Chapter 463: Evil God Festival · Houseboat |
“It seems you don’t want to discuss the matter of the whip with me.” Seeing Spades pull away from him, Bai Six changed the subject with the flow, asking with a smile, “Then are you willing to discuss the issue of Bai Liu with me?”
Spades’s retreating footsteps paused, and he stared straight at Bai Six.
“Perhaps we can sit down and chat?” Bai Six raised his hand with a half-smile. A stool rotated out from the darkness of the stage and pressed against the back of Spades’s knees. Bai Six politely made a gesture inviting him 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, right?” Bai Six walked unhurriedly behind Spades, resting his hands casually on the back of the chair, his tone carrying a laugh. “You made everyone in your winning team refrain from making wishes to me, instead storing the wishes here with me.”
“A very interesting way of doing things.”
Bai Six looked down at Spades, the corners of his mouth curling up. “But this is already our second meeting. Do you still remember our first meeting?”
Spades remained silent for a moment before speaking: “Siren Town.”
“Correct. After you were born in Siren Town, the first person you saw was me. I bestowed my own bone whip upon you.” Bai Six’s eyes held a touch of pity as his hand brushed through the air over the top of Spades’s head. “Do you know why?”
Bai Six smiled and said, “Because you are the vessel for my once most cherished creation.”
“Do you know why you were born?”
Bai Six slowly leaned down, pressing close to Spades’s ear. He raised his hand, and a water-ripple wall appeared in front of Spades. Ripples and waves rose on the water wall, spreading out circle by circle, reflecting scenes from the past.
Behind the water-ripple wall appeared the fourteen-year-old Little Bai Six, locked in the confinement room of the Love Welfare Home. He was curled up in the darkness, sleeping very deeply. Perhaps because of the cold, or perhaps because of something else, his eyelids trembled and his limbs unconsciously curled into a ball. He looked like a small animal with no sense of security, his lips slightly parting.
[Xie Ta].
This small animal murmured this name softly in his sleep.
Spades’s gaze froze. Bai Six explained softly, “This is the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu.”
The scene on the water-ripple wall changed continuously, showing a face covered in bandages and a giant, lanky Slenderman plushie. This plushie clumsily raised its hands, swaying left and right, performing some laughable movements.
“Have you really not considered making a living by playing a mascot when you grow up?” A youthful voice tinged with laughter came through. The scene shifted, and the fourteen-year-old Little Bai Six leaned on his hand, smiling so much that his features relaxed. His eyes were focused intently on Xie Ta. “I think you have a natural talent for this line of work.”
That plushie didn’t seem to realize Bai Liu was mocking him; instead, he asked seriously, “Really?”
“Then how much money can one make playing a mascot? Can it support the two of us?”
Bai Liu paused and turned his face away. “I don’t need you to support me, and you can’t afford it anyway.”
“Just take care of yourself.”
Although Bai Liu seemed to be rejecting him coldly, Spades saw that in the moment he turned away, the corners of Bai Liu’s mouth quirked up slightly.
Spades had never seen such a relaxed smile from Bai Liu. This caused Spades to quiet down completely. His eyes reflected the light and shadows on the screen, his gaze fixed unblinkingly on the water-ripple wall.
The water-ripple wall was like a giant television screen, playing back the events that had occurred in the welfare home in chronological order.
They met, studied together, were punished together, were chased together, and were hated together.
—And together, they embraced each other in the darkness to sleep peacefully.
But later, Xie Ta died.
Then Bai Liu was left to study alone, be punished alone, be chased and then caught and beaten alone, and be hated alone.
—Left to curl up alone in the darkness and sleep fitfully.
And while all this was happening, Xie Ta—the Xie Ta whom Bai Liu thought was already dead—had not died. Spades saw Xie Ta’s translucent soul anxiously surrounding Bai Liu, constantly pleading with him:
“Go away, don’t stay here.”
“Don’t feed your food to me. You’re eating too little; you’ll die!”
Yet Bai Liu could not see Xie Ta, nor could he hear Xie Ta’s pleas. He continued to walk numbly along the trajectory of the life they had shared when Xie Ta was still alive.
Bai Liu became increasingly thin and frail. His lip color changed from pale pink to white, then to a bluish tint, becoming visibly haggard and wasted.
Spades’s brow slowly furrowed.
When Bai Liu fainted again on the cold mud by the pond and spent the entire night without being discovered, Xie Ta’s soul bowed down. He used his soul to embrace the curled-up body of the unconscious Bai Liu—just as they used to embrace and sleep before.
Xie Ta closed his eyes: “God.”
“If You exist right now, if You are watching all of this, I would like to ask You to appear.”
“I want to make a wish to You.”
The wind began to swirl around Xie Ta, and his soul was lifted upright. Opposite him, an old, carved door appeared. Behind the door were infinite silver-blue glowing spheres. A hand emerged from these glowing spheres, gripped the door handle, and pushed it outward.
The spheres shattered into points of light, and Bai Six stepped out from the cluster of light points to stand before Xie Ta. He looked down at Xie Ta’s soul kneeling before him, a compassionate smile on his face. “Tawil, what wish do you want to make to me?”
Xie Ta knelt before Bai Liu’s unconscious body. He looked up and said very softly:
“God, I want to give all the happiness that an ordinary person in this world can possess to the person behind me.”
“I want him to have someone to accompany him during the loneliest times of his life. I want everything that causes him pain to dissipate. I want everything he has lost to be found again.”
“I want there to always be someone to play the horror games he likes with him.”
Xie Ta raised his head, his silver-blue eyes shimmering with a very faint light. “I want him and the people he loves to never be separated.”
“I want them to be able to meet as humans, be together as humans, and reach a beautiful conclusion with a human death.”
Bai Six’s mouth curled into a half-smile. “Truly a greedy creation. All of these added together are far more than one wish. What price are you willing to pay for these wishes?”
Xie Ta was silent for a long time. He spoke in a very soft voice: “I am willing to pay the price of my soul.”
“I have a soul now. I will become the next generation’s Evil God as You desire, guarding the door forever.”
He raised his eyes and calmly looked toward the silver-blue vortexes and spheres inside the door behind Bai Six. “As long as I know that within these doors there is a world-line where he lives happily, I will never leave this door.”
“—I will never leave the abyss, desire, and pain.”
“Are you sure?” Bai Six said with a half-smile. “No matter how many times you see him happily together with others in the future, there will be no turning back for you.”
Xie Ta gripped Bai Liu’s cold hand within his own, without any hesitation: “I am sure.”
“Then the deal is struck.” Bai Six reached out his hand. In an instant, all the flashing silver-blue vortexes behind the door poured out like surging ocean waves, coiling around the tip of the index finger of Bai Six’s outstretched right hand, and tapped Xie Ta’s brow.
The silver-blue vortex rushed into the center of Xie Ta’s forehead, jarring his entire person backward as his gaze went hollow.
Bai Six’s ethereal and smiling voice rang in Xie Ta’s ear:
“I grant you the desire to change world-lines. You may pull anyone you feel can change Bai Liu’s fate from all world-lines into this place, using whatever method you deem appropriate to let Bai Liu have friends and family.”
“However, Bai Liu is still too young now and has no concept of love. When the time is right, I will use the method you wished for to bring the person he loves to his side.”
“But,” Bai Six said with a smile, “though you have a soul now, you are not yet in pain.”
“In order for you to successfully become the Evil God after this world-line’s game ends, Tawil, I still need to give you some other trials of pain.” Bai Six’s gaze shifted toward the sleeping Little Bai Six behind Xie Ta, whose brow was tightly furrowed. The smile on his face deepened. “If you cannot provide me with satisfactory pain when the time comes, I might choose another, even more painful child to be my successor.”
“If you don’t want to see that happen, then work hard to become even more pained.”
The silver-blue vortex swept past. Little Bai Six woke up coughing. He looked at the empty pond around him, then looked at his own right hand, grasping it tentatively.
In that instant just now, it felt as if Xie Ta were still alive, gripping his hand tightly, unwilling to leave.
Watching the water-ripple wall, Spades seemed to realize something. His face became more expressive than ever before, showing a sensitized resistance as he turned his head away. “I don’t want to watch anymore.”
Yet the water-ripple wall pivoted along with Spades’s line of sight, returning to his front. No matter how much Spades resisted by turning his head, it stayed right before him, getting closer and closer.
Spades simply closed his eyes, his hand tightly clutching his whip.
Bai Six gave a light laugh and snapped his fingers. He spoke as if being considerate: “If you don’t want to watch, I can explain to you what happened next.”
“Because Tawil made a wish at the cost of his soul, Bai Liu gained his own friends and family. He became one of the happy, ordinary, and mediocre people of this world.”
“But Tawil was exiled by me into the game, to be slaughtered and tortured by all the players.”
“But unfortunately, even then he was not in pain. He only feels pain because of Bai Liu. Therefore, I induced Bai Liu to enter the game. One year before Bai Liu entered the game, in order to fulfill Tawil’s wish to let him and Bai Liu meet and fall in love as humans—”
Spades interrupted coldly, “I’m not listening.”
Bai Six continued smilingly, unmoved: “—I separated Tawil’s spirit and flesh in Siren Town. I trapped the spirit in a seven-day cycle within the game, while the flesh was released from the game to interact normally with Bai Liu.”
“His flesh is you, Spades.”
“You were born from the persistent love that Tawil and Bai Liu have for each other. But to be honest, I created you for only one purpose—”
Bai Six said with a laugh, “And that is to make Bai Liu and Tawil suffer.”
“Your very birth signifies the extinction of the soul Bai Liu truly loves—Tawil’s soul.”
“The first time you met Bai Liu, you reached into his body and crushed the only remaining heart of Tawil. The second time you met Bai Liu, you forced him to accept the identity of the Evil God Heir I offered, because only that could save Xie Ta.”
Spades suddenly snapped his eyes open. He swept his black whip across, but Bai Six leaned back to dodge. Countless water-ripple wall screens surrounded Spades, all of them playing scenes of him hurting Bai Liu.
Bai Liu lay on a hospital bed, his face deathly pale. Next to him, Du Sanying cried as he asked the doctor, “How could his heart have been cut open?!”
In the last second before being submerged by the pond in Dense Forest Border, Bai Liu had a smile in his eyes, yet they also seemed to hold a layer of watery light as he said very softly to him, “I missed you so much, Xie Ta.”
Bai Six’s voice came from behind these countless water-ripple wall screens, carrying a laugh:
“Your existence means you will bring constant harm to Bai Liu, causing him constant pain.”
“You have completed the task I gave you excellently. But what surprised and moved me even more was—”
Bai Six gave a light laugh. He suddenly broke through the countless water-ripple walls and pinned Spades, who was in the center, back into the chair. He looked down at Spades, whose face was sharp and ready to counterattack. Bai Six’s face held a look of pitying amusement:
“Under Bai Liu’s gaze of love, you actually developed a soul of your own.”
“Even though that love isn’t meant for you; he’s just looking through you to see Tawil.”
The moment Spades raised his hand to lash out with his whip, a sudden, searingly intense pain shot through his lower back, forcing him to drop the whip in his hand.
—That was the wound from where he had been hit earlier by some Soul-Shattering Gun bullet. It would hurt every now and then.
But today, this pain was too strange.
Since his birth, Spades had felt all kinds of “pain,” but he had never felt this kind of “pain.” This “pain” wasn’t the sharp, piercing kind; it wasn’t like being hacked by a knife or split by a sword. Rather, it felt as if something were burning inside his body, making his heart start to feel sour and aching, his movements turn sluggish, and even his eyes begin to well up with water.
This “pain” clearly wasn’t that “painful,” yet it made him feel… that no matter what he did, it seemed he could never win.
But win what? It didn’t seem to be about winning a game…
Spades felt a bit lost.
A transparent thread flew in from the distance and tied itself around Spades’s right wrist.
Bai Six began to laugh. “You also possess a soul now, and you’ve also produced pain. To some extent, you too are qualified to be my successor.”
“But guess who Bai Liu will choose as his lover, and whom he will abandon, leaving them to become the solitary Evil God Heir?”
Spades finally looked up as if realizing something. Without him knowing, a drop of water fell from the corner of his eye, landing on the water-ripple wall that was playing the past of Bai Liu and Xie Ta.
Oh, it’s this.
The thing he felt just now that he could never win no matter what—it’s this.
—
Author’s Note:
Bai Six is lying; the souls of Tao (Spades) and Ta (Tawil) are one and the same. The one inside Tao’s body is Ta’s soul (see the last few chapters of Dense Forest Border), it’s just that Bai Six is currently deceiving Tao.
There will be sugar (sweet moments) after the Killer Sequence tournament is over.
—
*(T/N: It’s a good thing the author’s note told us there will be sweet moments after this because I feel physically ill.
Also, I figured Bai Six was lying about the separate soul thing. We know Xie Ta’s soul is dormant (?) within Spades. But that doesn’t mean his deceptive words hurt any less. I hate him so much.)*
