Bai Liu's tongue moved in his mouth, and the cold coin shifted slowly under the thin mucous membrane beneath his tongue. There was an inexplicable emotion in his eyes as he looked calmly out the window while the police officers guarded him with frightened gazes.
Trucks with heavy metal tailboxes sped along the desolate road at night. One after another, they headed toward a dome-shaped, stadium-sized white building in the middle of the wilderness.
The interior of the dome building was smooth, silvery white metal that reflected the light. Each side was like a mirror. A huge light hung in the center like a sun. The cold white light brilliantly reflected off the walls and shot out in all directions. The people coming and going wore dark goggles.
Those who had suddenly arrested Bai Liu in the name of the police skillfully put on goggles before entering the building. Bai Liu, who was tied up with metal chains, had no goggles to wear.
Under such high-brightness light without any goggles, it would take a person's eyes only a second or two to lose their normal visual function and see nothing but light spots. Long-term gazing might even cause snow blindness, where the human eyeball would be burned by the light and rendered blind.
Bai Liu originally wanted to take a look at the internal structure of the peculiar building, but this type of high-intensity lighting and building structure obviously prevented people like him, who wanted to escape, from remembering the route.
In this light, there was no way for his eyes to see anything, let alone remember the route.
Bai Liu instantly abandoned the idea. He closed his eyes and was dragged forward by others.
These people finally put Bai Liu into a small gray metal room with a square structure that wasn't very tall. There was a table and two chairs inside. On the table sat a high-brightness desk lamp. On the wall was a small window, only as large as the one Bai Liu had seen in the car. He could hear sounds coming from outside the window.
"Reporting to the vice-captain of the third team! The team has successfully captured a high-risk humanoid heretic with the proposed code of 006!"
"No one went crazy on the mission! No one committed suicide after being bewitched by the heretic! No one was physically crippled by the heretic's attack! Since Captain Tang classified the heretic as a red high-risk heretic monster, five modified armored vehicles, 17 restriction guns, and 33 members of the third team were dispatched to capture the heretic. At present, there has been no loss of personnel or weapons. The task has been completed successfully!"
A gentle male voice replied, "Thank you for your hard work. I will interrogate the rest of the information from the captured human heretic."
The voice of the reporting officer sounded anxious. "Vice-Captain Su, why are you in such a hurry? You should do it with Captain Tang! He has higher defense, and it was also Captain Tang who advocated tonight's forced arrest of the heretic. Facing such an unknown heretic alone is too dangerous."
"Where is Captain Tang?"
The gentle voice became subtly cold, and the man called Vice-Captain Su seemed to sigh with disappointment. "He went on a rampage so we could catch the heretic tonight, then he went drinking. Now he's drunk, and his phone is dead. We've been looking for him."
"…Captain Tang went drinking again?!" The team member's voice was incredulous. "How can he do this? For tonight's mission, he used his captain's privilege to force us to arrest the heretic without thoroughly investigating it! Didn't Captain Tang say he was going to handle it himself? Why did he get drunk again?!"
"It isn't the first time he has been in this mood after sending the team to a strange place to catch a monster." Vice-Captain Su smiled bitterly. "When he is drunk, he sees everyone as a monster. However, this is the first time he has used his captain's privilege. Tonight, his information about the human heretic called Bai Liu was very specific and accurate. I thought he acted only after checking thoroughly. But seeing this situation, perhaps this person is just an innocent, ordinary person…"
"I'll go in and assess the situation."
Then the metal door of Bai Liu's small room was pushed open.
It was a man in his thirties wearing a police uniform. He wore a protective mask and brown leather outerwear. He was over 1.8 meters tall and had soft grayish-yellow eyes, almost light amber. His hair seemed to have been neglected for a while, hanging down on both sides of his face. He looked slightly worn from staying up late, but he was clean and tidy. He seemed good at maintaining himself despite the high-intensity work. At first glance, he appeared very friendly—the type who could easily make people lower their guard.
Bai Liu's eyes fell on the identity card in the man's right chest pocket: Vice-Captain of the Dangerous Heretic Handling Department's Third Team — Su Yang.
Su Yang made a sit-down gesture to Bai Liu. After Bai Liu sat down, Su Yang noticed Bai Liu's gaze resting on his identity card. He nodded toward it and explained helplessly, "Maybe you won't believe it because of my comrade's violent capture, but we really are a formal department of the country."
Bai Liu looked at Su Yang indifferently and didn't answer.
Su Yang looked even more helpless. "This might sound ridiculous, but what ordinary people don't realize is that there are many existences in this world that can't be explained by scientific common sense. They're like monsters. We call these monsters, which come from unknown places, heretics.
"Some of these heretics confuse people and drive them crazy. Some eat human flesh and blood. In order to deal with these dangerous heretics that harm ordinary people, a special department was established. The people who arrested you tonight are members of this department."
Bai Liu raised his gaze. "What does that have to do with me? Do I look like a heretic?"
Su Yang didn't answer directly. Instead, he took out a remote control from the table and pointed it at the wall. A white screen slowly descended, and a projector on the opposite side began displaying a PPT presentation.
[Popular Science of the Dangerous Heretic Handling Department]
Su Yang looked at Bai Liu. "I'll first explain what I just said, then explain your situation in detail. As I mentioned, we are responsible for handling the heretics that suddenly appear in this world. Our department has existed for a long time, but even now, we don't know where these heretics come from. They simply appear, taking the form of strange and terrible people, animals, or objects."
Su Yang pressed the remote, and the PPT switched slides.
"These heretics have terrible, destructive power. Do you remember the Mirror City Bombing?"
The slide displayed a photo of the antique mirror Bai Liu had seen on Exploding Last Train. Around it, several people in uniforms identical in size and color to Su Yang's frowned as they carefully surveyed and measured the mirror.
Su Yang continued, "This is the mirror involved in the Mirror City Bombing. After the explosion, many people questioned how someone could blatantly bring a bomb through security. Didn't the security checks work? At the time, our public statement was that the thieves hid the bomb inside a shareholder's mirror, and we were scolded for nearly a month. People said we were insulting their intelligence to shift the blame. Based on the size and thickness of the mirror, it was impossible to hide a bomb."
He pressed the remote again. The photo changed. The uniformed personnel looked shocked as they pulled a huge black bomb out of the mirror, completely defying space and common sense.
"Still, that was the truth." Su Yang turned to Bai Liu. "This mirror shattered in the explosion. It took us a great deal of effort to recover and piece it together from the subway station. Once restored, we conducted extensive tests and experiments. We discovered that it functioned like a fold in space, from which objects larger than its own size could be retrieved. Items stored inside it can't be detected using any known rays or devices."
"Through long-term experimentation, we also found that the mirror doesn't just store objects—it has a form of spiritual materialization. If someone stares at it long enough, the object inside will change from a bomb into the last thing that person wants to see."
"We later discovered that the bomb appeared because the thief brothers were afraid of breaking the expensive mirror they had stolen. They feared anything that might damage it and stared at it day and night. Eventually, their fear manifested as a bomb inside the mirror, which later exploded on the train."
The slide changed to a report page.
[Name of Heretic Item:]Mirror of Murphy's Theorem
[Reference Number:] CEDT-0714
[Report:]Found after a massive explosion. During debris recovery, it was discovered that the train had been trapped in an unstoppable one-hour loop of exploding (despite the train line not being circular). It was confirmed that the fear of those who died was projected into the shattered mirror fragments. The passengers feared they wouldn't be able to escape the imminent explosion, so the mirror reflected an endless cycle of detonation…
…After all fragments were recovered, no repair was necessary. The pieces reassembled into a flawless mirror with no visible cracks……Testing showed that gazing at it for more than 17 minutes transforms the object inside into something the viewer fears…
[Containment Method:]Buried 17 meters underground, wrapped in polyethylene dark cloth, and kept away from light. Access to the CEDT-0714 containment site requires authorization from three vice-captains or one team captain.
[Danger Level:]Light Red
"Of course, after our experiments, the object inside the mirror is no longer a bomb." Su Yang smiled lightly. "We once had an experimental staff member who hates spicy food stare at the mirror after eating extremely spicy hot pot. An hour later, everything stored inside had turned into devilishly spicy hot pot."
Su Yang advanced the slides again. "Did you see the welfare home mushroom poisoning incident on TV some time ago?"
Bai Liu lifted his eyes to the wall. The screen showed a hand-drawn image of a blood Ganoderma lucidum.
"We took over the case midway and investigated the possibility that investors were involved. It was advertised as curing all diseases, but unfortunately, we found no solid leads." Su Yang smiled faintly and glanced at Bai Liu meaningfully. "However, there was a coincidence. This morning, someone suddenly exposed a clue. We received a big gift, and members of the second team have already gone to make arrests."
The PPT displayed surveillance footage of a hospital room.
In the video, Bai Liu visited the child in the hospital bed. After he left, the child quickly recovered, then turned toward the door and whispered thanks.
Seeing this, Bai Liu clicked his tongue softly in his heart.
He thought he might be in trouble.
"We used cotton swabs to test this young comrade's vomit and feces after you left," Su Yang said, taking out a thumb-sized glass vial containing blood-red mycelium preserved in solution from his right chest pocket.
He stared directly at Bai Liu. "Comrade Bai Liu, no outsider visited the children that day except you. Yet all the children improved after you came. Can you explain where this mycelium came from?"