In the jungle, Liu Jiayi and Tang Erda stared wide-eyed as Spades smoothly carried Bai Liu away in his arms.

“????”

What was going on?!

Without saying a word, Tang Erda and Liu Jiayi leaped out. They exchanged a glance, then quickly chased in the direction Spades had disappeared.

The dense broad-leaved plants and lush low shrubs of the jungle made pursuit extremely difficult for those behind him. Combined with Spades’ outrageous movement speed, he soon threw off the people chasing him.

But Bai Liu, the hijacked “corpse,” was not flustered at all. He propped his chin on one hand and lay leisurely over Spades’ shoulder, jolting along with him, his face devoid of expression.

Bai Liu was somewhat curious about when Spades would finally realize he was not a corpse.

Soon, Spades’ keen eyes caught sight of a simple jungle canvas tent hidden beneath layers of vegetation.

Camouflaging vines draped over the roof of the tent, and quite a few corpse fragments were piled around it. Those fragments had merely been covered with some sandy soil, then abandoned. Nearby were fortifications built from sandbags and cement. At a glance, it was a temporary outpost in the jungle, used by low-level soldiers responsible for cleaning the battlefield as a place to rest.

Spades took over this newly discovered outpost as his own without the slightest pretense. Carrying the “corpse” over his shoulder, he pushed open the hut door with his knee.

Inside the hut, there were only one or two steel-framed beds placed very close together. Empty shells from landmines and grenades had been tossed into the corner, probably picked up while searching corpses and casually brought back.

There were several tattered uniforms stained with blood, and two aluminum mouthwash cups hung on the wall. Under the bed, two opened medical boxes were half exposed; the slots that had originally held antibiotic drugs were empty. Clearly, the owner of the room had left in a hurry and had most likely taken the medicine to save someone.

Search-and-rescue soldiers were sometimes also responsible for handling simple external injuries.

Spades casually tossed aside the headless corpse fragment tucked under his arm. Just as he was about to throw away the one on his shoulder as well—

Bai Liu finally spoke.

“So the world-renowned Spades relies on stealing his teammates’ corpses to win games?”

Spades’ motion of flinging away the corpse paused. After hesitating for a moment, he gripped the corpse around the waist, lifted Bai Liu horizontally, and placed him on the bed. Then he leaned closer and observed Bai Liu’s face, which was smeared with mud.

Because he could not see clearly, Spades even used his palm to wipe at it a few times. He used considerable strength, distorting Bai Liu’s features slightly before finally revealing the originally fair face beneath the mud.

The two of them were extremely close at this moment. Spades stared intently at Bai Liu, trying to carefully identify him, looking as if he might press against him in the next second.

Bai Liu leaned back to create distance, averted his gaze, and looked toward the dirty clothes in the corner of the room.

“Oh,” Spades said, as if he had realized something, though he possessed no self-awareness whatsoever. “It’s you. Bai Liu from the last game.”

Then this person nodded seriously.

“Yes. I sometimes steal my teammates’ things to win games.”

Spades admitted his crimes in front of Bai Liu without the slightest shame, and even asked him, “Is that not allowed?”

Bai Liu: “...”

For a moment, he felt a subtle sense of pity for this guy’s teammates.

When Xie Ta played games, he also completely ignored rules and regulations. Sometimes he would even sincerely backstab him—someone in the same camp—and stab him with a knife...

At least on that point, he had maintained himself very well. He had never changed.

Bai Liu pursed his lips, and his gaze darkened. He turned to look evenly at Spades, yet a faint smile appeared on his face.

But the smile did not reach his eyes, and Bai Liu’s voice was cold to the extreme.

“I, for one, do not like people who lay hands on their teammates.”

Bai Liu flipped his hand and drew a soul banknote from his glove. The face on the banknote was clearly Tang Erda’s. He instantly activated the personal skill through Tang Erda’s system panel, reached behind himself, and pulled a gun from his waist, looking as if he were about to load the magazine.

Spades’ eyes were sharp, and his hands were fast. He pressed Bai Liu’s gun back into his belt. Instinctively, he wanted to draw his whip and duel Bai Liu, but when he thought of The Judge’s heartbroken accusations from earlier, along with the high probability of having to face the punishment of losing three games, Spades could not help hesitating for an instant.

And in that instant of hesitation, Bai Liu pressed down on his wrist, rotated the gun out of Spades’ hand, smoothly snapped the magazine into place, and fired straight at Spades’ heart.

Spades dodged fluidly to the side.

The bullet struck the tent with a bang, letting in a thin beam of dim light that fell precisely on Bai Liu’s pitch-black eyes. That gaze was cold and calm, holding little warmth beneath the light, as if it were filled with endless negative emotions.

Spades could not help freezing for a moment.

He felt that this person... seemed to be angry.

This anger carried a stronger deterrent force than any emotion Spades had ever encountered from other players. Instinctively, he wanted to pull away from Bai Liu.

But Bai Liu gave him no way out. Realizing that Spades would not easily attack him, he lowered his waist and hooked both legs around Spades’ waist, pulling him close and locking around him.

At the same time, the instant Spades was pulled into Bai Liu’s embrace, the muzzle of the gun aimed at Spades’ heart from behind in a hugging posture.

Spades arched his body forward to dodge the shot from behind and pressed Bai Liu down onto the bed. At the same time, he reached back to pull away Bai Liu’s hands, which were gripping him, and seize the firearm.

Bai Liu was pinned beneath Spades, breathing hard. Spades restrained Bai Liu’s hands against the bedframe, looking down at him from above, and asked in confusion, “Why do you keep aiming at my heart?”

“Is it because in the last game, I took your heart?” Spades was puzzled. “But I gave it back to you. What I took was the monster’s heart.”

“I just think that if you must dig out your own heart and destroy it...” Bai Liu looked up at him and smiled. “Then it would be better if I dug it out myself.”

“After all, I have wanted to dig out your heart for a very long time.”

After speaking, like a magician flicking out a poker card, Bai Liu drew a brand-new soul banknote from his glove. On the banknote was the face of a guild member whose skill was a sharp short blade.

The handgun Spades had seized vanished, replaced in Bai Liu’s hand by a short blade. Bai Liu knelt on the bed, straightened his back, and unsheathed the blade with a swing, forcing back Spades, who had been pressing down on him.

But even though Spades retreated, the momentum of the blade in Bai Liu’s hand did not weaken. Instead, a layer of sharp cold light flashed over it as it stabbed straight toward Spades’ heart.

Spades instinctively pulled out his whip to block the strike.

The smile on Bai Liu’s face became even fainter.

“I thought you would never take out your whip.”

“Where is your whip?” Spades noticed that Bai Liu had never used his own weapon, just like him.

Bai Liu lifted his eyelids and said nonchalantly, “You destroyed it in the last game.”

As he spoke, Bai Liu stepped ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) on the four supporting legs of the steel frame to borrow force, flipped over, and pressed down from above. The blade slashed fiercely against the bundle of whips Spades held up in front of himself to block.

The blade’s edge scraped out dazzling sparks. It looked as if it could not pierce through, but Bai Liu did not reduce his force. Instead, he turned the blade and slashed again, forcibly prying open a gap between the whips with the tip.

Spades shot Bai Liu a cold look. He tightened the muscles of his forearm and rolled the whip inward, actually crushing the inserted blade into fragments and dragging them in.

This was the suppression of a high-level skill weapon over a low-level skill weapon. The originally hard blade became as soft as a lump of mud under the effect of Spades’ whip.

Bai Liu did not withdraw the knife. Instead, he continued reaching upward along the blade as it was dragged in. With two fingers of his left hand, he pinched Tang Erda’s soul coin, once again loaded Tang Erda’s system interface, and swapped the skill weapon.

This ordinary member’s skill weapon was indeed not enough to contend with Spades, but Bai Liu had never intended to use it to fight Spades.

The blade had only been used to clear a path.

What would truly play a role was Tang Erda’s skill weapon, the one that could withstand Spades’ whip.

The gun.

Bai Liu’s gaze moved downward.

The blade had been completely dragged into the gap between the whips when its form suddenly changed, transforming into the indestructible Rose Revolver. The crushed blade being pulled inward abruptly morphed into a muzzle, forcing open a path within the strangling whips and pointing straight at Spades’ heart.

Bai Liu’s pitch-black eyes stared at Spades, and he pulled the trigger without the slightest hesitation.

Bang!

The bullet shot into Spades’ chest and exited through his back, dragging out a clean line of blood that struck the ground. The blood-stained shell casing clattered onto the floor and bounced twice with a crisp sound.

Spades was forced half a step back by the tremendous impact of the bullet. A trace of dazed realization appeared on his face as blood welled from his chest.

Bai Liu did not stop. Expressionlessly, he pushed Spades to the ground and half-crouched beside him. Then he let his hand hang down, raised the gun, and fired several more shots into Spades’ heart.

“Why aren’t you fighting back?” Bai Liu looked at Spades lying in a pool of blood and asked calmly. “Just like you did in the last game, when you dug out my heart.”

“Aren’t you very good at that?”

Spades turned his head to look at Bai Liu. His hair was submerged in blood, but his voice remained steady.

“Because if I attack you again, I will be punished.”

“Are you angry because of this?” Spades asked.

For an instant, an emotion rarely seen appeared on Bai Liu’s face.

But before Spades could determine what category that emotion belonged to, Bai Liu flawlessly withdrew it.

Bai Liu lowered his eyelashes, watching the blood gurgle out of the wound in Spades’ heart like a small fountain. He opened his fingers and placed his hand over the wound before Spades’ heart. Blood flowed outward through the gaps between his slender, fair fingers.

Warm yet cold, slightly viscous, a liquid texture like a mixture of strong acid and fuel.

“I thought your blood would be cold too.” Bai Liu turned his head and looked at Spades. “I didn’t expect it to still have some warmth.”

Bai Liu’s blood-stained fingertips slid all the way up from Spades’ heart, finally brushing aside his bangs. He gazed into Spades’ eyes and was momentarily dazed.

Spades’ eyes were also black, but they were different from Bai Liu’s lightless, pure black. His black was like a glass bead placed in a pitch-dark room without light; when seen from certain inadvertent angles, it would reflect a very faint silvery-blue glow, as if another person’s eyes were hidden inside the bead.

“You have such beautiful eyes. Why hide them?” Bai Liu abruptly asked in this bizarre scene.

And Spades, lying on the ground, cooperated and answered his question.

“I don’t think it is necessary to show my eyes to outsiders.”

He paused, then, combining it with Bai Liu’s question, added, “Except for you, no one has ever said these eyes are beautiful.”

“Is that so?” Bai Liu caressed Spades’ eyes and leaned down, pressing against him intimately. “I like your eyes very much. They are silvery-blue.”

Bai Liu spoke these words in an extremely soft tone. His eyes lost focus, as if he had already forgiven Spades’ mistakes and was sinking into those eyes.

But in the next second, Spades’ breathing quickened.

Bai Liu turned the gun back into a blade, sliced open Spades’ chest, pressed his five fingers together, and thrust them into the wound, grabbing that bloody heart.

Spades thought blankly—

So that was how it was.

This person seemed to be the type who repaid an eye with an eye.

So whatever he had done to Bai Liu, Bai Liu would do back to him.

If letting Bai Liu dig out his heart meant Bai Liu would stop being angry with him, then it was not impossible...

Bai Liu gradually tightened his hand around Spades’ heart. He looked down at Spades, then suddenly closed his eyes and leaned down, tightening his grip at the same time.

Spades’ pupils contracted as they never had before.

His heart exploded in an instant.

Bai Liu’s warm lips and teeth pressed against his ice-cold lips. It was an extremely strange feeling, as if his heart had burst because it could not withstand Bai Liu’s sudden kiss.

Bai Liu kissed him and murmured to himself, “I hate you. You have to remember that. I hate you.”

A large amount of blood flowed out of Spades’ body. In confusion, he embraced Bai Liu, who had curled into his arms after the kiss. For a moment, Spades felt that the one suffering from a wounded heart was not him, but Bai Liu.

“Are you still angry?” Spades asked.

Bai Liu did not answer. He shrank a little farther into Spades’ arms. The gun in his hand had not been withdrawn. It was still pressed against Spades’ heart, giving the impression that he might fire two more shots into him at any moment out of displeasure.

So Spades, confused and clumsy, patted Bai Liu on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry. I won’t do this next time.”

Bai Liu remained silent for a long time.

Finally, he lowered the gun.

—

Author’s Note:

A domestic violence scene.