Chapter 466: Evil God Ritual - The Boathouse

The door to the shrine was kicked open by Bai Liu, and the infinite flames came crashing down on him, the ashes and the heat coming together.

Bai Liu looked up, his dark eyes reflecting the orange fires, the blackened mountains, and the bright fireworks exploding in the sky.

From a distance, he heard the crowd cheering and counting down from the foot of the hill.

"As the Festival of Evil kicks off and the fireworks display draws to a close, let's count down to the time of year that brings us happiness!"

"Ten!"

The glorious fireworks exploded into the sky one by one, as if they were bouquets of sparkling flowers, blossoming in the night sky and sacrificed to the gods to start the beautiful story.

Bai Liu, carrying the bruised and battered Tavel and the bloodied Beiyuan Xiaokui on his back, walked slowly down the hill with his head hanging, as if he were carrying something he had overloaded.

Countless threads from the shrine were wrapped around Tavel in Bai Liu's arms, threads called [pain] strangling Tavel and Bai Liu holding him, their blood mixing together and dripping onto the fire-scorched ground.

"Nine!"

Bai Liu's steps stopped, his breathing became slow and hard, his whole body leaning forward, as if he was walking with all his strength down the hill, towards the shrine away from him.

But the threads on him and Tavel would not allow them to stay away any longer.

"Bai Liu." Tavel's face was torn apart by the silk thread, but he didn't seem to feel any pain at all, instead he stroked the strangled wounds on Bai Liu's body very gently, looking down at him intently, as if to remember him forever, "Put me down."

"You won't get out of here with me."

"Your hands are shaking as you hold me."

"Eight."

"I don't want it." Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked straight at Tavel, "You have traded yourself to me, so naturally I have the right to take you."

Tavel stood up on Bai Liu's shoulders, he looked at Bai Liu and then bent down and hugged him and whispered.

"But I love you."

Bai Liu's pupils flinched.

"Seven!"

Tavel continued, his eyes closing slightly, "I finally understand what your feelings were when you came to see me."

"It's love, right?"

"Six!"

"I want to see you, I want to escape from the shrine and see who you've chosen as your prince charming, I want you to answer me why you don't come in and see me." Tavel buried his head completely in Bai Liu's shoulder and he hugged him so tightly that Bai Liu rarely felt able to breathe, Tavel's voice hoarse, "I want you to come and see me every day, to talk to me, to look me in the eye and say your own things."

"I want you to take me away, I want to go with you."

A silk thread wrapped tightly.

"I want you to be with me forever."

Two silk threads wrapped tightly.

"Five!"

Bai Liu's eyes were dazed and he subconsciously hugged Tavel back: "...... You're leaving me again, aren't you?"

"God spoke to me once." Tavel replied to him in a very soft voice, "that I would be his heir when I generated the pain to be able to sacrifice to him."

"He said that only love can make God suffer."

The countless threads wrapped around Tavel's body are instantly taut.

"Four!"

"The more love one obtains, the more painful the sacrifice to the gods will be, and the better the gods will control each other." Tavel, wrapped in silk threads, slowly raised his eyes to look at Bai Liu in his arms and he smiled softly as if he was happy, "I am now a puppet of the gods."

"I could not leave the prison that held me captive, for it was forged by the love and pain that I produced myself."

"Three!"

"Two!"

"ONE!!!"

"The Evil God Festival has officially begun!!!"

Heavy figures darted up the path behind Bai Liu, all of them holding dead-faced sacrifices, obviously men from the eight great families who had come up to offer them in advance, and these men chanted angrily.

"What's going on! Why is the shrine burning up here!"

"Where's that body?! That body in the shrine is gone!"

"Was it the Bei Yuan family who supervised the theft or which one of the defected offerings did it!"

Fireworks exploded behind them in big bursts.

"I love you." Tavel closed his eyes and he dropped them, dropping his cold lips to those of the unresponsive Bai Liu and murmuring, "My soul will only be here for you."

"But you can't exist here."

"Because there is only pain here."

[System Prompt: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for obtaining one of the main quest objectives (Evil God Spirit), he is about to depart back to the timeline five years later, please prepare for player Bai Liu!

All the threads of Tavel's body straighten, pulling him backwards while he closes his eyes and embraces Bai Liu, his hands crossed and clasped in the long hair at the back of Bai Liu's head, his lips opening and closing as if to say something.

Bai Liu saw behind him a number of men running towards him with knives, guns and sticks in their faces, and the fireworks continued to burst, with colourful lights and shadows mingling in front of Bai Liu's face, causing him to close his eyes for a moment.

At the moment he closed his eyes, Bai Liu heard Tavel whisper in his ear.

"Farewell, Rapunzel who came to my rescue."

Bai Liu opened his eyes and found himself lying on his side on the floor as if he had fallen asleep from exhaustion in the shrine's training room for the Shinto dance.

There were no lights in the room, and it was so dark that only the moonlight from outside made it possible to see the picture of the Sea Wave Shrine hanging on the wall directly opposite - the same picture Bai Liu had found the clue to cross into at the beginning.

Everything around Bai Liu, the fire, the hysterical crowd, Beiyuan Xiaokui dripping blood, and the "corpse" of the evil god who kissed him tenderly, all disappear like an unrealistic nightmare.

He sat up for a moment in silence, then dressed, approved his coat, stood up and pushed the door open ready to walk out of the chamber.

Two servants were kneeling on the ground by the door, and it was clear from the clothes they were wearing and the word [Gifune] embroidered on their right lapel that they were members of the Gifune family.

The moment Bai Liu stepped out the door, the two servants, heads bowed, quickly raised their hands to block his departure, " Master Bai six, you cannot leave here."

"Lord Mifune has decreed that you must not set foot outside this shrine if you do not practice the sacred dance you will perform tomorrow night."

Bai Liu looked sideways at the two servants and then at the shrine behind him, which no longer looked like it did back then, and asked, with a raised tone, "Is this the Luming Shrine?"

"Yes." The maid looked up a little strangely, "You've been practising your dance in the shrine's worship room, don't you remember?"

"If this is a shrine." Bai Liu asked rhetorically with a cool eye, "What about the evil god who lived in this shrine five years ago? Where did he go?"

The two maids of the Gifune family blushed at this questioning, and as if they had heard something extremely taboo, they bowed their heads, closed their eyes tightly, and, as if in prayer, folded their hands and whispered in a quick chant.

"Evil God do not blame us, do not blame us, we did not mean to move you from the Luming Shrine to the Sea Shrine after the great fire."

"It's just that half of the people in the village of Luming County went mad and killed themselves in their sleep because of the horror of the wai you sent five years ago."

"...... remote please evil gods don't blame!"

Not a trace of expression was left on Bai Liu's face as his gaze slowly shifted from the ship-shaped object rocking and undulating on the distant waves to the mural hanging on the wall inside the house - a huge ship-shaped shrine thrown up on the waves of the sea.

Seaside boathouse.

After a few moments of thunder, lightning and rain, a sudden downpour fell.

A shivering girl, draped in a soaking wet lining, ducked into the boathouse, her lips pale, her face purple, her fingers and knuckles visibly bruised, and instead of closing the door when it was obviously raining so hard, she just left it open and sat on her knees and just let the wind and rain pour in and beat down on her bloodless face.

The wind whipped the wooden sign she had hung next to the peace room, with four words written on the old wooden board that were about to be worn out of sight - [Beiyuan Xiaokui].

"Xiaokui, what are you doing?" An alarmed male voice interrupted Xiaokui's self-mutilation, and a drenched Beiyuan Cangtai hurriedly went up to close Xiaokui's door, placed the paper umbrella, which had been tipped over by the gale, by the door, and turned to Xiaokui, saying reproachfully, "Why didn't you close the door in this rain? "

"Maybe it's because I haven't suffered enough from the training I just did in the suffering room." A hollow-eyed Xiaokui mumbled in reply.

Cthulhu gave a start as he looked to his own knuckles which were also strangled with blood lines, gripped them hard and lowered his head to stop talking.

Xiaokui rolled her eyes to catch Aota's little movement and she asked, "Did you go to the suffering room too?"

"Well." Aota smiled ruefully and self-deprecatingly, "Ever since we were found out to be involved in setting the shrine on fire five years ago, even though the Bei Yuan family had fallen from grace and could no longer afford to build up a large mansion to train and torture us, and our suffering had not been up to par every year and we were inferior sacrifices, they still had not given up torturing us."

"That's for sure." Xiaokui's eyes lit up for a moment, a kind of smug and pained grin on her face, "What happened five years ago, that's what scared the shit out of the brutes."

"Yeah." Aota couldn't help but smile too as he eyed the memory, "That was when the shrine was on fire and Bai six was going to save the evil god-sama and we went back to help him."

"I was the one who went back to help him!" Xiaokui retorted, but soon she slumped back and said mockingly, "But all in all I wasn't much help is all, and was soon knocked unconscious."

"Then I remember in a daze Bai six carrying me and the evil god down the mountain, but the evil god was pulled by the silk threads growing from within the shrine and could not leave, and the eight families who had come to offer sacrifice came up again."

"The imperial boat dragged Bai Liu straight into the shrine to forcefully sacrifice him."

Xiaokui laughed out loud, her arms and legs fluttering and her eyes tearing up with laughter, "But the Lord of Evil has had a rare tantrum!"

"He would not open his eyes to see Bai six, nor would he sacrifice Bai six, so he closed his eyes dead and said I will not allow you to do this to him."

"And so that night." The smile on Xiaokui's face widened, "The evil gods were in full force and had half of Luming County buried for their beloved sacrifice, Bai six."

"It descended on the dreams of these people and looked straight into their souls; these lust-filled beasts, unable to look the evil god in the eye, went mad in their dreams and committed suicide."

"This is the first time I've seen an evil god kill someone."