Chapter 466: Evil God Festival - Boathouse

The door to the Shrine was kicked outward by Bai Liu, and an infinite amount of flames burst forth, ash and heat coming together.

Bai Liu looked up, his dark eyes reflecting the orange-red fire, the mountains burning to black charcoal, and the bright fireworks exploding in the sky.

Far away, he heard the cheers and countdowns of the crowd from the foothills:

"The Evil God Festival is about to officially kick off, and the fireworks display is coming to an end, so let's count down to the moment that brings us happiness once a year!"

"Ten!"

Gorgeous fireworks exploded one by one in the sky, as if they were bouquets of flowers set ablaze by sparks, blossoming in the night sky and offering sacrifices to the gods, opening a beautiful prelude to the story.

Bai Liu, carrying the bruised Taville and the bloodstained Xiao Kui on his back, hung his head, as if he were carrying something he was overburdened with, and walked down the hill, step by step, extremely slowly.

Countless threads from the shrine were wrapped around Taville in Bai Liu's arms. These threads, called [Agony], strangled Taville and Bai Liu, who was holding Taville in his arms, and their blood mingled together and dripped down onto the fire-scorched ground.

"Nine!"

Bai Liu's steps stopped, his breathing became slow and hard, and his whole body leaned forward, as if he was using all his strength to walk down the hill, away from the shrine.

But the threads in his and Taville's bodies won't allow them to stay away any longer.

"Bai Liu." Taville's face was in tatters from the silk threads, but he didn't seem to feel any pain at all, instead he very gently stroked those strangled wounds on Bai Liu's body, looking at him intently with his eyes downcast, as if he wanted to memorize him forever, "Put me down. "

"You can't walk out of here with me."

"Your hands are shaking from holding me."

"Eight."

"I don't want it." Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked directly at Taville, "You have traded yourself to me, and I naturally have the right to take you with me."

Taville stood up supporting Bai Liu's shoulder, he looked at Bai Liu, then bent down and hugged Bai Liu, whispering:

"But I love you."

Bai Liu's pupils shrank.

"Seven!"

Taville continued, his eyes closing slightly, "I finally understand what you were feeling when you came to see me."

"It's love right?"

"Six!"

"I want to see you, I want to escape from the shrine and see who you really chose to be your white horse Wang Zi, and for you to answer why you didn't come in to see me." Taville buried his head completely into Bai Liu's shoulder, he hugged Bai Liu tightly, it was so strong that Bai Liu felt unable to catch his breath in a rare way, Taville's voice was hoarse, "I want you to come in and see me every day, to talk to me, to look me in the eye and say things about yourself."

"I want you to take me, I want to go with you."

A silk thread wrapped tightly.

"I want you to be with me forever."

Two silk threads wrapped tightly.

"Five!"

Bai Liu's eyes were dazed as he subconsciously hugged Taville back : "...... You're leaving me again, aren't you?"

"God spoke to me once." Taville answered him in a very soft voice, "When I produce pain to be able to sacrifice to him, then I can be his heir."

"He said that only love can make God suffer."

The countless threads wrapped around Taville's body instantly tensed.

"Four!"

"The more love that is gained, the more pain that is produced to be sacrificed to the god will be, and the better the god will be able to control the other." Wrapped in silk threads Taville slowly raised his eyes to Bai Liu in his arms, he smiled softly as if happy, "I am now one of the gods' puppets."

"I can't leave the prison that holds me because it was forged by the love and pain I generated myself."

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One!!!"

"The Evil God Sacrifice has officially begun!!!"

Heavy silhouettes leaned up quickly from the path behind Bai Liu, all of them holding dead-faced sacrifices in their hands, obviously people from the eight great families who had come up to offer sacrifices in advance, and these people shouted angrily:

"What's going on! Why is this place at the shrine burning!"

"Where's that body? That body in the shrine is gone!"

"Did the Kitahara family supervise the theft or which defecting sacrifice did it!"

The fireworks exploded behind them in large bursts.

"I love you." Taville closes his eyes as he lowers them, dropping his cold lips to the unresponsive Bai Liu's and murmuring softly, "My soul will only be here for you."

"But you can't exist here."

"Because there is only pain here."

[System prompt: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for obtaining one of the main quest objectives (Evil God Spirit), and is about to depart back to the timeline five years from now, please prepare yourself, player Bai Liu!

All the threads on Taville's body tense up, pulling him backward while he closes his eyes and embraces Bai Liu, his hands crossing and closing tightly in the long hair at the back of Bai Liu's head, his lips opening and closing as if to say something.

Bai Liu saw a lot of people behind him holding up knives, guns and sticks with fierce faces running this way, fireworks continue to bloom, colorful lights and shadows in front of Bai Liu mixed, shaking him in a moment to close his eyes.

The moment he closes his eyes, Bai Liu hears Taville whispering in his ear:

"Goodbye, Rapunzel who came to my rescue."

Bai Liu opened his eyes and realized that he was lying on his side as if he had fallen asleep from exhaustion in the Japanese room where the shrine trained for the Shinto ritual dance.

There was no light in the Japanese room, it was pitch black, and only through the moonlight coming in from outside could we vaguely see the picture of the Wave Shrine hanging on the wall directly across from us - the same picture that Bai Liu had traveled into at the beginning when he found the clue.

Everything around Bai Liu, the fire, the hysterical crowd, the blood dripping from Xiao Kui in Kitahara, and the "corpse" of the evil god who kissed him so tenderly, disappears as if it were an unrealistic nightmare.

He sat up and was quiet for a moment, then dressed, approved his coat, and stood up and pushed the door open in preparation for his walk from the chamber.

There were two servants ambling and kneeling by the door, and from the clothes they wore and the word [Gobune] embroidered on their right collar, it was clear that the two servants were members of the Gobune family.

The moment Bai Liu stepped out of the door, these two servants lowered their heads and quickly raised their hands to block his departure, "Young Master Bai Liu, you can't leave here."

"Lord Mifune has given orders that you are not to set foot outside this shrine until you have practiced the Shinto ritual dance you are to perform tomorrow night."

Bai Liu heard this and gave a start, he looked sideways at these two servants, and then turned his head to look behind him at this shrine that had completely lost its shape from back in the day, and his tone rose as he asked, "Is this the Kagome Shrine?"

"Yes." The maid looked up a little strangely, "You've been practicing your dance in the shrine's worship room, don't you remember?"

"If this is a shrine." Bai Liu asked back with cool eyes, "What about the evil god who lived in this shrine five years ago? Where did he go?"

These two servants of the Gobunshi family's faces changed when they heard this questioning, as if they had heard something extremely taboo, and they bowed their heads, their eyes tightly closed, and as if they were praying they folded their hands together and chanted in small, rapid voices:

"Don't blame the evil god, don't blame him, we didn't mean to move you from the Kagome Shrine to the Sea Shrine after the fire."

"It's just that because the Wei you sent out five years ago was so horrible, half of the people in the village in Deer County went crazy and committed suicide in their sleep and died."

"......遥请邪神莫怪罪!"

Not a trace of expression remained on Bai Liu's face, as his gaze slowly shifted from the ship-shaped object bobbing and undulating on the waves in the distance to the mural hanging on the wall inside the house - a huge ship-shaped shrine thrown up on the ocean's waves.

Waterfront Boathouse.

After a few moments of lightning and wind and rain, heavy rain suddenly fell.

There was a shivering girl clad in a soaked lining who ducked into the boathouse, her lips pale and purple, her fingers and knuckles visibly bruised, and instead of closing the door in what was obviously such a heavy downpour, she just left it open and sat down on her knees just letting the gusty wind and rain come pouring in and slapping at her face without a trace of blood on it.

The wind whipped the wooden sign she hung by the Japanese room, the aged wooden boards bearing four words that were about to be worn out of sight - [Kitahara Xiao Kui].

"Xiao Kui, what are you doing?!" A panicked male voice interrupts Xiao Kui's self-mutilating behavior, as a drenched Kitahara Cangta rushes up to close Xiao Kui's door, placing the paper umbrella, which has been overturned by the gusts of wind, beside the door, and turning his head to Xiao Kui with a tone of reproach, "Why didn't you close the door in such a heavy rain? "

"It's probably because I just didn't suffer enough when I trained in the bitter room." A hollow-eyed Xiao Kui mumbled in reply.

Cangta paused for a moment as he looked to his same knuckles strangled with bloody lines and gripped them hard, lowering his head to stop talking.

Xiao Kui rolls her eyes to scan Cangta's little movement and she asks, "You went to the bitter room too?"

"Hmm." Cangta smiles poignantly and self-deprecatingly, "Ever since we were found out to be involved in the shrine arson five years ago, even though the Kitahara family has fallen on hard times and can no longer afford to build up a large mansion to train and torment us, and our suffering has not been up to par every year, and we're an inferior sacrifice, they still haven't given up on torturing us."

"That's for sure." Xiao Kui's eyes lit up for a moment, a sort of smug and pained grin on her face, "What happened five years ago, that's what scared the shit out of these brutes."

"Yeah." Cangta couldn't help but smile as well as he eyed the memories, "The shrine was on fire at that time, and Bai Liu had to go save the Evil God-sama, so we went back to help him."

"I was the one who went back to help him!" Xiao Kui retorted, but soon she slumped back and said derisively, "But all in all I wasn't much help is all, and was quickly knocked out."

"Then I vaguely remember Bai Liu carrying me and the Evil God down the mountain, but the Evil God was pulled by the silk threads growing out of the shrine and couldn't leave, and the people from the Eight Families who had come to offer sacrifices came up again."

"Gobune dragged Bai Liu straight into the shrine to forcefully sacrifice him."

Xiao Kui laughed out loud, her arms and legs flailing as she laughed through her tears, "The Evil God-sama, however, rarely loses his temper!"

"It did not want to open its eyes and sacrifice Bai Liu, so it closed its eyes in death and said I will not allow you to do this to him."

"And so that night." The smile on Xiao Kui's face widened, "Lord Evil God was so powerful that half of Luming County was buried for his beloved sacrifice, Bai Liu."

"It descended upon the dreams of these men and looked straight into their souls, and these lust-filled brutes, unable to look the evil god in the eye, went mad in their dreams and committed suicide."

"This is the first time I've seen an evil god kill someone."