“You certainly accepted the idea of playing in the League together with me quite quickly.” Bai Liu looked at Tang Erda thoughtfully. “Did the me from other timelines ever recruit you?”

Tang Erda, who was crouched on the ground searching through the skulls inside the dead monsters’ bodies, suddenly went stiff. He seemed to recall something extremely unpleasant, and his eyes began to turn fierce again.

“Yeah.” He let out a slightly mocking breath. “But it wasn’t in this gentle manner of yours.”

Gentle?

Bai Liu did not think his method of recruiting Tang Erda had been particularly gentle.

He had locked onto Tang Erda’s weakness and almost completely pierced through both his physical and psychological defenses. At a time when Tang Erda’s sanity had worn very thin, Bai Liu had used verbal guidance to reshape Tang Erda’s views and opinions of him.

Bai Liu had also made use of Tang Erda’s trait as a righteous public official who easily empathized with others, allowing Tang Erda to witness his own similarly painful experiences. This had caused this captain, who was essentially very kind, to develop a psychological dependence on Bai Liu and a sense of belonging to the group.

Humans were products of their groups and environments. Long-term solitude could drive a person mad, while moving toward a familiar group that could accept them was the instinct of any normal person with social awareness.

As for Tang Erda, as a captain who had once been suspected, rejected, and even isolated by his original group, the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau, he was indeed homeless.

Tang Erda also could not approach other normal people like him and establish stable social relationships, because his sense of morality would not allow him to spread the misfortune known as “the game” to other innocent people.

If he chose to establish connections with people inside the game, such as the major game guilds, they would only use him or flatter him. They could not empathize with someone like Tang Erda, who possessed a certain degree of idealism. Thus, Tang Erda could only accept being employed by those people, rather than forming a fixed group and developing emotional ties.

In the long, boundless, vast darkness of time, Tang Erda had been forced to wander alone.

And he needed group connections.

Under such circumstances, approaching the Wandering Circus—which would not cause him guilt, required no responsibility, and even possessed a certain degree of mutual understanding due to their long-standing hostility—from Bai Liu’s cold perspective, which did not consider Tang Erda’s private emotions at all—

He felt that the Wandering Circus truly counted as a decent group choice for Tang Erda.

The problem lay in how to transform Tang Erda’s hatred for the Wandering Circus into empathy. The angle Bai Liu had chosen to cut in from was “kindred spirits.”

It turned out that there was someone in this world as pained and lonely as he was; they could understand and accept each other.

They were both kindred spirits who had been toyed with by fate, then abandoned, wandering without end.

Such an awareness was like a life-saving straw for a normal person who had wandered alone across every timeline for too long and was on the verge of collapse.

Tang Erda’s entire conversion process could hardly be called gentle. One could even say it was a case of finding life after being forced into a death trap.

But Tang Erda actually felt this counted as gentle?

That truly piqued a bit of Bai Liu’s interest.

To avoid drawing attention, Tang Erda’s small TV had always been on full-time silent paid service, which meant the content of his conversations with Bai Liu was muted. That was why Bai Liu had spoken so openly with him earlier, without the slightest scruple.

Bai Liu crouched down and began searching through the monster corpses Tang Erda had blown apart with his gun, looking for Tawil. As he searched, he pretended to mention casually, “Can I ask how the Bai Six from other timelines treated you?”

Then Bai Liu quickly added, full of apology, “Of course, if mentioning it makes you sad, you don’t have to say anything. I’m very sorry that you experienced those things because of ‘me.’”

Tang Erda’s hands paused for a moment, then continued. “You don’t need to apologize. Those things have nothing to do with you.”

“In that timeline, the Joker’s growth failed to meet your—Bai Six’s—expectations. Bai Six wanted to find a substitute output for the League.” Tang Erda paused. “Then Bai Six saw my small TV and took a liking to me at first glance... In any case, he used many methods to try to lure me over, but my hostility was very firm.”

Tang Erda took a deep breath. “At that time, you all had a type of prop in your hands. Bai Six used that prop to deceive me, and then discovered that... the most important person to me was Su Yang.”

“Bai Six originally wanted to use Su Yang to make me join the team, but... Bai Six abandoning the Joker enraged the Joker. The Joker was extremely hostile toward me. He felt that Bai Six had given up on him because of me.”

“When Su Yang went abroad on a field mission, Bai Six ordered someone to kidnap Su Yang. He used Su Yang as a bargaining chip to negotiate with me several times, but I still didn’t agree. Su Yang wouldn’t have allowed me to join that kind of organization because of him either.”

“But after two rounds of negotiations, Bai Six lost his patience. He simply gave up on making me join the team. He felt that continuing to spend time on me had too low a cost-performance ratio, so he turned to scout other players.”

Tang Erda closed his eyes.

“Bai Six threw the no-longer-useful Su Yang to the Joker.”

“What happened after that, you saw it all in the mirror.”

Out of politeness, Bai Liu remained silent for a while. Then he reached out, intending to pat Tang Erda’s shoulder as a gesture of comfort—he felt that Captain Tang truly needed this kind of encouragement between normal people right now.

Tang Erda suddenly snapped his eyes open.

He seemed to still be immersed in some kind of emotion and had not yet come out of it. The pupils in his deep, dark blue eyes were constricted into narrow slits.

The moment before Bai Liu’s hand was about to touch his shoulder, Tang Erda struck Bai Liu’s hand away with an almost distorted expression. A hoarse, threatening growl came from his throat.

“Don’t touch me!”

For one split second, Bai Liu felt as if he were looking at a wolf baring its teeth, crouching down to bite and tear through his throat.

Tang Erda’s chest heaved violently. He stayed quiet for a moment before calming his breathing. He opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something. Bai Liu saw the shape of his mouth and guessed it should have been an apology.

But in the end, Tang Erda did not say it. Instead, he silently turned his {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} head away and lowered it, continuing to search through the skeletal remains for the skull Bai Liu had asked him to find.

Very severe post-traumatic stress.

Bai Liu made a simple judgment in his heart. After obtaining the information he wanted, Bai Liu withdrew his hand, not feeling awkward at all. Instead, he followed the flow very considerately and changed the topic, handing Tang Erda a way out.

“Captain Tang, in the battle just now, you could see Tawil’s skull even without a scope. Why did you give the scope to me?”

Tang Erda was quiet for a while, but eventually answered Bai Liu. “The vision needed for attacking and the vision needed for finding things are different. When I use skill-based firearms for rapid fire against targets, I don’t deliberately pay attention to the rolling skulls inside.”

“At times like that, I need someone else to help me locate them.” Tang Erda paused for another second or two. “That skull is to you what Su Yang is to me. Using a scope is much safer. It won’t get damaged.”

Bai Liu smiled. “Yes, he’s very important to me. Thank you very much for taking that into consideration for me, Captain Tang.”

“...Just now...” Tang Erda’s palm tightened because of Bai Liu’s thank-you. He clenched his hand hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Then he exhaled a breath of hot air. “...I’m sorry.” 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

This was an apology for knocking Bai Liu’s hand away just now.

“It’s fine.” Bai Liu accepted it calmly, then raised his hand.

This time, the hand Bai Liu patted down finally landed on Tang Erda’s overly tense shoulder. He gave a very faint smile. “I can understand Captain Tang’s feelings. Being angry and furious because someone important was hurt is not your fault. I would be the same.”

Tang Erda’s back, which had originally been as straight as a steel plate, involuntarily relaxed after Bai Liu patted it.

He felt an inexplicable sense of relief.

Bai Liu turned to continue searching among the skeletal remains. Tang Erda looked somewhat blankly at Bai Liu’s profile.

Bai Liu had said he could understand his feelings.

Could Bai Six... actually feel anger and fury too?

Across so many timelines, Tang Erda had never once seen Bai Six look angry. He had always remained rational, without any weaknesses, and that was precisely why he was so invincible.

But just now, Bai Liu’s attention had been entirely focused on finding Tawil’s skull. He had not even noticed his surroundings and had nearly been eaten by a monster.

And on top of that, when this guy had run over earlier, smiling and waving as he called him Captain Tang, Tang Erda looked back at that smile now and detected a trace of the mischief of a child bringing back someone stronger to take revenge on the bullies who had hurt someone important to him.

Tang Erda stared blankly as Bai Liu searched through the pile of corpses bit by bit. His face was covered in mud and blood, but he did not seem to care at all.

This was a Bai Liu with feelings and weaknesses.

Not a complete monster.

Not Bai Six.

“Found it!” Bai Liu very gently pushed aside a messy pile of cranial bones. Beneath the skeletal remains and roses lay a sleeping skull.

Bai Liu’s breathing began to turn light. He knelt on the ground and moved forward one step, very, very gently cradling the skull and placing it on his lap. Floating rose debris clung to his lowered eyelashes. His chin and nose were covered in dried mud. He bent his body slightly, curving himself into an extremely precious arc to protect the skull in his arms.

“Found you.” Bai Liu’s eyes curved. He lowered his head and pressed it against the skull, revealing a pure, happy smile that could not be hidden at all.

Tang Erda almost thought he had gone mad, seeing such a smile on Bai Liu’s face.

But that smile was simply too infectious. Tang Erda watched for a while and could not help relaxing as well. He opened his arms and leaned back against the pile of bones they had searched through. Tilting his head back, he looked up at the dull grey sky of the Inner World and let out a very soft laugh through his nose, muttering to himself.

“That’s great. You found him.”

“Found him, completely intact.”