Chapter 469: Evil God Festival · Houseboat |
“Bai Liu has flipped Spades into the water!!”
The host was so excited he was dancing and gesticulating: “Spades reacted instantly, using his whip to coil around Bai Liu’s ankle and dragging him down. Now both players have fallen into the seawater!”
“Thrilling!”
“Damn it, damn it!” Mu Shicheng’s hands and feet were cold, and his clenched teeth were shaking, “How much longer is this fucking fight going to last!”
Wang Shun didn’t dare look at the big screen at all. He took several deep breaths and lowered his head to look at the system panel to distract himself: “Bai Liu’s current popularity is rising all the way. He has now broken into the top fifty, ranking 48th.”
“The betting odds for his victory against Spades have now dropped to around 4:1. Our current betting pool growth rate…”
Wang Shun clicked on the panel, slowly exhaled a long breath, and said hoarsely: “—is fifty times what it was when the match started.”
This data was terrifyingly good, but no one’s expression relaxed because of it.
—This was essentially Bai Liu relying on giving up his Death-Exemption Gold Medal and using his life to trade for this level of attention.
Beside him, Bai Jiamu squeezed the fists resting on his knees. He exhaled and asked, “Uncle Liao, do you think Spades can beat Bai Liu?”
“It’s hard to say.” Liao Ke shook his head slowly and gave a bitter smile, “Judge might be able to see some inkling of victory or defeat here, but I can’t.”
“In my view…”
Liao Ke paused: “It’s fifty-fifty.”
“Fifty-fifty?! Surely not! The odds in the arena are set at 4:1, saying Spades has an 80% chance of winning!” Bai Yi said in shock, turning to look at the pitch-black screen, stomping his feet in anxiety, “Where are they?! Can they turn up the brightness on the screen? You can’t see people at all!”
“Bai Yi.” Bai Jiamu suddenly reached out and pressed down on the restless Bai Yi. He looked up at Bai Yi’s panicked face, his expression carrying a kind of desperate decisiveness, “If Spades loses, we must win the doubles match…”
Bai Yi subconsciously retorted: “Spades won’t lose!”
“Spades can lose.” Bai Jiamu took a deep breath and squeezed Bai Yi’s shoulders hard. His expression carried a sternness that didn’t match his age, “Those gamblers can think he can’t lose and go crazy insulting Spades after he loses, but we are his teammates. We are the ones who should give him the right and the leeway to lose.”
“If even we can’t accept him losing, then there will be no one in this world who can accept him losing!”
Bai Yi’s shoulders slowly slumped. His expression was dazed, tears welled in his eyes, and he muttered to himself: “…But this guy didn’t bring a Death-Exemption Gold Medal. If he loses, he dies.”
Everyone fell silent.
“I’m joking!” Bai Yi suddenly took a deep breath and forced a smile, “If Spades admits defeat and exits on his own, then it’ll be fine!”
No one responded to Bai Yi’s words.
The smile on Bai Yi’s face slowly vanished.
In the game pool, Spades might run if he couldn’t win, because that was just a game.
But when this person was in a league match, even the last time he was stuck in a quagmire and nearly drowned, he never once clicked the exit button.
Spades was a monster who would not admit defeat in the league, as if after the league started, the [Exit] button on his system panel had disappeared.
After a long, long time, Liao Ke lowered his head and spoke: “…Spades was already born in an environment where no one accepted him. As his teammates, let’s not let him die in an environment where no one accepts him in the end as well.”
“That would be too much.”
Bai Yi looked up at the undulating water ripples on the big screen with a blank expression. Tears fell from his face as he slowly opened his mouth:
“Then is it not too much to ask us to accept Spades’ death?”
“…He hasn’t even been to reality once.”
The screen flashed, turning from total, illegible darkness to brightness. The two people fighting in the seawater reappeared in the frame.
As the image became clear, the entire audience screamed. Many people stood up, trying to get closer to the big screen to see the scene inside.
The host was jumping wildly: “It’s here, it’s here! The moment to decide victory or defeat is here!”
In the pitch-black, surging seawater, black and white bone whips intertwined and crossed, appearing like skeletal fish stripped of flesh, darting rapidly beneath the heaving surface.
Spades’ bone whip was wrapped around Bai Liu’s ankle. The bone whip exerted force, dragging Bai Liu deeper under the sea.
“Spades’ bone whip is dragging Bai Liu downward!” The host excitedly gripped the microphone, “As everyone knows, Spades’ bone whip is one of the top high-intensity, high-judgment skill weapons in the game. Killer Sequence spends millions of points every year on the maintenance of this bone whip. Once it snags an opponent, it is basically impossible to shake off!”
The red hair tie was dragged loose, and Bai Liu’s long hair instantly spread out in the seawater. Bubbles escaped from between his teeth as he coldly and sharply swung his whip back, using the whip as a blade to slash toward the place where the bone whip was coiled around his ankle.
“Does Bai Liu want to use a dagger to cut this bone whip?” The host gave a hiss, “This judgment is a bit low-level; that’s basically impossible.”
The short knife in Bai Liu’s hand didn’t stop for a second, making a clean and crisp slash.
A thick line of blood bloomed in the water by his leg. The bone whip that had been coiled around Bai Liu’s ankle fell into the deep sea.
The host looked at that ankle falling in the sea, dumbfounded: “…Player Bai Liu cut off his own ankle?!”
*(T/N: There goes another limb…)*
“He successfully used this to break free from player Spades’ bone whip entanglement!”
Bai Liu supplemented with an antidote. His severed right foot bent outward and grew back distortedly. Most of the color drained from his face as he floated up to the surface to take a deep breath. Heavy rain smashed frantically against Bai Liu’s face.
He closed his eyes and breathed hard, his long hair falling below his shoulders, spreading like ink in the water.
The next second, something surged violently from beneath the sea.
Bai Liu on the surface swam backward with agility. A black whip, as if intending to lift a giant wave, grazed past the side of Bai Liu’s face, carving a finger-wide bloody gash on his right cheek and tearing the clothes on his right shoulder.
Blood fell from Bai Liu’s cold, white face, dripping into the water and swirling, blending into his long hair scattered on the water’s surface.
Floating on the sea, Spades held his whip. He looked at Bai Liu without much emotion. His shattered hair was soaked through and stuck to his ears and forehead, obscuring his gaze.
He raised his hand, and the whip’s momentum sharply sliced through the water from both sides, coming straight for Bai Liu’s face.
The whip grazed Bai Liu’s left side, severing the long hair on his left shoulder. Bai Liu took a deep breath and dove down into the deep sea.
Spades followed closely, merging his legs and swimming and diving at high speed underwater. He looked like a black-skinned tiger shark on the hunt, his speed so fast his face was stretched into a blur.
*(T/N: What the fuck is their game plan here? Ya translator is stressed.)*
“Wow! Relentless pursuit!” The host excitedly hammered the railing, “As expected of Spades! Opponents who have fought Spades say he has the shadow of an aquatic animal on him, able to fully utilize his attack advantages in water. Looking at it now, it’s true!”
“Bai Liu has no power to fight back at all!”
“Talking pure bullshit!” Mu Shicheng was so angry he rolled up his sleeves, wanting to climb the camera crane to hammer the host, “What a dumbass commentator!”
Tang Erda forcibly held him down: “You can’t hit him from here.”
On the big screen, Bai Liu was about to be grabbed by the waist by the pursuing Spades.
Bai Liu spun and dodged. He looked at Spades, who had swum directly above him. In the moment they faced each other, Spades threw out his whip without any hesitation, intending to wrap it around Bai Liu’s waist and pull him over.
At the moment Spades’ whip was about to touch his waist, Bai Liu twisted his waist like a fish, flipped over to dodge, and swam downward.
“He dodged it!!” The host raised a fist and cheered, “Great move!”
Mu Shicheng also raised a fist and roared: “Awesome!”
Mu Ke let out a long breath.
Liu Jiayi held her fists against her chin. She stared at the big screen, her lips pursing slightly, “Looking at Bai Liu’s current movement speed, he should be wearing the panel of Mu Shicheng, the one with the fastest movement speed among us, and it’s in full-throttle mode.”
“But this mode can only last five minutes.”
Mu Ke was startled.
Liu Jiayi looked up at the big screen: “If Bai Liu can’t end the match within five minutes, he will be in a completely passive state.”
On the big screen, water ripples and bubbles tumbled together.
Passing downward through the shallow sea area, the color and ripples of the water disappeared, becoming calm, as if the wind and waves on the surface did not exist. Bai Liu dove downward in the deep sea, his gaze looking straight ahead, while not far behind him, Spades followed, also diving downward.
Spades’ gaze was fixed intently on Bai Liu. He didn’t shift his line of sight once, as if in such a vast sea area, only Bai Liu’s existence was worth his full attention to pursue.
A gentle white light spread from the depths of the sea.
Bai Liu quickly kicked his feet and swam toward the direction where the white light was emitting.
He swam directly above the white light and then stopped his movements. Like a falling leaf, he slowly drifted down. There was no expression on his face, only those pitch-black eyes reflecting this underwater white light that seemed to breathe, and the person at the center of that white light.
Tawil seemed to be in a deep sleep, his head hanging low. His hands, feet, and eyes were all entangled by countless threads. His silver-blue curly hair and blood-stained white kariginu drifted underwater.
The Inverted-Cross pendant he had traded for from Bai Six hung over his heart, emitting a gentle halo beneath the sea, illuminating his face which was blurred by the entanglement of threads. The deep blue seawater cast layers of shimmering water shadows over his face.
Following the threads from Tawil upward, the other end of the threads was surprisingly connected to that maritime shrine that remained motionless despite the wind and waves on the surface. Tawil was suspended beneath the boat by these threads named ‘suffering’, becoming an [Anchor] that stabilized the vessel.
The moment they saw Tawil, system panels popped up for both Spades and Bai Liu simultaneously:
>[System Notification: Congratulations to player Spades for finding the most painful offering (Tawil). Please sacrifice them before the Evil God Festival storm night passes!]
>[System Notification: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for gathering the Evil God’s soul and flesh in one place. Please sacrifice them before the Evil God Festival storm night passes!]
