"It's not her." Bai Liu explained truthfully, "This is the clothing of another sacrifice, Kitahara Xiaokui."

"She and I have never met at Kitahara's house. The clothes are here with me only for some accidental reasons."

"Beiyuan Xiaokui?" Xie Ta paused.

Bai Liu raised her head sharply: "Do you know her?"

"I have not yet met Kitahara Xiaokui in this world line." Xie Ta shook his head slightly, raised his eyes and looked at Bai Liu, "But before this, I did meet her."

"She was brought to me by another child."

Bai Liu asked, "Who?"

Xie Ta was silent for a few seconds: "In each world line, God will place a derivative of himself. The derivative will grow up slowly in the world line, and then when he is about fourteen years old, he will meet me in the orphanage."

"Although the derivatives are God's creations, they are like God, born with a desire for desire and money, full of plunder and cruelty, extremely cold and powerful towards humans, and can eventually become the dominant person in every world line."

"This derivative and I are both candidates for the evil god's successor, but we both have a fatal flaw that prevents us from becoming evil gods—"

Xie Ta said softly, looking up at Bai Liu: "We all have no souls."

"According to the different characteristics of me and the derivatives, God has formulated two different plans for us to produce souls and put them into each world line."

“He will first let us come into contact with a large number of different humans, and then find a human being that we will develop feelings for. This human being will be our ‘anchor’.”

"When we possess the Anchor, we change from a soulless creature of God to a soul-possessed evil god in reserve."

Sheta lowered his eyes: "Next, the evil god will design various game paths for us to actively destroy——"

Bai Liu opened his eyelids: "——Destroy your anchors, so that you can lose the pain of anchors and make your souls more valuable, right?"

"Yes." Sheta turned his head to look at Bai Liu, "God calls this process the destruction and reconstruction of the Anchor, which shapes the soul."

Bai Liu looked away and commented indifferently: "It sounds like a research that an evil god with nothing to do would do."

"But this research has never been successful on me." Xieta accepted Bai Liu's words obediently. He knelt down and sat casually on the side of the corridor, looking at the moon hanging in the sky with clear eyes. "Because no matter how the evil god sent me out and how many people I was allowed to contact, I never found my own [anchor]."

"Not only that." Bai Liu said calmly, "You also became the evil god's derivative [anchor], right?"

Sheta paused: "Yes."

"Because he and I are competitors, even if he has no memory of me at the beginning of each new world line, his curiosity about me is the greatest among all the humans he has met."

"He will always observe me, the books I read, the places I often go, my reactions after others touch me, the cores of the food I eat, my attitude after being punished, and even-"

Bai Liu said calmly: "——It is the pinholes on your body, the eyes you deliberately covered. He will even stand at the head of your bed after you fall asleep, lean over to count the number of times your eyelids tremble slightly every minute, the frequency of your heartbeat, and touch your abnormally cold body temperature."

Shetta paused abruptly.

He fell silent, curled up his fingers gently beside the white willow, and drooped his eyelashes quietly, looking at the goldfish in the pond swimming carefree under his chained feet.

Bai Liu turned around and looked at Xie Ta's profile calmly. "After a long period of observation, He discovered that you are different from other vulgar and lustful people. He gradually developed an unusual attention to you and some strange feelings of wanting to get closer to you. So you became His [anchor], is that right?"

"That's right." Shetta's long hair was blown gently by the wind, and her tone seemed to become light and elusive in the wind, "But it's not exactly what you said."

Xie Ta turned his head, his silver-blue eyes glowing with a dazzling light, and he looked intently at Bai Liu who was sitting opposite him: "The derivatives will not give me the kind of strange feelings you said, the feelings that make me want to get close to me."

"You don't have to have positive emotions to become someone's anchor. Having extremely negative emotions towards the anchor can also help shape a person's soul."

"The spawn in each world line only produces one emotion for me."

Xie Ta looked directly into Bai Liu's eyes and said softly, "That is murderous intent."

"His strong desire for money will make him realize that I can be used. I am the anchor that pulls his desire. As long as he kills me and removes the anchor, it will sink to the bottom of the sea. He can enter the game on a ship full of his desires, follow the game path that God has already written for him, and ascend to the top to become the king of the world line."

"Then the God should be satisfied." Bai Liu asked calmly, "Shouldn't he have found an heir who meets his requirements?"

Shetta shook her head. “God is not satisfied.”

"Although the derivative that finally came before God had a soul, the soul had no texture. It was just a container full of desires, without any pain in it."

"God doesn't like souls like that. He thinks a soul without pain is worthless, so He wants a container that can hold both pain and desire. That's why He keeps opening up new world lines, and keeps experimenting with His own derivatives, me, and every human being in this world line."

Sheta said calmly: "In so many experiments of God, I am the only one who cannot find my own [anchor]."

“In order for me to find my own ‘anchor’, God exiled me to many places and allowed me to meet many people.”

"But I still can't understand what these people's desires and emotions are all about."

"So, in order for me to better understand human desires and evil," Shetta lowered his eyelashes slightly, "God placed me at the bottom of the sea, at the center of the earth, in the universe 13.7 billion light years away from here, and then transformed my body on a chair."

"Under God's transformation, I became a monster, a creature of inherent evil."

"God said that when human desires touch me, they will lead to endless suffering and hell. I am a god and enjoy the faith of human beings, so I should be responsible for the human tragedy caused by my own evil."

"Whenever someone approaches me, the most evil desires in that person's heart will emerge from their subconscious. When that person's desires are strong enough, or when enough people approach me, as long as the sum of their desires exceeds a value set by a certain evil god, their desires will be able to transform a part of my body, turning my body into a tool to realize their desires."

"When this [tool] spreads into human society, it will transform humans into some kind of monster like me."

"So human society formed some kind of organization to deal with these [tools] and monsters."

Sheta raised his eyes and said calmly, "The people in this organization call these [tools] and those who are transformed by [tools] heretics."

"I am the sum of all heretics, and the one they most want to destroy."

"In the path God has set for me, no matter whether people in every world line are good or evil, no matter what their position is, what kind of experience and life they have, when they see me, they will only have two thoughts about me - either they want to dismantle me or they want to destroy me."

"When they look into my eyes, they will all have extreme emotions towards me—"

“—that’s fear.”

Sheta half-closed his eyes, the moonlight poured down on his face, and his half-curled silver-blue hair was shimmering with a faint glow, making him appear flawless and white under the moonlight, like a jade sculpture. Except for his slightly moving lips, it was almost impossible to tell that this god who was whispering was a living being:

"God sees man as a mirror."

"When the person standing in front of the mirror has certain emotions towards the mirror, the mirror will reflect those emotions. So when one person hates another person, the other person will also reflect this emotion of [hate] towards this person."

"The first emotion God wants me to have is fear, so he makes everyone stand in front of me in fear, and hopes that I can reflect this emotion, and with this emotion as the starting point, have a soul strong enough to become an evil god and make everyone fear me."

"But no matter how many people stood in front of me in fear, I could not feel and understand what they were thinking, and could not have the same emotions as them, so I could not have my own soul."

"God said, I am a broken mirror, unable to properly reflect the emotions of the person standing in front of me."

Xie Ta turned his head, and he looked at Bai Liu with those eyes that frightened countless people. The wind blew up the fallen leaves and his hair, and they fluttered in front of Bai Liu's eyes like flowing water and dark clouds, just like the light tone of Xie Ta's words at this moment:

"But Bai Liu is different."

"When Bai Liu stood in front of me, I could feel a very strange emotion."

Xie Ta leaned his hands on the side of the corridor, leaned forward, and approached Bai Liu. His enchanting silver-blue eyes enlarged in front of Bai Liu, reflecting the moonlight and the water. It was as if the skylight and the moonlight were all blended in his eyes, shining into an ambiguous haze. But when he opened his mouth, his words were as clear as the pond under his feet:

"This feeling makes me want to observe you all the time, read books with you, go to places you often go with you, want to know your reaction after others touch you, know what kind of food you have eaten——"

"——I even want to take off your clothes and carefully examine the wounds on your body that you deliberately covered. I want to stand at the head of your bed after you fall asleep, lean over and count the number of times your eyelids tremble slightly every minute, the frequency of your heartbeats, and touch your body that is different from mine——"

"——warm body temperature."

Xieta reached out and gently touched Bai Liu's cheek, as if she were touching a goldfish in a pond. She lowered her eyes and looked at Bai Liu, asking earnestly:

"Bai Liu, can you tell me what this strange feeling is that I reflect back to you every time you look at me?"

Bai Liu's heart skipped a beat.