After staring into Lu Yizhan’s stubborn gaze for a while, Bai Liu stood up.

He put away the bone whip he had already taken out. He had originally intended to give Lu Yizhan a quick end, but it seemed the other man did not need it.

The snow-white whip trailed across the ground, stained with the blood seeping from Lu Yizhan’s body.

Lu Yizhan lay back down on the floor. Because of the pain, his breathing had become heavy, and his voice came intermittently.

“Go outside... and ask... ask that factory worker. Hah... hah... your talent should already be Special Grade.”

Bai Liu went out to ask the factory worker.

The worker looked down at the time, then asked about the characteristics of Bai Liu’s scent strip. After that, he confirmed that Bai Liu’s perfumer talent was indeed Special Grade or above.

At the same time, the worker asked in surprise, “The scent strip inside still hasn’t been scrapped?”

Bai Liu was silent for a moment before saying no.

The worker went in to inspect and verify the characteristics Bai Liu had described.

Lu Yizhan was sitting by the bed, just as Bai Liu had seen him the first time he entered this dungeon, slumped over as he took off his clothes for the worker’s inspection.

Once the inspection was finished, Lu Yizhan even limped over and put his clothes, soaked through with blood and sweat, into the sink. It looked as though he was preparing to wash them in a moment.

If Bai Liu had not seen the patterns on the backs of Lu Yizhan’s hands still spreading, he almost would have thought this person was fine.

Even the factory worker sighed repeatedly, saying he had not expected this scent strip to still hold on after a Special Grade talent test.

After all the verifications were complete, the worker prepared to lead Bai Liu upstairs.

Before Bai Liu left, Lu Yizhan called out to him.

Bai Liu looked back and saw Lu Yizhan sitting by the bed, smiling with gratification and relief. The patterns on his face were constantly growing and healing, terrifying and bloody to look at, yet his smile carried the warmth of an ordinary person.

Lu Yizhan struggled to stand up and pushed Bai Liu from behind, pushing him out of the cage.

He said very, very softly, “The thirty-year hotpot deal. You said it. Remember to show me °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° the world after it changes.”

Bai Liu held the bone whip stained with Lu Yizhan’s blood and did not look back.

He only gave a light “Mm,” then walked out of the cage.

On the other side.

Tang Erda lowered his head.

He carried the silver gun stained with Su Yang’s blood and staggered out of the cage.

Seeing Tang Erda come out still holding his gun, the factory worker did not say much. He only glanced at the bloody, mangled scent strip inside the cage and nodded indifferently to Tang Erda.

“The scent strip is scrapped, right? We’ll deal with it later. You’ve passed.”

Tang Erda acted as though he had not heard anything. He carried his gun and walked past the worker, his eyes hollow and soulless as he made his way outside.

Su Yang’s blood dripped from his fingertips.

His clothes, his shoes, even his face were covered in the blood that had splattered when that one shot pierced Su Yang’s heart.

Every footprint Tang Erda left behind, every breath he took, and every step he took forward was stained with the blood of the withered Su Yang.

The blood dripping from Tang Erda’s hands and feet gathered on the ground into a path leading back to the slowly closing cage where Su Yang had been imprisoned. It seemed as though he had never truly walked out of the cage Su Yang had drawn for him in the past.

He wanted so much to die in that cage together with Su Yang.

But he was the Captain.

He did not have such a good fate.

If Tang Erda had been any ordinary team member, perhaps Su Yang would have pitied him and been willing to let him die cleanly.

But he was the Captain.

The responsibility and meaning bestowed by that title made Tang Erda hate it at this moment.

Captain Tang could not run away, could not stop, and could not even die. He could only witness the tragic endings of everyone again and again across infinite, irreversible world lines. And after seeing all of it, he still had to continue walking forward like a machine, without the slightest emotional fluctuation.

How he wanted to die.

The completely withered hunter even bore the traces of suicide on his bullets.

Tang Erda’s skill, Russian Roulette, required the user—himself—to sincerely want to commit suicide at every moment, every second, every time he raised the gun and shot at himself. Only then could it be used.

In the end, Tang Erda could no longer even distinguish whether the one he wanted to kill when he fired was the enemy or himself.

But he was still alive.

Like a walking corpse being cut into a thousand pieces, he lived while carrying the hopes of all those who had died.

Bai Six could die.

Su Yang could die.

His team members could die.

Any ordinary person in this world, whether bad or good, could die.

Only Tang Erda, chosen as the hunter, could never die.

Because he had made a wish to God for everyone to live, and so God had deprived him of the right to die.

The factory worker’s faint voice sounded behind the dazed Tang Erda as he pointed and said in disgust, “The scrapped scent strip this time is so disgusting. Let’s just shred it for fertilizer.”

Tang Erda tightened his grip on his gun.

But in the next second, as though in a hallucination, he once again heard Su Yang’s weak voice from before his death.

“Captain, walk forward. Don’t... look back again.”

[System Warning: Player Tang Erda’s mental state is oscillating violently, dropping to 11! The mental panel is about to explode!]

Tang Erda turned his head expressionlessly and aimed his gun at the head of the factory worker who was currently kicking Su Yang’s corpse.

He whispered softly, as if answering someone, “Su Yang, I can’t manage not to look back.”

Because he had long since run out of any path to return to.

The only thing he could do was look back.

“Bang—!”

————————————

Separated from him by only a wall, Bai Liu was also carrying his whip and looking forward with a faint gaze.

Behind the two people separated by that single wall were the mangled bodies of their best friends. Before them were both closed paths.

At the same time, deep in the darkness underground, they carried weapons stained with the blood of the people most important to them, converging toward the end of fate.

The factory worker inserted the key into the lock and opened the door in front of Bai Liu.

Tang Erda kicked aside the corpse of the worker who had just said he would shred Su Yang’s body. The worker had died with his eyes wide open.

There was a very obvious fatal gunshot wound in the center of the corpse’s forehead. It seemed that in the second before his death, this worker, shot by Tang Erda as he turned around, had also been shocked by such an ending.

Tang Erda held the blood-stained gun loosely between two fingers of his right hand, while his left hand held the key he used to open the dungeon door himself.

The dawn outside gathered into a bright beam of light, falling simultaneously on Bai Liu’s and Tang Erda’s faces.

Bai Liu raised his head with a faint expression, the beam of light swaying dazzlingly across his face.

Tang Erda curled his lips into a violent smirk. His face was covered in crisscrossing splatters of blood, and his expression was a strange, cruel smile, the corners of his mouth pulled to their widest.

The light fell across the upper half of his face.

The rose in Tang Erda’s eyes stretched and bloomed toward the first ray of light entering his pupils.

Behind him was the factory worker, dead in a miserable state.

“What a perfect encounter. It wasn’t in vain that I spent so long designing this.”

The person wearing a black hood at the Werewolf Kill game table moved the Hunter card in front of himself with great interest.

This Hunter card was different from the one at the start of the game. On the face of the card, the hunter, who had originally looked cold, was now holding a withered rose and weeping sadly. Tears seeped from his emerald-blue eyes, and the rose in the hunter’s heart withered along with him.

“A Hunter God card gone mad and turned evil, and a Wolf card that seems to carry the mission of saving the world. Truly interesting.”

As this person spoke, he looked up at the Prophet sitting opposite him, who had remained silent the entire time. He casually rested his chin on his folded hands and smiled meaningfully.

“Prophet, do you want to use your ability to predict the result? Or rather, did you foresee this situation?”

The Prophet did not answer him and remained silent.

The person did not mind the Prophet’s silence and continued talking to himself with a smile.

“As expected, no matter which world line it is, Bai Six is still the most interesting.”

The Prophet finally spoke.

“In this world line, he is called Bai Liu.”

“If you insist.” The person opposite him shrugged. “I think he would prefer to be called Bai Six.”

The person said with a smile, “Or rather, I think he is about to turn back into Bai Six. After the duel with the Hunter, if he kills the Hunter, then Bai Six loses the standing to be an ordinary person. Then the result of our bet regarding Bai Six in this world line will come out.”

“And you only need to lose once for our Werewolf Kill game to be over.”

The Prophet gazed like a stone statue at the weeping Hunter card and the Werewolf card beside it on the table, saying nothing.

——————————

Meanwhile, by the flower field.

Liu Jiayi finished skimming through the diary Bai Liu had placed in her item warehouse and gained a basic understanding of the game’s supplementary content.

Just as she wanted to contact Bai Liu and determine the path for his next move, she suddenly heard a loud noise erupt from the distant factory. The sound of gunfire mingled with the layered shattering of glass, so loud that Liu Jiayi could hear it clearly even from beside the flower field.

Of course, her hearing was not something an ordinary person could compare to. For example, Qi Yifang beside her could not hear it as clearly as she could. He could only vaguely make out a tremendous noise and was looking over nervously.

She quickly looked back. With the aid of a visualization tool, she could clearly see something rapidly crashing through the open dormitory windows on the first floor of the Rose Factory, as well as hear a very faint muffled groan from Bai Liu.

“Oh no!” Liu Jiayi’s expression changed. “That guy Bai Liu has started fighting with that gunman!”

She would never mistake that gunshot.

It was the sound of that strange skill weapon that had shot her before—the silver revolver!

Before that gun fired, there was the swinging sound of its cylinder being changed!

She instinctively wanted to go over and see what was happening, but Liu Jiayi quickly calmed herself down.

Although Bai Liu was a player who liked to gamble small stakes for big gains, he was not an impulsive tactician. Since he had chosen to duel Tang Erda, whose mental value was much higher than his, at this point in time, then he must have his own considerations.

Now was not the time to save Bai Liu.

He had her skill panel—that is, the Witch’s skill panel—so he could restore his own health and would not die easily.

As Bai Liu’s support player, what she needed to figure out now was what Bai Liu was trying to do by stalling Tang Erda!

Liu Jiayi opened the diary Bai Liu had placed in her item slot again. Finally, on the last page, she found a very scribbled sentence, clearly written in great haste.

—Before true death arrives, the time on your body is unique and irreversible.

“Time, time...” Liu Jiayi murmured to herself. “Before true death arrives, true death—”

In the entire game, the things that truly represented time and death had appeared—

Liu Jiayi’s eyes suddenly widened.

“The explosion date on the newspaper, and the specific time when a major death event occurred!!”

—

Author’s Note:

A commentary on the Werewolf Kill rules from a high-level reader in the comment section:

Prophet and Hooded Man Werewolf Kill Recap:

First Night: Siren Town, 1 person.

The Prophet does not verify; the Hooded Man deploys the Siren, Tawil.

Personnel: Bai Liu, Werewolf.

Outcome: Bai Liu, the Werewolf, plays solo. A peaceful night passes.

Second Night: Last Train to Blast Off, 7 people.

The Prophet verifies the Thief; the Hooded Man deploys the Mirror, Tawil.

Personnel: Bai Liu, Werewolf; Mu Shicheng, Thief; Du Sanying, Villager; Zhang Kui, Guilty Puppet Master; Liu Huai, Villager; Li Gou, Guilty Villager; Fang Ke, Villager.

Outcome: Bai Liu, the Werewolf, kills Zhang Kui, the Guilty Puppet Master, and Li Gou, the Guilty Villager. Five people survive: Bai Liu, Mu Shicheng, Du Sanying, Liu Huai, and Fang Ke. One Werewolf, one Thief, and four villagers of unknown variety.

Summary: The Thief joins the Werewolf camp. The Werewolf killed two bad people. The Thief and four villagers of unknown variety survived. The Prophet wins.

Third Night: Love Welfare Home, 6 people.

The Prophet deploys the Witch, Liu Jiayi, and Cupid, Liu Huai; the Hooded Man deploys the Blood Lingzhi, Tawil.

Personnel: Bai Liu, Werewolf; Mu Ke, Werewolf-camp Villager; Liu Jiayi, Witch; Liu Huai, Cupid; Miao Feichi, Criminal; Miao Gaojiang, Criminal.

Outcome: Bai Liu, the Werewolf, kills Miao Feichi, the Criminal, and Miao Gaojiang, the Criminal. Liu Huai, Cupid, dies because of Bai Liu, the Werewolf. Three people survive: Bai Liu, Mu Ke, and Liu Jiayi. One Werewolf, one Werewolf-camp Villager, and one Witch.

Summary: The Witch joins the Werewolf camp. The Werewolf killed two bad people. Cupid died. The Werewolf-camp Villager survived. It is a draw between the Prophet and the Hooded Man.

Fourth Night: Rose Factory, 6 people. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The Prophet verifies the Hunter and deploys the Hunter; the Hooded Man deploys the Rose, Tawil.

Personnel: Bai Liu, Werewolf; Liu Jiayi, Witch; Tang Erda, Hunter; Qi Yifang, Villager; King Player, Villager; King Player, Villager.

Outcome: Unknown.

Summary: Regardless of whether the Werewolf or the Hunter kills, it counts as a loss for the Prophet. It can be inferred that the villagers are all good people. For the Prophet to win, everyone must survive.

Known Rules Mentioned Above:

The Prophet can verify cards and deploy personnel. The effect of verifying cards is unknown. At present, the Hooded Man only deploys items.

Prophet’s Winning Condition:

Guide the Werewolf to kill bad people. Not a single good person can die.

Hooded Man’s Winning Condition:

The Werewolf kills a good person. If the Werewolf kills both good people and bad people, it is considered a draw.

So impressive! This is much clearer than what I wrote! Thank you, thank you. Thank you to this beautiful reader for taking the time out of her busy schedule to summarize!

bows