The deity who had drained away his final drop of blood for his only believer slowly closed his eyes in exhaustion.
Beside the believer who had been granted new life and healed, he fell into a peaceful sleep.
The withered vines turned into a black quilt that covered his body.
At the corner of the young deity’s lips was a faint smile so slight it was almost imperceptible, like a child dreaming sweetly after finally receiving his favorite toy.
Everything felt like the magic of a Fairy Godmother.
Because the clock had only just struck midnight.
——————
Liu Jiayi woke coughing amid the sharp smell of disinfectant.
She had lost too much blood. Her face was pale to the point of translucence.
Yet the instant she woke, the little girl’s alertness snapped back into place. She immediately drew out a bottle of poison and pointed it toward the source of the sound.
Because the duration of the visualization item had expired, Liu Jiayi currently couldn’t see anything.
“It’s me. Bai Liu.”
Even with poison pressed to his throat, Bai Liu remained calm.
He raised both hands to show he meant no harm.
“Your wounds are still bleeding, so I was trying to bandage them.”
Liu Jiayi slowly lowered the poison, still seeming unable to process the fact that Bai Liu had survived.
At the time, she had already been prepared to smash the pot and sink the ship. She had only wanted to gamble one last time.
She hadn’t expected to actually save Bai Liu.
Only then did she notice the bandages wrapped around the cuts on her arm.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the throbbing rows of knife wounds.
“Your HP should still be very low.” Bai Liu looked at her. “Aren’t you going to recover some for yourself?”
Liu Jiayi pursed her lips and remained silent.
Her healing skill cooldown had indeed ended.
And Bai Liu was right.
Because she had recklessly drained her blood to save him, her HP had dropped dangerously low. She only had five points left now.
Even sitting there, she could feel a chill seeping from deep inside her body, cold enough to make her tremble.
Liu Jiayi didn’t answer.
Bai Liu didn’t press further either.
He simply turned and continued bandaging the still-unconscious Xiao Mu Ke.
Just as he finished, Liu Jiayi suddenly grabbed the hem of his clothes.
Bai Liu turned back slightly in surprise.
Liu Jiayi had closed her eyes.
Her trembling lashes were wet with tears, and dried blood stained her dirty face. Yet a sacred, pure white glow suddenly spread from her body like flowing water, enveloping Bai Liu and Mu Ke alike.
The halo was warm and clean, soothing enough to loosen even tightly wound nerves and muscles.
At the center of that glow, Liu Jiayi held a slender embossed glass bottle about the length of Bai Liu’s palm.
Inside it swirled a silver liquid that sparkled like quicksilver.
She pushed it into Bai Liu’s hands, her voice hoarse.
“The antidote.”
“You and Mu Ke drink it.”
“Don’t save any for me. Fill your HP to full.”
Before Bai Liu could ask why, Liu Jiayi curled in on herself as if suddenly feeling cold.
She hugged her knees tightly and buried her face against them.
Her voice came out muffled.
“The lower a player’s panel level is, the stronger the recovery effect of the antidote skill.”
“It works better on you and Mu Ke than on me.”
“And both of you were almost dead already.”
“I still have HP left, and I still have skills.”
“In this game... I’m more durable than you two.”
“Why give it to us?” Bai Liu still asked.
Liu Jiayi kept her face buried against her knees.
“...I’m returning it.”
It sounded like complete nonsense.
But Bai Liu understood immediately.
Bai Six had saved her.
Mu Ke had saved her.
He had saved her too.
She remembered every single thing.
She still doubted. She was still confused. She still found it difficult to trust.
But she remembered all of it.
“I thought you’d hate me,” Bai Liu said thoughtfully. “You probably figured out back in the church that I used Liu Huai to capture you.”
Liu Jiayi gave a muffled nasal “Mm.”
Bai Liu lowered his eyes toward the top of her messy yellowish hair.
“Then if you knew I lied to you and used you, why did you still risk your life to save me?”
Instead of answering, Liu Jiayi asked quietly:
“Then what about you?”
“Why did you risk your life to save me?”
“A deal,” Bai Liu replied simply.
Only then did Liu Jiayi finally raise her head.
Her eyes were red.
“Because you really did save me.”
The two of them looked at each other in silence for a very long time.
This little girl had a pair of gray eyes that could not see the world.
Whenever she raised her head like this to “look” at someone, she carried a stubborn, lonely kind of fragility.
Like a fish peeking from muddy water at the birds on the shore.
Ignored by everyone.
But if someone truly brushed aside the mud and looked carefully at this little fish, they would realize her eyes could speak.
They said:
Whoever saves me, I’ll return it all.
I owe no one anything.
I want to settle every debt with this world and everyone in it.
I want to know what I did wrong.
I want to know how long a “little wretch” like me can continue struggling to survive.
Bai Liu handed the antidote back to her.
His tone and expression remained calm.
“I already obtained the Blood Lingzhi. I’ve cleared the stage.”
“I don’t need HP recovery.”
“You don’t owe me anything either.”
“Someone already repaid it for you.”
“Just leave some antidote for Mu Ke.”
“As for the rest...” Bai Liu held the bottle out in front of Liu Jiayi. “I think you need it more.”
“Your HP is low too.”
“Drink it.”
“If anything happens, I’m here.”
“I promised Liu Huai I’d take you out.”
Liu Jiayi’s dry, cracked lips parted slightly.
Curled into herself like a tiny ball, she rested her chin on her knees as she cautiously looked up at him.
The angle of her gaze was filled with wariness and suspicion.
She blinked hard, suppressing the emotions surging in her chest, then reached out for the antidote bottle.
But both of her hands were injured.
They trembled badly enough that she almost dropped it.
“Your hands are hurt.”
Bai Liu caught the bottle steadily before it could fall.
Then he raised it back to Liu Jiayi’s lips.
“I’ll feed you like this.”
Liu Jiayi inhaled softly.
She opened her mouth.
But before she could drink, a drop of liquid fell into the bottle.
Then another.
And another.
Tears dripped into the antidote.
Liu Jiayi vaguely remembered hearing somewhere that tears were the poison humans secreted when emotions overflowed.
She didn’t know whether dropping tears into the antidote would ruin it.
Liu Jiayi bit down on the mouth of the bottle while tears streamed freely down her face.
She drank while sobbing uncontrollably.
“It’s so embarrassing to drink like this...”
“...like a...”
“Like a stray dog?” Bai Liu smiled slightly. “Why is your catchphrase exactly the same as your ge’s?”
“Being a stray dog isn’t so bad.”
“Why do all of you hate stray dogs so much?”
The moment Liu Huai was mentioned, Liu Jiayi cried even harder.
Tears and mucus mixed together as her whole body shook with sobs.
“What’s good about being a stray dog?!”
“They’re filthy!”
“Everyone hates them!”
“Everyone beats them!”
Bai Liu lightly patted Liu Jiayi’s head.
He almost seemed amused that she was crying so hard over this particular point.
“A drifter wouldn’t hate a stray dog.”
Liu Jiayi slowly raised her tear-filled eyes.
“When the game ends, take your ge away from a drifter like me,” Bai Liu said softly, looking down at her.
“When the game truly ends...”
“You and him won’t have to wander anymore.”
——————
After Xiao Mu Ke woke up, he drank the antidote as well.
Liu Jiayi herself drank very little.
This little girl had an absurdly stubborn streak buried deep in her bones and insisted on leaving some for Bai Liu.
With only three HP left, Bai Liu really was in danger, so in the end he drank some according to her wishes.
Now Bai Liu and Xiao Mu Ke had both recovered to full HP.
Liu Jiayi never said how much HP she herself had left.
When asked, she merely said she was at a level where she wouldn’t die easily and told them not to worry.
Under the cover of night, Bai Liu pushed aside the baptismal pool, revealing the tunnel underneath.
He clapped the dust from his hands and exhaled lightly.
“At this hour, the Deformed Children can’t leave through the church exit anymore, so they’ll go through the hospital side.”
“There shouldn’t be many of them left in the tunnel now.”
“Even if there are, it doesn’t matter.”
Liu Jiayi held her poison bottle as she stood in front of Bai Liu, her voice still hoarse.
“I’ll clear the way.”
Bai Liu raised an eyebrow.
“Fine.”
“Then I’ll go carry Xiao Miao Gaojiang.”
Xiao Miao Gaojiang still had a soul contract with Bai Liu.
After Big Miao Gaojiang’s death, Bai Liu only needed to complete the contract to obtain Xiao Miao Gaojiang’s soul paper money.
That was why Bai Liu had deliberately kept the child alive and even fed him antidote to maintain his HP.
Liu Jiayi could already guess this, so she showed no reaction when Bai Liu walked over to pick Xiao Miao Gaojiang up.
Mu Ke, however, was nowhere near as calm.
His eyes instantly reddened with anger.
He pointed at Bai Liu with a trembling finger.
“Why are you still saving him?!”
“Are you insane?!”
“If he hadn’t shut the church door earlier, nobody would’ve died!”
“Even if he hadn’t shut it, they still would have died.”
Bai Liu shot Xiao Mu Ke a cold glance.
“The church gives no protection to adults.”
“If we’d gone inside, we would’ve died too.”
Xiao Mu Ke still looked furious.
But Liu Jiayi had already jumped down into the tunnel entrance.
Startled, Xiao Mu Ke turned toward her.
Bai Liu said calmly:
“Follow her.”
The tunnel remained dark, humid, and suffocating.
Every so often, something would crawl nearby with a rustling sound.
But before anything could approach Bai Liu’s group, Liu Jiayi would locate it through sound and kill it first.
Bai Liu followed behind her, glancing sideways at the little girl.
Liu Jiayi’s natural blindness gave her a terrifying advantage in darkness.
When it came to tracking targets through sound, she was even faster than the monsters.
When they reached a certain stretch of tunnel, the sound of fingers clawing through dirt echoed faintly.
Liu Jiayi instinctively prepared to attack again.
But Xiao Mu Ke suddenly screamed:
“Wait!”
Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi both turned toward him.
Xiao Mu Ke stared directly at Bai Liu, breathing hard inside the narrow tunnel.
“Bai Six...”
“Before Bai Six sent us upstairs, he was lying here.”
“You promised you’d take him away.”
They dug the limp, motionless Xiao Bai Six out from beneath the mushroom clusters.
The battle earlier that morning had exhausted him completely.
The child had already lost all ability to move, and his mutation was accelerating rapidly.
When Bai Liu touched him, the flesh sank inward like soft mud.
Xiao Bai Six was rotting very quickly.
Fourteen-year-old Bai Liu was becoming just like the other Deformed Children who transformed into monsters.
Rotting away inside the tunnels beneath the welfare home.
Turning into a puddle of decayed mud.
Xiao Mu Ke looked nervously at Bai Liu.
Bai Liu was already carrying Xiao Miao Gaojiang on his back.
Adding Xiao Bai Six’s corpse would clearly become another burden.
According to Bai Liu’s “value utility theory,” Xiao Mu Ke couldn’t help feeling uneasy.
He was afraid Bai Liu would abandon Xiao Bai Six just like he had earlier that morning.
“You promised him,” Xiao Mu Ke said warily. “You can’t leave him here.”
Bai Liu tilted his head slightly and looked down at Mu Ke with an unreadable expression.
Xiao Mu Ke became even more tense.
His back stiffened immediately.
“I know he’s just a corpse now...”
“But you still can’t leave him «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» here.”
“You promised him!”
Suddenly, Bai Liu laughed softly.
He first used bandages to secure Xiao Miao Gaojiang’s limbs against his own body.
Then he crouched down in front of Bai Six.
Dark postmortem bruises had already appeared on Bai Six’s face.
He looked like a child sleeping restlessly.
Even in death, his brows remained faintly furrowed.
Yet there was still the slightest trace of a smile at the corner of his lips.
A strangely contradictory expression.
“See? You do have friends too, Bai Six.”
Bai Liu’s tone was so light it was difficult to tell whether he was speaking to Bai Six or to himself.
“Not a liar with ulterior motives like me.”
“Real friends.”
“Your luck will get better.”
Bai Six did not open his eyes.
His chest no longer rose or fell.
Dark bruising spread slowly outward from the area over his heart.
Xiao Mu Ke watched Bai Liu strangely as he spoke to himself.
Then Bai Liu bent down and lifted Bai Six’s corpse into his arms.
With one child on his back and another in his arms, even Bai Liu’s movements became unsteady for a moment.
But he still managed to stand.
Bai Six’s limbs dangled limply.
His head rolled weakly off Bai Liu’s shoulder, only for Bai Liu to support it with one hand and tuck it carefully back into the crook of his arm.
Like cradling a sleeping infant.
Carrying the corpse of his own fourteen-year-old self, Bai Liu walked out of the welfare home step by heavy step.
