Challenge

A large amount of psychoactive bleach fumes suddenly erupted from the ornamental pool, and the entire pool was covered in a cloud of white mist, making it impossible to see anything but the choking and coughing sounds and complaints of the audience.

"What's the situation? What NPC exodus?"

"I'm still waiting for the results! Now I can't see a thing."

Before Bai Yi could react, he saw Spades, who was not far away from him, fall to the ground, and subconsciously reached out to help him, but was forced to stop by Liao Ke.

"No!" Liao Ke dragged Bai Yi behind himself, clicked out the props panel in his system, fully armed, facing Spades, who was on the ground, bruised and struggling to get up, looked away from him and warned with a deep gaze, "Spades is in extreme danger."

"If you don't want to get out of the game, go crazy and kill yourselves, now you'll be honest for a while!"

"Never see his eyes."

Liao Ke dragged Bai Jiamu and Bai Yi back as fast as they could, soon reaching the edge of the inner perimeter of the viewing pool, where all they could see was the faint outline of Spades' human form in the white mist.

This silhouette is trying hard to stand up, but it seems that because of the severity of the injuries, it can't manage to stand up on its own, and after a few steps, it collapses again, but it is particularly persistent and staggers to support its body again, and stands up again.

Get up, get down, get up, get down.

Spades seems to be trying to find someone, moving in one direction in a near-crawling manner, looking like a lizard that has just taken human form and is not yet coordinated enough to walk properly.

Bai Yi's heart trembled as he watched, "Are we just going to leave him?"

Liao Ke looked solemn: "We don't have the ability to control him now."

"We're his teammates! Can't we even help him a little!" Bai Yi's eyes were red and his voice was shaking, "He hurt the city like this for our game!"

"He doesn't know anything! We're the ones who forced him onto the field, taught him to race, told him to win these games, and banned him from reality."

"We've taught him so many rules in favor of us humans who live in reality, but not once has he had the friendly treatment we give to those in reality, and he lives like a monster even in our presence."

"Everyone fears him."

Bai Yi's tears streamed down his face as he asked back in a mute voice, "If even we, his teammates, who have utilized him, aren't willing to help him now, he really has nothing left."

Liao Ke opened his mouth, he clenched his fists and lowered his head, "You are not allowed to help."

"I'll go." He said, looking up.

Bai Yi was anxious, "I don't mean to force you to go! I'm just saying I'll go!"

"None of you need to go." Out of the mists, a slender man with a slightly arched back and clenched fists choking and coughing came out, a very warm smile on his face, a little pale, a uniform with blood still wet draped over his shoulders, and said softly, "Someone else will be there."

Liao Ke let out a long breath as he looked at the man across from him, a small genuine smile finally brought out on his face, "You're finally here."

Bai Yi and Bai Jiamu stared blankly at the man who had suddenly stepped out of the white mist.

Bai Jiamu's tense shoulders relaxed in an instant, and Bai Yi's tears came out, as if he had found his backbone, he jumped over and hugged the other party, bawling, "Captain!"

"We lost the singles match!!!"

Lu Yizhan's brow arched as he caught the wailing Bai Yi : "Really? Looks like I just missed a pretty good game."

"I'm the one who's late."

In the white mist, Spades stumbled forward alone, his clothes soaked through, taking one step and falling back, blood dripping down the ends of his hair and the corners of his coat, nothing on his face, the shrill warning sound of the system playing on a loop in his ears:

[Please stay away from player Spades! He is now in a dangerous Monster Book state!

[Please stay away from Player Spades!

[Please keep anyone away from player Spades!]

Oh, keep them away from me.

Only now was his mind slowly processing the sound message that had reached his ears.

Spades fell to the ground, his knees bent and he stood on one knee bracing himself on the ground trying to get up again, he thought calmly as he got up.

This warning system doesn't have to be given, does it? It's redundant.

These people, these players, they won't come near me without warning.

They're so afraid of me.

--like being afraid of monsters in a game.

Spades takes a step, his knees buckle and he falls heavily to the ground.

Blood and seawater dripped from beside the ends of his hanging hair, and pools of blood densely spread from beside his kneeling knees, Spades thought in some sort of trance.

Yeah, I was supposed to be a monster in a game.

No one should have been near me in the first place, and it was my vocation to kill those who came near me, to make them fearful, to make them suffer, to make them drown in their own desires.

The only value of my birth and existence is this.

[That's not true.]

Spades suddenly remembered what Lu Yizhan had told him, what the strange seer had told him as he leaned over the balcony fence in the Slayer sequence, smiling up at him and reaching out to pat him gently on the head:

[Not so, we Spades do not exist to cause pain and fear to others, no being in this world was created for that purpose.]

[You must have been born because of someone's love for you.]

[And your presence is sure to make this person feel happy as hell.]

So who is this guy? Spades asked.

Lu Yizhan replied with a smile, [That person is the one who brought you into reality and turned you into a human being.]

Does this person really exist?

Spades looked at the blood under his knees, at his blood-stained hands, at the white mist of empty silence around him, and wondered from the bottom of his heart.

Of all the humans, why would this one love a repulsive monster like him?

"Bai Liu, what are you going to do!" Mu Sicheng's voice rang out eagerly, "Grass! The system won't let us go over there! The system won't let us go over there! It's dangerous, don't you hear me!"

"Bai Liu, you're so heavily injured now, don't mess around anymore!" Tang Er hit a slightly serious warning.

"Don't go over there." Mu Ke prayed softly, "Spades has his teammates to deal with first, so you rest, okay?"

"Bai Liu," the last person to stand in Bai Liu's way was Liu Jiayi, she was quiet for a long, long time before she spoke, "You can go if you want to."

"I know you've made your choice."

From beginning to end, there was no sound of Bai Liu answering, he seemed to just be silent and determined as he pushed away these people in front of him, and walked towards him with a shaky gait as he pushed through the white fog.

Spades looked up slowly as an equally wretched figure appeared in front of him, a thin, monolithic figure that had to wobble just as much as he did when he took a few steps, one step at a time as he approached where he was.

Not a single step back, no matter how many people were in the way.

The shrill warning grows sharper:

[Please keep anyone away from player Spades!]

[There are so many humans, why would this person love me a monster that scares people?] Spades asked Lu Yizhan suspiciously.

[He's so strange.]

Lu Yizhan laughed: [I think he's so strange too.]

[But you should like him a lot when you meet him.]

Spades at the time didn't think twice: [I'm not going to like him].

Lu Yizhan laughs and asks: [Why?

Spades replied bluntly, [Because I don't understand like.]

Bai Liu walked over to Spades, who was kneeling on the ground, his face pale and breathing heavily, blood still oozing from the wounds on his ankles and wrists, dragging all the way across the floor.

He looked down at Spades, who was looking up at him, and a drop of blood mixed with seawater fell from his eyelashes.

Bai Liu held out his hand to Spades, the game coin in it, and he spoke shallowly, "I won."

At that moment, Spades couldn't hold back his tears.

He didn't understand the meaning of the tears, like he didn't understand a lot of things, he didn't know that in this moment, all the human emotions he had always wondered about, like, hate, hate, love, jealousy, pursuit, pain, resignation, were all experienced by him in this moment.

"I lost." Spades unconsciously wept as he clenched his fists, "I'm an unqualified souvenir."

Bai Liu pauses, he puts the coin away, gets down on one knee in front of Spades, takes out a roll of bandage and wraps it around Spades' silver-blue eyes, Bai Liu wraps it around one by one, carefully and meticulously, and the two of them breathe in close proximity to each other.

"No." Spades heard Bai Liu whisper in his ear, and there seemed to be a smile in his voice, "You qualified."

[SYSTEM ALERT: Player Spades' dangerousness has been dealt with and the Danger Alert has been lifted.]

The nozzle of the rotating spray of psycho bleach stopped spraying.

The moment the white fog cleared, Bai Yi rushed up in excitement, "Spades! The captain is back!"

Meanwhile, the wandering circus came up to assist Bai Liu.

Spades was put on a stretcher with his eyes wrapped around his head, Liao Ke holding his hands guiltily at his side, "Is anything wrong? I'll take you back to the Slayer Sequence office and have your wounds looked at."

"I hurt." Spades mumbled, "It's heavy again."

Spades had never heard Liao Ke cry out in pain once since the match, and now his heart skipped a beat when he heard it, but then he heard the next sentence and was puzzled, "Heavy, what's heavy?"

"I feel like my body ......" Spades describes word for word, "is so heavy."

"It's normal." Lu Yizhan stepped forward and he touched Spades' forehead with a smile, "Because souls and love, they're heavy things."

"Eh ......" Bai Yi noticed something like a piece of paper clutched in Spades' left hand and curiously tried to pull it, "Spades what's in your hand?"

Spades clenches violently, "Mine!"

"No snatching, no snatching!" Bai Yi instantly loosened his hands to do a hands up surrender as he cried and laughed, "I thought it was something bad you brought out of the game so I wanted to show it to you."

"No." Spades said, "Bai Liu just gave it to me."

Bai Yi asks carefully, "Now that you are blindfolded, would you like me to help you see what Bai Liu has given you?"

Spades lay still on the stretcher for a long, long time before slowly releasing the small, crumpled note he had clutched.

Bai Yi's entire body froze when he saw what was written on the note.

It couldn't have been a simpler little note, and what was written on it was simple, a string of twelve digits.

--that's a realistic coordinate.

Access to Bai Liu's rental house.