"

Bai Liu smiled and hooked a silk thread on her index finger, the door to the interrogation room was slowly opened, "-What would your loyal Lieutenant Cen, Mr. Hunter, do with these suspects who have not yet been convicted, and don't know if they're innocent?"

"Of course, I promise these suspects won't hurt you."

"But I can't guarantee that Lieutenant Sham won't hurt these suspects."

Lu Yizhan's pupils shrank.

Everything seemed to be in slow motion, the moment the door was pulled open, there were sudden noisy shouts from outside, those suspects were pulled by the puppet silk and rushed into the interrogation room where Lu Yizhan was in the blink of an eye, their faces were greedy and monstrous, some of them had already transformed into the appearance of a heretic, and raised their weapons high up on Lu Yizhan who was trapped in the magic space.

Outside the door, Cen Buming raised his gun without hesitation, his gaze cold and intense with a ferocious bloodlust that was extremely sharp.

"Drop the gun, Cen Buming!!!"

"Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang--!!!"

Lu Yizhan's pupils were dilated as he watched the men in front of him, drenched in blood, explode under Cen Buming's fire and then fall motionless to the ground.

Blood flowed on the ground, spreading to Lu Yizhan's feet.

Lu Yizhan couldn't utter a word, staring blankly or perhaps in a trance at Cen Buming, who was still holding a gun that reeked of gunpowder at him.

And Cen Buming just stared at Lu Yizhan quietly, his eyes didn't flicker, and he still didn't put his gun down.

"Call a doctor ......" Lu Yizhan hissed out, "Call a doctor-!!!"

Cen Buming said calmly, "There's no need to call a doctor; with these people, every shot I take is a fatal one."

Lu Yizhan closed his eyes as he slowly slid down to his knees.

...... Cen Buming was awake, he heard his orders but still didn't lower his gun, he knew exactly what he was doing ......

Bai Liu folded his hands in satisfaction, "Game over, props recovered, players please leave the field on your own."

Lu Yizhan thought he would break down, curse Cen Buming, and even fight with Cen Buming, but when he stepped out of Bai Liu's magic space prop and looked up at Cen Buming, his mind went blank.

He couldn't say anything.

Something that they had always agreed upon amongst themselves, striving to maintain in these three hundred or so world lines, had finally shattered.

Lu Yizhan stood alone at the training ground for a long, long time that day, overlooking the trainees as they ran laps and laps, his mind completely empty, feeling as if he were thinking about a lot of things, but then again, as if he was thinking about nothing at all.

Until Cen Buming appeared at his side.

Cen Buming's voice remained calm: "I killed Bai Liu."

"This world line is about to end."

"But we still won't win." Lu Yizhan's eyes looked far, far away, "He must have laid out his backstory long before I caught him, and by now there must be some sort of heresy spreading around the world."

Cen Buming hmmm.

After a while, Cen Buming said, "Of the six people I killed that day, five were involved in Bai Liu's heretical smuggling."

"There's another one who hasn't."

Lu Yizhan was quiet for a long, long time, his fingers slowly curling up as he asked softly, "...... If you had to do it again, would you still shoot?"

Cen Buming didn't hesitate, "Will."

"In my case, the lives of good people are just more valuable than these lives of people who most likely might be bad people." Cen Buming looks off into the distance, "Lu Yizhan, I probably don't really have the means to do what you do, I hate these people who roam the edges of the gray, whose one action and one mistake can take away the lives of countless really innocent people who are trying to stay alive."

"If it weren't for their own desires and greed, they could have stayed out of contact with Bai Liu and wouldn't have been brought to the Heresy Authority by us."

"So again, I'd still shoot."

Cen Buming looked out over the training field at the fluttering Heresy Handling Bureau flags and said, "Because your life is just more important to me than the lives of these six men."

"My life is no more important than any of these six." Lu Yizhan said softly, "Especially when we're all facing death at the same time."

Lu Yizhan turned around and left.

Cen Buming didn't turn around as he burst out, "Sifu."

Lu Yizhan's back paused for a moment.

Cen Buming was quiet for a few seconds and said, "Next worldline, you won't be coming for me, will you?"

Lu Yizhan didn't answer, he just stayed still.

"Then kill me." Cen Buming laughed suddenly, "A hunter who can't stand in the prophet's camp, and I'm nothing more than a monster who wanders on the edge of gray."

Lu Yizhan left without looking back.

Remaining in place, Cen Buming slowly closes his eyes as he looks down at the running and laughing trainees below.

After that worldline ended, Lu Yizhan sat in the temple, and for the first time he initiated a game-changing deal with Bai Liu: "I wish to revoke Cen Buming's status as a hunter."

"Revoke the Hunter identity." Bai Liu raises an eyebrow as he smiles a little, "It can be revoked, but Cen Buming so many worldlines reincarnated with you, I'm sure you noticed."

"-- Cen Buming also paid the price of his participation in the game, and he became a heretic long ago."

"Each world line regained the memories of all the world lines with your arrival, and lost the memories of all the world lines with your departure, and he has become a piece of consciousness that can only keep following you, the prophet."

"If you revoke his status as a hunter now, then you must ensure that you can reasonably house him without him directly interfering with my game or meddling in any of my layouts with you."

"--or I would have simply erased Cen Buming from this part of my consciousness."

Lu Yizhan took a deep breath, "I'll shelter him and make sure he doesn't interfere with the game going on."

"Alright then, I'll pick the second generation hunter card for you." Bai Liu was just about to shuffle his deck when Lu Yizhan called a halt.

Lu Yizhan looked at Bai Liu with determination in his eyes, "I know that you are intentionally interfering with Cen Buming's Hunter card, forcing him to let him collapse, spiritually downgrading him completely into a heretic with no self-awareness."

"Bai Liu, don't you want the game to be more interesting? This time I'll agree with you that I won't directly interfere with the Second Generation Hunter cards, and you shouldn't directly interfere either, how about seeing how he chooses his camp?"

"Go with the flow?" Bai Liu smiled softly with downcast eyes, "Interesting, I promise."

"The second-generation hunter I've chosen this time is also very hunter-like, and instead of interfering directly with torturing him, I'll just give him the qualifications to become a hunter and let him start reincarnating in the worldline with you."

Lu Yizhan said in a deep voice, "I will also give him my seer's authority directly, but I will never see him or interfere with him."

"And then we'll see together what this wildly growing hunter will grow into?" Bai Liu looked up and smiled, "But Captain Lu, you'll be the only one left."

"There are still over three hundred world lines to go, are you going to stick it out on your own?"

Lu Yizhan said, "I can."

The second-generation hunter Bai Liu chose to fight was Tang Er, a trainee Lu Yizhan had met twice before.

Tang Er played surprisingly well for Lu Yizhan, and he grew up so fast that he even won Bai Liu in a later game on the World Line to get the Hunter qualification to start his turn.

But soon Lu Yizhan realizes that even if Bai Liu keeps his agreement with him and doesn't directly interfere with the hunters, Tang Er fight slowly becomes paranoid and irritable in the constant timeline rounds, and begins to hate those who were about to commit crimes in the previous worldline.

-- The Tang Er fight is becoming more and more like a rehash of Cen Buming's original.

And Lu Yizhan soon found out why.

Bai Liu never tortured Tang Er Ta directly, and even let Tang Er Ta go on purpose when he caught him, but he tortured Tang Er Ta's second-in-command, Su Yang, and Tang Er Ta got deeper and deeper into the torture because Su Yang was tortured to death by Bai Liu in front of him over and over again.

By the time the countdown to the world line was over, Tang Er hit the ground running.

Lu Yizhan was sitting next to the stone table, he looked at Bai Liu flatly: "You've tortured Tang Er out of his mind."

Bai Liu smiled slightly and said, "I haven't touched the Second Generation Hunter."

Lu Yizhan said, "But you touched his [anchor]."

Bai Liu lowered his eyes as the smile on his face became clear, "It seems you have fully understood the definition of [Anchor]."

"Yes, my derivatives from each worldline keep on downgrading the spirit of the hunter who chose you by tormenting Su Yang, who will last one more worldline at most."

"Are you going to change hunters again, Prophet?"

Lu Yizhan was silent for a moment, "No more changes."

"Also right." Bai Liu crossed his arms and smiled, "With only three world lines left, there's no need to change them."

During the penultimate Worldline, Lu Yizhan, for the first time, checks out the location of this Worldline's Fang Dian and goes to see her instead of dealing with the Heresy Authority when Iden enters.

It was raining heavily when Lu Yizhan went to see Fang Dian. He held a black umbrella and searched for her through what seemed like ten thousand umbrellas.

He soon found it, for Fang Dian had no umbrella; she was standing next to a grocery store, holding her briefcase up to keep out the rain, but she didn't wait long before she put it down, rolled up her sleeves and suit pants, and seemed ready to simply ignore it and dive right into the rain.

Lu Yizhan, who saw the scene, laughed a little as he tried to walk up with his umbrella, but paused after only one step.

He stared blankly at Fang Dian through the rain, the umbrellas, and the stream of people.

Dian Fang ran past him with her briefcase held up and her head slightly bowed, a smile on her face as she didn't look back, and at some point a man appeared beside her laughing with her as she dashed into the rain with her briefcase on top of her.

Lu Yizhan stopped in the center of the crowd with his black umbrella, not looking back at Fang Dian, who was running past, rain sliding down his chin.

Dian Fang Dian's blissful smile and the face that hung its head in silent tears as each world line crossed crossed his mind.

[Because Lu Yizhan lost the game this time, the person you love is going to die.]

[Because Lu Yizhan lost the game again, ......]

"Fang Dian ......" Lu Yizhan slowly lowered his umbrella and let the rain wash over his face, murmuring to himself, "Am I really right to choose this way? "

"If you were still around, wouldn't you have won already?"

"I really suck."

Time and time again, time and time again, he loses the game, all of them suffering because of his self-righteous choices.

Droplets of water slid down Lu Yizhan's face, and his voice was so light that the rain could break it up, "If only the people who met you in the first place weren't losers like me."

"There's only one last world line left." Bai Liu asked Lu Yizhan with a slight smile, "I can give you all the cards you got your hands on before all over again."

Lu Yizhan raised his eyes, "At what cost?"

Bai Liu laughs softly, "The price is that if you lose this game, then the souls of all these cards are destroyed."

"Of course, if you don't want to, the souls of these cards will be destroyed by me as well, I don't accept such worthless things as the loser's cards here."

Lu Yizhan said, "I'll pay the price, the game goes on."

"The game continues with the consent of both you and the other player." Bai Liu stands up, he looks sideways at Lu Yizhan and raises an eyebrow, "Going to check on her?"

Lu Yizhan stilled, "Good."

Seabed.

Through the watery wall, Lu Yizhan saw Fang Dian hanging by her hands, her head still hanging down, Bai Liu walked up to her, squatted down and said, "The last world line."

"657 world lines ahead, and your teammate, Lu Yizhan, lost them all."

"The last world line, are you going to continue to pay the price to keep the game going?"

Bai Liu looked down at Fang Dian : "If you choose to stop now, you can still walk out of the temple, if you lose the last world line as well, then all your games are lost."

"The soul is at my disposal."

"From the way things are going, there's no way Lu Yizhan is going to beat me in the last line."

Fang Dian suddenly raised her head, her long, loose hair falling from her face and covering half of her face, which made her look haggard and weak, but her face still had a smile on it, and her eyes were still bright as ever, "He'll definitely win you."

Lu Yizhan behind the watermarked wall looked at Fang Dian incredulously.

Bai Liu sparingly asked rhetorically, "Where in the world do you get this unwarranted trust from?"

"Believing in Lu Yizhan doesn't cost any money, so why can't I believe in it." Fang Dian's brows arched, "Let the game continue."

"I'm sure he can beat you, it's like believing-"

Fang Dian's gaze was resolute: "--Good will eventually triumph over evil."

Bai Liu stood up, he smiled and said, "As you wish then."

He snapped his fingers, and Lu Yizhan fell backward, as if he had landed on the Worldline 657 times before, thinking he would be in the Heresy Authority as soon as he landed this time as he had before.

But as he descended, it was as if a mermaid-like creature with a silvery-blue fish tail brushed past him in the ocean, causing Lu Yizhan's fall to lurch so violently that he landed in an orphanage when he hit the ground.

And in this orphanage.

Lu Yizhan looked incredulously at Bai Liu, who was sitting in the far corner of the dining table, skinny, with dark eyes and only a small plate of food in front of him.

--He met Bai Liu, who was only fourteen years old.

A Bai Liu who hasn't logged into the game yet.

It's a whole new, strange world line with incredibly little heresy, like it's been freed from the interference of evil gods.

- - Like a bug, a miracle, it's a world line that hasn't been tainted yet.

And Lu Yizhan, after a few days of furtively observing the skinny and ostracized Bai Liu--

--He couldn't contain himself from moving to kill at all.

In this world line, this miraculous world line, if he kills this Bai Liu now, he wins.

Lu Yizhan followed the strangely behaving Bai Liu to the small pond he visited every day, and was calmly preparing himself mentally to kill the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu when he surfaced from under the water.

But he waited a long time, and Bai Liu didn't come up.

Lu Yizhan jumped into the pond with his head full of question marks, and he realized that Bai Liu, the guy who hadn't come up for so long, was actually drowning at the bottom of the pond!

And in the case of drowning, this Bai Liu is still holding on to something at the bottom of the lake, Lu Yizhan is now a child's body, and it took him a lot of effort to pull out Bai Liu together with the thing at the bottom of the lake that he was holding on to.

As a result, Lu Yizhan's pupils shrank when he saw that thing - it was the body of a teenager with a very beautiful and delicate appearance.

But that wasn't what startled Lu Yizhan the most; what startled him the most was the fact that the corpse was actually talking to him in his head without speaking.

"My name is Sheta, and I am the corpse before you."

"I used all my power to pull you ahead of the world line, and I know you're a good person, and I know you've been through a lot."

"But you're the only one left who can save Bai Liu, he can't keep spending time here, he's really going to die."

The light teenage voice pleaded with him very sincerely, "Please believe me, this Bai Liu in front of you is different from all the other Bai Lius, he is a good boy."

"Please don't kill him."

Lu Yizhan's hand slowly tightens around the knife hidden behind him as he silently, without a word, locks eyes with Bai Liu, who falls to his knees in dismay.

Bai Liu is choking on the water with his head down, his face almost transparently white, and he is clutching Sheta's body in his arms under all these circumstances.

-looks, almost powerless to resist any attack.

Lu Yizhan slowly stepped forward as he clutched the knife tighter and tighter, his expression a blank state of over-carrying as all the information in his head surged wildly.

Tang Er, who is spitting at the instructor, Fang Dian, who is running in the rain, Cen Buming, who has a cold face, Wu Ruishu, who has accidentally fallen down, Yu Fu, who is wrapping someone up into a mummy and smiling gently, and Dong Chenglong, who is scolding him with a black face.

--As long as he killed the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu now, none of these men's agonizing sacrifices would have been in vain.

Bai Liu was holding Sheta in his arms, he was kneeling on the ground, his face was a kind of unconscious dazed expression similar to that of drowning, he was looking at Lu Yizhan with his head tilted up like that, and a tear fell very, very softly from his eyes, his voice was soft and hoarse: "...... Whoever you are, please you, save Sheta."

"I would pay anything for that."

Bai Liu's voice overlapped with the voice from Sheta in Lu Yizhan's head--

"Please, save Bai Liu."

"I would pay anything for that."

--This is the first time Lu Yizhan has seen Bai Liu cry.

Lu Yizhan stood quietly in front of the weeping, fourteen year old Bai Liu as if in a daze for a long, long time, his hand hidden behind his back finally released, leaving a red mark of the handle of the knife that he had gripped too hard in his palm.

The knife smashed into the grass without making a sound.

Lu Yizhan heard his voice answer clearly, "Yes."