Testing fragrance was a very simple matter.

“You only need to drip the perfume concentrate onto your palm and spread it evenly,” Lu Yizhan said to Bai Liu.

“Then place your palm on a patch of intact skin on my body,” Su Yang said to Tang Erda.

“After that, you just need to observe how quickly that patch of skin cracks, and how intense my pain response is. The faster it cracks and the more painful my reaction, the stronger your talent is, and the more suitable you are for blending Rose Perfume.”

With slightly trembling, weak fingers, Su Yang unbuttoned his uniform one button at a time, took it off, and turned his back to Tang Erda.

The uniform hung loosely around his waist. On his fair back, the patterns of bursting flesh looked like unfinished tattoos, winding from his neck—half-hidden by his medium-length hair—all the way down to his slightly sunken waist.

On his entire back, only the patch of skin directly opposite the tip of his left scapula was still intact.

That was precisely where the heart projected onto the back. Tang Erda knew that if one fired from a side angle at that spot, the bullet could pass straight into the heart wrapped between the lungs.

Lu Yizhan sat cross-legged on the bed. With his back to Bai Liu, he lifted his hair, revealing a complete patch of skin on the back of his neck, free of cracks and signs of withering. Then he lowered his head, exposing that patch of skin to Bai Liu, who stood behind him.

These were among the few remaining pieces of good skin left on their bodies.

Su Yang and Lu Yizhan both took a deep breath and closed their eyes.

“Begin.”

Bai Liu dripped the perfume concentrate onto his palm. Tang Erda, still in a dazed state, spread it evenly over his hand. Then the two of them reached out and lightly pressed their palms against the skin of Lu Yizhan and Su Yang.

Almost the instant their hands touched them, Lu Yizhan and Su Yang both collapsed to the ground, letting out shrill screams that made anyone who heard them shudder, a chill running through their entire body.

At the same time, the two factory workers standing outside the cages realized from the screams that the fragrance test had begun. With indifferent expressions, they took timers from their pockets and began recording the test—recording the duration of the “scent strips’” screams inside.

Lu Yizhan’s body twitched and spasmed on the bed. On the back of his neck where Bai Liu had touched him, deep, bloody gashes opened as if carved by a knife, so deep they nearly reached bone. The roses in his eyes flickered in and out of existence, and his face was so twisted and contorted that every muscle seemed to be straining. Yet pained groans continued to leak from his nose.

Su Yang pressed his forehead against the floor, breathing deeply and without pause. The roses in his eyes bloomed with dazzling brilliance, casting their glow into the dark cage.

All the patterns on his back began to writhe and gather together. Fresh blood seeped from every pulsing wound, quickly soaking the uniform draped around his waist.

Su Yang desperately tried to stop himself from making a sound, unwilling to place a psychological burden on Tang Erda. Cold sweat and tears mixed together, dripping from the tip of his nose to the floor.

It hurt too much.

It really hurt too much!!!

Resisting the erosion of this thing with all his strength was truly too painful!!

Tang Erda knelt beside Su Yang in a daze. Su Yang’s extreme agony made him feel as though he was going insane.

For a moment, he could not tell whether the one being tortured was Su Yang or himself.

For several seconds, when Su Yang looked at him with tear-filled eyes, Tang Erda’s mind went blank. He uncontrollably pulled out his skill gun, wanting to fire several shots into his own legs and limbs.

It was as if enduring some pain together with Su Yang might make Su Yang feel even the slightest bit better.

But Su Yang gripped his wrist tightly and said, word by word, “Captain, you have more important things to do. Don’t be like me... hurting yourself here... because of guilt.”

“It’s meaningless, Captain,” he said softly.

The strength Su Yang used to stop him was so slight that Tang Erda could easily have broken free. But he still lowered the gun with trembling hands.

He saw countless scars on Su Yang’s thin arms.

Different from the wounds caused by Rose Perfume, these scars were all man-made.

They were scars Su Yang had left by harming himself.

Blood was also seeping from the cracks on Su Yang’s face. He lifted his head, and a very difficult smile appeared on his face. The red light of the roses in his eyes faded, becoming clear and pale again.

“A person who experienced the same thing as me once stopped me from hurting myself. He told me that if I could survive by hating someone, then I should hate them.”

“Even if the person I hated was his best friend.”

Su Yang’s breathing gradually began to slow. His eyelids drooped weakly, and his tone became much fainter.

“Even though he saw it with his own eyes, he still believes Bai Liu didn’t blow up the factory. I can’t convince him, and he can’t convince me.”

“Neither of us has definitive evidence to prove whether Bai Liu actually blew up the factory or not. Captain, we’ve dealt with these strange cases for so many years. We know that sometimes, seeing something with your own eyes...”

“...does not mean you have seen the whole truth.”

“So according to the principle of innocent until proven guilty, that person was actually right. It’s just that I was too...”

“People always project their own helpless anger onto others, gradually turning themselves into heartless heretics.”

“I have lived until now, distorted and disgusting like a heretic, waiting for you, Captain. I no longer even know whether I’m still human.”

Su Yang opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but at that moment, the scars on his back began writhing madly, and his eyes instantly turned crimson.

The roses that had receded in Su Yang’s eyes began flashing red again. He cried out in pain, his gentle expression becoming extremely distorted.

The hand Su Yang had used to lightly grip Tang Erda’s arm tightened in an instant. He leaned forward and looked straight at Tang Erda. The roses in his eyes bloomed with a soul-shaking intensity, while hatred and desire flowed vividly across his face, which no longer had a single piece of good skin.

“Kill Bai Liu! Captain, I saw him blow up the factory with my own eyes. The current situation no longer allows us to hesitate! If we don’t kill him, everything will become irreversible!”

Pieces of skin on Su Yang’s face began to peel away and fold over. The rose petals in his eyes curled and stretched, blooming completely and utterly.

“Kill me, Captain. I’m really about to turn into a heretic.”

Tang Erda pulled out his gun.

Su Yang closed his eyes with a smile.

A silver bullet traced a diagonal line of blood across the floor.

With a bang and a clatter, mingled with a heart-rending scream, it was impossible to tell who had let it out.

On the other side.

The patterns on the back of Lu Yizhan’s neck spread forward, crawling onto his face. He lay on the floor, breathing deeply, the roses in his eyes flickering. They seemed to want to freeze there permanently, only to be stubbornly extinguished by Lu Yizhan, then swept back again by the next wave of pain.

Bai Liu stood nearby, quietly looking down, as if the person writhing and struggling in agony on the floor had nothing to do with him.

“If I had known... your talent as a perfumer was this strong...”

Lu Yizhan exhaled, trying to control the pain. Cold sweat had already soaked his clothes, but this fellow actually still had the presence of mind to tease Bai Liu.

“This job makes so much money. You should have become a perfumer earlier.”

Lu Yizhan was clearly referring to normal perfumers in the real world.

Bai Liu gave a lazy “mm” and asked, “Generally speaking, how long does the result of this fragrance test need to last in order to show that I have the talent of a Special Grade perfumer?”

“Hard to say. Depends on the factory worker’s notice outside,” Lu Yizhan said, his face pale and his words somewhat slurred.

Bai Liu squatted down beside Lu Yizhan. He rested his hands casually on his knees and looked directly at Lu Yizhan with a gaze that could not be avoided.

“Then let me ask another way. How long do you think my talent can torture you in this test before it stops?”

The duration of a perfumer’s scent strip test was determined by the other party’s talent. Generally, it lasted around ten minutes, but the test on Lu Yizhan’s side had clearly already exceeded ten minutes. Moreover, the patterns showed no sign of stopping. They had even begun spreading to other intact parts of Lu Yizhan’s body.

If a factory worker were inside and saw this result, he would probably tell Bai Liu in surprise that his talent was enough to burst this scent strip.

In a test like this, where the talent exceeded the scent strip’s endurance, there was usually only one outcome: the scent strip would directly mutate into a monster. In the factory workers’ words, it would “become scrap.”

However, Lu Yizhan was a fellow with an exceptionally strong will. He was unwilling to be mutated by desire, so right now, he was relying entirely on grit to hold on.

And he had actually managed to endure.

The result was also obvious.

Lu Yizhan had to endure multiplied pain every single second.

Bai Liu could see that this fellow wanted to keep holding on and was deliberately avoiding his question. That was why he asked him directly.

Although Lu Yizhan’s limbs were trembling from the pain, he only joked back to Bai Liu, “I have to hold on for at least sixty or seventy years. Otherwise, how am I supposed to treat you to hotpot for that long?”

Bai Liu lowered his eyelids and looked at Lu Yizhan’s face. It was so white there was almost no color left in it, and it had been split into several terrifying sections by the spreading cracks. Blood seeped out, yet the man’s eyes were still clean.

No roses would grow there.

Lu Yizhan was the strangest person Bai Liu had ever met.

There was no exception.

If several billion people in the world were given a choice, if they had to live while constantly enduring this kind of heart-piercing pain, most would cowardly choose to abandon their sense of self and become monsters. Those with more backbone would simply seek death.

But Lu Yizhan did neither.

He insisted on living openly, painfully, and with a smile.

He possessed the resilience and kindness of ordinary people, only more stubborn, thicker, and unshakable. These were qualities Bai Liu usually believed a clever person would not have.

However, Lu Yizhan was very clever. It was just that all his intelligence points had been spent on doing good deeds.

He was a good person in the truest sense.

According to Bai Liu’s understanding of most good people, when upheaval came, or in a world setting like the Rose Factory game, good people were always the first to leave.

Yet Lu Yizhan was strange even among good people. Because according to his logic, he would absolutely find ways to make himself live and to make others live, all for the sake of saving more people.

He would be the kind of good person who survived until the very end.

“Actually, I wanted to kill you, Lu Yizhan,” Bai Liu said from the bottom of his heart. “For a good person like you, dying would be easier in this kind of world. Living is too painful.”

Lu Yizhan was in so much pain that one of his eyes had already squeezed shut. He was baring his teeth, and his muscles were twitching, but when he heard Bai Liu’s words, he suddenly laughed.

He struggled to open both eyes and propped up his upper body in a wretched state, speaking to Bai Liu almost fiercely.

“Don’t look down on the People’s Police. It’s just one bottle of perfume.”

“Are good people necessarily more fragile? Bai Liu, let me tell you, in order to be a good person, a good person can also cut through thorns and use any means necessary!”

“You think you’re so great just because you’re bad? I’m telling you, Bai Liu, you can’t defeat me!”

—

Author’s Note:

Please, everyone, do not let this escalate! Lu Yizhan is a fictional character!! He is not a real-life police officer! Real-life police officers are even greater! Because they are truly serving and working for all of us. A fictional character is far from comparable! I hope everyone won’t post strange comments! I also hope everyone can distinguish between the real world and fictional entertainment.

Thank you, thank you.

bows