After that, Heart successfully brought the little witch into the guild.

After Red Hearts met the little witch two or three times, he did not hesitate to include her in the fixed team for the next league and began to focus on her training. Before that, Red Hearts had a chat with Phoebe.

The conversation took place in a gloomy room filled with burgundy quilts on the island, on a rainy afternoon.

"I originally..." A trace of genuine weariness rarely appeared on Hong Tao's breathtakingly beautiful face. He leaned on a chair that was as wide as a bed, with his legs curled up on it. His long wine-red hair was wet and stuck from the side of his face to his slightly open chest. His tone and eyes were both dazed and confused. "I originally planned to let you join the team."

Phoebe glanced at him and said, "Did you go to see your mother?"

She knew that Hongtao's mother was buried on another island far away from here. If this was the case, it could only mean that the guy went to sweep his mother's grave before going to the island.

"Yeah." Hong Tao obviously didn't want to talk about this topic any more. He avoided Phoebe's sight, calmed down his voice again, and changed the subject. "But the little witch is more suitable than you. Your skills overlap, and you are a little too extreme. It's not suitable for you to participate in the league so early. The little witch can be said to have developed steadily in all aspects. She is more suitable to join the team than you. With her ability, although she is still a novice, she can even take over the position of tactician."

"I have no objection to being her substitute. She is very strong and I should be her substitute." Phoebe looked at Hongtao and said directly, "You should be her substitute too."

"You are too weak. You are not as likely to win as her as a tactician."

"You are not as strong as she is."

Hong Tao was silent for a while. He raised his hands to cover his eyes, leaned back, and said in a hoarse voice: "...You are right."

"She was so young, and she had been through so much. She was so suspicious, and yet she remained calm in the midst of hatred. She had the will and the courage to protect others."

"...I don't know what else I can protect. Even your mother, my old friend, was saved by her."

"You're right. I should be her replacement." Hongtao slowly put down the hand covering his face. He looked at Phoebe across from him and said softly, "I want her to become the president of the King's Guild and the real tactician of this team."

"You want her to be the president?" Phoebe noticed something. "So you want to leave the guild, right? What are you going to do?"

Hong Tao turned his head away and looked at the rain outside the island calmly without answering.

That night, he came to his mother's grave again. It was a very remote small village in Europe. Hong Tao bought the whole village, but he did not take care of it. There was only his mother's grave in the whole village.

It was raining heavily. Hong Tao held a black umbrella and stood silently in front of his mother's grave. After a long time, he squatted down, hugged his knees, and curled up like a cold child. He raised his head from his knees and looked quietly at the photo on his mother's grave with his purple eyes.

"I met a very amazing little girl." He said softly, reaching out to wipe the water droplets off the photo. "She is even more amazing than Phoebe I told you about last time. She saved Rebekah."

"I want to give her the guild."

"Phoebe is right. I am indeed weak. No matter how many shields I have, I don't have the courage to bring you back to this world."

Hongtao's tone became lighter and lighter.

Phoebe had asked her a long time ago why she didn't resurrect her mother, when it was obvious that she could do it with the power of a guild. Heart sat in her office chair in a daze for a moment, then answered with a casual smile - the dead also have the will.

If you randomly resurrect a dead person, have you ever asked her if she still wants to live? If she lives in pain after resurrection and wants to die again, would you kill her again with your own hands?

—Or watch her kill herself again?

What would happen if I was resurrected?

This world still has the Vatican, the arms dealers, and everything else that can dominate him and easily deprive her of her freedom and destroy her beautiful existence. He couldn't protect her ten years ago, and ten years later, he also failed to successfully protect the people who got off the island.

As Rebekah said to Phoebe's father before she married him - what's different outside the island?

It's just a bigger island.

The only island that is free from the shackles of the secular world, the Sky City, is still floating in the sky. It is cloudy and rainy, and everywhere is filled with the bloody smell left by the trial of that year. This is the only place where he can control and protect her.

But if she survived, would he let her live like him for decades on this island full of traces of the harm she had done?

When he first entered the game, he was burning with anger and hatred. After gaining the ability to punish the enemy, he repeatedly tortured and judged the opponent. In this extreme hatred with great power, while the enemy was tortured to death, he also gradually became tired.

Hong Tao began to feel a little empty and tired. Sometimes, when she saw her face in the mirror and it looked somewhat similar to that of the man - the man who started all this, her biological father - she would feel an uncontrollable disgust.

Disgust, hatred and fatigue consumed him. He was on the island, lying alone in flannel, listening to the sound of rain in a trance. The poker cards that once represented the settlers on the island were scattered all over the ground.

Why do we have to keep judging them? Their guilt has been confirmed, why not kill them - Phoebe asked him - kill them and everything will be over.

He was always unwilling to free those people so easily, letting them and his mother end up with the same ending - death. Would their souls after death complain about her hard-earned freedom? Also because of the note left by the guest, he always regarded death as the best outcome for these people. But that day, under Phoebe's puzzled questioning, Hearts rarely thought about it - what would happen if he really killed them?

What am I going to do after I kill them?

Hongtao asked herself softly.

Counting from that day, he has been on this island for twelve years.

He initially founded the guild to become more powerful, and he did become more powerful as he wished. The whole world was his power, and he even had the strength to compete and confront arms dealers. The daily flow of points in the guild warehouse reached a terrifying level. In the early days, he was still a little excited to leave the island, and became an actor as he had wished in his childhood, showing himself to everyone. He had also naively hoped to get the praise she said without that kind of desire.

But the fact is that it is unattainable. The people he has come into contact with, from fans who have been writing letters to his studio for three consecutive years to investors who said they chose him because they believed in his acting skills, are of all kinds. There are many of them. As long as he is willing, or as long as they sense something extra in his eyes, they are all very willing to sleep with him.

Power, money, love, he had seen almost all of these things at the peak, with a cold and weary attitude.

Did the person she said really exist and who was only sincerely praising her beauty? Or was she just seeing things wrong, and there was actually a glimmer of desire in that person's eyes?

He had no wishes, no desires, nothing he wanted to do, no place he wanted to go. Day after day he stayed on the island, listening to the sound of the heavy rain and daydreaming. He became lazier and lazier. Even during games, he only liked to use the [Shield] to torture his opponent instead of taking the initiative to attack. Everything he did was as if he was expecting someone to suddenly kill him on the field one day.

All this came to an abrupt end when the player named Spade saw the black bone whip in his hand.

He could no longer remember the exact moment he saw Spade. It was like hearing a thunderclap in the rain. He almost stopped, all his thoughts coming together. He sat up straight, staring blankly at the black bone whip wielded by Spade on the small TV.

"What's his name?" he heard himself ask.

Wang Shun replied respectfully: "Your Majesty, he is the dark horse of this session."

"He doesn't have a name, but he seems to have a code name, Spade."

[You can't call me by my real name, just call me by my code name. You can call me Spade.]

What happened next was a natural progression. Hearts' frantic pursuit of Spades was naturally understood as pursuit. He was rarely so ambitious and chased Spades all the way to second place in the league - but in fact, it was only because Spades only had competitions and opponents in his eyes. If you didn't meet him on the court, he would never respond to your questions and would just walk past you as if he didn't see you.

After losing the game, Hearts stood in front of Spades. The host kept urging them to shake hands, but Hearts never extended her hand.

Red Heart looked at Black Heart with almost no emotion in her eyes, as if she had expected something. "Who gave you your whip and code name?"

There is no such coincidence in this world that something happens to fit so perfectly.

Spade replied, "I don't remember."

Hong Tao remained silent for a long time, but he still extended his hand. He looked up again with that flawless lazy smile: "It's nice to meet you. I hope to see you on the court next time."

"At that time, I hope you can remember the answer to your question."

Later, Phoebe entered the game and the little witch joined the guild. After Hearts tried Spades many times without success, he became lazy again and began to give up his rights in the guild, allowing the little witches to take over one by one.

"So what are you going to do?" Phoebe rarely found Red Heart alone. She stared at her. "You let go so quickly. By the end of this year, the little witches will be able to take over the King's Guild. What are you going to do after leaving the guild?"

Hong Tao was silent for a long time, then answered the question irrelevantly: "Go outside the island."

He half-closed his eyes and smiled casually: "After going to the place where no one wants to sleep with me after dancing."

Phoebe was silent for a moment - except for some necessary things, Hearts almost never left the island. He hated the island, just like he hated this island.

"With your face, there's no such place." Phoebe replied rudely.

——Hong Tao’s favorite dance is “Dance of the Seven Veils”, which is a dance that is inherently seductive. When Hong Tao dances it, it can simply make people’s souls fly away. This person grew up on this island of love, and even the seams of her bones are soaked in the breath of temptation.

"Yeah, I know." Hong Tao replied lazily, with a smile on his face and a sigh in his tone, as if he was immersed in memories. "I have only danced with that one person who just admired me. I waited for that customer for ten years, and even named the guild after him."

“And then I never saw him again.”

"I've been looking for him for a long time..." Hong Tao held her chin up, the candlelight beside his face flickered, and his long eyelashes cast a swaying shadow on his face, "Every time I was about to find him, I was just a little bit away, and then there was no news."

"Look at it this way," Phoebe said calmly. "Maybe he's dead."

Hong Tao laughed for a moment, then fell silent again: "This might be a good ending for him."

"That guest... is indeed longing for death."

Phoebe's premonition grew. She looked at Hongtao's face, which was so charming even when she was deep in thought in the candlelight. She guessed what she was thinking almost instantly. She asked Hongtao coldly, "So... because of him, you also think death is good, right?"

"So you left the guild because you wanted to die, huh?"

"At first... when he said he wanted to die, I really couldn't accept it. I even wanted to kill the person who wanted to kill him." Hong Tao said softly, "But after so long, when I think about what he said now, it seems that there is nothing wrong with it."

"To me, it's all boring, and there's no need for me to bring her back into this boring and dirty world."

"——Death might be a good ending."

"Even if I go to hell after death, it might be cleaner than the island I'm on now."

Hong Tao tilted his head slightly, the faint light of the candle reflected in his lifeless purple eyes. He raised his hand and casually fiddled with the candle wick, and the candlelight went out.

Then not a single ray of light could be seen on the island.

The sound of rain outside the window is harsh.

A few months before the league was about to start, something unexpected happened, and Phoebe was the first person to notice that something was wrong with the little witch.

She knew that the little witch's heart knot was Liu Huai, the cowardly and incompetent man, but the guild controlled Liu Huai very well. Although the little witch always silently "looked" at Liu Huai who was a little dazed after being controlled, and did not seem to agree with their approach, she did not stop them from doing so.

For a timid, incompetent and weak person like Liu Huai, such strict control may also be a kind of protection.

Phoebe doesn't like Liu Huai, and can even be said to hate him. Although her view of the weak has changed, she doesn't like Liu Huai, a weak person who has no beliefs and is keen on betrayal.

She was certain that Liu Huai would become the little witch's weakness, and she felt that Hong Tao shared the same view as hers - otherwise this family would not have come up with the idea of ​​training a group of reserve brothers.

But Phoebe scoffed at this operation.

"If a person's core desire can be easily replaced or transferred, then it is no longer the core." Phoebe pointed out, with a hint of disgust, "And the brothers you found are too low-quality. A little witch will not easily transfer her feelings to these people."

Hongtao smiled noncommittally, and he asked her, "Then what do you think is a good brother for a little witch?"

"He must understand her ideas to a certain extent, support what she wants to do, and make her empathize with him successfully. He must be similar to Liu Huai in appearance, and have similar experiences, such as teaching her a lot of things and believing in her abilities..." Phoebe raised her eyes, "Finally, it would be best if he is as cowardly as Liu Huai, so that she would want to protect him."

The smile on Hong Tao's face gradually disappeared.

Phoebe said indifferently: "Red Heart, I don't believe you haven't noticed that the little witch has similar complicated feelings for you as she does for Liu."

"You are the most suitable candidate for her as a brother."

"As long as you use your skill on the little witch once, you will become Liu Huai in her eyes. You and her brother are not only identical in appearance, but also in personality and the role you play in her current experience. With your means, you can also completely replace Liu Huai's position in the little witch's heart psychologically. After Liu Huai's weakness is replaced by you, the little witch can become stronger and more stable..."

Hongtao's tone faded: "That's enough."

Phoebe looked into Red's eyes and said, "Since you are determined to help the little witch overcome Liu Huai's weakness, why don't you deceive her yourself?"

"You are obviously the most suitable person."

"In person?" Hongtao looked at Phoebe with a half-smile, "I am in her eyes, but the Queen, how can she accept me as her brother?"

Phoebe raised her eyes and said, "Red Heart, there is no point in running away."

"You are a man, from this point of view, you are also suitable to be her [brother]."

"You've already done something bad. Procrastinating like this will only backfire. Don't be a vicious and cowardly ruler, Heart."

"Okay, let's stop discussing this matter." Hong Tao restrained his expression, his eyelashes drooping, "You can leave first, I will consider it."

Phoebe paused, opened the office door and left. Hongtao sat alone in a chair in silence for a long time before he slowly opened the drawer under his desk. He took out the photo from the drawer and placed it on the table.

Hong Tao slowly lowered his head, resting it on the table, burying it in his elbows, looking at the photo of his mother's bright smile, his voice so soft that it could not be heard:

"...I hated the thought of having to be a man to deceive her, to win her trust."

"It makes me think of you."

"...So I asked someone else to do it." Hong Tao slowly lowered his head and chuckled twice. "Phoebe's evaluation is really accurate. I am really cowardly and vicious..."

"But I really..."

"I don't want to deceive Jiayi."