"I'm very curious about this." Bai Liu tilted his head slightly and asked with a smile, "What does it feel like to fall in love with a creature that doesn't respond and to deceive yourself into loving it?"

"When you looked at Tawil reading alone in the church, did it hurt when he looked back at you?"

"Does that bother you?"

"No one likes to fall in love with someone who makes them miserable. It's just that you have no choice."

"After all, since you were born, you have never received love from other humans spontaneously. What you have is all love that you have traded for yourself, which meets various conditions. So you can't tell whether they respond to you because of the external things you gave them, or because they respond to you because they are your peers?"

"Xie Ta is like this, Lu Yizhan is like this, your later teammates, Mu Ke, Mu Sicheng, Liu Jiayi, Tang Erda, everyone is like this."

“You have to meet their expectations and give them something they want in order for them to come to you.”

"So do you actually earn their affection for you? Or do you just buy their presence for a short period of time?"

"If one day you can no longer provide items for trade, will they abandon you forever and leave you?"

Bai Liu raised his lips and said, "——Just like Sheita who once died."

Bai Liu's breathing slowed down, he lowered his head, and the strands of hair in front of his forehead fell down to cover his face, so his expression could not be seen. His whole body slowly shrank, and the hunting clothes he was wearing turned into the loose uniform of the welfare home. His body became thin and weak, and finally turned into the appearance of fourteen-year-old Bai Liu.

The thin Bai Liu sat motionless in the audience chair opposite the water-patterned wall, with water drops from the ends of her hair falling into the universe.

[System warning: Player Bai Liu is under attack from the evil god Bai Liu. His spirit value is decreasing and is about to drop below 60. He is seeing hallucinations...]

Bai Liu smiled and looked at Bai Liu, or the fourteen-year-old Xiao Bai Liu, on the other side of the water-patterned wall:

"You are essentially the same as Tawil at the beginning. You gathered these people around you by giving them gifts in advance without paying for them. But I have proved in countless experiments that such gifts in advance cannot bring love, but only desire."

"Are you sure that what you are trading from others now is really emotion, and not some desire that looks like emotion?"

Bai Liu lowered his eyes as if with pity: "You, like Tavier, are both lonely gods."

"It's just that it doesn't have a soul. It won't feel lonely and painful when it doesn't get a response or love, but you do."

"Your soul will suffer endlessly because you cannot be loved."

[System warning: Player Bai Liu's spirit value continues to decline and is about to fall below 40! ]

Water gradually seeped out of Bai Liu's clothes. He seemed to have fallen into a non-existent pool. His hair and clothes began to float in the universe. His hands floated in front of him. A door-shaped black hole appeared and rotated directly below him. There was a faint silver-blue light flashing inside.

Bai Liu smiled at Bai Liu with his silver-blue eyes and continued:

"The pain that is born from people's souls will bind them, trapping them in place and making them unable to move forward, just like a thread. They can only be manipulated by this pain, and then slowly become puppets of pain."

A transparent thread flew out from the depths of the universe and wrapped around Bai Liu's wrist, lifting his thin wrist like a puppet.

"Tawil is a real monster, and you are a monster with a soul. You are not the same from the beginning."

Bai Liu said softly:

"And the human beings around you, whether good or bad, have been loved and have loved others, they have gained souls from the pain caused by others, and there are human beings who truly care about them."

"They and you do not come from the same place. Even if they wander by your side now, they will not end up in the same place with you, because you are not of the same kind, and because they all have their own homes and people to welcome them back."

"You are just a god who temporarily shelters them."

Bai Liu looked at the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu across the watermarked wall and said, "When they leave, you will still be alone."

“No one will stop for you.”

"No one in this world expected you to be born, no one expected you to grow up, no one expected you to become a good person. As a derivative of an evil god, you tried hard to control your desires, meet their conditions and turn yourself into an ordinary good person, thereby making yourself the same as them and gaining their short-lived affection."

"--Just like when you were fourteen, you turned yourself into a monster in order to have a monster like Tavel."

"After all these years and after all your efforts, you still haven't found your peers, Bai Liu."

[System warning: Player Bai Liu's spiritual value continues to decline and is about to fall below 20! Please restore the spiritual value quickly! ]

Two silk threads flew out and tied to Bai Liu's left wrist and neck. He was pulled by the silk threads and slowly raised his head. Bai Liu walked out from behind the water-patterned wall leisurely. He walked in front of Bai Liu and lifted Bai Liu's chin, with a sigh on his face as if he was hanging with pity.

"In this world, I am the only one who has been watching you and waiting for you since you were born."

Bai Liu took off his right glove, lowered his eyes, and gently supported Bai Liu's cheek with his right hand, saying softly:

"I know what you're thinking and what you're going to do, and I'll bring you the most interesting game in the world."

"——The birth of your soul surprised me and made me give up that old creation. Your growth and self-restraint made me feel that I saw the most valuable things in this world."

"You showed me the possibility that a human with a soul could become a god, guarding the gate in endless pain and loneliness."

Bai Liu's warm palm stroked Bai Liu's cheek, his thumb brushed under Bai Liu's eyes, and a sympathetic smile appeared on his face:

"I know that if it were you, even if all the abysses, darkness, hatred, desires, and other negative emotions on the other side of the door were poured onto you, you could still maintain your sanity, and let your soul maintain the human form in some kind of love that comes from nowhere, and guard this door forever in the vast universe."

"——It's like protecting those you think are your peers, even though they're not."

"In all the world lines you know, the only person who hopes you can live forever and who can truly understand your thoughts and is closest to you is me, whom you hate."

Bai Liu half-knelt on one knee in front of Bai Liu. He stared at the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu sitting on the chair with his silver-blue eyes that gradually turned into dark blue, and stroked his soft hair like a gentle and friendly elder.

"In 658 world lines, you are the one who has endured the most malice from me. There are so many pursuers who hate you, but I can't give you any help. I can only watch you struggle again and again in the malice given by others."

"sorry."

Bai Liu suddenly leaned forward and hugged Xiao Bai Liu. He buried his head in Bai Liu's thin shoulders, tightly hugging his paper-thin shoulder blades, and his voice became serious:

"sorry."

"In those 658 worldline games, you have exceeded my expectations. I have indeed hurt many people, but you are the only one. I did not intend to play with you in this game."

"You are not an NPC in the game that I set up, nor are you one of those creatures that evolved from the world line that was born from my palm."

"——You are just a person without any peers, but with a soul."

Bai Liu gently patted the motionless Xiao Bai Liu's back, just like comforting a child:

"A long time ago, when I saw you sneak into the church and stuff yourself into Sheita's arms full of blood, I was thinking--"

"——If at this moment, instead of you twisting yourself into Sheta's embrace to receive that bloody and cold embrace, someone took the initiative to hug you, what would you do?"

"What would you do if I came up to you and hugged you as your peer?"

"But I can't touch you, but I think." Bai Liu's tone became very soft, "He is already a human being, he has a soul, he loves others, and one day, he will wait for someone to take the initiative to hug him."

"So I will quietly observe beside you and wait with you until that person shows up."

"In the past ten years, you have had people who fought alongside you, people who looked up to you and believed in you, people who stopped you from going astray, people who were responsible for you. There are so many people around you—"

"——But still, no one comes to hug you."

"You have become an omnipotent god and a monster who can do anything evil in the eyes of others, but no one still regards you as a human being."

"Only me." Bai Liu whispered, "Only I know that you are a human with a soul, a good child who always loves others."

"You're waiting for a hug."

"I thought humans were a mirror that reflected emotions, and that you, who had given love, would have waited for your own embrace a long time ago. But I didn't expect that you took in so many people, and in the end, it was still me who gave you a hug."

Bai Liu stared with eyes devoid of any emotion at Tawil, who looked like a cold sculpture behind the water-patterned wall. He saw the reflection of himself in Tawil's eyes, who was fourteen years old and curled up in a chair, with Bai Liu holding his shoulders.

Bai Liu opened his mouth and whispered "Xie Ta" with his lips.

Tawil looked at him with his emotionless silver-blue eyes and did not respond.

Then a tear fell slowly from Bai Liu's eyes. He heard Bai Liu say softly, as if sighing:

"Be my heir, my child."

“This is where you’ll end up.”

[System warning: Player Bai Liu's spirit value is about to be reset to zero! Warning! Warning!!]