Someone was forcing Bai Liu to do to Tawil what those investors and the factory manager had once done to him—forcing him to become the person he was supposed to have become.
Bai Liu did not want to do it.
But he was not completely out of options. He only needed to take a gamble.
However, Tawil would never allow that method.
The instant the plan appeared in Bai Liu’s mind, he quickly lowered his head.
Tawil understood him too well. It was very difficult for Bai [N O V E L I G H T] Liu to hide his thoughts in front of him, so he could only lower his gaze, pretending to think before giving an answer.
“...The antidote, then. I have no other choice. I’ve already made a deal with someone else.”
“Then only my blood is needed.”
Tawil extended his hand.
A tiny thorn-covered Blood Lingzhi vine pierced out from the blue-green veins beneath his pale wrist. Bright red blood instantly wound around both sides of his wrist and spilled downward.
The vines greedily followed the path of the flowing blood and began to grow wildly. They wrapped around Tawil’s arm and spread inward. Sharp black thorns pierced into his porcelain-white skin, and soon even more blood gushed from the puncture wounds.
Tawil’s face rapidly turned pale as the vines coiled around him. His breathing slowed from the excessive blood loss. Blood dripped continuously from his fingertips as he held Bai Liu.
“I... need something to hold the blood,” Tawil said with effort, his eyelids half lowered. “Something like a baptismal font.”
Bai Liu swept his eyes around the room, then fixed his gaze on a glass display case lying horizontally, its lid opening upward.
Tawil lay down inside the glass cabinet of his own accord.
It was the cabinet the factory workers had prepared for replacing his heart. It had only just been pulled out when Bai Liu and the others burst in, so it was still intact and undamaged. Its length was roughly the same as Tawil’s height—just enough for him to lie inside.
The blood silently seeping from him soon covered the backs of Tawil’s hands where they rested against the sides of the glass cabinet.
—This scene was exactly the same as Xie Ta lying inside the baptismal font in the church.
Bai Liu instinctively turned his face away and stood up, giving his back to the scene.
His breathing quickened beyond his control. His hands kept opening and clenching. He had been too close to Tawil, and the fragrance had caused his mental value to keep falling slowly. Now, at this moment, it finally reached the threshold for hallucinations.
Disordered voices began to surface in his mind.
[—He’s in pain! Can’t you see he’s in pain?! Are you a monster? Do you have no feelings? Stop it right now!]
[Do you know how much pain he’s in?! Why are you torturing him?! Does someone like you even have anyone important to you?!]
[Are you incapable of empathizing with people?]
[He really is a monster, isn’t he?]
[Bai Liu, your mental state isn’t right. You should see a psychologist...]
[...Severe post-traumatic stress disorder. When encountering scenes of injury, the patient may subconsciously repeat stereotyped actions from that time...]
[Bai Liu, why are you afraid of water? You aren’t afraid of water at all. What you’re afraid of is seeing the corpse in the water. Do you still remember who he is?!]
[The real Xie Ta already died for you!]
[...Some PTSD patients, though they did not suffer the harm themselves, possess strong empathy and will repeatedly imagine the original scene, simulating themselves taking the other person’s place and enduring the harm in order to ease their guilt...]
[If only I were the one being tortured. If only I were the one in pain. If only I were the one who died... if only I could have taken Su Yang’s place...]
Everything in Bai Liu’s mind began to collapse into chaos.
Through the narrow gap behind the curtains, Xie Ta was submerged again and again in the baptismal font, his hair hanging on both sides of his face and dripping with bloody water.
From beginning to end, the person in Bai Liu’s childhood fantasies had always been Xie Ta.
The one the children called a monster, the one the teachers punished harshly and ostracized, the one locked alone in solitary confinement inside the church for baptism, the one forced beneath the water of the baptismal font again and again to be “cleansed,” the one who could not escape that welfare home—
It had always been Xie Ta.
It was not Bai Six.
It was not Bai Liu.
It was Xie Ta.
Then why, in Bai Liu’s lost old memories, had the person enduring these things been replaced by himself?
Bai Liu’s breathing grew ragged. A piercing pain began to spread across his skin, as if vines were drilling out from beneath it.
He clutched his own neck. A sharp pain like a vine piercing his carotid artery made him frown.
But in reality, there was nothing there.
A vine as thick as a finger pierced through Tawil’s neck. His breathing gradually weakened. His long hair floated in the bloody water, tangled with the vines.
Bai Liu began to lose his footing.
He felt as though sharp thorns were constantly bursting out from every bone in his body. Every breath brought violent pain as his muscles contracted and seemed to be sliced open. It left him unsteady, almost dizzy enough to drop to his knees.
But in truth, there was nothing on Bai Liu’s body.
It was only a hallucination.
A hallucination far too real.
These hallucinations, born from Bai Liu’s subconscious, were making him experience the same thing as Tawil.
Tawil’s voice came from behind him.
“Are you leaving?”
“What are you going to do?”
Tawil’s calm voice steadied Bai Liu.
Bai Liu braced himself against an unstable cold-gas pipe and took two deep breaths, forcing his mind, which had already become a tangled mess, to maintain the most basic ability to think.
Then he answered Tawil.
“I’m going to tell the people outside that I found the [Antidote].”
“Liar,” Tawil said. “Bai Liu, you never dare to look me in the eye when you’re lying.”
His tone was as gentle as it had been when he first saw Bai Liu in the church.
“Are you willing to tell me what you’re going to do after you leave me?”
—[Are you willing to read a book with me?]
Bai Liu’s body seemed to be controlled by some unknown consciousness.
Like a malfunctioning robot, he turned around stiffly and saw Tawil sitting up in the pool of blood.
—Covered in thorns, yet still watching him intently, without blinking.
His body was covered in needle-like wounds, and there was a very faint smile on his face.
Bai Liu’s pupils contracted slightly, then slowly dilated.
...Xie Ta’s corpse by the pond, covered in needle marks.
And Bai Liu kneeling beside him, exhausted after performing CPR for who knew how long.
Bai Six stared blankly at that place. Then he leaned over the corpse, clenched his hand into a fist, pressed it against Xie Ta’s chest—where there was no heartbeat—and gently opened and closed his hand, whispering as he imitated the sound of a heartbeat.
“Thump-thump—thump-thump—thump-thump—”
“Doesn’t your heart speed up? Why isn’t it even beating now...”
“Beat for me...”
The words of that sham psychologist Bai Liu had only seen a few times because the sessions were free echoed intermittently beside his ear.
[...According to what your friend said, you have severe PTSD. Specifically, it is the type associated with witnessing injury. You need to regulate yourself...]
[But your personality is too extreme. If you encounter a similar scene again, your reaction will likely be very excessive. You will do everything in your power to prevent a similar thing from happening in front of you again—even to the point of replacing the other person yourself...]
“What are you going to do, Bai Liu?”
Tawil raised his silver-blue eyes and looked at him.
The fingers hanging at Bai Liu’s side moved.
He summoned a card.
The Ace of Hearts poker card.
He opened his mouth, and finally spoke.
“I’m going to find a mirror.”
[Liu Jiayi, can this Ace of Hearts completely transform one person into another? Including things like blood?]
[Why are you asking this? If you can find the person who exists completely in your heart, and get close to them, this skill card can achieve basic transformations such as blood composition.]
[What about certain traits? For example, blood regeneration speed and tolerance for death?]
[= = What the hell is that? Who are you planning to transform into? Whose “most important person” in their heart looks like that? Blood regeneration, death tolerance... just thinking about it—]
[—That’s simply like a monster.]
“What do you need a mirror for?” Tawil asked.
“To let me see myself,” Bai Liu said.
[Yeah, whose “most important person” in their heart is a monster like that~]
[Wow, Bai Liu, the expression on your face is disgusting. You smiled so strangely just now!]
“Why do you want to see yourself?” Tawil asked.
Bai Liu lowered his head and calmly looked at his reflection in the puddle on the floor.
He let the shimmering light of the roses—like the dazzling surface of that summer pond long ago—reflect in his pupils. There was no emotion on his face.
He remained silent like that for a very, very long time.
At the same time, the heart at the center of the Ace of Hearts card in his hand flickered and spun rapidly.
The person inside the heart quickly changed from Su Yang into someone else.
Bai Liu’s hair grew long. His limbs became powerful and perfectly sculpted. Needle marks appeared across his body. Thorns pierced through his neck. He was bathed in blood. His silver-blue lashes drooped, and pale pink rose undiluted solution mixed with blood dripped from his jaw and eyelashes. His curled hair coiled behind his waist.
“Because this time...”
Bai Liu said, “I want to become the monster being tortured.”
—
Author’s Note:
It’s here!
This chapter is a little chaotic, with many flashback memories intertwined, but I absolutely didn’t mean to be perfunctory with everyone! It really is because my ability is limited, and this was the only way I could write it. Sorry. Kneels.
Also, I must seriously emphasize that all my psychological knowledge comes from Baidu and is not rigorous at all, so everyone, please, absolutely do not take it seriously!
This instance is almost over. Slumps.
Thank you to all the readers who have followed the story this far. It has been hard on you!
Writing a framework story that exceeds one’s own ability really makes a person want to gouge out their own eyeballs.
