Witch trials

Phoebe's words came true, the little witch defected during the critical period two months before the league, the whole King's Guild could be said to be in chaos, Phoebe was immersed in an unprecedented low pressure, she was so crazy that she almost killed Bai Liu directly, but Heart stopped her.

"Can't you at least give it a chance, and let us see what kind of a man she chooses?" Heart said this to Phoebe, "I'm not going to let you meddle in the handling of this until you've calmed down."

"For you to handle?" Phoebe raises an eyebrow, "A coward only misses opportunities again and again."

"If you'd chosen the best way from the start, the Witch wouldn't have defected at all, you left her open - at first I asked you to kill Liu Huai and you wouldn't do it, then I asked you to impersonate Liu Huai and you wouldn't do it, and now there's someone willing to kill and replace Liu Huai at the same time, and it's only logical that the Witch would defect. Now that there is someone willing to kill and replace Liu Huai at the same time, the witch's defection is simply logical."

Heart paused, "Indeed, but a gap might as well be freedom of choice, no?"

"It's her choice."

Phoebe paused, then sneered, "I watched the replay, and it's more Liu Huai's choice than the little witch's, isn't it?"

"And her choice." Heart says, "I can bring her back, but only if you stay out of it."

Phoebe replies, "You better be able to."

Heart met Bai Liu, the player who also used the bone whip, and he sped through the small TV screen with a very laid-back, loose smile on his face, spreading his arms in the wind created by Qi Yifang and laughing uncontrollably.

The wind ruffled Bai Liu's hair, and he smiled and held out his hand to Liu Jiayi and said, "Yes."

"You can do whatever you want, whatever you choose."

[Can.]

[Whatever you want to do.

The familiarity that followed him made Heart's fingers curl slightly, and he remained still in front of Bai Liu's small television for a long time, long enough for the attendant next to him to cautiously remind him, "Empress?"

"Sorry, just got sidetracked." Heart lowered his eyelashes and raised his hand to give the order, he turned his head without looking at Bai Liu's small television, his tone indifferent, "Round him up."

Could ...... be him?

Or was it another trick he had deliberately set up to play his game - just as Spades had done, after he had calmly and clearly followed his choice to die, and then released such a player more like him to continue to entice him to live, to suffer endlessly in this game.

All the ups and downs of the thoughts were just a moment, Heart quickly changed back to his original lazy appearance, methodically ordering, with harsh and ferocious means, to round up Bai Liu--even if it was really him, taking away the only heir that he had nurtured with great care, there had to be some price to pay.

...... If it's really him, he can easily survive these tactics of his too, right? ......

"So that's why you let him take the little witch?" Phoebe looked at Heart coldly, "And a reason to let me top it?"

"You think this Bai Liu is similar to the customer you've been waiting for?"

Heart gave Phoebe an afterimage, "Charles stepped in to bail him out."

"And you let him go?" Phoebe gave a laugh, "You can use that excuse to put off the others in the guild, but you can't fool me, if you really wanted to round him up, then even if Charles had intervened, he would have been dead by now."

"Bone whips, souls, like to trade, tone of voice, style of behavior, even the attitude towards the little witch, all remind you of yourself at the time, don't they? Bai Liu is very similar to that customer, isn't he? And just because of this similarity, you have gone soft on this man called Bai Liu."

Heart is silent.

"Heart," Phoebe said coldly, "you're going to regret letting Bai Liu go today."

Soon the day of regret came.

Heart's pupils fluttered lightly as he looked at Bai Liu in his school uniform in the first group battle of the Challenge -- a uniform he recognized, he'd worn, and he remembered that it was the first thing he'd worn as an adult that wasn't from the island, and the first man he'd imitated-- -was the one whose guest had brought the clothes and the demands.

[The pupils of that child's eyes are black.]

[Don't look at me like that, he looks at me cold, he hates me and won't look at me with such fond eyes.]

[He refused to kill me.]

[Speaking of which, he's about the same age as you, and he's also eighteen this year.]

Heart had never seen that customer look at the finished imitation with such emotional eyes - even the first time he imitated the silver-blue child, the customer's eyes were still calm with nostalgia, not much emotion, but that time, after he had imitated the other person's request, the other person's eyes had a very peculiar emotion - he was looking forward to "him", or more accurately, the customer was looking forward to the boy he was imitating. But that time, after he had imitated the boy exactly as he had requested, the other man's eyes had a very peculiar emotion - he was looking forward to "him", or to put it more accurately, the customer was looking forward to the boy he was imitating.

The guest, wearing a mask, smiles and says to the boy he is playing, "I look forward to you, to the day when you grow up, have desires, and walk up to me."

"I can't wait to meet you."

He asked the guest, "Who is this?

The guest smiled and said, "This is the man who will kill me in the future."

"Or to describe it more accurately, it's a me with a soul."

Trembling and confused, he softly inquired, "What do you mean, a you with a soul?"

"I'm a god without a soul, and this human you're playing as, he's a derivative of me, or to be more precise, he has the same appearance as me, the same character traits, the same desires, and he's exactly like me in everything except he's not a god, a mortal version of me if you will."

"By all rights, he was derived from me, and there should not be anything in him that is different from me, but it is very strange that the man in this world, apart from having the same outward appearance as me, has character traits and desires that are completely different from mine, as well as the most important point of all-"

The guest slowly sat up straight, his tone rising slightly, "-I have no soul, but he does."

"A [me] with a soul, I am strong enough to imagine him, if there is some kind of existence in this world that can kill me, it is bound to be him."

"Why did you show such an angry expression when you heard that I was going to be killed by him?" The guest looked at Heart with a smile, his head tilted to one side, resting against the back of his hand, his tone mildly diffident, with a plausible ambiguity, "Since you like me so much, you'll probably like him more compared to me."

"Because I don't understand [love], but he can."

"I won't like him!" Heart showed an expression as if he had been humiliated as he retorted angrily, "I won't like someone who's going to kill you! My liking is not something that can be so easily diverted!"

"Oh? Is that so?" That guest's tone was dazzling, and the corners of his lips were curled up in a smirk, "You've only met me twice, so why do you like me?"

"It's just because I showed up at just the right time, at just the right place, with just the right power just to help you get your wish, so you like me, right?"

"Is it me you like, or is it this person who showed up at just the right time? Would you have liked this person if it had been someone else instead of me?"

Heart was still in place, he looked up incredulously, his eyes wide open, his breath coming in quick breaths, but he couldn't answer a word.

The guest gave a very soft chuckle as he stood up, dropping his eyes to straighten his black leather gloves, lifting them upwards a little as he didn't look at Heart, who sat half-kneeling in front of him, and spoke as if in casual conversation without a huff, his tone smiling with a coolness to it:

"As I understand it, human liking is also kind of superficial and utilitarian, and can be easily created and diverted."

The guest said with a smile, "If you really want to prove to me that you won't like him, and express your loyalty to my liking-"

"--Then kill him and prove it to me."

The moment the words fell out of her mouth, Heart felt the guest pat Heart's head very gently, and he looked away from Heart, his eyes smiling as if he were looking at Heart, and as if he was looking at the person Heart was playing, "If you really like me that much."

The pupils of Heart's eyes quivered slightly.

--This was the first time this guest had touched him.

"What a rare visitor." Charles folded his arms in front of himself as he looked over at Heart, who had pushed open the door to his office, and said with a smirk, "What is it that could make the high and mighty Empress skip her rivalry meeting after watching the Challenge, and hoof it over to come knocking on the dirty door of a gambler like me?"

Heart walks up to Charles and looks at him with one wrong eye, "I want to know what's behind Bai Liu."

"Behind the scenes information?" Charles inquired with a polite smile as he spread his hands, "The Empress and I have been working together for a long time, and I am certainly willing to traffic you in a lot of information, after all, last year I even did something like create a fake identity within the Gamblers Guild for you to invest in Spades."

"That doesn't qualify as you helping me." Heart retorted back impassively, "It was you yourself who agreed to work with me because you needed an extreme gambler to boost Spades' status and build up his popularity."

Last year, Heart was dropping points with Charles in order to get to Spades - he was asking Spades where he got the bone whip from, and normally newbies are privy to the gambler who backs them the most, but Spades is an unusual player, and he's a good one to have. Heart had dropped so many points that the man hadn't even given the gambler at the top of the leaderboard a second glance, and hadn't been tempted to make a private connection.

It was only after Heart finally fought him in the ring, killing him in a bloody fight, that he was able to get a one sentence reply from Spades about the origin of the Bone Whip - [I don't know].

"Last year you were looking at Spades, this year you are looking at Bai Liu." Charles mocked, "Empress, your vision is really good, you can accurately pick my dark horse every time, last year you were looking at Spades for access so you were willing to work with me, and this year it's for the same reason?"

"I don't like Bai Liu." Heart retorted in an indifferent tone, "I just want to hear from him."

Charles shrugged, "Well, it's a basic ethic of mine not to question my clients, but I sell news by the article here, so what kind of news do you want? Career? Background? Marriage? Relationships? Or something to do with the league?"

"Seeing as we've worked together for so long, I'll give you a friendly price of ten thousand points a piece."

Heart looks up, "I want everything you know about Bai Liu, no matter how many pieces of information."