Chapter 461

"I'm very curious about that." Bai Liu(6) tilted his head slightly, smiling, "What is it like to fall in love with a creation that doesn't respond, to delude itself into love?"

"Do you suffer when you watch Tavel reading alone in church, as he face back at you?"

"You do mind that, don't you?"

"Nobody likes a kind that makes them miserable, you just don't have a choice."

"After all, since you were born, you have never received spontaneous love from other humans, all you have traded in, feelings that fit all sorts of conditions, so you can't tell if they respond to you because of the external things you give them, or because they are your kind?"

"Xie Ta was like this, Lu Yizhan was like this, your later teammates, Muke, Mu Sicheng, Liu Jiayi, Tang Erda, each and every one of them."

"You have to meet certain expectations and give them what they want in order to get them to come near you."

"So did you really get their affection for you? Or did you just get them to be there for you briefly by buying them?"

"If one day you can no longer give the goods you trade, will they abandon you forever and leave you?"

Bai Liu(6) curled his lips, "- like the once dead Xie Ta."

Bai Liu's breathing slows as he hangs his head, his hair falling from his forehead to cover his face, his expression unreadable, his body slowly shrinking, dressed in a kimono that turns into a wide uniform from the orphanage, his body becoming thin and frail, and finally taking on the appearance of fourteen-year-old Bai Liu.

A thin Bai Liu sits motionless in an audience chair opposite the watery wall, drops of water falling from the ends of her hair into the universe.

[System Warning: Player Bai Liu has been attacked by the evil god Bai Liu(6), his spirit value has dropped, about to drop below 60, seeing hallucinations ......]

Bai Liu(6) smiles and looks across the watery wall at Bai Liu, or little Bai Liu(6), aged fourteen.

"You are essentially the same as Tavel at the beginning, who gathered these people to himself by pre-giving them free of charge, but I have proved in countless experiments that such pre-giving does not bring love, only desire."

"Are you sure that what you're trading from the others now is really feelings and not some kind of desire that looks like feelings?"

Bai Liu(6) lowered his eyes as if in pity: "You, like Tavel, are a lonely god."

"It just doesn't have a soul and doesn't feel lonely and miserable when it doesn't get a response or love, but you do."

"Your soul will only endlessly produce pain because of the lack of love."

[System warning: Player Bai Liu's spirit level continues to drop and will soon fall below 40!]

Water gradually seeped out of Bai Liu's clothes and it was as if he had fallen into a non-existent pool. His hair and clothes began to levitate in the universe, his hands floated in front of him and a door-like black hole appeared spinning directly beneath him with a faint silvery-blue glow inside.

Bai Liu(6) looked at Bai Liu with those silvery blue eyes and smiled, and continued.

"The pain that a person is born from their soul will bind them, trapping them in place unable to move forward, like a silk thread, only to be manipulated by this pain and then slowly become a puppet of it."

A thread of transparent silk flying out of the depths of the universe wrapped around Bai Liu's wrist, lifting his thin wrist like a puppet on a string.

" Tavel is a true monster and you are a monster with a soul, you were not of the same kind from the beginning." Bai Liu(6) whispered.

"And you are surrounded by human beings, good and bad, who have been loved and who have loved others, who have gained souls because of the pain that others have produced, who have human beings who really hold them."

"They do not come from the same place as you, and even if they wander to you at this moment, they will not end up in the same place with you, because you are not of the same kind, and because they all have their own place to return to, and those who welcome them back."

"You're just a god who took them in for a short time."

Bai Liu(6) looks across the watery wall at fourteen-year-old Bai Liu: "When they leave, you'll still be alone."

"No one will stop for you."

"No one in this world ever expected you to be born, no one ever expected you to grow, no one ever expected you to become a good person, and you, as a derivative of an evil god, struggled to control your desires and satisfy their conditions to turn yourself into an ordinary good person, thereby turning yourself into one of their kind and gaining their fleeting affection."

"-it's like fourteen-year-old you turned yourself into a monster in order to give yourself the monster-like Tavel."

"After all these years and all this effort, you still haven't found your kind, Bai Liu."

[System Warning: Player Bai Liu's Spirit Level continues to drop and will soon drop below 20!]

Two silk threads fly out and tie around Bai Liu's left wrist and neck, and he slowly raises his head as the threads pull him up.

"In this world, I am the only one who has been watching you and expecting you since the beginning of your existence."

Bai Liu(6) takes off his right glove, looks down and holds the side of Bai Liu's face with his right hand, his tone is very soft.

"I know what you're thinking and understand everything you have to do, and I will hold the most interesting game in the world in front of you."

"- The birth of your soul surprised me and made me give up that old creation, and your growth and self-restraint made me feel that I saw the most valuable thing in this world."

"You opened my eyes to the possibility of a human being with a soul becoming a god, guarding the gate in endless pain and loneliness."

Bai Liu's warm palm caresses the side of his face, his thumb brushing under Bai Liu's eyes, his face a compassionate smile.

"I know that if it were you, even with all the abysses, darkness, hatred, lust, and other negative emotions pouring over you on the other side of the door, you could still maintain your sanity and keep your soul in some kind of love that comes from nowhere to keep the human shape and guard the door for eternity in the vast and infinite universe. "

"-like guarding the people you thought were your own kind, even though they weren't."

"Of all the world lines you can perceive, the person who expects you to live all the time, who can truly understand your thoughts, the closest thing to your kind of existence, is actually just me, who you hate."

Bai Liu(6) crouched half on one knee in front of Bai Liu, his silvery blue eyes fading to a deep blue as he gazed at the fourteen-year-old sitting in the chair and stroked his soft hair like a gentle and friendly elder.

"Of the 658 world lines, you are the derivative that I have borne the most malice from, so many haters who hate you, yet I can give you no help but to watch you struggle again and again with the malice given by others."

"I'm sorry."

Bai Liu(6) suddenly leaned forward and embraced little Bai Liu, burying his head in Bai Liu's thin shoulders and hugging his thin, paper-like shoulder blades tightly, his voice becoming earnest.

"I'm sorry."

"In all those 658 worldline games, you exceeded my expectations, and I did hurt many people, but only you, and it was not my intention to toy with you in this game."

"You are not the game npc I set out to play, nor are you one of those creatures that evolved from the world line that was born out of my palm."

"- you are just a me without a kind, but with a soul."

Bai Liu(6) gently pats the motionless little Bai Liu on the back, as if soothing a child.

"I was thinking a long, long time ago, after seeing you dive into the church and stuff yourself into the arms of Xie Ta, who was covered in blood and water-"

"- What if, at this time, instead of twisting yourself into a Xie Ta embrace to get that bloody and icy hug, someone came along and offered to hug you?"

"What if I came to you as one of your kind and embraced you?"

"But I can't touch you, but I want to." Bai Liu(6)'s tone became soft and light, "He's already a human, he has a soul, he's loving others, and one day he'll wait for the one who comes to offer to embrace him."

"So I'm watching quietly beside you, waiting with you, waiting for that person to appear."

"In these ten years you've had people who have fought alongside you, people who looked up to you and believed in you, people who stopped you from going astray, people who have been responsible for you, people who have surrounded you with so many people obviously -"

"- but still no one who comes to offer you a hug."

"You have become an omnipotent god and a monster without evil in the eyes of others, but still no one thinks of you as a human being."

"Only me." Bai Liu(6) whispered, "Only I know that you are a human being with a soul, a good boy who has always loved others."

"You're waiting for a hug."

"I thought humans were a mirror reflecting emotions and that you who gave love would have waited for your own hug long ago, but to my surprise you took in so many people and it was me who finally gave you a hug."

Bai Liu's eyes were open and emotionless as he looked behind the watery wall at the cold statue of Tavel, whose eyes reflected the fourteen year old himself huddled in a chair, held by Bai Liu(6)'s shoulders.

Bai Liu opened his interfering mouth and said [Xie Ta] very softly with his muzzle.

Tavel opened his emotionless silver-blue eyes and did not respond to him.

Then a tear fell from Bai Liu's eye very slowly, very slowly, and he heard Bai Liu(6) whisper as if with a sigh.

"Be my heir, my child."

"This is where you will end up."

[System warning: Player Bai Liu's spirit value will soon be zero! Warning! WARNING!!!]

~

Chapter 462

"Xie Ta."

An extremely indistinct voice floated through the air, and Spades, standing in the boat, turned back in an instant, his lips pursed as he looked around at the circle of people trying to find Bai Liu in there.

The crowds of people walking towards the festival, dressed in costume and talking animatedly to each other, were not joined by Bai Liu.

But that was indeed Bai Liu's voice.

Spades walked against the crowd, darting his eyes around the group while simply tapping on his system panel and dropping an item to check if there were any players around besides him.

[System Alert: No other player's movement track was detected nearby.]

[System Warning: We are in the middle of a league, player Spades, you have not moved within a map for three hours, you will be given a yellow card warning for negative play, please play actively, explore the map, contact the NPCs, complete the main quest as soon as possible!]

Immediately afterwards, the main quest panel pops open in front of Spades, bolded in red and almost jumping up to Spades' eyelashes as if he's afraid he won't see it.

Spades gave an expressionless sideways tsk, folded his five fingers and pushed the system panel away from him, giving it a perfunctory glance.

[System Alert: Player Spades' status is set as the (Servant) of this year's greatest sacrifice of the evil gods]

[Main Quest: Find the largest sacrifice and offer it to the other side to make a wish to the evil god].

[The sacrifice you are looking for is the one that has been tortured for the longest time since the festival's inception and has accumulated the most pain.]

Spades reluctantly read through the main quest again under system compulsion, and the next second after retrieving his panel, he was off searching the crowd for Bai Liu.

A few young girls in summer kimonos whispered, brushing past Spades.

"I heard this year, is the Gosho family going to sacrifice that one?"

"It can't be, can it? How can our evil god festival be carried out properly when the Gosho family treasured that one so much, hid him for so many years, and sacrificed him?"

"I heard that the Gosho family has been instructed in their dreams that this one will not be needed for the Evil God Festival in the future, and that the Evil God-sama will choose a new successor."

As a violent player who never gathers information, Spades walked past the group of talking NPCs as if he hadn't heard them, without looking at them.

A few moments later, some more grown men in bathing suits walked past Spades with laughter.

"Last year my family caught a sacrifice at the Funeral Palace Night Festival made a successful wish at the Sea Shrine and had a pretty good year, and this year we caught another one, so it looks like we should have a pretty good year next year too."

"No matter how well they live, they can't possibly compare to the Gosho family." One man rubbed his chin with a sigh, "Ever since the fire five years ago, when the Bei Yuan family was burned to the ground and the biggest sacrifice fell into the hands of the Gosho family, I knew that Luming County would be under the rule of the Gosho family for the next twenty years."

"Eh, didn't they say that this year the Gosho family is going to sacrifice their biggest offering?" A man next to me poked his head in the air and asked, "Is that true? Isn't it said that this sacrifice is very evil? Wasn't it because the Bei Yuan family was devastated by this sacrifice that they did that?"

"After a fire people died and went mad, leaving only a few demented offspring to live their lives guarding two or three inferior sacrifices that could not be sacrificed at first glance."

"Hush." The man who had first said he had caught the sacrifice had a solemn look on his face, his eyes darted from side to side and his voice lowered, "If you don't want to be punished, you fools will give me less to talk about that incident five or six years ago."

"Five years ago, almost half the village could have been emptied of this offering, a large number of people committed suicide by jumping into the sea and everyone was terrified of the shrine."

The man's eyes were serious as he warned, "Why do you think the shrine has been moved to the sea? Isn't it because people are afraid to be on the same piece of land as the shrine anymore?"

Several men were instantly silenced and gathered with shrunken heads, walking in silence right in front of Spades.

But Spades was still not listening to what these people were saying and continued to walk towards the end of his gaze.

The system almost relented and popped up a panel that

[Please pay attention to the main quest information given by the npc's around you when talking! You have already missed two key quest messages!]

Spades paused: "Why should I pay attention to what they say?"

The system panel shows: [Some of the key information of the game will be given to players in the form of npc conversations, so please be aware of the information around you.]

"Is that so?" Spades face was devoid of any emotion, "I thought the game designer wanted me to follow the path he designed for the game and that's why he gave me the message on purpose like that?"

"I don't like to play the game that way."

Spades drew his whip, his black eyes reflecting the large, gilded ships docked in the harbour, and his tone was cold: "Playing the game like this, what's the difference between me and these set-up npc's?"

"It's not even my game, it's his game."

The system panel popped up and disappeared from Spades' face, who gripped the whip without emotion and walked straight towards the large ship docked in the harbour by the sea.

He walked down to the harbour - the same place where Spades had heard Bai Liu's voice coming from earlier - and with a sweep of his gaze looked around.

On the side of the harbour is a huge wooden platform with a gable structure with raised corners and a wooden stage for the performance of ritual dances, with a thick knotted rope hanging around the wooden frame, from which white paper is hung at regular intervals to ward off evil spirits.

Underneath the high platform there is a wooden board with the words written in red paint: [The place where the dance of the divine priest is performed].

Across the high platform, down the harbour, a large, gilded ship is docked, or perhaps a large ship is not an apt description; it is a stage for a theatrical performance in the shape of a ship.

The stage is made in the shape of a boat and has three tiers, each with many light bulbs on the sides and directly above the top, which light up like daylight at night and shine brightly on the centre stage.

All the curtains are suspended from the sides by loops, so there are layers of heavy crimson velvet curtains on either side and a polished wooden floor in the middle.

Two actors in hari-kari costumes are sitting on two wooden stools opposite each other in the middle of the stage, separated by a piece of watery glass, looking at each other through the watery glass, and next to them stands a male actor wearing a shimmering coat of quicksand.

A small display board was placed directly in front of the stage, and on it was written - "The Evil Gods Festival Play - Act 1".

The chairs are neatly arranged at the bottom of the stage with a group of people watching the play with great interest, the chairs are not full and new people are constantly coming from afar to sit in the chairs and join the audience.

A newcomer to the audience asked those who had been watching for a while.

"What's the play about?"

The veteran audience member sidled up to the new audience member who had just sat down and whispered, "This play is a traditional part of our annual Luming County festival, about the emergence, development and changes of the festival, and we're only in the first act."

Someone inquired curiously, "This first act, what is it about?"

"This first act is a background introduction about the process of the evil gods choosing their heirs to come to earth and preside over the evil gods' festival." The old audience member pointed to the three actors on stage, "The ones sitting on either side of the watery wall are the heirs chosen by the evil gods, and the one next to him in the bright-coloured sarong is our evil god lord."

The two actors sitting on stools on the stage suddenly jerked to their feet and exchanged insults as they fiercely sparred across the watery wall:

"I am the one most appreciated by the Lord of Evil! I am the most exceptional heir!"

"I am the one who is the logical successor to the evil god!"

The old spectator was so amused that he shook his head and explained: "The Lord of Evil created all living things and chose his heirs among them, and finally there were two heirs who met the requirements. --"

The "evil god" on the stage nodded his head with his hands behind his back, looking at the two "heirs" who were competing for the top spot: "You are both excellent, but there is only one successor to me."

"I will erase all your memories and drop you into all the world lines I have created to experience, and you two will be given two different identities, that of [sacrifice] and [squire]."

"The [sacrifice] will be helped by me during the training, while the [squire] will be hindered by me in countless ways." "The evil god" walked around the two heirs in a