Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau Headquarters.

Bai Liu was escorted here under heavy guard. This time, he was “welcomed” through the main entrance with full ceremony.

Everyone stood in formation on both sides of the gate, arrayed for battle. They looked at this heretic—who had escaped from this very place last night and was now being brought back in broad daylight—with fear, hatred, and disbelief.

The enormous white sphere of light rotated slowly, opening the entrance for him.

Bai Liu walked inside without glancing to either side. On his left was Cen Buming, captain of the Second Branch, who was escorting him. On his right was Tang Erda. Behind him followed a grand procession of team members.

If not for Bai Liu’s hands still being cuffed behind his back, he would have looked like the leader of these two branches—the former captain of the First Branch.

But in reality, he was nothing more than a fugitive whose arrest had required the deployment of two entire branches.

Under their guidance, Bai Liu entered the elevator. Cen Buming swiped his card, lighting up the elevator controls, and Tang Erda stepped forward, took a deep breath, and pressed the button for the lowest floor.

The elevator carrying the three of them descended floor by floor, plunging deep underground.

At some point, the cramped elevator began to fill with the smell of brine.

“I’m surprised you agreed to my conditions so readily,” Bai Liu said, turning his head to look at Cen Buming, who stood behind him on his left. “After all, Heretic 0001 seems very important to you.”

Cen Buming glanced at him. “No matter how important it is, it isn’t more important than two thousand human lives. Its importance is relative only to the captain of the First Branch. He is its guardian, and he was the one who decided to seal it away. As for what this heretic actually is, none of us know.”

“Besides, all you asked for was one look. That doesn’t hinder us in any meaningful way.” Cen Buming coldly seized the back of Bai Liu’s head and twisted it forward with a sharp click. “Look ahead. Don’t look at me. The file says your gaze has a bewitching effect on humans.”

Bai Liu, whose teeth had been jarred by the sudden twist: “...”

Tang Erda, who had supplied that information for the file: “...”

The elevator came to a steady stop. The doors slid open smoothly, and Bai Liu stepped out.

He had once again entered the lowest level of the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau. The circumstances were entirely different, yet the scene before him was identical—

—A long, pitch-black corridor where not a single ray of light existed, like a tunnel beneath the deep sea. The scent of brine drifted through the air from an unknown source, and at the far end stood that towering door, silent and eternally sealed.

“Let me make this clear first. We have no intention of opening this door for you. No one knows how dangerous a heretic of this rank might be.” Cen Buming looked sideways at Bai Liu. “We only agreed to let you use Heretic 7061, the [Lens of Clairvoyance], to take a look at what is behind the door.”

“To be precise, for one minute.”

Cen Buming held up a black box labeled [7061]. He tapped the strange-looking watch on his wrist in front of Bai Liu’s eyes. “If you confirm, I’ll unlock your handcuffs, hand you the [Lens of Clairvoyance], and start the timer.”

Without objection, Bai Liu turned around and let Cen Buming uncuff him.

Cen Buming lowered his head to unlock the cuffs. “One more thing. As far as I know, everyone who has seen Heretic 0001 has gone mad and committed suicide.”

He paused. “That includes my former captain, the greatest captain the Heretic Management Bureau ever had, the first captain of the First Branch—[Prophet]. It still isn’t too late for you to regret this.”

The instant the handcuffs were removed, Cen Buming pressed a gun to Bai Liu’s head.

Bai Liu’s expression remained perfectly natural. He raised his hands to show that he meant no harm, then rubbed the wrists that had been bruised purple by the cuffs. Afterward, he turned toward Cen Buming behind the muzzle of the gun and asked with interest:

“Did that great captain say anything else related to Heretic 0001?”

Standing off to the side, Tang Erda shook his head. “Most of it is stored in top-secret files. No one has the clearance to view them.”

“But I do know a small part.” Cen Buming looked at Bai Liu. “[Prophet] said that everyone would be extremely terrified by what Heretic 0001 presents. That is why they go mad after seeing it.”

Bai Liu raised an eyebrow. “Something like the Murphy Magic Mirror?”

“No. The Murphy Magic Mirror is fake, but the things Heretic 0001 shows you are real.” Cen Buming leaned closer to Bai Liu. The muzzle pressed against Bai Liu’s forehead, the metal as cold as his gaze. “Every heretic has a name. Do you know what Heretic 0001’s name is?”

Bai Liu asked, “What is it?”

Cen Buming said, “[Future].”

Tang Erda was stunned as well. From the corner of his eye, Bai Liu caught Tang Erda’s flustered expression and realized that this captain of the Third Branch was also hearing the name of Heretic 0001 for the first time.

“Why would [Future] drive so many people mad with fear?” Bai Liu looked up at this Second Branch captain, who seemed to be hiding countless secrets.

“Perhaps the very meaning of [Future]’s existence is to make people feel fear and go mad because of it.” Cen Buming used the gun against the back of Bai Liu’s head to force him forward. His tone and expression were unnaturally calm. “Fear comes from the unknown. Is there anything more unknowable, and therefore more terrifying, than the [Future]?” 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Bai Liu raised his hands and walked forward. “It sounds as if Captain Cen has already seen his own [Future].”

“I haven’t. Knowing the [Future] would make me lose both my fear and my motivation to keep chasing.” Cen Buming stopped in place. “But now you are about to decide whether or not you want to see your [Future].”

Bai Liu looked up. Before him stood the welded-shut door where Heretic 0001 was kept.

This door was tall, cold, and indestructible. It had no entrance and no key. It seemed isolated by nature, heavily blocking the scent of Xie Ta that Bai Liu had smelled.

Within the [Future] that belonged to him, Bai Liu smelled Xie Ta’s scent.

“Have you thought it through?” Cen Buming looked at Bai Liu. “Do you want to see your terrifying [Future]?”

“Sometimes, perhaps the [Future] isn’t terrifying,” Bai Liu replied softly. “Especially when you know a certain person is in that [Future].”

Bai Liu did not look back. He calmly held out his hand to Cen Buming.

Cen Buming was silent for a moment, then placed the box containing Heretic 7061 into Bai Liu’s palm and unlocked it with his fingerprint.

The heavy stainless-steel box folded open in all directions. Inside, wrapped in fine velvet, lay an exquisitely crafted ancient monocle.

“Hold it level with your pupils, the way you would during an eye exam. Adjust its position until the iron door in front of you becomes transparent.”

Tang Erda directed Bai Liu in a low voice on how to use the monocle, his tone uncontrollably complicated. “...Then you’ll be able to see the... [Future] inside.”

At the same time, Cen Buming pressed the timer button on his watch.

Amid the ticking of the second hand, Bai Liu looked through the old, semi-convex lens, its surface covered in scratches. He saw the iron door gradually disappear. Behind it appeared a desolate, empty, pure-white space.

That pure-white light and shadow stretched endlessly inward, as if no matter how one peered inside, one could only catch a futile glimpse of that cold, emotionless white light.

Finally, just as Bai Liu’s eyes began to ache from staring, a small television filled with static appeared at the far end of the white light.

The small television seemed to realize Bai Liu was looking at it. The buttons along its edge clicked and shifted automatically, as though searching for a channel. The snow-filled screen flickered twice, then turned into the black-and-white opening of an old movie. Specks of light flashed across it, and in the center appeared a row of large subtitles:

[The Last World-Line Game]

[Player: Bai Liu and his friend(?)s]

[Mode Setting: Extremely Hard Mode (Hell Mode)]

[Game Mainline Setting Part 1—A romantic tragedy of life and death]

The subtitles faded. The bars on the small television flickered twice, revealing a very blurry first-person scene, much like a standalone horror game from the eighties or nineties.

On the small television, Bai Liu saw swaying ripples, broken floating ice, and air bubbles continuously rising from his mouth and nose. It seemed that he had fallen into the water. Judging from the way his limbs floated weakly at the edge of his vision, he had probably been drowning for more than four minutes and was on the verge of death.

Yet even at this moment, his hands and feet seemed to still be moving feebly. He appeared to have some consciousness left.

Strangely, he was not swimming toward the surface. Instead, he kept diving deeper underwater, as though trying to catch something that was falling toward the icy seabed.

Following the shaking screen and the shift in perspective, Bai Liu saw what he was trying to catch.

It was a heart, still beating as it fell into the deeper reaches of the glacial seabed.

And at the very moment Bai Liu was about to grab it, a hand pierced through his chest and caught the heart one step ahead of him. As that hand withdrew, as if intending to pull the roots out completely, it mercilessly crushed Bai Liu’s heart.

A mist of blood burst from his body, spreading everywhere the seawater could reach.

Bai Liu saw himself slowly turn around, his limbs splayed as he sank. In that sea stained red and blue, his eyelids closed weakly, and the image on the small television began to flicker, growing unstable and dark.

But Bai Liu had indeed seen the person who crushed his heart.

He had a face exactly like Tawil’s.

He hovered there coldly and indifferently, holding that still-beating heart, suspended in the water like a god. From high above, he looked down as Bai Liu froze in the water at zero degrees.

The faint light from the sky perished and vanished. The sun on the horizon was incomplete, with only a quarter remaining. The seabed that swallowed Bai Liu grew even colder.

The image faded, and another new row of subtitles appeared on the small television:

[Game Mainline Setting Part 2—Ten-year-old friends parting ways]

This time, the image on the small television shook even more violently, as though someone had grabbed Bai Liu by the collar and was shaking his head hard while screaming hysterically at him:

“Bai Liu!! You can’t keep going like this!! You’ve already done enough just to win!!”

Bai Liu recognized this voice.

Bai Liu also recognized the face of the person whose eyes were red with tears, whose neck was bulging with veins, and who was hitting him on the small television. After ten years, this was truly the first time he had seen this man show such an expression.

Lu Yizhan stood before him, gripping his shoulders and arms, then slamming him into the ground again and again. This was how Lu Yizhan dealt with criminals.

Bai Liu was covered in blood. Bruises covered his arms and legs. But Lu Yizhan was not in much better shape. His nose was crooked, his face was swollen from being hit, and his eyes—usually either troubled or gentle—were filled with an unprecedented intensity as they stared fixedly at Bai Liu, as though he might lunge at any moment.

They seemed to have fought a brutal, merciless brawl.

Bai Liu heard his own heavy, labored breathing. He should have been the one more seriously injured. Lu Yizhan had received professional grappling training; in a purely physical fight, Bai Liu could not beat him.

But Lu Yizhan, who was less injured, finally seemed unable to hold back any longer. Tears welled in his eyes. He raised a hand to wipe them away, smearing blood and torn flesh across his face, then looked up and asked in a choked voice:

“Bai Liu, what is the meaning of your existence?”

“Is it just to become the monster standing opposite me?”

“Are you even human anymore?”

—

Author’s Note:

Everything seen in [Future] will happen. This story has a HE, and [Future] has a specific referent. You’ll find out if you keep reading!