Free Web Novel“I just wanted to find someone I could entrust my soul to.”
“I heard someone in the guild say that the souls of players who die in the game are reclaimed by the system.”
He fell silent for a moment.
“I don’t want that.”
[System Notification: Player Liu Huai’s mention of soul trading involves a violation. It will be automatically censored and silenced during the Little TV broadcast. Player Liu Huai, please reduce these mentions, otherwise, the system will consider blocking player Liu Huai’s Little TV.]
Liu Huai fell quiet.
“Besides my soul, I have something else I can give you, Bai Liu.”
Liu Huai raised his eyes. They were dry now, emptied of tears.
“This thing is more useful than my soul.”
“After all, I’m about to die. My soul is only a banknote to you. You have no way to extract any value from me anymore.”
“But as long as you sign this with me, after I die, you can use my personal skill however you want, just as if you were the owner of that personal skill yourself.”
A strange, yellowed parchment appeared in front of Liu Huai.
The paper drifted downward like a half-burned piece of ash.
Bai Liu reached out and caught it.
The parchment landed in his hand.
Bai Liu looked it over.
[《Notification and Various Explanations Regarding the Twenty-Eight Items for Party A and Party B Concerning the Transfer of Personal Skills Prior to a Player’s Death》]
[Party A voluntarily transfers their personal skill, a desire derivative, to Party B before death. If Party B agrees to inherit Party A’s personal skill, Party B must also inherit Party A’s desire, becoming the carrier of Party A’s desire and fulfilling it on their behalf...]
[...If Party B already possesses a strong derivative personal skill, due to the saturation of the player’s desire, the player who signs the agreement to obtain Party A’s personal skill will be unable to carry excessive desire. The acquired second skill will experience a certain degree of reduction. If a third skill is acquired, the usage effect will continue to diminish. Should the effectiveness of the transferred personal skill be poor, it is not due to the system; it is hoped that both parties understand...]
[...Before signing the agreement, Party A has the obligation to inform Party B of the origin of their desire. It is hoped that Party B will listen and reflect deeply before deciding whether to sign the agreement...]
[This agreement is signed by the souls of both parties. Once signed, it cannot be regretted before the souls are extinguished. This agreement involves desire and the soul, requiring both parties to sign voluntarily from the bottom of their hearts; it cannot be signed under duress.]
[The agreement is in one original copy. Once signed, it will be recorded into both parties’ systems. The original manuscript of the agreement will be kept by the impartial public institution system.]
[Party A: ——]
[Party B: ——]
After briefly skimming it, Bai Liu looked at Liu Huai.
“I can’t sign this right now.”
“The system isn’t on my side, so even if I sign it, it can’t be recorded.”
“Furthermore, from multiple perspectives, the restrictions of this agreement are too great for me.”
“I would have to inherit your desire, and the skill I obtain as a second skill wouldn’t function at full capacity.”
As he spoke, Bai Liu looked at Liu Huai’s severed arms.
Liu Huai’s pair of daggers had already been recalled and placed beside his feet.
The word [Blood] was embossed on the pitch-black, reflective blades.
Bai Liu paused.
“But your skill is indeed very interesting.”
“It truly is the most valuable thing you have.”
“But it won’t be able to exert its greatest effect on me.”
“And your primary goal is to have me inherit your desire—to protect Liu Jiayi.”
Bai Liu’s tone was lukewarm.
Liu Huai looked up at him in trepidation.
He had already brought out the last bargaining chip he had, but Bai Liu showed no burning desire to obtain it.
That made Liu Huai panic.
“You don’t want my skill?” Liu Huai asked, his heart trembling.
“It’s not that I don’t want it.”
“Your skill is very useful. Just not on me.”
“There is someone more suited to this agreement than I am. Someone who fits your desire better and can bring out the power of your skill more effectively.”
Bai Liu lifted his eyes and looked directly at Liu Huai.
“It depends on whether you are willing to change the transferee.”
Liu Huai asked somewhat dazedly, “Who?”
Bai Liu said, “Mu Ke.” ƒгeewebnovёl.com
————————
Mu Ke, his face blackened with soot, climbed up from the lower floor that had been blasted into ruins, gritting his teeth.
The concrete was still hot from the explosion, scalding his palms as he climbed and making him hiss in pain.
Because of his illness, Mu Ke was not exactly the athletic type. Climbing this sort of wreckage took him a great deal of time.
Fortunately, all the nurses had gone to rescue the half-dead patients caught in the blast, giving him enough time to climb up.
Using every ounce of strength he had, he finally reached the ninth floor where Bai Liu and the others were.
As soon as he climbed up, Mu Ke rushed madly toward Room 906.
He ran so desperately that he tripped several times, nearly bursting into tears from the pain.
When he saw Bai Liu—missing one hand but otherwise looking alive and normal—talking to Liu Huai, Mu Ke could not hold back anymore.
With a loud “wah,” he dropped to his knees and started crying.
He had been terrified the entire night.
When he had gone downstairs to call the nurses and saw the ninth floor explode, he had nearly felt his soul leave his body.
He had ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ rushed back up, crawling and scrambling, ignoring all danger.
Thank goodness Bai Liu was okay.
Mu Ke wiped his tears as he edged toward Bai Liu’s side.
“You scared me to death!”
“Stop crying for now. Let’s discuss business.”
Bai Liu reached out, grabbed Mu Ke by the shoulder, and turned him toward Liu Huai.
The teary-eyed Mu Ke looked blankly at Liu Huai, who was staring at him with a serious, scrutinizing gaze.
That stare made Mu Ke feel somewhat apprehensive, and he stopped crying.
He shrank back a little, his voice much smaller.
“...What business?”
Bai Liu patted Mu Ke on the shoulder.
“Give a brief introduction of yourself.”
“How old you are, what your family circumstances are like, your future plans for marriage and family, how many children you intend to have, whether you have any bad habits, your education level, and how many boyfriends or girlfriends you’ve had.”
“??????”
What the hell?!
Was he being set up on a blind date with this guy named Liu Huai?!
Mu Ke grew more and more confused, but Bai Liu’s calm gaze swept over him, signaling him to begin.
Even though he was still completely lost, Mu Ke obediently and cautiously began introducing himself.
“Oh, um, my family circumstances are pretty good?”
“Anyway, there should be about ten or twenty billion, right?”
“I’m not completely sure. If you need to know, I can go back and ask for you.”
“I’m almost twenty-one this year. I don’t smoke or drink, and I don’t have any bad habits.”
“As for marriage in the future... I haven’t thought about that yet.”
“I haven’t had any boyfriends or girlfriends.”
“As for education, I have a bachelor’s degree, but if I want a master’s, I can take the exam anytime.”
After finishing, Mu Ke looked at Bai Liu pleadingly, asking with his eyes—
What on earth is going on?!
Bai Liu raised his chin.
“You should introduce yourself too, Liu Huai.”
Liu Huai took a deep, heavy breath.
He looked Mu Ke up and down with a somewhat picky gaze.
“The candidate I was satisfied with in my heart wasn’t actually you.”
“I wanted Bai Liu, but he won’t take it.”
“You seem... acceptable, I suppose.”
Mu Ke looked at the expressionless Bai Liu in shock, his eyes conveying an enormous amount of information—
You already went through a round of blind dating with him?!
You don’t want him, so you’re making me take him?!
Bai Liu handed the parchment to Mu Ke, gesturing for him to read it.
Mu Ke lowered his head and read.
When he looked back at Liu Huai, his eyes had become complicated.
...This person wanted to transfer his personal skill to him?
Although he had known from the moment Bai Liu set the plan that Liu Huai’s death was already an irreconcilable certainty, he still had not expected this.
“I have a sister...”
Liu Huai rambled to Mu Ke for a while, telling him some things about Liu Jiayi.
Bai Liu waited patiently until he finished before speaking.
He gazed at Liu Huai with eyes that seemed to see through everything.
“What is the core of your desire?”
“Liu Huai, if you want Mu Ke to carry your life’s desire and your sister, then you have to be honest with him about everything.”
“Otherwise, I won’t let him sign this agreement lightly.”
“This agreement is engraved into his soul, and his soul belongs entirely to me.”
“I need to be responsible for the soul in my hands.”
“I need to know everything.”
Liu Huai opened his mouth.
Then closed it again.
[System Notification: Does player Liu Huai wish to spend two hundred points to purchase the silencing service?]
[Confirm.]
[System Notification: Purchase successful. For the next ten minutes, what you say will be silenced. Little TV viewers will not be able to hear. Please begin to speak freely without reservation!]
Liu Huai turned his head away.
His eyes reddened as he spoke, his voice dry.
“...Jiayi and I are half-siblings.”
“...Our home was in a very distant, very small, very remote countryside.”
“You probably can’t imagine how remote that kind of countryside is.”
“After getting off the bus, you have to put on rubber boots and walk for an hour and a half.”
“After heavy rain, the roads even get blocked.”
“The entire path is mud.”
“People inside can’t get out, and people outside can’t get in.”
Liu Huai closed his eyes.
He remembered that muddy, pitch-black little village.
“When I was little, I had an older sister.”
“But later, on a rainy day, she drowned in a pond.”
“My father just stood by that pond, waiting for my sister to dig fish out for him.”
“He didn’t go down to save her while she struggled in the mud.”
“I didn’t understand why back then either...”
“My father sent me to school, but he didn’t care about anything else.”
“Before, my sister raised me. Later, he would occasionally raise me.”
“My father said my mother ran away a long time ago. I don’t know where she went.”
“I’ve never seen her.”
Tears rolled down Liu Huai’s face.
His gaze drifted, empty and far away.
“I really wanted to leave that place.”
“I studied very hard.”
“But I’m not smart, so I didn’t do well.”
“Then one day, someone from our village got into a prestigious university.”
“It was my aunt’s daughter.”
“The village gave her a twenty-thousand-yuan reward.”
“To us, that was an astronomical sum.”
“From that day on, my father changed.”
“He had never cared about my grades before, but from then on, he asked about them every single day.”
“As long as I did poorly, he would start hitting me.”
“His face would turn red, and he’d yell that we were all from my grandfather’s seed, so how could I, a male, fail to beat even my aunt’s daughter?”
“He asked what a girl—someone who could do nothing but get pregnant—could possibly be better at than a proper ‘root’ of the Liu family like me.”
“But the harder he hit me, the more scared I became.”
“As soon as I picked up a pen for an exam, my hands would start shaking.”
“My grades got worse and worse.”
“Finally, one day, he decided I really was just a useless coward.”
“He gave up on beating me.”
“I breathed a sigh of relief.”
“He said he would have my cousin—the one who had gotten into the prestigious university—tutor me for three months.”
“At the time, I was very happy.”
Liu Huai fell silent.
He was silent for a very, very long time.
So long that Bai Liu almost thought his story had ended there.
But then, as if he suddenly could not bear it anymore, Liu Huai bent at the waist.
He gritted his teeth, drew in a deep breath—
and finally let out a bleak, miserable laugh.
“Do you know why Jiayi was born unable to see?”
Bai Liu understood.
He too fell silent for a few seconds, looking toward the night sky.
His tone was very light.
“Many congenital deformities are caused by inbreeding.”
“Liu Jiayi is the same, isn’t she?”
Mu Ke suddenly understood the meaning behind Bai Liu’s words.
His shocked gaze fell on Liu Huai, and goosebumps erupted across his back.
“Holy shit...”
“No way?!”
“That’s completely lawless. Did no one care?”
Liu Huai looked like a bone crushed beneath a brutal weight.
His head hung low.
Very low.
His voice was hoarse and cracked, as though a piece of charcoal had lodged in his throat.
He laughed and cried mockingly.
“No one would care.”
“Because it was too filthy.”
“So filthy that no one was willing to care.”
“Everyone who knew treated it as a scandal to be covered up, something that could never be spoken of.”
“After my cousin got pregnant, she wanted to call the police and get an abortion.”
“But my father said the one in her belly was definitely another university student.”
“He played every rogue trick he could.”
“And because he was the only son of the Liu family, after my grandfather mediated, he eventually got his way.”
Liu Huai closed his eyes.
“...And three months later, my cousin couldn’t go back to continue university.”
“Not long after Jiayi was born prematurely, she became just like my older sister.”
“She went to dig fish by herself and drowned in the pond.”
“And my father also stood by the pond, watching my cousin struggle in the mud.”
“He didn’t save her.”
(T/N: Holy shit... what kind of evil motherfucker...)
“I started studying like crazy.”
“I got into a prestigious university and took that twenty thousand yuan reward to run away from that little village with Jiayi.”
“But before long, my father found us.”
“He demanded that I give him money to support him.”
“He tortured Jiayi.”
“He tortured me.”
“I looked at that man from the shadows thousands of times, wishing I could kill him with a single strike of my knife.”
“But I didn’t dare.”
“I couldn’t bear to lose the university I had worked so hard to get into.”
“And I couldn’t bear to leave Jiayi behind.”
Liu Huai sobbed, his tears striking the ground.
He howled and cried in a suppressed, muffled way, like a wounded beast that still did not dare openly resist.
He knelt on the ground, his head pressed to the floor as tears flowed freely.
Beside his head lay the dagger engraved with [Blood].
It was as though the sin inherent in his blood had seeped into his desire and his soul, turning him into a suffering fish trapped in mud, constantly struggling yet never able to escape.
“You’re like an assassin who wants to kill, but doesn’t dare strike.”
Bai Liu looked down at him and evaluated calmly,
“In the end, the personal skill generated from that could only cut the opponent’s mental value and had no damage attributes.”
“Yes.”
Liu Huai’s forehead rested against the ground.
His eyes were open, but they were lifeless.
“...I am a cowardly assassin.”
[System Notification: Player Liu Huai’s skill identity—(The Cowardly Assassin) background story line and carried desire have been activated. Do you wish to initiate the personal skill transfer?]
[Initiate]
Liu Huai slowly straightened his body.
Through tear-blurred eyes, he looked at Mu Ke.
“Can you live bravely in my place?”
“Can you take my daggers and protect Liu Jiayi properly in this game?”
“This is my only desire.”
“Do you have the resolve to carry it?”
Mu Ke turned his head and looked at Bai Liu somewhat helplessly.
He was not prepared to take on something so heavy.
Subconsciously, he was seeking Bai Liu’s advice.
Bai Liu looked at Mu Ke with an utterly calm expression.
“Mu Ke, if you’re asking for my advice, then my position is already very clear.”
“I suggest you accept.”
“Having a skill brings only benefits and no drawbacks for you.”
“But whether or not to accept is your own choice.”
“Abilities and desires are linked,” Bai Liu said.
“When you choose to pick up the daggers Liu Huai gives you, you must become an assassin like him.”
“...Can I try picking up your daggers?” Mu Ke asked carefully.
Liu Huai nodded in agreement.
Mu Ke looked at the two black daggers engraved with [Blood] lying on the ground.
Their surfaces flowed with an ominous luster, like forbidden black blood.
The moment Mu Ke reached out and gripped the hilts, he could not help shivering.
The hilts of the daggers pulsed faintly in his palms, warm as though human vessels and veins were growing out of his hands.
Mu Ke’s weak heart began to race uncontrollably under the pressure of the powerful desire contained within the daggers.
Vitality and hatred flowed backward from the blades, traveling along Mu Ke’s palms all the way into his heart.
In that instant, Mu Ke felt as though he could sense all the surging resentment and extreme emotion of Liu Huai’s entire life.
He stared blankly at the armless, wretched Liu Huai.
Liu Huai’s face was covered in clumps of mud.
His breathing was faint.
He was dying, like a fish in a dried-up pond that had never been pulled free.
The life of a fish struggling in mud was something a high-priced cat living inside a crystal box was never supposed to understand.
But at this moment, Mu Ke and Liu Huai resonated as they never had before.
Their weak hearts beat at the same frequency, as if both were about to leap out of their throats.
They both only wanted to live.
Unfortunately, the world would not allow it.
“I agree.”
Mu Ke clenched the daggers in his hands and spoke in a hoarse voice.
“I will inherit your skill and become an assassin.”
Liu Huai’s head and eyelids drooped tiredly.
His voice was as faint as smoke. freёwebnovel.com
“...Thank you.”
[System Notification: Player Mu Ke and Player Liu Huai have formally signed the 《Agreement Concerning the Twenty-Eight Items for Party A and Party B Regarding the Transfer of Personal Skills Prior to a Player’s Death》]
[This agreement will formally take effect after player Liu Huai’s death]
[Third-party witness: Bai Liu]
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