Chapter 510: Challenge

After a brief handover to the other members, Bai Liu calmly logged out of the game.

The other members of the Stray Circus were understanding of the outcome and no one blamed Bai Liu.

To be honest, they don't have the right to be blamed. If it comes down to it, the responsibility is even greater for the few of them who were basically cleared out by Lu Yizhan at the beginning of the game, and it's all up to Bai Liu to hold it together until the end.

"Don't have so much pressure." Tang Er hit patted Bai Liu's shoulder with a gloomy expression, "Rest well, we still have a tough battle ahead of us."

Bai Liu hmmm, he logged out of the game, lying on the bed of his rented house, looking at the ceiling with a flat expression, his breathing sound is very light.

He didn't bring his injuries out this time, he was sober from start to finish.

Including the closing one at the end.

"Ling Ling--"

His cell phone suddenly rang, Bai Liu did not even look at the screen of the phone to pick up, after picking up the opposite side of no sound, only an unstable breathing sound, so Bai Liu did not say anything.

After a long interval, a bitter laugh came from across the room, "Let's talk?"

"Where do we talk?" Bai Liu's tone was smooth, "My place or yours?"

"You come over." Lu Yizhan scratches his face, "I'll cook and wait for you to come over, is there anything you want to eat?"

Bai Liu paused, "Whatever."

"Okay, then I'll go buy food and wait for you, you just got out of the game, don't ride your bike when you come over, take a taxi, I'll reimburse you." Lu Yizhan said.

Then Bai Liu took the most expensive express taxi.

When Bai Liu called Lu Yizhan to come down to pay for him, Lu Yizhan, wearing an apron, wiped his hands and took out his cell phone to pay in shock: "How did you call over a hundred dollars!"

The cab driver answered truthfully, "This guy said he wanted to go to the shopping street over by the Qiao Mu private high school, so I took a little detour, and he went down to buy something, and then he came back at this price."

Lu Yizhan, who realizes he's being retaliated against by Bai Liu by taking a long detour on purpose: "......"

Lu Yizhan turned to Bai Liu : "What did you take the long way around to get?"

"Put it in the trunk." Bai Liu gets out of the car, pushes open the trunk, and pulls out a huge black plastic bag, dragging it up to the third floor, "You find a place for me to put this."

This bag looks square, but the thing inside is vaguely humanoid, being carried by Bai Liu, the head of that place is still unconsciously a little bit, looking almost like a body bag.

Lu Yizhan, who was following behind, grew more and more shocked: "What the hell did you buy?"

Bai Liu slanted him a look, "The body, do you want to report it now?"

"...... No need." Lu Yizhan weakly withdrew his exploratory gaze as he lowered his head, wiped his hands vigorously on his apron, and suddenly said, "I'm sorry."

Bai Liu's back paused for a moment, he didn't say anything and continued to walk forward.

When he reached Lu Yizhan's door on the third floor, Bai Liu stopped, and just as he was about to raise his hand to knock, Lu Yizhan reminded him in a low voice, "You have the key."

"Last time you were here, Fang Dian gave it to you."

Bai Liu's hand stopped in mid-air when he raised it to knock on the door, he was quiet for a moment, then he found the key, inserted it into the keyhole, and turned it with a somewhat rusty movement.

The door didn't open.

Lu Yizhan whispers again, "You've got it backwards."

Bai Liu: "......"

Bai Liu lightly swept Lu Yizhan's eyes with his afterglow: "Why don't you drive?"

"No no no!" Lu Yizhan carefully smiles, "You didn't come for a long time, it's normal, it won't happen if you come a few more times."

Bai Liu shifted his eyes back, his gaze lingering on the lock and key for a moment before turning twice more in the opposite direction.

The door finally opened.

The dampness of the wet soup pot rushes to the surface, the wallpaper on the bright house has two or three marks of water pen, it is obvious that the careless hostess drew on it accidentally, the TV in the living room is playing some noisy entertainment programs, the kitchen keeps on bubbling with the sound of gurgling bubbles, and there are already three or four plates of dishes on the dining table on the side of the living room, and the hot air floats upward. White smoke was wafting up from the heat.

It's a very lively, very smoky house, bustling with activity as if it were a festival.

Bai Liu stepped inside.

"Bang--"

It was the sound of a firework tube thumping away, and Fang Dian jumped out from behind a sideboard of shoes and popped up in front of Bai Liu with a big smile on her face, holding a firework tube in one hand and a cake in the other, shouting:

"Happy 25th birthday to Bai Liu!"

Bai Liu's right foot just stopped where it was going.

His eyes slowly shifted from the large table of food, the overly lively atmosphere in the living room, to the face of Fang Dian, who was wearing a birthday hat and holding a candle, and finally slowly fell on the birthday cake with the [25th] year candles.

Oh, so it's his birthday.

It's been so long since he's been there, he's forgotten.

Bai Liu has had Fang Dian and Lu Yizhan celebrate basically all of his birthdays since high school.

But on Bai Liu's 22nd birthday, something happened to Fang Dian, and since then, Bai Liu never came to Fang Dian's house for her birthday, and even said that he never came back.

No matter how Lu Yizhan and Fang Dian specially invited him, Bai Liu would coldly refuse, and eventually it gradually turned into a text message congratulating him on his birthday and a birthday cake takeout, and Bai Liu's sense of ritual for [birthday] ended there, he would eat the cake as food like beef noodles for breakfast, and then scanned the text message, and his His birthday passed in an unusual way.

Now he suddenly recalls - oh, so it's my birthday.

It's also true that his birthday three years ago, when Fang Dian's accident happened, coincided with the same time that Lambic Frenzy's lost the challenge against the Deer Hunter, and this year his birthday came after losing the challenge against the Slayer Sequence.

In that way, he has one more subtle thing in common with the tactician from Lambic Frenzy - both lost to Lu Yizhan.

"Come on in, come on in!" Seeing Bai Liu's lack of response, Fang Dian naturally grabbed Bai Liu's shoulders and shrugged him in, then puffed and stomped her feet twice, looking at Bai Liu with some surprise, "You just wore a white shirt over here, aren't you cold?"

"It's September and October, the weather is getting cooler, and it's raining today!" Fang Dian looked disapprovingly at the thinly dressed Bai Liu and shook her head, "Is that all you're wearing? Can your little body handle it?"

"I'll get your clothes!"

As soon as Fang Dian put the cake down, she went into the back room and started rummaging through the closets for clothes.

Bai Liu and Lu Yizhan were sitting on the sofa, watching a cartoon on the TV across the room.

Lu Yizhan took a deep breath as he clutched his apron and opened his mouth first, "...... What do you have to ask?"

"What else is in your game with Bai Liu besides werewolf killing?" Bai Liu's tone was light, but the question was to the point, "What's your next plan?"

Lu Yizhan smiles a little bitterly, "I'm going to give you Prophet status."

Bai Liu also paused for a moment as he turned his head towards Lu Yizhan, his eyes narrowing, "You're going to sell your soul to me, won't you die?"

"It would have been." Lu Yizhan sighs as he holds out his hand, "Why don't you find the bills and soul trade with me first, you'll know what's going on afterward."

Bai Liu paused expressionlessly for a moment, then rummaged through the corner of his wallet and pulled out a ten-cent coin, holding it up right in front of Lu Yizhan's face with a stunned expression, "Ten cents for your soul."

Lu Yizhan The whole thing cracked, "Well at least one piece! Ten cents is too much!"

"Forget about not selling." Bai Liu calmly withdrew the coin, "Lu Yizhan, get it straight, it's a buyer's market, you're the one who has to sell me your soul, I don't really want it."

Lu Yizhan: "......"

Lu Yizhan took a deep breath and held out his hand in humiliation, tears glistening inside his eyes, "At least 50 cents! Ten cents is just too little!"

"I can buy it at the explicit price of fifty cents." Bai Liu clasped his hands to his chest and spoke in a cold tone, "But later you'll have to transfer me forty cents and the real price will still be ten cents, counting me as helping to falsify the price of your soul swipe lift."

Lu Yizhan: "......"

I only have one soul bill and am not going to open a wholesale store and don't need to swipe and jack up the price for counterfeiting, thank you.

"A dime is a dime." Lu Yizhan couldn't help but laugh and cry, "Give it to me."

Bai Liu tapped a dime into Lu Yizhan's palm, and almost instantly, a new soul bill appeared in his wallet, and his brows quickly knit together as he held the newly generated soul bill between two fingers and drew it out.

This banknote is not new and straight like Bai Liu's other banknotes, but a bit old and wrinkled, and in the upper right corner there is a hole the size of a baby's fist, with a black circle around the big hole, as if it had been burned by something.

Bai Liu quickly looked up as he looked over Lu Yizhan's right shoulder that had been hit by the Soul Shattering Gun, and his tone sank, "Your soul appeared damaged after being hit by the gun?"

"Yes, so my soul was incomplete after my last injury." Lu Yizhan spread his hands as he said helplessly, "So even though I sold my soul to you, I didn't completely sell it to you, in a kind of Schrodinger's sold soul state."

"It's kind of a cheating violation."

Lu Yizhan sighed and laughed softly, "There are rare times when I can cheat in the face of Bai Liu."

Bai Liu looked at Lu Yizhan steadily as he asked an abrupt question, "When did you start to formulate this plan for me to take the status of a prophet?"

"--it was before the last time you took a bullet for me, wasn't it?"

Bai Liu's tone was calm and unmistakable, "So, at that time, you intentionally blocked that shot in front of me, just so that you could successfully sell your tattered and torn soul to me afterward, and cede me the prophet status that you couldn't afford to take, so that I could get those useless, so-called world-saving responsibilities and rights."

"- Is that why you raised me, Lu Yizhan?"

"Either kill me as a criminal or use me as an heir, as a tool?"

Lu Yizhan slowly raised his head, and instead of avoiding Bai Liu's pressed question, he answered smoothly, "Fifty percent."

Bai Liu instantly understood what Lu Yizhan meant.

-- Lu Yizhan's point is that he raised him 50 percent because of what Bai Liu just said.

"That's another fifty percent." Bai Liu lifted his eyelids as he gazed at Lu Yizhan, "What is it?"

Lu Yizhan stared straight into Bai Liu's eyes for a long, long time, he closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.

What is it?

It's the guy who stayed up all night studying at fifteen because he said so, the guy who stopped him from laying waste to his classmates at sixteen, the guy who vaguely bragged to them when his grades went up to four-hundred at seventeen, the guy who saved up his popsicles under Fang Dian's bed to buy them Kauai Do's.

Jumping off the high school lake at eighteen, but controlling himself from getting into the game, and collapsing outside of Fang Dian's surgery at twenty-two when he took a hand in folding his memories.

At the age of twenty-five, he closed in on him in the game with only one point of life.

-because he's human, and I'm human, and can't avoid, can't cut, those emotional connections that arise.

"The other fifty percent ...... is because you are my friend." Lu Yizhan's eyes were extremely complicated, his voice trembled a little and he wore a very forced smile on his face, "You may think it's ridiculous, but I do."

"I'm sorry you had to find this out on your birthday."

Bai Liu's breath stuttered, and he averted his gaze for a long moment of silence:

"You gave me fifty percent of the reason, and I received fifty percent of your soul."

"We're even."

Bai Liu put away the half-burned soul bill.

Lu Yizhan looked up in consternation, and before he could say anything, Fang Dian poked her head out of the inner room, and looking curiously at Bai Liu, she asked, "Bai Liu, I'm looking for an overcoat jacket for you... how tall are you now?"

Bai Liu : "......177."

"Wow, you've grown a bit then." Dian Fang pondered for a while, "But Lao Lu's clothes still don't work out too well, he's five-five-eight-six, you're a bit far off."

"Then you can wear mine first, I'm 5'8" and the jacket is just right for you."

Bai Liu : "...... Oh."

Fang Dian found a camel-colored coat for Bai Liu to put on, and couldn't help complaining about Bai Liu when she put it on: "What's wrong with you? Have you eaten properly? You're too skinny, your waist is almost as thin as mine, and you have to go one button in when you wear a waist-cinching women's coat like mine."

"No, you need to eat more." With that, Fang Dian pushed Lu Yizhan, who was hesitant to speak, into the kitchen, "Quickly go in and bring out pig's trotters soup for Bai Liu."

After being pressured by Fang Dian to eat two large pieces of pig's trotters and a bowl and a half of rice with urgency, Bai Liu had to put down the bowl and reiterate, "I'm really full."

"Bullshit." Fang Dian's line of sight swept past Bai Liu's waist like an x-ray, coldly judging, "Your stomach isn't even bulging, so you should be able to have some more."

Bai Liu: "......"

Literally throwing up.

Lu Yizhan sobbed and laughed as he relieved Bai Liu, "You let him save some of his stomach for the cake."

After dinner, Fang Dian mysteriously pulled Bai Liu to sit on the sofa: "Sit here, I'll go get your birthday present."

Within moments, Fang Dian had rummaged through three large, dusty boxes and a brand new one out of nowhere.

Bai Liu As if sensing something, his eyes seemed to stand still, resting on those gray boxes.

Dian Fang wiped it off as she opened the first box, "It was your birthday present the year you turned twenty-two."

Inside the box was an old console and a bunch of game cards for horror games.

"Lu Yizhan and I went to the flea market to get them." Fang Dian laughed as she patted herself on the back and assured her, "They're all out-of-print games, so you're guaranteed not to have played them!"

"It was your birthday present the year you turned twenty-three."

Inside the box was a set of formal wear that was worth a lot of money at first glance.

Dian Fang opened the box and took it out with nostalgic eyes, "You're working now, thinking that you should use it when you attend any formal occasions, so Lao Lu and I saved up and bought you a set of them, which cost several thousand dollars."

"It was a gift for the year you turned twenty-four."

Fang Dian turned over the box, Bai Liu looked at the contents and his eyes moved for a moment.

--The box was densely packed with all kinds of amulets and prayer charms from different temples.

"This is some of the ones that Lao Lu and I went to the temple to beg for, and some of them I had my friends and the girls bring back for me from out of town." Fang Dian looked at the amulets with a sigh, "You always had bad luck during that time, and even though I don't believe in it either, sometimes I think too much and say what if."

She looked at Bai Liu with a smile, "If there really are immortals in the sky that can bless us Bai Liu for a while, it's not a big deal for me and Lao Lu to buy a talisman and beg them for a while."

Bai Liu was quiet for a long time, "Thank you."

"You don't have to say thank you to us." Dian Fang interrupted Bai Liu's thanks with a wave of her hand, then she sighed despondently, "I was going to give it to you on your birthday, but you didn't want to come, and you don't really see me anymore, I don't know what you think, in case I give it to you and you don't want it, it'll just add to your worries, maybe you'll have to find a way to return my favor, then I'll be really sad."

"Think about it and end up not giving it out every year."

"Good thing you finally came this year." Fang Dian smiles again without a trace of embarrassment, "Then we'll give it to you all together in person."

She didn't say a word about the fact that Bai Liu hadn't come to the house once in the last three years.

"Oh, and this." Fang Dian rummaged down again and joyfully pulled out a set from the bottom of the box and placed it in front of Bai Liu, "This is warm, you can wear it later!"

Even Bai Liu, when he saw Fang Dian turn out the set, he couldn't help but have his pupils quake for a moment, and quickly calmly refused, "That won't be necessary."

"What's not to use." Fang Dian held up a whole set of red autumnal clothes and red autumnal pants and even included a look at red underwear, disliking Bai Liu's face, righteously saying, "You didn't wear these in the year of your birth, and I think that's why you're unlucky!"

Bai Liu: "......"

I don't think so.

Dian Fang emphasized again, "These pants are open and padded, so get in there and change into them while it's still your natal year!"

Bai Liu slowly shifts his eyes to Lu Yizhan behind Fang Dian, who helplessly shrugs his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness.

Fang Dian coldly interrupted these two silent exchanges: "Lu Yizhan also wore a whole year's worth of red autumn clothes and red autumn pants in his current year, so it's useless for you to beg him."

Bai Liu: "......"

Lu Yizhan: "......"

That's right.