Chapter 311: The Borderlands of the Dense Forest

"Xie Ta." Bai Liu lay on his back on the ground, he looked at Tavel, who had his head hanging over him with a rare expression bordering on unresponsiveness, his breathing completely disordered but his tone still calm, "What are you doing? Let go of me."

There was no emotion in Tavel's silver-blue eyes as he wrapped his whip around Bai Liu's hands, holding them down with one hand, and looked down at him intently.

" Bai Liu, there is a price to pay for wishing upon an evil god."

"You asked for my affection, companionship, heart and love from the start, to be with you all the time." Tavel's long hair snaked and trailed, mingling with Bai Liu's, and he looked straight at Bai Liu, "And in return, you will give me the same thing."

The pupils of Tavel's eyes reflect Bai Liu's shadow in its entirety.

"You are my only believer."

"Your feelings, heart, love, pain and faith can only be my offerings, not to any other evil god."

The lake, completely red with fuel, pours more and more gleefully into Tavel's back, and a reverse cross appears faintly in his silver-blue eyes, on which Bai Liu is reflected, as if imprisoned in Tavel's eyes by the reverse cross.

[System Warning: Player Spades' monster book identity "The Fallen Old Evil" desire is completely out of control, spirit level is bouncing at a high rate ......]

Tavel's hand slipped into the hem of Bai Liu's loose shirt, the cold touch of his fingertips sliding up the side of his waist in a way that seemed like a touch, finally reaching out and curling his fingers to rest at his heart.

"...... Is your heart beating fast because you are afraid of me now?"

Bai Liu covered her eyes with her bound hands, a small gasp in her voice: "- no."

"I can sense you're afraid." Tavel's voice suddenly lowered and Bai Liu could feel the other man leaning close to him, "An evil god on the verge of becoming a complete monster that won't let you go, scary, isn't it?"

"But even then-" Tavel took Bai Liu's wrist and jerked Bai Liu's arm away from covering his eyes, calmly and forcibly holding Bai Liu in place so that Bai Liu looked directly at him. "And I won't allow you to run from me."

"You have lost the right to fear me from the moment you yourself had to look me straight in the eye."

Bai Liu's pure black eyes reflect Tavel's face and tumbling silver-blue curls in slow motion.

The blackness on the bone spike-filled whip paused for a moment and exploded upwards in a complete burst.

Bai Liu drew his whip and instantly released the restraint. The whip wrapped around Tavel's arm and swung to the side, throwing Tavel off his body.

Tavel looked at Bai Liu, who had fled from underneath him, his eyes emptying as the lake behind him poured into his back like a boiling frenzy.

He looks up at Bai Liu, who is standing at the other end of the room.

"- Faith in me, abandoned by you is it?"

"I don't have faith in you anymore, Xie Ta." Bai Liu gripped the whip that dangled at his side, only one spot on it was pure white anymore, and he spoke in a very calm tone.

"And between us, what is the relationship?" Tavel asked Bai Liu.

Bai Liu gazes silently at Tavel, his pure black eyes reflecting the red paint of the lake, refracting a vague red, the only remaining white spot on the whip swallowed to an edge.

"And the other relationships between us, with you unable to exist as an individual beside me, unable to retain even your memory, your soul, don't you think it would be too unfair for me to explore any relationship between us, right now?"

"So I've thought about it and I don't really see the need to explore it."

Bai Liu arched her eyebrows and smiled crookedly, "So now, there's nothing between us."

With that, Bai Liu swung the whip in his hand.

The whip, full of bone spikes, went straight for Tavel's front.

"Bang-!"

Bai Liu opened Tavel's black whip with his gun, he was half on his knees, his chest heaving violently, his face covered in bruises, his white shirt completely stained with blood, even his voice came out hoarse: " Spades, stop."

Tavel lowered his head in a trance as he saw in his hand the black whip full of bone spikes with blood dripping from it, and in Bai Liu's hand was a silver revolver.

...... and what he had just seen in Bai Liu's hand was this whip full of bone spikes.

Everything around them was in disarray, the lake had disappeared, leaving what had been a lake a large crater, the swampy mud at the bottom exposed and strewn with white bones and an old wooden statue of an evil god leaning out, this one with its head smiling at Tavel.

In the vague blur of messy space, Tavel heard this old wooden sculpture laughing at him in a pitying tone.

[Tavel, is an evil god who falls in love with someone still an evil god?

[The old evil god who was invulnerable is now full of desire for someone, full of feelings, full of weaknesses, full of illusions].

[See, your desire to be a part of humanity is strong enough to hear the oracle I sent down, oh former evil god.

[In your own subconscious delusion, are you so afraid of being abandoned by Bai Liu?

[Tavel, you're just a mere mortal now, too.

[You are only a hair's breadth away from selling your soul to extreme emotions, desires, and delusions, from being human to being a monster].

Tavel looks at Bai Liu in front of him.

Bai Liu looked straight up at him and suddenly charged forward with his gun, shooting him several times in the head with a wry smile, "- By sacrificing you, the old evil god, I can fully become the heir to the new evil god."

Tavel was knocked down in the mud by the recoil of the gun when a sudden rainstorm fell from the sky, so heavy that it instantly filled the lake again, and vines quickly grew out of the mud beneath the ground and entangled Tavel.

The old wooden carved head of the evil god rolls to the side of Tavel, entangled at the bottom of the lake, with the usual smile on his face.

[What's wrong? You're not fighting back at all, Bai Liu. It's just an illusion. You're not even fighting back?

[You know that this Bai Liu is probably fake, but you dare not resist his attack on you because you are afraid of what if it is true, right?

[Maybe if Bai Liu is really that disgusted with you, hates you, fears you, maybe he'll actually do this to you, right?

[After all, the connection between you two is so thin, just an encounter ten years ago].

The lake shrinks inwards, deepens and reduces in size from a large lake to a pool the size of a weir, the water going from murky to clear with small fish and shrimps constantly swimming and swaying around it.

A rope was tied around Tavel's ankle, tying him to the bottom of the lake, the knot tied very tightly, as if the person tying it was afraid he would be swept away by the water.

Someone jumps into the water and picks up Tavel, a dripping wet-haired Bai Liu, who is twenty-four years old, but the surroundings are clearly the orphanage they were in when they were fourteen, and Bai Liu is wearing the same clothes the orphanage gave him at that time.

"I'm coming to feed you, Xie Ta ." Bai Liu's face went pale and he suddenly smiled, "Once you drink this, it will all be over."

"I will never again let my life be a mess and stay miserable for so long because I met you, a monster to be feared."

Tavel looks over to what Bai Liu is holding - it's a bottle of poison.

The witch's poison.

As Bai Liu brought the poison to Tavel's mouth and looked at him with expectant eyes, Tavel opened his mouth after only a brief pause.

After drinking, Tavel was unceremoniously thrown into the pond again, his eyes half-closed as he sank, sank, sank and touched the bottom of the pool.

The sediment flew away as the bottom of the pool abruptly shifted and inward, turning from a pockmarked stone bottom to polished ceramic as the sinking Tavel's head was violently grabbed by the hair and pulled out of the water.

The pond in front of Tavel has been transformed into a bathtub-like baptismal font, and the setting has been changed from the pond of the orphanage to the interior of the church.

The faint moonlight shines through the glazed windows of the church and casts a beautiful glow on the face of Tavel, who has been taken prisoner. The deity on the baptismal font, originally Jesus on the cross, has been replaced by a reverse cross and a broken wooden sculpture of an old evil god.

The wooden sculpture looks at Tavel, who is caught by the hair, and smiles.

Tavel had just been ripped from the baptismal font when someone grabbed him by the head and forced him to tilt his head back to face the idol, and the sharp, distorted female voice came from behind him, "You monster, what strange things you have done again!"

"I will punish you severely in the sight of God!"

Tavel was once again held down and ripped out again when the sculpture of the gods on the stage was changed again.

Standing on stage with a smile, Bai Liu knelt down on one knee, lowered his eyes, lifted Tavel's hair from his forehead with his gloved hand, cupped Tavel's damp face and whispered, "It hurts, doesn't it?"

"I was at the back of the church, hiding behind the curtains when I saw this scene and it was oh so painful too."

Bai Liu smiles so softly that the moonlight through the window casts a multicoloured halo on his eyelashes.

"-but you, a monster who can't die, probably don't feel a tenth of the pain I feel for you at this time."

A shrill female voice hysterically interrupts their conversation and once again pushes Tavel under the water.

"-- Bai six That weird kid is willing to hang out with you, and most likely not in a good way either!"

Tavel was once again dragged out of the water and the statue above the alter was changed again, the orphanage director drained of blood, his body hung on a cross with a horrified face and knees on the ground, seemingly in penance to them.

The person who pulled Tavel out of the baptismal font was Bai Liu this time.

Bai Liu gently wrapped his hands around Tavel's neck and slowly began to contort them, his nails becoming sharp and black, transforming them into two sharp monkey claws, before gracefully interlocking and falsely gripping Tavel's throat.

The thief's monkey's paw.

"You know what, without you." Bai Liu's claws nestle into Tavel's veins and his tone is soft as if he's whispering, "I'd just have to be an ordinary person who follows his desires wholeheartedly."

"How happy that should be."

The blood that spurted from Tavel's throat flowed into the baptismal font before him, instantly staining everything red as spiky blood-linger vines emerged from the bottom of the red stained baptismal font and wrapped around Tavel's limbs, dragging him down.

Bai Liu stood by indifferently watching Tavel being dragged into the baptismal font, blood dripping from the nails of his hands.

" Xie Ta, the faith you have given me is worthless and just keeps me in constant pain from beginning to end."

"Even so, are you selfish enough to want me to keep believing in you?"

The vines stirred up Tavel's limbs and dragged him deeper into the bottom, the blood around him turning redder and redder, like some kind of red paint seeping into his body.

Tavel was fished out of the lake by some strange-looking natives, hoisted up by vines, fixed to a reverse cross and made into a wooden sculpture, and then surrounded by him, chanting songs in peculiar accents and flanking Bai Liu from the crowd.

With a short, sharp dagger in his hand, Bai Liu smiled as he stepped in front of Tavel, who was tied to a reverse cross, and placed the tip of the dagger against his heart, whispering softly.

" Xie Ta, from the time I met you until now, I was free only for the ten years after your death when I completely forgot about you."

"Without faith in you, without affection for you, without missing you, I'm just a mundane person in the mundane world agonizing over money desires once in a while, how vulgarly happy."

"You claim to want me to be happy, but you never let me go when I enter the game, clinging to me again and again, guarding me at every game, impatient to put the mark of your only believer on me, afraid that I will abandon you, forget you, leave you."

"You kissed me, you seduced me, you influenced me." Bai Liu lifted his eyes, his look softening, "You selfishly let your only devotee fall in love with you, sacrifice his lust and soul to you, and immovably possess his decade-long suffering as a sacrifice."

"Is there any essential difference to me between your vile possessiveness of me and this evil god now?"

Tavel's head was bowed and he gasped slightly, but did not deny anything this Bai Liu had said, droplets of water dripping from his long, drooping eyelashes.

Bai Liu smiled and plunged the dagger into Tavel's heart, the bright red paint dripping out onto the nearly black whip raised in Bai Liu's other hand.

The assassin's dagger.

The only remaining white spot on the whip was blackened little by little by Tavel's blood.

"You see, your blood is all equally evil." Bai Liu's smile deepened, "It all acts as the same contamination to me."

Bai Liu held Tavel's face in his bloodied hands and smiled softly, "Xie Ta, at this point, do the only thing that's good for me before you fade away."

Tavel lifted his head and looked at Bai Liu with a bloodless expression.

Bai Liu The smile on his lips was wide and unmistakable.

"- as a sacrifice to the new evil god, break free from all bondage to become a god for me, and die in the horrible illusion you have created, Xie Ta."

The blackened whip on Bai Liu's hand spreads out its bone spines, a thorny bone whip that climbs and twists around the reverse cross, coiling around Tavel's hands and feet.

Bone spikes pierced the snow-white skin, the tip of the bone whip resting on the part of Tavel's heart and then stabbing hard in.

The blood seeps out and drips onto the whip, the last white spot on the whip disappears and becomes pitch black.

Bai Liu reached out and embraced Tavel, who was wrapped in a bone whip, and he whispered with a smile against Tavel's ear, "- Xie Ta, your death is the most valuable thing to me."

"I like things of value, so I will fall in love with you the moment you die, and then forever pursue and miss the dead you."

"After dying, you are forever loved by me, isn't that what you want?"

"Want to make a deal with me?" Bai Liu smiled. He pressed his hand against Tavel's heart, "Your death in exchange for my love?"

At the sound of [Forever Love], Tavel's heart, which had been inserted at the end of the whip, suddenly beat sharply.

The oracle of the evil god came from afar, smiling.

[So this is what you fear and want the most, Tavel.

[Once you weren't afraid of anything or had any desire at all].

But now your fears and desires are full of Bai Liu, you are afraid that he will abandon you, forget you, that Bai Liu will love someone else, believe in someone else, want to possess his feelings and get his belief.

[You see, once a god has feelings and becomes human, he is full of desire and fear, and that is not far from becoming a monster].

[You know this will happen, and you actually fall in love with a human being who is full of lust and reason, and who will most likely only use you to further degrade for him].

[It was ...... so much fun.]

Tavel's blood dripped from the bone spikes and he blinked slowly, the lustre in his silver-blue eyes fading away.

By the time he opened his eyes the next second, Tavel was in the town's tavern again.

He was surrounded by a jubilant crowd, shouting and screaming, but on closer inspection these men were blue and white, with stitch marks, all corpses.

And Tavel, dressed in a black groom's suit and neatly groomed, looked up to see Bai Liu, standing on stage in a white shirt and suit trousers, holding a bright bouquet of flowers and smiling at him.

The corpses around them grinned hideously and shouted, "Now will the groom please put the ring on the bridegroom and then the bridegroom can kiss the groom."

Bai Liu came down from the podium, holding his bouquet, and walked over to Tavel and pulled a ring in the shape of a bone whip with a ring of thorns around it from the pocket of his suit trousers.

Bai Liu smiled and looked up at Tavel: "After I put the ring on, I will love you forever, let's get married."

Tavel looked at Bai Liu and there was no more light in his silver-blue pupils.

As a child, he and Bai Liu had a casual conversation about marriage.

[Two people bound to each other by love and law, making a promise to be together forever is marriage].

[Bai six, have you thought about who you're going to marry?

Bai six propped up his chin and dozed off in boredom. When he heard Xie Ta ask him, Bai six turned his head and gave a laugh, as if he found it amusing: [No.]

Xie Ta was silent for a long time before continuing to ask: [Why?

[I won't love anyone forever.] Bai Liu gave a very diffident laugh and replied, [Because that would be too worthless.

Xie Ta was quiet for a long, long time. Bai six seemed to notice his abnormality and looked at his expression with amusement, but Xie Ta averted his eyes slightly to avoid meeting Bai six's face.

Bai six leaned back against the bookcase, hugging his chest and smiling meaningfully: [You don't want to marry some woman and start a family, do you?

Xie Ta didn't look him in the eye, but lowered his eyes: [Can't I have the idea of marrying someone?

[You could have.] Bai six arched her eyebrows in a nasty smile, [but that's just a fantasy.

[Because an undead monster like you can't even get on the household register and have someone marry you.]

You'd better be honest and give up your weird ideas and follow me forever. Fourteen-year-old Bai six crouches down and catches Xie Ta's chin and turns it around so that Xie Ta is looking directly at himself.

Bai six smiled wickedly: [Because I'm the only one who will take you in and play games with you, little monster].