Chapter 431: The Evil God Festival - Boathouse

Bai Liu is taken by his young valet to a townhouse on the coast.

This building has only one floor, very low, but very wide, the exterior is a wooden and thatched roof structure, under the eaves hung with sunny day dolls and wind chimes, the bottom is a wooden frame and stone pads up a compartment and the ground, is hollow, lowered down to the darkness, you can feel the dampness of a piece of the face, as if at any time there will be something strange crawling out from underneath.

The raised stones were covered with moss, the wooden frames were blackened and rotten, and Bai Liu felt the floor shake when he stepped on it, so it was obvious that it was extremely old.

Inside the house, there was a row of rooms that looked like the hot springs bed and breakfast that Bai Liu had seen in reality, separated by partition doors made of pine wood and paper barriers, and in the upper right corner of each room there was a niche for a wooden signboard, in which was placed a black-painted pine signboard indicating the use of the room, such as [so-and-so room], or [kitchen], or [parlor].

Bai Liu walked along the corridor, could clearly hear the miserable cries and maniacal laughter coming from inside the room, and could vaguely see the shadows of the people inside through a layer of paper door, they either sat on the ground with their clothes half undone, or hit their heads against the ground one by one, or some people laughed loudly and unclasped a belt from their own clothes, and bolted it into a live buckle, and put it into their own necks. and muttered a prayer:

"It's good to die, Evil Lord choose me as a sacrifice quickly, I want to die this year."

Soon, three or four figures entered the apartment to stop the self-inflicted injuries or suicides, whose cries and laughs mingled neurotically, and became mournful in their weeping and sobbing:

"Haven't I suffered enough! Why won't Lord Evil God choose me!"

The small attendant led Bai Liu to walk quickly down the corridor with his head bowed, and when he saw that Bai Liu did not follow, he turned his head to see a sideways glance at the situation of the next peace room, so his eyes followed, and the smile on his face became reluctant:

"Oh yes, Bai Liu you don't know yet do you, now there are three or four people in charge of conditioning and watching over each sacrifice, before when you were there there was only one person, then more and more sacrifices collapsed, the town added the manpower to watch over the sacrifices, and it became a lot tougher for people to flee and beg for death."

"The sacrificial children who live here are ...... sympathetic to you." The young squire said this in an uncertain tone, "Being chosen as the heir of an evil god, you can no longer be a sacrifice."

After saying this, the little squire went on ahead with his head down, "Come with me, there is not much time you can rest, don't look at them."

Through the long, winding corridors, Bai Liu was eventually led by a small attendant to a very old room with a wooden sign that read [Kitahara Cangta], which he removed on tiptoe and replaced with a new one.

Bai Liu watched as the wooden sign that had been replaced became [御船 Bai Liu 】.

"This is the name tag you had here at the boathouse when you made your offering, I kept it and used it today." Kitahara Cangta recited as she unlocked the door and the great dampness of the room hit her, "This is my room, and since you're going to be resting here, I'm replacing it with your nameplate."

This is a very damp and narrow room, the middle of the floor of the room is paved with a narrow tatami mat, on the tatami mat there is a set of one person's outdated bedding, next to the bed there is a wooden plate placed almost half a meter apart, on it you can see unwashed grease stains, it should be a wooden mat used for eating, the tatami mat is directly opposite to a short mahogany desk that is about forty to fifty centimeters high.

On the wall next to the desk hung a ukiyo-e style, brightly colored picture of ocean waves, and in the center of the waves was floating a ship in the style of a Shinto shrine, and the flag hanging from the ship's mast was only half-hidden because it was being blown by the sea breeze that made the flag shake, but Bai Liu still recognized it as a Reverse Cross flag at a glance.

Kitahara Cangta was still rambling, "If you want to take up a wabi-sabi room to rest here you have to put a wooden sign with your name on it outside or else later the overseer here at the boathouse will take you as a sacrifice on your name outside, and if by some bad luck the boy happens to have a shift to go to the ascetic room to practice you'll be dragged off as a practicing ......"

He suddenly paused as he spoke, his eyes falling straight on the inside of the paper door he had pushed open, as if he had seen something unbelievable his face lost all blood color for a moment and turned pale.

Bai Liu followed Kitahara Cangta's line of sight and found a piece of paper pasted on the inside of the paper door - [Since the sacrifice Kitahara Aoi's practice of the Bitter Cultivation has reached its standard, today the Bitter Room Cultivation of the Kitahara Clan lineage is transferred to be performed by the sacrifice Kitahara Cangta].

"Xiao Kui ...... cultivation reached the standard ah." Kitahara Cangta reached out to uncover the notice informing him to go to the bitter room for cultivation, his hand trembled very badly, along with his voice, "I only went for half a day's cultivation yesterday, and I have to go again today? ......"

"The bitter room practice." Bai Liu sits on his knees and looks up at Kitahara Cangta, "What is it?"

"Oh yes, Bai Liu, when you made the sacrifice, you had not yet practiced in the bitter room." Kitahara Cangta also naturally knelt behind Bai Liu, he straightened his back, raised his hand and gently hooked the tether around Bai Liu's ear with his fingers, his tone was as light as his movements, "After you were captured and brought back from your escape back in those years, this side of the boathouse was reorganized a bit, and it's been all about the regimented style of ascetic room practice."

Dark-colored cloth belt ties fluttered to the ground, and Bai Liu's long hair tilted down to her waist.

It was only then that Bai Liu realized that his hair was not only half-length like the outside world, but had been pulled inward and tied to be only half-length.

"From the time you left the boathouse to become the heir to the Evil God, it has been five years now, the heir to the Evil God is in charge of the Divine Sacrifice, the body hair and skin are the property of the God, and you are not allowed to trim your hair at will, without realizing it, your hair has grown so long ......" Kitahara mumbled indistinctly as he passed his fingers through Bai Liu's long hair, murmured indistinctly, "It's even longer than Xiao Kui, a girl ......"

Bai Liu sidled his eyes to look at Kitahara, who was kneeling behind him, "Kitahara Xiao Kui is not your sister or elder sister, though she shares your last name, is she?"

"No, Bai Liu you really have been away from the boathouse for so long that you have even forgotten where our last name comes from." Kitahara shook his head in amusement as he took a wooden comb from under his pillow and knelt back down behind Bai Liu to brush his hair again, "The last name of us sacrifices has nothing to do with ourselves."

"Don't move." Kitahara Cangta gently pressed down Bai Liu who wanted to incline his head, and carefully combed Bai Liu's hair one by one, "If you comb it out of place, when Lord Gobune sees you, he will punish you again."

"I didn't forget." Bai Liu stared straight ahead, his tone light, "That last name, it's the last name of the person who chose our town, right?"

"My last name is Gobune, so I should have been a sacrifice to Gobune in the first place, and you and Xiao Kui both have the last name Kitahara, so that proves that both were sacrifices to someone with the last name Kitahara, and both of those last names should be from the same clan."

Kitahara's brushing of his hair stopped in the center, and he paused for a long, long moment before continuing to brush it, his voice a soft hmmm.

"But you've long since ceased to be Gobune Bai Liu, you weren't successfully sacrificed, and you became the heir to an evil god, no longer a sacrifice, and the family name Gobune was removed from you after that."

Kitahara lowered her eyes, the comb following the droop of her eyelids all the way to the ground, her tone light and sure:

"You were chosen by the Evil God Lord, you should not bear any mark other than that of the Evil God Lord, and the family name Mifune is not worthy of you."

Kitahara picked up a tie, hooked a strand from Bai Liu's left and right temples with his pinky finger and loosely draped it around his ears, tying it with the tie at the end, and finally combining the two strands in the center of the back of his head to drape it over Bai Liu's ceremonial clothing.

Bai Liu's eyes lifted lightly as she looked sideways at Kitahara, her hair caught in a tie and slid down Bai Liu's cheek, curling lovingly into a wisp on her shoulder.

His eyelashes are long, the pupils of his eyes are dark, when he raised his eyes in the dark and room reflecting the painting behind Kitahara on the waves of the waves of the gold dust paint refracted over, as if glittering with the shimmering light like fish scales, Bai Liu softly asked rhetorically, "Is it tied?"

Kitahara stared at Bai Liu in a daze, then suddenly smiled, "You're really good looking, Bai Liu, no wonder God chose you as His heir from amongst our pile of sacrifices."

As he laughed, Kitahara fell into tears as if he could not control himself, his eyelashes were stained with tears, his forehead was pressed against Bai Liu's shoulder to avoid his tears from staining the festival clothes, and his body moved forward to embrace Bai Liu's shoulder restrainedly and forcefully, sobbing:

"...... God can be so cruel."

"Why should the best-looking child among us be allowed to live in such agony, deprived even of being a sacrifice?"

"This world is just one bitter room for us, but for you it's a bitter room everywhere."