Chapter 148: The Dangerous Heresy Treatment Authority

Soon afterwards, it was time for the rich people to come to the church to perform some very strange rituals.

Normally, the dean would call him to church a day in advance and then that day he was not to go back to his normal sleeping quarters to sleep, he slept in church.

Bai Liu tossed and turned, clutching the copy he had been given of The Long, Thin, Ghostly Book of Murder, and eventually he got up, stepping carefully into his shoes and headed for the church.

The church was locked by the dean, but Bai Liu had been in that church long enough to know some of the little ways to sneak into it, such as a small broken window blocked by a curtain.

Bai Liu climbed through a window into the church, using the moonlight to search the pews for signs of another man, whom Bai Liu eventually found behind the statue.

The moment he saw him, Bai Liu's face was devoid of emotion.

He was curled up in a bathtub slightly smaller than he was long, full of blood, his almost transparent white face half-soaked in it, unable to feel his breath, his eyelashes even frosted with white, his hands, feet and forehead covered with stitches that were still oozing blood.

" Xie Ta ." Bai Liu called his name for the first time.

Xie Ta woke up slowly in the bathtub, he opened his eyes and saw Bai Liu, he seemed to reach out his hand to touch Bai Liu, but something in the bathtub squirmed, a thorny vine full of mushrooms came out of the blood, wrapped around Xie Ta's neck and wrists and ankles, and confined him to the bloody baptismal pool a second before Xie Ta's fingertips touched Bai Liu. The second Xie Ta's fingertips touched Bai Liu, he was wrapped in a bloody baptismal pool.

"What are you doing? " Bai Liu heard his voice calmly ask.

Xie Ta says: "Baptism, which is the ritual before the blood is drawn. "

"Those people are here to draw your blood, right? They needed your blood to save them. " Bai Liu continued calmly, "You're going to die after all that blood, aren't you? "

"It won't. " Xie Ta looks at Bai Liu, "I'm a monster, so I won't die. "

Xie Ta exhales a white breath as he speaks - a good indication of how cold his body temperature is right now.

"So you're sleeping here, are you cold? " Bai Liu asks.

Xie Ta shakes her head honestly: "I can't feel it. "

Bai Liu's warm body heat travels far and wide through the blood to Xie Ta, who blinks slowly, the frost on his eyelashes melting between Bai Liu's breaths.

He could feel the cold now, because Bai Liu was so warm.

Then Bai Liu opened the book that Xie Ta had given him as if nothing had happened, and he came over with it, asking him, "Want to read it together?"

They slept together in the blood-soaked baptismal font, looking down at the idol overlooking them, chatting aimlessly and in a hundred different ways.

"Does it mean anything to be baptized?"

"Baptism means the blessing of God for His most beloved, newborn believers."

"You call this a blessing?"

"...... to their own blessings, I guess."

"You believe in this a lot? You don't really think there's a God, do you?"

"Hmm."

......

Bai Liu curled up in Xie Ta's cold arms and fell into a deep sleep, and when he woke up the next day he was in his own bed with no blood on his body.

Xie Ta returned in the afternoon, paler than before.

This time the needle holes spread to his face and on the backs of his hands and feet were shocking, bruises left by repeated blood draws.

Bai Liu was silent as he wrapped the bandages he had stolen from the infirmary around the still bleeding stitches.

And Xie Ta looked at him quietly and suddenly said, "This bandage is removed and your [long, skinny ghostly shadow] doll will have a face."

Bai Liu's lips pursed into a straight line.

The rich people who draw blood come more and more frequently, the moments when Xie Ta appears become less and less frequent, and even when they do, the smoky smell of blood and mushrooms from Xie Ta can be overwhelming.

When Xie Ta appears, the children stay away from it and keep fanning their hands in disgust at the tip of their noses, as if trying to get rid of the strange smell along with Xie Ta.

Xie Ta seems to know that he doesn't smell good, and he rarely appears in front of Bai Liu anymore, only watching him from afar.

When he didn't want to be in contact with people, it was as if he didn't exist and no one could find him, including Bai Liu.

Bai Liu started to make contact with adults on the outside, doing things that were suitable for children, grey areas, and he was able to make a lot of money with this.

With enough money and the ability to prepare himself, he was sure to take Xie Ta off the trail of the investors and run away from the orphanage - albeit with a very immature and naive plan.

A vague sense of unease and urgency makes Bai Liu realise that if Xie Ta does not leave, there is a good chance that he will never leave again.

But Bai Liu's story was revealed anyway.

The child who had denounced Bai Liu cowered behind the dean, his face flinched and excited, and he swallowed several times before he raised his hand tremulously and pointed to Bai Liu, whose face was emotionless: "I saw him doing ...... some strange deal with that adult! He's helping some grown-ups do bad things! I saw it! Those adults are paying him back!"

"Did you do this! Bai six!" The dean looked at him sternly.

Bai Liu did not say anything in denial, he just stared indifferently away from the group at Xie Ta, sitting in the middle of the crowd, and was silent.

He didn't didn't explain exactly what he had done - because there was no point.

These people didn't care what he had actually done, nor would they have asked too much about what he had done and pronounced him guilty.

Of course what he did wasn't really a good thing, that's all.

The teachers were just scared of him - of him, the weird kid who hung out with Xie Ta all day, who became more and more creepy, who liked to read gory stories and who always looked at other people with the same eyes as if they were slaughtering animals.

So of course, he was punished, but Bai Liu was in the mood to wander off and judge the measures these teachers were using to punish people - and that was all there was to it, not for the first time.

But as the teacher came over and grabbed Bai Liu's arm, trying to drag him away, Xie Ta suddenly staggered to his feet with one hand on the back of his chair.

His face and tone were the same flat as they had been for ten thousand years: "I made him do it."

Now these teachers have completely exploded.

More frightened than Bai Liu, they are of course the reticent Xie Ta, who is surrounded by them, but with a cautious one-metre gap between them, creating a vacuum.

The dean interrogated him cautiously, fearfully, condescendingly, "Why did you let Bai six do such a thing?"

There was no doubt that Xie Ta had not done it, and the verdict was as clear and definitive as the previous process of finding Bai Liu guilty.

Because he's a monster, Bai six is a bad kid who hangs out with monsters and takes whatever they do for granted.

Xie Ta glanced slightly sideways at Bai Liu, who had been tugged and lifted up by the teachers. He raised the corner of his mouth abruptly, very, very lightly, and for a second Xie Ta smiled, Bai Liu thought his silver-blue eyes must have been soft and beautifully curved, but unfortunately they were blocked by his hair and he couldn't see them.

Xie Ta confesses in the same soft tone that he used when he sent the book to Bai Liu.

He said, "Because I wanted to contact someone outside and run out with Bai six."

"How dare you run out of here!!!" The Dean screamed hysterically, "Do you know how much trouble you'll get us into if you run out! It's already in the second round of screening! Those investors won't pay without your blood!"

The children scattered in panic, they were frightened and chattered about.

"Blood?! What blood! All that blood from his pinholes?!"

"He really is a monster, isn't he!"

The dean subconsciously covered her mouth when she realised she had blurted out, and the next moment she looked viciously at Xie Ta, whose slender wrist she was tugging towards the church.

"You've been given everything by this institution and you're trying to escape!" The mother's anger overcame her fear and she cruelly sentenced Xie Ta to the punishment she would have to endure, "I think we've given you too many privileges, you deserve some education and I'm going to have you baptised in church tonight!"

With that, she dragged Xie Ta by the wrist and walked away.

Bai Liu struggles to get past the noise of children and teachers as he struggles to chase through the crowd, reaching out to grab Xie Ta, who is being led away from him: "Xie Ta!"

Xie Ta looks back at him, the wind blowing the curls from his forehead, revealing those silvery blue eyes that look as beautiful as a lake after the snow has melted.

Bai Liu stared blankly at Xie Ta's silvery blue eyes, which were not sad at all, just calm, as if with a very contented feeling, and which reflected him wholeheartedly.

Xie Ta also reached out to him and took the hand that Bai Liu had tried to grab from under the crowd and interlocked his fingers.

Cold and warm to the touch, you can feel those bulging pinhole scars on the back of your hand.

" Bai six ." He smiled very lightly and held Bai Liu's hand tightly, "Don't be afraid, I'm a monster, I won't die."

"Let go!" The dean brutally ripped away their clasped hands.

Bai Liu gritted his teeth and didn't want to let go, but Xie Ta quietly let go of his hand and the grip was broken at once.

Xie Ta shook his head at Bai Liu, told him not to come after him, and turned to walk with the dean to the church, which he had known for a long time.

Bai Liu, never a very obedient child, sneaked, carefully, through the broken window covered by a curtain a few minutes after the dean had led Xie Ta through, and Bai Liu hid behind the curtain, curling himself into a small ball and peeking over the edge at Xie Ta and the dean standing beneath the statue.

Xie Ta, dressed in pure white and holding a waving white candle in his hands, stands barefoot in front of the statue, his head tilted back and his eyes closed as he recites the prayer in a slow and unhurried manner.

The dean was standing next to Xie Ta, holding a whip in his hand and looking at him coldly.

After reciting the prayer, the abbot came forward and gazed at him, "Next is baptism, but today, because you have had thoughts of betraying God and running away, today's baptism must be thorough and complete, cleansing your body of all evil and filth!"

Xie Ta lowered her eyelashes, "It won't wash."

"I am the evil itself that cannot be squared away." He whispered.

The dean sank deeper and deeper after a moment's stare.

She snatched the candle from Xie Ta's hand and pushed him into the baptismal pool, holding it up with a cruel, triumphant grin, as if she had finally defeated some demon she had feared for a long, long time, with a sense of post-apocalyptic madness.

The dean looked with relief at Xie Ta, who was submerged in a wave of water in the north, and said coldly as she raised the candle and placed it flat on the baptismal pool, "You will not get up until the candle has burned out, do you understand?"

Drop by drop, the wax tears fall into the water and halo into small white flowers, like some kind of ritual flower, suspended one by one above Xie Ta, who lies under the water with her eyes closed.

This baptismal font was like a coffin too small for him, firmly, twistedly binding him.

Before anyone was aware of it, the idol that was facing the baptismal font moved and the expression on the face of the pure white marble statue of the god turned into a very human accusation, as if accusing the child in the baptismal font why he had misbehaved and tried to escape from the place of divine refuge.

[You are an evil thing, a fallen god, you cannot leave the confines of God, and you should not be moved to think of escaping because of a child under your spell]

The idol's tone of condemnation was cold: [Tavel, you know that the boy was compelled by your evil and that he is not the new believer you seek]

Tavel's eyelids twitched under the water.

[No, I don't think of him as my new convert]

The idol questioned coldly: [And what do you take the boy for? He has seen your eyes, he is not far from madness]

[You should kill him or he'll turn into a monster as evil as you and destroy the world, you know, whatever you've contaminated will lead to that.]

Tavel's fingers folded over his chest moved slightly: [I took him ...... as ...... I want to read with him forever]

But you know that no, Tavel, kill him, kill the child you have defiled! God commanded.

[I can't do it] Tavel calmly refused, [You kill me, I can't kill him].

The idol's expression became angry: [...... Being banished here and still daring to disobey the gods, you should indeed be punished by being put to sleep forever!

It opened its hand right above Tavel's, and the water at the bottom of the baptismal pool still became heavy and slimy and cold, as if flowing ice was running through Tavel's body as a single spike, which made him wrinkle his eyebrows for a moment, but he soon released them again.

Under the water, Xie Ta curled up and held Bai Liu's hand for a moment, his fluttering eyelids stopped moving.

The warmth of Bai Liu's palm still lingered in his hand, but it faded away under the cold water and stopped along with his breathing.

His clenched fingers, trying to retain the warmth, slowly loosened and Xie Ta's body levitated under the water.

"Thank you, Xie Ta ?!" The dean took two panicked steps backwards and then forward to touch Xie Ta's nostrils again, she dropped the candle she was holding in shock and in her panicked steps stepped on it to extinguish the flame and the only light left in the church.

"It's over ......" Dean dropped to the ground in a trance, she tugged at her hair frantically and muttered to herself incredulously, "Isn't he a monster?! He's still alive after all that blood? He's been baptized so many times without dying, why is he drowning this time! ""

"It's only been a few minutes, huh?! The candle hasn't even burned out! " The look on the dean's face became more frightened as she kept shaking her head as if Xie Ta would come to life if she didn't admit it, "It can't be, it can't be! It can't be! "

"What am I going to do when he's dead?! " Dean broke down and fell to his knees in front of the baptismal font.

She could not imagine that even the death of this child would bring her such mortal fear.

Dean looked down in a daze at Xie Ta's flawless face in the baptismal pool and muttered, "...... If I drown Xie Ta myself, the pack will drain my blood, I must find another child to be his replacement! "

Hidden behind the curtains, Bai Liu's face was emotionless as he watched the Dean's hysterical rant.

There was a strange steadfastness that made Bai Liu watch quietly - Xie Ta had said he was a monster, that he couldn't die, that he must be playing dead to fool the stupid dean.

Wait, when the dean had gone, Bai Liu would walk up to him and Xie Ta would rise from the baptismal font, smile at him in the same way he rarely did, and perhaps lift his forehead hair, which was already wet, and look at him intently with those silvery blue eyes, asking him why he had come.

The association of these scenes makes Bai Liu's heart beat slightly faster.

Not daring to let the investors know that she had killed Xie Ta, the dean carried her body out of the baptismal font, sneaked it out the back door of the church, tied stones to Xie Ta's hands and feet, and threw it into a small lake in the barren grass at the back of the church - a lake that connected to a river outside The lake was connected to a river outside.

After a few circulations, Xie Ta's body will flow with the lake into the river, and then with the river into the sea.

But Bai Liu would not let Xie Ta go that far.

Bai Liu Liu, who had silently followed the body-destroying dean all the way, didn't make a sound; the dean looked like he was going crazy already, and if he showed up now, it didn't look like the hysterical dean would mind disposing of one more child's body.

Only after she had made a hasty escape did Bai Liu emerge, burying his face in a small lake full of bright green duckweed and diving under the water to reach Xie Ta, who was sinking with the sediment.

The lake is deep, the duckweed is green and Xie Ta is sinking fast.

The black silt, like some kind of creature that devours human corpses, soon crawls over Xie Ta's body, greedily trying to drag him into hell.

But Bai Liu resisted the urge to choke on the filthy lake water pouring into his mouth, nose and ears, and he gritted his teeth and grasped Xie Ta, who was engulfed in mud and sand with only one hand, and pulled out with all his strength until he had used up the last breath of air in his lungs and Bai Liu felt his brain burning up from the lack of oxygen.

But he finally pulled Xie Ta out, and Bai Liu ripped the heavy rocks and ropes from Xie Ta's body and carried him upstream.

When he got to shore, Bai Liu was panting heavily with his hands propped back on the ground and his head tilted up to look at the starless sky, his face and eyelids dripping wet, and the cicadas chirping in the grass around him, making for a very messy scene.

But Bai Liu suddenly grunted with pleasure for some reason, and he kicked Xie Ta, whose eyes were quietly closed and who was lying on the ground without waking up, and asked him, "How do you know that I am taking you away? What if I work for those adults and earn money just to spend it on myself? "

Bai Liu squints at Xie Ta with a small, uncomfortable, and slightly diffident smile on his face: "Aren't you being a little self-conscious, Xie Ta."

Xie Ta's face is stained with dampness and he is still awake. Bai Liu sits up and then returns to a crouching position, looking down at the motionless Xie Ta and then reaching out to lift the hair that is soaked to his forehead.

This one is really beautiful.

Bai Liu's fingertips slid from Xie Ta's long, watery eyelashes, all the way down, over the tip of his straight nose, and finally onto his incredibly white lips and the most beautiful, silvery-blue eyes that seemed to have been shown only to him and only to him.

"Xie Ta." Bai Liu's voice was soft as he bent sideways and pressed his ear against Xie Ta's chest, his eyes straight and open, "If you don't wake up, I'm going to give you artificial respiration and I'll bite you to death."

--There was no heartbeat, no breathing, no body temperature, no sign that Xie Ta would wake up.

"I mean it." Bai Liu buries his head in Xie Ta's arms, his fists gradually clenching, so tightly that his fingertips turn white.

Bai Liu could smell the heavy, familiar scent of blood on this man mixed with the smell of the water underneath, a scent of approaching death.

Bai Liu hugged Xie Ta's shoulders harder and harder, tightening his arms around Xie Ta as the water dripping from their bodies fused together.

"I don't think you're making a fool of yourself, either." Bai Liu whispers as he rests his head on Xie Ta's shoulder.

His forehead rests against Xie Ta's heart and he blinks slowly with his head down, a drop of water dripping from his floating eyelashes.

Xie Ta's head rested on Bai Liu's shoulder without any strength, he did not answer Bai Liu's drawing and his eyes remained open, only the cold water from his hair fell down into Bai Liu's lapel, reminding him that he was still there.

Bai Liu leans on Xie Ta's shoulder, his voice so quiet that it doesn't rise or fall at all.

"Didn't you say you were a monster? Come alive like a monster and I'll admit you're a monster."

"You're making me feel so horrible right now, Xie Ta ."

A drop of water slips from Xie Ta's eyelashes like a tear on the back of Bai Liu's hand.