Chapter 148: Dangerous Heterodoxy Bureau

Soon after, it was the day when the rich people came to the church to perform some very strange rituals.

Typically, the dean would call him to church a day early, and then that day he was not to go back to his normal sleeping quarters to sleep, he slept in the church.

Bai Liu tossed and turned, clutching the copy of The Long, Skinny Ghosts of Murder that he had given him, and finally he got up, stepping carefully on his shoes, and headed for the church.

The church was locked by the dean, but Bai Liu had been in that church long enough to know little ways to sneak into it, such as a small, shattered window blocked by a curtain.

Bai Liu climbs into the church through a window, and searches the pews by moonlight for the other man, whom Bai Liu eventually finds behind the statue.

Bai Liu's face was emotionless the moment she saw him.

He was curled up in a bathtub slightly smaller than his length, filled with blood, his white, almost transparent face was half submerged in the blood, he couldn't even feel his breath, there was even a layer of white frost on his eyelashes, and his hands, feet and forehead were filled with pinholes still seeping blood.

"Sheta." Bai Liu called his name for the first time.

Sheta woke up slowly in the bathtub, he opened his eyes, saw Bai Liu, he reached out his hand seemed to be ready to touch Bai Liu, but something in the bathtub wriggled, a thorned vine full of mushrooms reached out from the bloody water, wrapped around Sheta's neck and wrists and ankles, and in the second before Sheta's fingertips touched Bai Liu, it wrapped around and confined him in the blood-colored bathtub. The second before Sheta's fingertips touched Bai Liu, she wrapped him in the blood-colored baptismal font.

"What are you doing? " Bai Liu heard his voice calmly inquire.

Sheta says, "Baptized, it's a ritual before the blood is drawn. "'Those people are here to draw your blood, right? They need your blood to save them. "Bai Liu went on to ask very calmly, "You've been bled so much, you're going to die, right? ""No. "Sheta looked at Bai Liu, "I'm a monster, so I won't die. "

Sheta exhaled a breath of white air as he spoke- it was enough to show how cold his body temperature was right now.

"So are you cold sleeping here? " Bai Liu asks.

Sheta shook her head honestly, "I can't feel it. "

Bai Liu stepped one foot into the blood and water, he knelt down and tucked himself hard into the gap where Sheta was curled up, Bai Liu's warm body heat passed far and wide through the blood and water to Sheta, who blinked slowly, those frosts on his eyelashes melting between Bai Liu's breaths.

He can feel the cold now because Bai Liu is so warm.

Then Bai Liu, as if nothing had happened, opened the book that Sheta had given him, which he had brought along with him, and asked him, "Want to read it together?"

They slept together in the dirty blood-filled baptismal font, looked at the idol overlooking them, and chatted aimlessly with no inhibitions.

"Does it mean anything to be baptized?"

"Baptized means God's blessing for His most beloved, newborn believer."

"You call this kind of blessing?"

"...... A blessing to themselves, I guess."

"You believe in this a lot? You don't really think a god exists, do you?"

"Uh-huh."

......

Bai Liu curled up in Sheta's cold arms and fell into a deep sleep, and when he woke up the next day he was in his own bed, with no blood on his body.

Sheta came back in the afternoon, paler than before.

This time the needle holes spread to his face, and on the backs of his hands and feet were shocking, bruises left by repeated blood draws.

Bai Liu is silent as he wraps the bandages he stole from the infirmary around the stitches that are still oozing blood.

And Sheta looked at him quietly, and suddenly said, "This bandage is removed, and your [Skinny Ghost Shadow] doll will have a face."

Bai Liu's lips pursed into a straight line.

The blood-sucking rich people came more and more frequently, and the moments when Sheta appeared became fewer and fewer, and even when she did, the smoky blood and mushroom odor of Sheta's body was too much to bear.

When Sheta appeared, the children would stay away from her, and kept flapping their hands in disgust at the tip of their noses, as if they wanted to fan the strange odor away along with Sheta.

Sheta also seems to know that his odor is not good, he seldom appears in front of Bai Liu, just watching him from afar, and occasionally when Bai Liu walks over to look for Sheta, Sheta disappears.

When he doesn't want to make contact with people, it's as if he doesn't exist and no one can find him at all, including Bai Liu.

Bai Liu started contacting adults outside, doing some kid-friendly, gray-area stuff, and he was able to make a lot of money off of it.

With only enough money and ability to be prepared, he was certain to take Sheta off the trail of this group of investors and run away from the orphanage - albeit with a very immature and naive plan.

A vague sense of unease and urgency makes Bai Liu realize that if Sheta doesn't leave, she probably won't be able to do so again.

But Bai Liu's affair was still uncovered.

The child who had denounced Bai Liu cowered behind the dean, a mixture of awe and excitement on his face, gulping several times before he raised a trembling hand and pointed to Bai Liu, whose face was emotionless: "I saw him doing ...... some strange dealings with that adult! He helped some adults do bad things! I saw that! Those adults even gave him money!"

"Have you done such a thing! Bai Liu!" the dean looked at him sternly.

Bai Liu didn't say anything to deny it, he just stared indifferently at Sheta sitting in the middle of the crowd, out of breath and silent.

He didn't didn't explain exactly what he did - because there was no point.

These people didn't care what he actually did, nor would they ever ask what he did, and pronounced his sentence.

Of course what he did do wasn't exactly a good thing is all.

The teachers were just afraid of him - of him, the weird kid who hung out with Sheta all day, who was getting more and more ghoulish, who liked to read gory stories, and who always looked at other people with the eyes of a slaughtered animal.

So rightfully so, he was going to be punished, but Bai Liu was still in the mood to go off on a tangent and judge the measures these teachers were using to punish people - just the same ones, and it wasn't the first time he'd been punished.

But as the teacher came over and grabbed Bai Liu's arm, trying to drag him away, Sheta suddenly staggered to her feet with one hand on the back of her chair.

His face and tone were the same flatness of a million years, "I made him do it."

Now these teachers are completely blown away.

More afraid of Sheta than of Bai Liu, they surrounded her with a one-meter gap between them, creating a vacuum of encirclement.

Dean cautiously, fearfully, condescendingly interrogated him, "Why would you let Bai Liu do something like that?"

They had no doubt at all that Sheta had not done the deed, and they convicted Bai Liu with the same dryness and certainty as in the previous process of finding him guilty.

Because he's a monster, Bai Liu is a bad kid who's in the company of monsters who do everything as a matter of course.

Sheta glanced slightly sideways at Bai Liu, who was being pulled and lifted up by the teachers, and he raised the corners of his mouth very abruptly, very, very gently, and in the second that Sheta smiled, Bai Liu thought that his silvery-blue eyes must have curved up very gently and beautifully, but unfortunately, they were blocked by his hair, and he didn't get to see them.

Sheta confessed in the same soft tone she used to deliver the book to Bai Liu.

He said, "Because I wanted to contact someone out there and run out with Bai Liu."

"How dare you run out!!!" The Dean screamed hysterically, "Do you realize how much trouble you'll get us into if you run out! It's already in the second round of screening! Those investors won't pay without your blood!"

The children scattered in alarm; they were frightened and chattering:

"Blood? What blood! All that blood from his pinholes?!"

"He really is a monster, isn't he!"

Dean subconsciously covered her mouth after realizing she'd blurted it out, and the next moment she looked viciously at Sheta as she yanked her slender wrist toward the church.

"You've been given everything by this orphanage and you tried to escape!" The Mother Superior's anger overcame her fear and she cruelly sentenced Sheta to the punishment she was going to endure, "I think we've given you too many privileges, it's time for you to get some education, I'm going to lock you up in the church tonight and baptize you!"

With that, she dragged Sheta by the wrist and left.

Bai Liu struggles to get past the noise of children and teachers, he struggles to chase his way through the crowd and reaches out to grab Sheta, who is being led away from him: "Sheta!"

Sheta looked back at him as the wind blew the curls from his forehead, revealing eyes that were silver-blue and as beautiful as a lake after the snow had melted.

Bai Liu stared blankly at Sheta's silver-blue eyes that weren't sad at all, just calm, as if with very contented feelings, and which reflected him wholeheartedly.

Sheta reached out to him as well, taking Bai Liu's hand that was trying to grab him from under the siege of the crowd and interlocking her fingers.

Cool and warm to the touch, I could feel those bulging pinhole scars on the back of my hand.

"Bai Liu," he smiled very lightly and held Bai Liu's hand tightly, "Don't be afraid, I'm a monster, I won't die."

"Let go!" Dean savagely yanked away their clasped hands.

Bai Liu grits his teeth and doesn't want to let go, but Sheta quietly releases her hand, and the grip breaks up at the touch of a button.

Sheta shook her head at Bai Liu, telling him not to come after him, and turned to walk habitually and calmly with the dean toward the church that, long ago, he had come to know so well.

Bai Liu had never been a very obedient child, and a few minutes after the dean had led Sheta there, he sneaked, carefully, through the broken window covered by the curtains into the church, where Bai Liu hid behind the curtains, curled himself up into a small ball, and peered over the edge at Sheta and the dean, who stood beneath the statue of God.

Sheta, dressed in pure white, holding a flickering white candle in both hands, stood barefoot in front of the idol as he tilted his head and closed his eyes, reciting his prayers in an unhurried manner.

The dean was standing right next to Sheta, holding up a strip of whip and looking at him coldly.

After reciting the prayer, the abbot stepped forward and gazed at him, "The next step is baptism, but today, because of the thoughts you had of betraying God and running away, today's baptism must be thorough, completely cleansing your body of evil and filth!"

Sheta lowered her eyelashes, "It won't wash."

"I am evil itself that cannot be confronted." He said softly.

The dean's face sank further and further after he froze.

She snatched the candle from Sheta's hand and held Sheta down into the bobbing water of the baptismal font, and she held it up with a cruel, triumphant grin, as if she'd finally triumphed over some demon she'd feared for a long, long time, in a kind of hijacked insanity.

Dean looked with relief to Sheta, who was north submerged in a wave of water, as she lifted the candle and placed it flat on the baptismal font and said indifferently, "You're not to get up until the candle burns out, is that clear?"

Drop by drop, the wax tears fall into the water and swoon into small, white, hazy flowers, like some kind of ceremonial flower, suspended one by one right above Sheta, who is lying under the water with her eyes closed.

This baptismal font was like a coffin too small for him, binding him firmly, twistingly.

Before anyone realized it, the idol that was facing the baptismal font moved, and the expression on the face of the idol's pure white marble statue changed to a very human accusation, as if accusing this child in the baptismal font of misbehaving and wanting to escape from the place where the god was sheltering him.

[You are a thing of evil, a fallen god, you cannot leave God's confinement, you should not be moved to think of escape because of a child under your spell]

The idol condemned in a tone of indifference, [ Taville, you know that the boy is under the spell of your evil, and that he is not the new devotee you seek ]Â

Underwater, Taville's eyelids flickered.

No, I don't think of him as my newest convert.

The idol coldly questioned, [And what do you take that boy for? He's looked into your eyes, he's not far from madness.

[You should kill him or he'll turn into a monster as evil as you are and destroy the world, you know, anything you've contaminated will lead to that.]

Taville's fingers folded over her chest moved slightly, [I think of him ...... as ...... I want to read books with him forever]

But you know you can't, Taville. Kill him. Kill the child you have dishonored! Thus commanded God.

I can't do it." Taville calmly refused, "You kill me, I can't kill him.

The idol's expression became furious: [...... Being banished here and still daring to disobey the god's order, you should indeed be punished by being put to sleep for eternity!

It opened its hand right above Taville's, and the current underneath the baptismal pool of water became heavy and viscous and cold still, like ice that could flow was turning into a spike running through Taville's body, which caused him to wrinkle his nose for a moment, but then quickly loosened it again.

Under the water, Sheta curled up and held Bai Liu's hand for a moment, and his fluttering eyelids stopped moving.

The warmth of Bai Liu's palm still lingered in the center of his hand, but it faded under the cold water and stopped along with his breathing.

His clenched, wanting to retain that warmth fingers slowly loosened as Sheta's body levitated under the water.

"Shea, Sheta?!" The dean took two panicked steps backward, then forward again to touch Sheta's nostrils, and she dropped the candle she was holding in shock, stamping out its flame in her panicked steps and extinguishing what little light there was in the church.

"It's over ......" Dean dropped to the ground in a trance, she tugged at her hair in a frenzy, muttering to herself incredulously, "Isn't he a monster? Drained of so much blood and still not dead? Baptized so many times and didn't die, why would he drown this time! ""

"It was only for a few minutes ah? The candles didn't even burn out! " the expression on the dean's face became even more terrified as she kept shaking her head as if Sheta would come back to life as long as she didn't admit it, "No, it can't be! It can't be! ""What am I going to do if he dies? " Dean broke down and fell to his knees in front of the baptismal font.

She couldn't imagine that the death of even this child would strike such a deadly fear into her.

Dean looked down in a daze at Sheta's flawless face in the baptismal font and muttered, "...... If I drown Sheta myself, the group will drain my blood, and I'll have to find another child to be his replacement! "

Bai Liu, hidden behind the curtains, watched Dean's hysterical rant with an emotionless expression on her face.

There's a very strange firmness that keeps Bai Liu quiet as he watches- Sheta said he's a monster, he's not going to die, he must be faking his death to fool this stupid dean.

Wait a minute, after this dean had gone, Bai Liu would walk up, and Sheta would get up from the baptismal font, smile at him the same smile that she rarely saw, and perhaps lift her already damp forehead hair, and look at him intently with those silvery-blue eyes, and ask him how he had come to be here.

The association of these scenes made Bai Liu's heart beat slightly faster.

Not daring to let the investors know that she had killed Sheta, the dean carried her body out of the baptismal font, sneaked it out the back door of the church, tied stones to Sheta's hands and feet, and threw it into a small lake in the barren, grassy area behind the church-the lake was connected to a river outside. The lake was connected to a river outside.

After a few circulations, Sheta's body would flow with the lake stream into the river and then with the river into the ocean.

But Bai Liu won't let Sheta go that far.

Bai Liu silently follows the ruined body all the way to the dean and doesn't make a sound; the dean looks like he's already going crazy, and if he shows up now, it doesn't look like the hysterical dean would mind disposing of one more child's body.

Only after she had fled in a hurry did Bai Liu step out, burying his face in a small lake full of bright green floating weeds, diving under the water and reaching out for the Sheta that was gradually sinking with the sediment.

The lake was deep, the flotsam was green, and Sheta was sinking fast.

The black muck was like some kind of creature that devours human corpses, and soon it was crawling all over Sheta's body, voraciously trying to drag him into hell.

But Bai Liu resisted the dirty lake water that poured into his mouth, nose and ears and the desire to choke and cough. He gritted his teeth and grabbed hold of Sheta, who was engulfed in the mud and sand with only one hand left, and pulled himself out with all his strength until he used up the last of his lungs' air, and Bai Liu felt that his brain was going to burn up due to the lack of oxygen.

But he finally pulled Sheta out, and Bai Liu ripped away the heavy rocks and ropes that bound him and carried him upstream.

When he came ashore, Bai Liu propped his hands back on the ground and looked up at the starless sky, gasping for breath, his face and eyelids hanging under the duckweed, and his body was all soaked, and there were cicadas chirping in the grass around him, it was really a wretched scene.

But Bai Liu suddenly grunted a little pleasantly for some reason, and he kicked Sheta, who was quietly lying on the ground without waking up, with his foot, and asked him, "How do you know that I'm trying to take you away? What if I'm working for those adults and earning money just to spend it on myself? "

Bai Liu squints at Sheta with a small, very uncomfortable, and somewhat diffident smile on his face : "Aren't you being slightly presumptuous, Sheta."

Sheta's face was covered with duckweed, he still didn't wake up, Bai Liu first sat up, then turned into a crouching position, he looked at the motionless Sheta with downcast eyes, then reached out to ruffle the hair that was plastered on Sheta's forehead because of its wetness.

This one is really beautiful.

Bai Liu's fingertips slid from Sheta's long, beaded lashes, all the way down, over the tip of his straight nose, and finally landed on his incredibly white lips and the most beautiful, silver-blue eyes that seemed to have been shown only to him and only to him.

"Sheta." Bai Liu's voice was soft as he bent over sideways and pressed his ear against Sheta's chest, straightening his eyes, "If you don't wake up, I'm going to have to put artificial respiration on you and I'm going to bite you to death."

--No heartbeat, no breathing, no body temperature, no sign that Sheta would wake up.

"I mean it." Bai Liu buries his head into Sheta's arms, his fists gradually clenching, tightening until his fingertips turn white.

Bai Liu could smell the heavy, familiar scent of blood mixed with the underwater smell of approaching death on this man.

Bai Liu hugged Sheta's shoulders harder and harder, closing his arms around Sheta so tightly that the water dripping from their bodies blended together.

"I don't think you're too full of yourself." Bai Liu whispered as he rested his head against the hollow of Sheta's shoulder.

His forehead rested against Sheta's heart, and he blinked slowly with his head down, a drop of water dripping from his floaty lashes.

Sheta's head rested on Bai Liu's shoulder without any strength at all, he didn't answer Bai Liu's drawing, and his eyes still didn't open, only the cold water in his hair fell down into Bai Liu's lapel, reminding him that he did still exist.

They hugged and leaned on each other, both hands interlocked, Bai Liu leaning on Sheta's shoulder, his voice quiet, so quiet that it didn't rise or fall at all:

"I thought you said you were a monster. Come alive like a monster and I'll recognize you as one."

"You make me feel so horrible now, Sheta."

A droplet slips from Sheta's eyelashes, like a tear hitting the back of Bai Liu's hand.