“Everything written here was personally verified by you, Captain Tang, in front of everyone. There’s no reason for you to turn around and deny it now.”

Cen Buming took a step forward, aggressively attempting to enter the room where Bai Liu was being held.

But just as he reached the door, a sudden roar came from above. After a wave of earth-shaking tremors, someone stumbled in through the exit, face deathly pale. Looking up at the group, he gasped out:

“Report! ...The factory, the factory exploded!”

Su Yang asked urgently, “Have all the citizens within a five-kilometer radius been evacuated? Not just the residents—what about the homeless people sleeping on the streets? Were all of them notified?”

The person swallowed hard. “Everything has been swept and everyone has been notified. There isn’t even a cat left in that area. The fragrance is still spreading, and we’re preparing the second line of suction defenses, but we should be able to control the pollution range within twenty-eight kilometers of the factory.”

“But the team members on the first line of defense...” The person’s face filled with grief. “They’ve all been polluted.”

Tang Erda closed his eyes.

The anxiety and fear that had been pressing on him for so long were finally released at this moment. Every muscle in his body slackened, and he collapsed onto a stool, his limbs hanging limply over the edges. He tilted his head back and stared blankly at the blinding white fluorescent light on the ceiling.

For a few seconds, Tang Erda could not even hear the voices of the people calling him.

Amid the long ringing in his ears, only Bai Liu’s calm voice lingered.

[Captain Tang, leave it to me. I have a way.]

This was the world Tang Erda had experienced with the fewest casualties and the most controllable outcome.

It felt so unreal, like a dream mercifully bestowed by a deity.

Tang Erda wiped his face with one hand, then suddenly began to laugh in the room’s heavy atmosphere, startling the team members standing before him.

They turned back in shock to look at their Captain, who sat on a stool with one hand half-covering his face, laughing loudly. For a moment, they even wondered whether their Captain had gone mad because he could not withstand the bad news.

Cen Buming raised an eyebrow at Captain Tang. “If Captain Tang still hasn’t sobered up, then I’ll be taking Heretic 0006, the cause of this large-scale group incident, away.”

Tang Erda lowered his hand and stood up, his gaze heavy as he looked at Cen Buming.

“You can’t take him away.”

“I am exercising the last of my [Predictor] permissions.” Tang Erda removed his ID card, placed it on the table, and pushed it toward Cen Buming with four fingers. “Using my status as Captain as collateral, I am extracting Heretic [0006] and binding him as my privately held heretic.”

“If Bai Liu does anything wrong, I will bear the responsibility with him.” Tang Erda looked steadily at Cen Buming. “If you want to interrogate him or kill him, then kill and interrogate me along with him.”

The room fell into a long silence.

Su Yang looked at Tang Erda in shock. “Captain?!”

Tang Erda’s gaze did not waver as he stared back at Cen Buming.

Cen Buming was silent for several seconds before slowly reaching out and picking up Tang Erda’s Captain ID card from the table. He looked up at Tang Erda.

“Captain Tang, once you bind a heretic, you can never return to the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau. You will no longer be some glorious Captain.”

“For the rest of your life, you must be responsible for guarding this one heretic. If this heretic does anything wrong, you share its guilt. And the moment you realize you can no longer control this heretic, you must kill yourself and bring it back—”

“The meaning of your existence will be solely to allow this heretic to move through the outside world like a human. You will be nothing more than a human-shaped box, or a safety pin, meant to trap this heretic.”

Cen Buming asked in a low, heavy voice, “Even so, do you still want to release Heretic 0006?”

Tang Erda looked straight at him. “Yes.”

“Even if you end up like the Captain of the First Division, who went mad and committed suicide because he bound Heretic 0001, you still won’t regret it?” Cen Buming stared fixedly at Tang Erda.

“I won’t regret it,” Tang Erda said.

The [Predictor] permissions in the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau referred to a series of special powers once held by the former Captain of the First Division.

The most special among them was this:

[The permission to bind a certain heretic, release it into the human world under supervision, and take full responsibility for everything it does.]

This was an extremely strange permission, one that ran counter to the core mission of the entire Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau.

If capturing heretics and placing them inside the [Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau] was a process of dehumanizing these dangerous entities and treating them as inanimate objects, then what this permission did was like granting these heretics human rights again. Releasing them into the human world was a process of humanization.

But this process was clearly full of danger for humanity.

Therefore, when the former Captain of the First Division proposed this permission, a sharp question arose:

[Who will be responsible for these heretics released into human society?]

[What if these heretics continue killing, committing evil, and polluting others? Who will bear the consequences?]

Thus, the Captain of the First Division proposed the [Lifetime Responsibility System], also known as the [Parental Responsibility Permission].

It advocated placing a heretic under the charge of a specific member, who would assume all responsibility for that heretic. That member would be responsible for caring for it, protecting it, and educating it so that it could integrate into human society, while taking full responsibility for everything it did.

In other words, that member would be equivalent to the heretic’s parent.

But as a parent—especially the parent of such a dangerous “child”—one naturally had to maintain close supervision twenty-four hours a day.

Therefore, once a member became the [parent] of a heretic, their primary mission would essentially become monitoring that heretic for the rest of their life. They would no longer need to exist as an ordinary member of the Bureau.

At the time, no one had been willing to hold this permission, and no member had been willing to take on such a responsibility.

They could not understand why the [Predictor] harbored such unrealistic fantasies—that these evil and terrifying heretics could become human.

Nor could they understand why he would offer them the sympathy a parent gives a child, guiding them and hoping they would grow into “humans.”

In the eyes of most members, a heretic was a heretic, and a monster was a monster. There was a clear line between them and humans. They could not become human. Born of evil, they should be imprisoned and eradicated.

But what the [Predictor] saw of the future was always far more than what they could see.

In the end, this permission was passed, but the only person who ever used it was the [Predictor] himself.

And so, the [Predictor] stripped himself of the rights and duties of the Captain of the First Division.

The first heretic he attempted to release was 0001.

Then he went mad and committed suicide.

He destroyed Heretic 0001’s files and brought it back to the Management Bureau, where it was sealed forever in the deepest underground level, forbidden for anyone to peer into its secrets.

This was clearly a failed attempt, and so no one ever mentioned that absurd permission again.

However, the permission did exist, buried among the pile of strange privileges passed down from the [Predictor] to Tang Erda.

If Tang Erda wanted to use this [Parental Permission] on Bai Liu, he would need to resign from his position as Captain, protect and guard Bai Liu at all times, and remain forever responsible for everything Bai Liu did—including the current Rose Factory explosion.

Cen Buming tossed Tang Erda’s ID card back.

“There are nearly ten thousand Dry Leaf Rose infectees in total, half of them our members. How are you going to take responsibility for that?”

“Bai Liu has a way to resolve it,” Tang Erda replied quickly.

Cen Buming sneered. “A bomber? You’re counting on him to resolve it for you?”

Tang Erda kept his composure and did not directly respond to Cen Buming’s words. Instead, he turned and asked, “Can I go in and speak with Bai Liu first?”

“If you insist on binding the dangerous heretic inside.” Cen Buming, who had been blocking the door, stepped aside. He gave Tang Erda a look with an unreadable meaning and said in a slighting tone, “Of course you have the right to speak with your own [child].”

Tang Erda pushed the door open and walked inside.

Bai Liu was propping up his chin with one hand, glancing at Tang Erda in boredom.

His gaze lingered briefly on the empty spot on the right side of Tang Erda’s chest where his ID card had been. Then Bai Liu looked up at Tang Erda with a half-smile.

“Wow. Captain Tang made quite the sacrifice to fish me out.”

Tang Erda turned a chair around and sat down.

He sat very upright, hands properly clasped on the table, head lowered in silence. Compared with the relaxed and natural Bai Liu, he looked far more like the criminal waiting to receive judgment.

“I’m sorry,” Tang Erda said in a low voice. “Thank you.”

That abrupt apology was for everything he had done before.

And the thank you was for Bai Liu’s willingness to do all of this even after Tang Erda had done what he had. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

“It’s all right. You’re welcome,” Bai Liu accepted with a smile.

Bai Liu glanced toward the glass. “How many people were affected by the explosion?”

“The current number is nearly a thousand, basically all members.” Tang Erda exhaled slowly. “But {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} the overall spread is under control. The situation is acceptable.”

“So you came in because someone wants to save those thousand members?” Bai Liu released his chin and rested his head on the table, letting out a tired yawn. “It’s not impossible, but I have one condition.”

Tang Erda immediately followed up. “What condition?”

Although Bai Liu was speaking to Tang Erda, his eyes remained fixed on the one-way glass as he chuckled.

“I never make a deal without personal gain.”

“If you want to cooperate with me and have me save people, then bring out something that can move me.”

Tang Erda pushed the door open and walked out. He looked at all the members outside.

“You all heard Bai Liu’s condition.”

Everyone’s faces held complicated, mixed expressions. They seemed at a loss over Bai Liu’s request. Only Cen Buming showed no emotion.

On the contrary, this Captain seemed to gain a trace of interest, his eyes fixed motionlessly on Bai Liu, who appeared to be sleeping with his head on the table behind the glass.

“How interesting. I thought he would ask for money.” Cen Buming curled his lips.

“Instead, he actually requested that we open the door to Heretic 0001.”

—