Chapter 462: Evil God Festival · Houseboat |
“Xie Ta.”
An extremely ethereal voice drifted through the air. Spades, standing on the boat, turned his head back in an instant. His lips were pressed thin as he scanned the surrounding crowd, attempting to find Bai Liu’s figure among them.
*(T/N: THERE YOU ARE, GODDAMN)*
The crowd walking toward the festival was dressed in grand attire, chatting animatedly with one another; Bai Liu’s figure was not among them.
But that voice just now was definitely Bai Liu’s.
Spades walked against the flow of the crowd, his gaze rapidly searching through the people while he decisively tapped his system panel to throw out an item to investigate whether there were other players nearby besides himself.
>[System Notification: No movement trajectories of other players detected nearby.]
>[System Warning: It is currently the League period. Player Spades, you have not moved within a single map for three consecutive hours. You are about to be given a yellow card warning for passive gameplay. Please play actively, explore the map, interact with NPCs, and complete the main storyline tasks as soon as possible!]
Immediately afterward, the main task panel automatically enlarged and popped up in front of Spades. The main tasks on it were bolded and in red, and the panel nearly jumped right onto Spades’s eyelashes, as if terrified that Spades wouldn’t see it.
>[System Notification: Player Spades’s identity is set as the (Attendant) of this year’s Evil God Festival’s greatest sacrifice.]
>[Main Task: Find the greatest sacrifice, and sacrifice the other party to make a wish to the Evil God.]
>[Warm Tip: This year is the once-in-a-decade Evil God Festival celebration. The sacrifice you are looking for is the one who has been tortured for the most years in the ‘Auspicious Room’ since the founding of the Evil God Festival, and who has the most accumulated pain on their body. This sacrifice has been hidden in an extremely secretive location by the people of Luming County. What you need to do is find this sacrifice and bring them to the shrine for the ritual.]
Under the system’s coercion, Spades reluctantly read the main task once more. The second he retracted the panel, he continued searching for Bai Liu’s shadow in the crowd.
A few young girls dressed in summer festival kimonos chatted in low voices as they brushed past Spades:
“I heard, is the Mifune family going to sacrifice that one this year?”
“Impossible, right? The Mifune family treasures that one so much; they’ve hidden him for so many years. Besides, if he’s sacrificed, how will our Evil God Festival proceed normally?”
“I heard the Mifune family received instructions in a dream. In the future, the Evil God Festival won’t need this person to appear; Lord Evil God will choose a new successor.”
As a violent player who never collected information, Spades acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing, walking past these gossiping NPCs without a sideways glance.
After a while, several adult men wearing yukatas walked past Spades while laughing loudly:
“Last year, my family caught a sacrifice during the Funamiya Night Festival and successfully made a wish at the sea shrine. Things have been going pretty well this year. We caught another one this year, so it looks like next year should be alright too.”
“No matter how well you do, you can’t compare to the Mifune family.” A man sighed and rubbed his chin. “Ever since that great fire five years ago, when the Kitahara family was burned to nothing and fell into ruin, and the greatest sacrifice fell into the hands of the Mifune family, I knew Luming County would be under the Mifune family’s rule for the next twenty years.”
“Eh, isn’t it said that the Mifune family is going to sacrifice the greatest sacrifice this year?” A man next to him leaned in with interest and tucked his hands into his sleeves to probe, “For real or for fake? Isn’t it said this sacrifice is very ominous? Wasn’t it because the Kitahara family suffered a backlash from this sacrifice that they ended up like that?”
“After the fire, people died or went mad. Only a few idiotic and senile juniors are left guarding two or three inferior sacrifices that clearly can’t be offered.”
“Shh.” The man who first mentioned catching a sacrifice turned stern. His eyes darted left and right as he lowered his voice, “If you don’t want to suffer retribution, you idiots better stop mentioning that business from five or six years ago to me.”
“Five years ago, nearly half the village was wiped out by that sacrifice. Large groups of people jumped into the sea to commit suicide; everyone was terrified of the shrine.”
The man warned with a serious gaze: “Why do you think the shrine was moved to the sea? Isn’t it because everyone is afraid to stay on the same land as the shrine?”
The men instantly fell silent, huddling their heads together as they walked past Spades in silence.
But Spades still didn’t listen to what these people were saying; he continued toward the endpoint of his gaze.
The system, seemingly unable to endure it any longer, popped up a panel:
>[Player Spades, please pay attention to the information related to the main task given during NPC conversations! You have already missed two pieces of key task information!]
Spades paused: “Why should I pay attention to them talking?”
The system panel displayed: >[Parts of the game’s key information are given to players in the form of NPC conversations, so players are asked to pay attention to surrounding information.]
“Is that so?” Spades’s face remained devoid of any emotion. “I thought it was because the game designer wanted me to walk along the game path he designed, so he intentionally gave me information like this?”
“I don’t like playing games this way.”
Spades drew his whip. His black eyes reflected the golden, magnificent ship docked at the port, and his tone was cold: “Playing the game like this, what’s the difference between me and these pre-arranged NPCs?”
“This isn’t my game at all; it’s his game.”
The system panel that had popped up made a sizzle sound and vanished from in front of Spades. With a hollow expression, Spades gripped his whip and walked straight toward the large ship docked at the seaside port.
He reached the port—this was also the place where Spades had previously heard Bai Liu’s voice drifting from. He swept his gaze around, looking in all directions.
On the side of the port was a massive wooden high platform. The platform had a structure with upturned eaves at the four corners, containing a wooden stage for performing sacrificial dances. Thick shimenawa ropes were hung around the wooden frame, with omamori paper used to ward off evil hanging at certain intervals along the ropes.
Below the high platform, there was a wooden board with red lacquer writing: [Performance Area for the God-Sacrificer’s Dance].
Opposite the high platform, down by the port, was a golden and magnificent ship. Or rather, to describe it as a ship wasn’t quite accurate; it was a theatrical stage shaped like a ship.
This stage was made in the shape of a ship with three levels. Many light bulbs were installed on both sides and on the top facing forward, lighting up the night like broad daylight and making the central stage sparkle.
All the curtains of the stage were looped and hung to the sides, resulting in layers of heavy, deep-red velvet curtains on both ends, while the center was the main stage body composed of wooden floorboards that had been polished with oil until they gleamed.
At this moment, two wooden stools were placed facing each other in the center of the stage. A piece of water-patterned glass stood between the stools. Two actors dressed in kariginu sat on these two stools, looking at each other through the water-patterned glass. Beside them stood a male actor wearing a shimmering cloak of flowing sand. These three actors were performing passionately on the stage.
In the very front of the stage stood a small display sign. The sign read—《Evil God Festival Play · Act One》.
Directly below the stage, audience chairs were neatly arranged. A group of people sat in the chairs, watching the play with great interest. The chairs were not full; new audience members continuously arrived from afar to sit down and join the crowd watching the play.
A newly arrived audience member asked someone who had already been watching for a while:
“What is this play about?”
The veteran audience member tilted his head to explain in a low voice to the newcomer: “This play is the traditional play of our Luming County’s annual Evil God Festival. It tells the story of the emergence, development, and changes of the Evil God Festival. This is only the first act.”
Someone asked curiously: “What is this first act about?”
“This first act is the background introduction. It tells the story of the Evil God selecting successors to come to the human world and preside over the Evil God Festival.” The veteran pointed at the three actors on stage. “The ones sitting on either side of the water-patterned wall are the successors chosen by the Evil God. The one next to them in the bright gauze robe is our Lord Evil God.”
The two actors sitting on the stools on stage suddenly stood up abruptly. They began to fight intensely through the air across the water-patterned wall, hurling insults at each other:
“I am the one the Lord Evil God appreciates most! I am the most outstanding successor!”
“I am the rightful heir to the Evil God!”
The veteran audience member watched with great interest, swaying his head as he explained: “Lord Evil God created all living things and selected his own successors from among them. In the end, there were two successors who met the requirements. To choose the most excellent heir from between them, Lord Evil God gathered the two together, conjured a water-patterned wall to separate them, and told them—”
The “Evil God” on stage stood with his hands behind his back and nodded, looking with satisfaction at these two “successors” who were scrambling to be first: “Both of you are very excellent, but there is only one successor of mine.”
“I will erase all your memories and cast you into all the world lines I have created for tempering. You two will receive two different identities: the [Sacrifice] and the [Attendant].”
“The [Sacrifice] will receive my help during the tempering, while the [Attendant] will have countless obstacles set by me.” The “Evil God” walked a circle around the two successors from a high vantage point. “But these identities are not fixed; they can be swapped anytime and anywhere. At any moment, the person who is more pained will become the [Sacrifice], and the person who is less pained will become the [Attendant].”
“After the tempering in all world lines ends, the [Sacrifice] will become the next Evil God after offering their pain and soul to me.”
“And the [Attendant] will lose everything they possess—friends, family, lovers, and their soul.”
At this moment, the veteran audience member nodded in agreement below the stage: “Yes, exactly. This is the origin of Luming County’s [Sacrifice] and [Attendant] system.”
Back turned to the audience, the successor sitting opposite the water-patterned wall suddenly spoke in a soft voice: “Xie Ta.”
—That was Bai Liu’s voice!
Spades, who had been searching below the stage, suddenly looked up. Without any hesitation, he used one hand to vault over the edge of the stage and jumped up.
The moment he jumped up, the curtains behind him fell instantly. The stage was plunged into pitch-black darkness. Spades heard the noisy discussions of the audience outside vanish in an instant. The rhythmic footsteps of the three actors on stage rang out, gradually overlapping into one person walking toward Spades.
His surroundings suddenly lit up. The stage lights, which were originally piercing and somewhat dazzling, turned into swirling cosmic stars. The flowing light rotated in Spades’s emotionless eyes, reflecting the person walking toward him.
Bai Six curled the corners of his mouth: “Long time no see, Spades.”
Spades stared at him, not answering.
Bai Six’s gaze dropped. He saw the black bone whip held in Spades’s palm, and the smile on his face deepened: “The whip I gave you, is it still easy to use?”
>[System Notification: Player Spades has triggered a plot point, entering 《Evil God Festival · Act Two》]
NEXt
