Chapter 463: The Evil God Festival - The Boathouse

"It seems you don't want to discuss the whip with me." Seeing that Spades had distanced himself from him, Bai six changed the subject with good grace and he asked with a smile, "So would you like to discuss Bai Liu with me?"

Spades' retreating footsteps stalled and he looked straight at Bai six.

"Perhaps we could sit down and talk?" Bai six raised his hand with a smile, and a stool swivelled out of the dark depths of the stage and into the crook of Spades' knee, Bai six making a polite gesture of invitation to sit.

Spades stared at Bai six, and slowly sat down.

"The last time you saw me, was when you won the championship last year?" Bai six walked unhurriedly behind Spades, his hands resting casually on the back of his chair, his tone smiling, "You told everyone on your winning team not to make a wish on me, to store it with me."

"A very interesting approach."

Bai six looked down at Spades and curled his lips, "But this is the second time we've met, remember when we first met?"

Spades is silent for a moment and speaks, "Siren Small Town."

"Yes, I was the first person you met after you were born from Siren, and I gave you my bone whip." Bai six's eyes were compassionate as he ran his hand across the top of Spades' head, "Do you know why?"

Spades did not answer.

Bai six smiled and said, "Because you are the vessel of the creation I once held most dear."

"Do you know what you were born for?"

Bai six slowly bends down to Spades' ear, he raises his hand and a wall of water appears in front of Spades, rippling and rippling, spreading out in a circle, reflecting a whole new scene.

Behind the watery wall appears Bai Liu, a fourteen year old boy locked in a solitary confinement cell at the Home, cowering in the darkness in a deep sleep, seemingly from the cold or from something else, his eyelids trembling and his limbs curled unconsciously into a ball, looking like a small, insecure animal, his lips gently opening and closing.

[Xie Ta].

This little creature murmured the name softly in its sleep.

Spades' eyes flickered as Bai six explained softly, "This is fourteen-year-old Bai Liu."

The scene on the watery wall keeps changing, and a bandaged face appears, along with a huge, long, thin, ghostly doll that clumsily raises its hands and shakes them from side to side in some laughter-inducing gesture.

"Are you sure you won't consider playing dolls for a living when you grow up?" A youthful, laughing voice comes in and the scene shifts to a fourteen-year-old Bai Liu with a smile on his cheeks, his eyes focused on Xie Ta, "I think you have a lot of talent for this."

The doll didn't seem to notice that Bai Liu was mocking him, but instead asked seriously in return, "Really?"

"And how much money can you make playing the dolls? Will it support us both?"

Bai Liu paused and turned his face away, "I don't need you to feed me, and you can't afford it."

"You just mind your own business."

Although Bai Liu seems to be rejecting it indifferently, Spades sees that the corner of Bai Liu's mouth tilts up slightly as he turns away.

Spades had never seen Bai Liu laughing so easily before, and it silenced Spades completely, his eyes reflecting the light on the screen, his eyes staring at the watery wall.

The water-patterned wall is like a giant television screen that plays along in time the events that have taken place in the orphanage.

They meet, they read together, they are punished together, they are chased together, they are hated together.

--together in the darkness, embracing each other in a peaceful slumber.

But then Xie Ta died.

So Bai Liu reads alone, is punished alone, is chased and then chased and beaten alone, is hated alone.

--A man curled up in the dark in an uneasy slumber.

And while all this was going on, Xie Ta, the one Bai Liu thought was dead, was not dead, and Spades saw the translucent spirit of Xie Ta in the watery wall, anxiously surrounding Bai Liu, pleading with him.

"You go away, don't stay here."

"Don't feed me food, you'll die if you eat too little!"

Bai Liu cannot see or hear Xie Ta's pleas, and he continues to walk numbly along the same path as before, when Xie Ta was still alive.

Bai Liu became thinner and thinner, her lips turned from pale pink to white and blue, and she became visibly thinner and more emaciated.

Spades' brow slowly furrows.

On yet another occasion when Bai Liu had passed out in the cold mud next to the pond and remained unnoticed all night, Xie Ta's spirit bowed down and he wrapped his soul around Bai Liu who had passed out and curled up - just as they had done before when they had fallen asleep together.

Xie Ta closed his eyes, "God."

"If you exist now and are watching this right now, I would ask you to appear."

"I would like to make a wish to you."

The wind rises around Xie Ta and his soul is lifted up, while opposite him appears a flashing old carved door, behind which are endless spheres of silvery-blue light, from which a hand pokes out and takes hold of the handle of the door, pushing it outwards.

The spheres shattered into points of light and Bai six stepped out of the pile and stood in front of Xie Ta, he looked down at the Xie Ta spirit kneeling before him with a compassionate smile on his face, " Tavel, what do you wish from me?"

Xie Ta knelt in front of Bai Liu's unconscious body, he tilted his head and said very softly.

"God, I want to give this man behind me all the happiness that an ordinary person in this world can have."

"I want him to have company at the loneliest times in his life, I want everything he's suffering for to dissipate, I want everything he's lost to be recovered."

"I want to have someone to play his favourite horror games with all the time."

Xie Ta raised his head, his silver-blue eyes filled with a very light shimmer: "I think he and the one he loves will never be separated."

"They can meet in a human way, be together in a human way, and end beautifully in a human death."

Bai six curled his lips in a smirk: "What a greedy creation, these add up to much more than one wish, what would you pay for them?"

Xie Ta was quiet for a long time before he spoke in a very soft voice: "I would give my soul for that."

"I have a soul now, and I will be the next generation of evil gods, as you wish, to guard the gate forever."

He lifted his eyes to look calmly into the silvery blue swirls and spheres of the door behind Bai six: "I will never leave this door as long as I know there is a world line within it where he lives happily ever after."

"-never leave the abyss, desire and pain."

"Are you sure?" Bai six smiled, "No matter how many times you see him happily with someone else in the future, there's no turning back for you."

Xie Ta took Bai Liu's cold hand in his own and didn't hesitate: "I'm sure."

"That's a deal." Bai six held out his hand, and in a flash all the shimmering, glowing silver-blue swirls behind the door tilted out from behind it, wrapping around Bai six's outstretched right index finger like waves, nodding at Xie Ta's brow.

A silver-blue vortex rushed into the heart of Xie Ta's forehead, sending his entire body reeling backwards and his gaze blanking out.

Bai six's ethereal, smiling voice rang out in Xie Ta's ears.

"I grant you the desire to change the world line, and you may draw into this place all those in the world line whom you feel can change Bai six's destiny, and make Bai six have friends and loved ones in any way you see fit."

"But Bai six is still too young to have any idea of love, and when the time is right I will bring him the one he loves in the same way you wished."

"But." Bai six said with a slight smile, "Now you have a soul, but it's not painful."

"In order for you to successfully become an evil god at the end of the game in this world line, Tavel, I will have to give you some other painful experiences." Bai six's eyes strayed to the small Bai Liu slumbering with a frown behind Xie Ta, the smile on his face deepening, "If you are unable to provide me with satisfactory pain by then, I may choose another, more painful child to be my heir."

"If you don't want to see that, try hard to become more miserable."

A silvery-blue whirlwind rolled by and little Bai Liu choked and coughed as he woke up, looking around at the empty pond and glancing at his right hand, which he shook in a dazed manner.

For a moment, it was as if Xie Ta was still alive, holding his hand so hard that he didn't want to leave.

Spades, who was looking at the watery wall, seemed to sense something, his face was as vivid as it had ever been, revealing an emotional resistance, and turned his head away, "I don't want to look."

The watery wall followed Spades' gaze and deflected back to Spades' front, facing him no matter how much Spades resisted turning his head away, and getting closer.

Spades simply closed his eyes, his hand clutching the whip tightly.

Bai six gave a soft laugh and snapped his fingers as he spoke as if in good humour, "I can explain to you what happened next if you don't want to see."

"Because Tavel made a wish at the cost of his soul, Bai Liu gained a friend, a loved one of his own, and he became one of the happy and ordinary vulgar commoners of the world."

"Instead, Tavel was exiled by me to be slaughtered and tortured by all the players in the game."

"But unfortunately, even then he was still not suffering, he was only suffering because of Bai Liu, so I induced Bai Liu to enter the game, and a year before Bai Liu entered the game, in order to grant Tavel's wish that he and Bai Liu meet and fall in love in a human way- -"

Spades interrupted in a cold voice: "I can't hear you."

Bai six smiled impassively and went on, "- I separated Tavel's spirit from his flesh in Siren Small Town, trapping the spirit in the game for seven days of reincarnation, while the flesh was released from the game to live normally with Bai Liu."

"His flesh is you, Spades ."

"You were born out of Tavel and Bai Liu's obsessive love for each other, but in all honesty, I made you for one purpose only -"

Bai six laughs and says, "That's what makes Bai Liu and Tavel miserable."

"Your birth would mean the demise of the soul that Bai Liu truly loved - Tavel."

"The first time you met Bai Liu, you pulled Tavel's remaining heart out of his body and crushed it, and the second time you met Bai Liu, you forced him to accept the heirship of the evil god I gave him, because that's what saved Xie Ta."

Spades' eyes snapped open and he swept his black whip across the room, Bai six dodging backwards as a myriad of watery wall screens enveloped Spades, all showing scenes of him hurting Bai Liu.

Bai Liu lay pale in his hospital bed as Du Sanying cried next to him and said to the doctor, "How did his heart get cut open?!"

Bai Liu, with a smile in her eyes, as if filled with a layer of water, said to him very softly, "I miss you so much, Xie Ta," in the last seconds when she was drowned by the pond of "The Edge of the Dense Forest".

Bai six's voice comes from behind this myriad of watery wall screens with a smile.

"Your very existence means constant harm to Bai Liu and constant pain for him."

"You have performed the task I gave you with distinction, but what surprised and surprised me even more -"

Bai six laughed softly as he suddenly broke through the numerous walls of water and pinned the middle Spades to a chair, dropping his eyes to look at Spades who was ready to fight back with a stern look on his face.

"You actually produced your own soul under Bai Liu's loving gaze."

"Though that love is not for you, it's just looking at Tavel through you."

The moment Spades raised his hand to swing the whip, a sudden, excruciating pain that burned like nothing else came from his back, causing him to drop the whip in his hand.

-- That was a wound from whatever soul-crushing bullet had hit him earlier, and it hurt every now and then.

But today this pain is too strange.

Spades had felt all kinds of [pain] since he was born, but never this [pain]. This [pain] was not the kind of sharp stabbing pain, not like being cut by a knife or a sword, but like something starting to burn from inside his body, making his heart start to sour, his limbs start to move sluggishly, and even his eyes start to become watery.

This [pain] was obviously not that [painful], but it made him feel ...... as if he couldn't win no matter what else he did.

But what can't you win? It's not like you can't win the game ......

Spades is a little confused.

A transparent thread flew from afar and was tied around Spades' right wrist.

Bai six laughed: "You also possess a soul and produce pain, and in a way you qualify to be my heir."

"But guess who Bai Liu will choose to be his lover, and who he will abandon to become the lone heir to the evil god?"

Spades finally looked up with a start, a drop of water dripping unconsciously from the corner of his eye and landing in the watery wall where Bai Liu and Xie Ta's past was projected.

Oh, it's this one.

The thing he just felt he couldn't win any way was this.