Chapter 263: The Ice Age

"The other guest with the whip left for the time being, saying he would give me the death I wanted when he found the heart."

Edmond looked at Bai Liu calmly, peacefully, and smiled as if he had seen it coming: "But I know he won't find it, because it's not his heart, it's yours, and you found where I hid it, didn't you?"

Bai Liu raised the end of his eyebrow as he turned a wooden stool around and sat down, looking up at Edmond across from him with mild interest, "You don't seem to be a simple NPC, how do you know?"

Edmond removes the charmed glasses that hang from his ears, and beneath his eyes, floating with crushed ice, look like they hold endless deep waters.

In a trance, he gently touches Bai Liu with his shrivelled knuckles: "I've seen you, in someone's dreamlike prophecy."

Bai Liu asks, "Who's in the prophecy?"

"[The Judge Against God], a man who betrayed God." Edmond murmured softly with a lazy look in his eyes, "I could take in his memories, so I saw the truth of everything in his memories, the future, and the prophecy about you."

"I was awakened by it, and I could no longer forget what had happened, nor could I go on to death and extinction, because it wasn't real, and I knew I would come back to life."

"In the end, I had to punish myself over and over again by the hands of you players, in order to keep myself present."

"Only God, only God can completely dissolve my sins and dissolve the existence of this game-like evil world."

Edmond looked at Bai Liu with unfocused eyes, his lips quivering, "- I saw in the prophecy that you could do all this."

"It was a prophecy of hope and despair, of a destiny that belongs to you, to God."

Edmond repeated the prophecy he had seen in a distant, holy tone.

"The evil god boasts that there will be people drifting in his shadow.

The man in the shadow is fourteen years old.

Then the evil god gave this man a spine, a heart, and a divine emblem.

It boasts that this person will be its only believer.

The man in the shadow is twenty-four years old.

Then the evil gods fell in the snowy plains and the dead of the faithful drifted into the deep.

The backbone, the heart, the divine emblem all shattered-"

Edmond's eyes look straight at Bai Liu: "The evil gods change, the gods die because of you, because evil lives forever."

As he finished, he arched his back and coughed violently, as if under some irresistible curse, and Edmond hastily drew a bloodstained silk scarf from his front pocket and covered his mouth with a hoarse cough of blood.

Edmond, as if suffering some kind of pain, tilted his head as hard as he could, as if he couldn't breathe, his face full of pain gasping out sharp breaths from his throat.

He held Bai Liu's hand in a death grip and looked at him with bloodshot eyes.

"Only the game that God has trod is real, only the game that God has rejected is destroyable, only the monster that God has killed will never exist again."

"- Bai Liu, the moment one enters this game, this game is real in all dimensions."

"If Spades did completely destroy those corpses, Tavel would no longer exist in any place, at any point in time."

"It will be cracked weak like all the monsters that exist in all the games you've passed before, and completely, forever, utterly disappear from all the worlds that can be perceived, erasing even the traces of having existed."

"It is not a monster without weaknesses, my son, and the death you have given is its only weakness."

Edmond's face turned a sort of suffocating pallor, his voice was so thin as to be almost inaudible, his eyes filled with tears, as if an invisible hand had clamped a fierce grip on his throat, preventing him from revealing the prophecy to Bai Liu: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

"I know it is important to you, but my son, no one can escape his fate, neither can God."

"The price to be paid for defying fate is more than you can imagine."

The moment Edmond released his grip on Bai Liu's hand, the grip that seemed to be around his throat also released.

He slid off the wooden stool, staggered to pick himself up, gasped and coughed weakly, and faltered as he pulled a flat tin bottle of vodka from his fanny pack and tilted his head back to take two quick swigs before he could barely catch his breath.

Bai Liu's face was devoid of emotion, his hands still resting on the table in Edmond's firm grip, his dark eyes unmoving as he looked across the table at Edmond.

"Since there is a price for disobeying fate, it is nothing more than a trade."

Edmond looked back at him with cheeks soundly red: "It was indeed a bargain, but it was too high a price to pay, and the god who bargained with us for our fate was a man of too much greed for anyone to be able to redeem himself from his hand."

Bai Liu said calmly, "Since we can't trade, let's kill him and make someone else a god."

When he had finished, he pushed away from the table and rose as naturally as if he had heard nothing, and Edmond shook his head and waved his hand, "I know what you're here for - the fuel is at the back of the house, so you can all take it."

He took a sip of the spirits and muttered, "-just save a barrel for me, I'll use it to get burned."

"Everything ...... is almost over."

Bai Liu leaves without a pause.

The group took the fuel and headed back - Edmond seemed to have known they were coming back and even strapped the fuel to the sleds, so there was no need to call Tang Erda to fly a helicopter over to pull the load.

Things went incredibly well, but on the way back everyone was silent and the atmosphere was inexplicably gloomy.

Mu Sicheng wanted to ask what the prophecy was all about, but the overwhelmingly difficult look on Liu Jiayi's face stopped him from asking.

Bai Liu handed over the fuel to Tang Erda with an air of normalcy, returned to the helicopter to record the data, sent the other three to the tent to warm up, and then prepared for Tang Erda's turn later.

He had everything in place without a hitch, but instead of getting into the tent to warm up as Bai Liu had hoped, Liu Jiayi climbed into the helicopter.

She was shivering with cold, and her grey eyes were red from the wind, and she spoke with a voice that was hoarse after trying to hold back: "Bai Liu, what do you want?"

Bai Liu is sitting in the driver's seat and doesn't turn around to answer her question - a rare occurrence.

The guy seems authoritarian, but ever since Liu Jiayi Rose spoke to him, Bai Liu has been asking for everyone's opinion before making a decision.

Bai Liu is not a very authoritarian tactician, but rather a rare soft-spoken type who never shies away from talking to his players about their problems.

If Liu Jiayi's hesitation was due to a stylistic inconsistency with Bai Liu, it was an inappropriate challenge.

But Bai Liu's silence confirmed what Liu Jiayi had just suspected.

Bai Liu ...... is really going to do something out of the ordinary.

Liu Jiayi asked again, " Bai Liu, do you dare to look me in the eye and tell me what was going through your mind when Edmond told you that Tavel would disappear?"

Bai Liu still didn't turn around, but this time he spoke up: "I'm trying to figure out how to beat Spades."

"On top of not destroying Tavel's heart, yes?!" Liu Jiayi's voice was almost a little shrill.

She tried to stay calm, " Bai Liu, wake up, Spades has already played out the [true end] line, most of Tavel's corpses have been destroyed by him, you have to destroy the heart if you want to pass the game."

"Take a step back even if you can beat Spades and force him out of the game, but you have to protect Tavel from destruction and only prevent this game from ending, then you have to forever-"

"- to stay with this heart in this snowfield forever." Bai Liu turned his head as he added the second half of the sentence in a flat tone, "As long as there is one player trapped in the game, the game will never end, the game's ending cannot be loaded into reality, time just stands still, and Tavel can always exist even if there is only one heart."

Liu Jiayi tears like rain: "Fuck your father, you're crazy! You'll freeze to death in here!"

Her voice was shaking, " Bai Liu, the system shop and warehouse in the game pool are closed and each game cannot be put into the game pool for reincarnation until it ends, if you stay here and we are forced out of the game by you, no one can ever find you again - even you use soul notes there is no way to make contact with us."

"You will stay here alone, run out of supplies here bit by bit, and then starve and freeze to death alive."

If Bai Liu was going to stay here, Liu Jiayi could have guessed what this guy was going to do next - he would have forced them out!

Bai Liu did not deny what Liu Jiayi guessed, instead he looked at her with a smile, "Nor will I. I can eat the flesh of monsters, become a monster, and survive ......"

Before he could finish his sentence, Liu Jiayi came forward with his head down and raised his hand to slap him hard.

Bai Liu deflected by the blow.

"You're a beast, Bai Liu." Liu Jiayi raised her head slightly, her eyes hid under her goggles, grey and hazy, drops of tears falling, her cheeks bright red from crying, but her voice still malicious, "You have to tell me what the hell happened to you, don't you?"

--Knowing what Bai Liu was going to do, knowing that this guy did everything the way he did, that he was determined and unstoppable, knowing that she could guess what he was going to do-

But she couldn't stop it, Bai Liu. The son of a bitch always found a thousand ways to get what he wanted, so she had to guess and then watch as the guy went as far as she expected him to.

Liu Jiayi couldn't hold back her tears any longer as she gritted her teeth and cursed, "Bai Liu, you're a real piece of work, I'm blind to be on your team."

Bai Liu lowered her eyes, a small five-finger mark on her face, "I'm sorry."

Liu Jiayi turned his head away and sniffled.

Since joining the team, Bai Liu has never said sorry to anyone.

This man said sorry to her twice, but he didn't change even after he said it, and when everything comes up he still only cares about others and not himself.

Who wants him to care! He just doesn't know, doesn't know...

Liu Jiayi's mind was on fire again and he wanted to slap Bai Liu again.

But in the end Liu Jiayi just sat back down wearily, huddled in the seat that was too wide for her, wrapped her arms in a cold hug and shrunk herself into a ball, asking softly in a disoriented voice, "Is that wandering NPC called Tavel really that important to you?"

Bai Liu looks out of the helicopter.

The snow and wind outside the window have stopped, and the rare Antarctic daylight that pours over the snowy surface refracts through the glass, reflecting a hazy, pale white light on Bai Liu's face.

He was actually smiling at this time, reflecting in the clear light shining in the snow, with a bit of melting snow-like tenderness.

"Yes." Bai Liu turned his head to Liu Jiayi, his voice as soft as it had ever been.

Bai Liu's brow arched lightly and he repeated, "Yes."

"He's very, very important."