Chapter 315: The Game Pool

Liao Ke asks, "You're feeling sorry for Bai Liu, but you weren't really sorry, were you?"

The stethoscope hmmed.

Liao Ke bowed her head and wrote, "You empathise with Bai Liu."

The stethoscope asks, "What is empathy?"

"Empathy is when the two of you have similar experiences or the other person has a very different and special meaning to you, causing the other person's emotions to be experienced empathetically by you." Liao Ke writes in her notepad, " Spades, do you know why you are upset by Bai Liu's sadness?"

The stethoscope replied honestly, "I don't know."

"You actually lack the basis for empathy, your experience is so empty and white that it causes you to be completely unable to imagine what another person would feel in that scenario from something you've experienced yourself."

Liao Ke explains, "Most empathy is based on mutual understanding, but that doesn't hold true for you and Bai Liu either, you don't know Bai Liu, or you don't know anyone, you're not even Buming about the mechanisms of human emotion generation."

"So it's a strange thing to have empathy in you." Liao Ke looked up, "Between what I know about you, I think the only explanation is-"

"You're instinctively feeling Bai Liu's emotions."

"But in contrast, although you feel it, you don't have the ability to process such complex feelings." Liao Ke smiled, "To use an analogy, if Bai Liu's feelings were some kind of special data, and you were a computer, the influx of such data would cause you to react in a very strange way if you didn't have the ability to handle such special data."

The stethoscope asks, "What's the response?"

"In order to process this special data, you also keep producing special data in response to the other person." Liao Ke smiles warmly, "Sometimes people fall in love with people who love them and hate people who hate them, it's a kind of human emotional feedback, you can feel the other person's emotions, and accordingly, you produce emotions to deal with them."

" Bai Liu is feeling sorry for you, so you will feel sorry for Bai Liu too."

Liao Ke continues, "But the root of this empathy needs to be found together, that is, Spades, of all the people around you, why did your instinct, or subconscious mind, pick Bai Liu over others to feel each other's emotions?"

The stethoscope seemed to be thinking, sagging slightly:" Bai Liu ...... is not like the others."

"How is it different from others?" Liao Ke's voice is soft, "This may be a difficult question for Spades to answer, so let's explore why Bai Liu is different by giving examples of the progressive relationships around you, Spades."

"Like strangers in the play pool, how are they different to Bai Liu for you and why don't you choose to empathise with them?"

The stethoscope was silent for a long time: "These people fear me."

Liao Ke nodded with seeming understanding: "Because these people fear you, there is a natural barrier of empathy between you, they harbour malice towards you, so you will block each other out accordingly."

"In fact, normally, if Spades were a human being raised in a normal environment, the first reaction to being feared by a mass crowd would also be to be infected with subconscious fear and disgust of oneself, thus aligning oneself with the perceptions of other humans and seeking a sense of spiritual identity to avoid isolating oneself from the group."

"People are pack animals and instinctively avoid solitude, but that's not the case with Spades."

Liao Ke looks over at the Reverse God: "Spades must have been in a highly exclusive environment, he's used to it, so when he's massively feared, he just feels normal and ignores it, rather than seeking approval in the people who fear him."

"I would like to ask you Reverse God, do you know the circumstances of Spades' birth?"

The Reverse God silently clasped his hands against the tip of his nose and paused for a moment before speaking, " This guy Spades ...... is from within that single player login system in the small town of Siren."

" Tavel, the last evil god, became close friends with a human and drifted to the realistic map of the small town of Siren after being forced to sleep and fall."

"From that point on, the New Evil God, in order to punish Tavel, had it drift from game to game in a kind of slumbering state, being beaten by players as a godly wandering NPC, and also cut up and made into all sorts of evil origins to create copies of designed games."

"In order to be able to go back to that human again, Tavel returned to the town of Siren, where he had drifted into a copy of the game in the first place, and cut open his spirit and flesh there while the new evil god diverted his attention to finding an heir."

" Tavel allowed his soul to be trapped in the game to suffer for eternity while his physical body morphed into a human form, blending in when a group of newcomers logged in, eventually logging in from a dead player's small TV."

Liao Ke enlightened: "Is this the Spades that we were talking about when we said that the newcomer single-player copy had an extra small TV and was blocked from seeing the contents?"

The Reverse God hmmed, " Spades was born from Tavel's mermaid body, and the game was actually almost through when he was born, even though the players and main npc's were dead."

"That is to say, the inhabitants of the small town of Siren have basically regained their normal consciousness, are normal human beings, and know that their tragedy was caused by the mermaid, or Tavel, that was caught in the first place, which makes them very fearful and repulsed by the Spades that were born out of Tavel's shell."

"...... The townspeople tried many ways to kill Spades, fire, knives, but because this Spades guy's resistance was so high, they couldn't hurt him and he didn't feel any pain."

The Reverse God took a deep breath:" Spades did not resist from the beginning to the end, or rather, he simply did not understand what was happening and just calmly allowed the group of townspeople to dispose of him."

"But because the townspeople have been unable to kill Spades, extreme fear has driven the group mad."

"They lined up in front of the Spades, looking twisted and mad, shouting you're a monster, and then slit their throats en masse."

"Then later, Spades went through the bodies of these people, found the dead player's body inside, took his system coin and logged into the game covered in blood."

Liao Ke nodded understandingly and turned to Spades: " Spades, why don't you choose your teammates as the object of your empathy? Your teammates don't fear you."

The stethoscope bowed its head as if in serious thought, then replied, "They have no special data on me."

Liao Ke reacted and smiled, "You're using my earlier analogy right? The feelings towards you are data, but the feelings of your teammates towards you are not strong enough for you to produce special data in return."

"That's normal." Liao Ke pondered, "It's like strangers in normal human society, there's a sense of distance, but your teammates should feel a bit more for you than strangers, you should be able to feel it a bit, and you've been with them for so much longer than Bai Liu, so why can't you give back to your teammates, instead of Bai Liu? Liu?"

The stethoscope was quiet for a moment this time: "Because ...... the first time I saw Bai Liu, he smiled at me."

"I felt like he wanted me to hug him."

"I feel like he doesn't want me to go and wants to stay with me forever."

"Others don't do that, they don't fear me but they don't want to embrace me and be with me forever either."

"Only Bai Liu would produce this special data on me."

Both Liao Ke and the Reverse God were quiet for a moment before Liao Ke continued, " This particular data that Bai Liu gave you is different from what other people, such as your teammates, give you, isn't it?"

"Hmm." The stethoscope answered quickly.

Liao Ke continued, "Can you compare this particular data generated by Bai Liu with anything that gives you a feeling?"

The stethoscope paused:" Bai Liu held my wrist the first time he saw me."

"It's warm."

Liao Ke looked down and continued writing on her notepad before looking up at the Reverse God, "I'm done asking, I'm sure I don't have to tell you what Spades' psychological problems are, do I?"

The Reverse God held his forehead and let out a long, helpless sigh, "Although I guessed it when I was in the game, it was still a bit ...... when I really confirmed it"

Liao Ke smiled as he stood up and loosened the restraining straps that were helping Spades, then turned and patted the Reverse God on the shoulder, "It's complicated isn't it? I felt the same way when my youngest daughter first told me about her crush."

"On the one hand, I'm glad she's grown up and has someone she likes." Liao Ke turns to Spades with a smile in her eyes, "On the other hand, she's worried that this silly girl is falling for someone bad."

"But the good news is it's easy for you to get to know each other." Liao Ke suddenly reached out and took hold of the Reverse God's small arm and yanked it outward, "I see I'm not only going to counsel Spades, I'm going to counsel you as well."

The Reverse God was caught off guard and hissed as he was pulled out by Liao Ke, his hands covered in bloodied whip marks.

Liao Ke looked up at the Reverse God, "You can fool Bai Yi by saying you're not injured, but you can't fool me, a professional. Why did you bring the wounds out with you?"

The Reverse God gave a start, then drew back his hand and said with a slight grumble, "What could have happened? Spades, the bastard, suddenly went crazy when he was about to log out of the game and hit me with a broken whip, so I was caught off guard and took the wound out of the game without reacting."

Liao Ke looked steadily at the Reverse God: "The wound you have is the same as the one on Spades, both with barbs, and Spades' whips don't look like that."

The Reverse God sat on the back of the sofa, his head bowed without a word, and was quiet for a long, long time.

The blood seeping from his body from the whip marks slammed onto the floor drop by drop.