Inside the Red Cross
Guy, who was lying on the hospital bed, slowly opened his eyes. He raised his arms, leaned against the headboard, then lowered his head and stared at his intact hands in shock.
His injuries had miraculously healed overnight.
Guy looked up and was even more surprised when he saw Bai Liu standing beside his bed. "Why are you here?"
"Maybe you should thank me first?" Bai Liu smiled and pointed to Guy's healed wounds. "I stole Alex's potion to treat you. Although it's meant only for external use, it seems to have worked quite well."
Guy looked at his hands, where even the craters had vanished without leaving scars. His expression turned proud and nostalgic. "Yes… He's a very good young man."
"Alex doesn't want you to be cured at all," Bai Liu said as he sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. "But I'm sure you've already made up your mind. Do you remember what I told you the night before the wedding?"
Guy hummed softly. He fell into deep thought and whispered, "You said that because God doesn't want us to be happy, He created war."
"Because if we live too happily, we wouldn't need the existence of God."
Guy raised his head and looked at Bai Liu with determination. "It was your words that made me decide to rebel."
"I want to join the indigenous people and destroy their faith in God."
The corners of Bai Liu's lips lifted imperceptibly as he lowered his eyes. "Really?"
—Just as he expected.
A great battle was approaching, and Alex's third-party faction was beginning to take shape.
Alex had left alone before Guy woke up. He didn't allow Bai Liu to tell Guy he had been there. Instead, he remained outside Guy's tent, sitting in a wheelchair and staring blankly into the distance.
Stretchers carrying wounded soldiers—both allies and enemies—passed anxiously back and forth. Blood dripped onto the ground, tracing red lines that crisscrossed around him, forming an invisible net centered on him and Guy, who was behind him.
Bai Liu stepped out of the tent and narrowed his eyes at Alex in the wheelchair. "Do you feel like there's nothing that can stop this?"
Alex was silent for a long time before answering hoarsely, "The natives used to say that all this was God's will. Guy and I laughed at that for a long time. But now that I think about it…"
"…Perhaps everything created by God can only be stopped by God."
Bai Liu lowered his eyes. "Maybe."
After a pause, Alex suddenly said, "I thought about using the medicine I tested on these people to prolong their lives—hoping they might survive."
"But I found that no matter how long I extended their lives, they still died. The only difference was that after death, they could still move—becoming walking, attacking corpses."
Alex's eyelashes trembled slightly. "The corpse has no memory, no emotions, and no soul. But it can move. It can hug. It can kill. I'm afraid. I feel like I've created a terrible monster of war, so I didn't dare tell anyone."
"Except Guy."
Alex let out a hollow chuckle as tears slid from his lashes.
"He said he doesn't think something like that is terrible. He said if one day he turned into such a monster, he wouldn't feel sad—because then he could hug me tightly, even after death."
"War would turn this walking corpse into a weapon. But people in love would use that weapon to embrace each other."
Alex turned to Bai Liu. His expression was blank, as though he were asking Bai Liu—or perhaps himself.
"Should I use this medicine?"
Bai Liu rested his hand on the back of the wheelchair and looked down at him calmly. "Don't you already know the answer?"
Alex tightened his grip on the potion bottle and lowered his head. "If that's the case… I won't use it."
"There are too few people in love in this world. The medicine would only become a weapon to tear them apart."
Bai Liu glanced toward the tent and said softly, "Sometimes what separates people in love isn't something external. It's that one of them has chosen a different path."
"And you can't stop him."
Alex smiled bitterly. "Yes, Bai Liu. Why did you have to tell me the real reason Guy and I would part ways?"
"You're truly… rational and cruel. To watch your lover walk down a path of self-destruction… Bai Liu, you don't understand the pain of that."
Bai Liu lowered his eyes. "Maybe."
Then he began pushing Alex's wheelchair away.
After he had recovered, Guy quietly slipped out from behind the tent. From a distance, he looked toward the front of it. There was nothing there—only two tracks left by a wheelchair on the ground.
It was as if the voice he vaguely thought he had heard—Alex's voice—had only been a hallucination born from missing him too much.
Guy paused for a moment, then left without looking back.
The morning light was dim.
Fusiform wooden boats dotted the surface of the central lake, each carrying five to ten indigenous soldiers. Beneath the dark green water, a squad of assault soldiers approached silently with mines.
At exactly 6:25 a.m., all the lurking soldiers synchronized their watches before entering the water. The war's first explosion erupted from beneath the surface.
After capsizing a group of boats, the assault team retreated swiftly and began laying additional mines in an orderly pattern along the channel where the current flowed, preventing the indigenous soldiers from advancing through it.
It was a perfect raid—until the heavy rain began.
The artillerymen in the rainforest were loading shells under the downpour. Nearly all of the tens of thousands of bombs in the first wave—bombs that should have caused massive destruction—were driven into mud pits by the rain before reaching their targets, failing to produce the intended effect.
As the water level in the lakes and rivers—previously blocked by water mines—rose rapidly, the impact of the mines weakened instantly. Countless indigenous soldiers rushed out in boats. As the rain intensified, the battle fell into a stalemate.
Tang Erda looked as though he had been pulled from a swamp. Half his face was smeared with mud. He wiped at it and tried to shake the mud from his half-kilogram rifle, which had become difficult to handle. He was about to throw it away and switch to a skill-based weapon when Spades, beside him, thrust his gun barrel forward, stopping him.
Tang Erda turned in confusion. "What are you doing?"
Spades' clothes were soaked through, and mud streaked his face, making the exposed skin appear shockingly pale. "You and Bai Liu are on the same side, right?"
Tang Erda nodded hesitantly.
A faint light flickered in Spades' eyes through the pouring rain. "Don't use skill weapons. Keep the gun. Let's head back to the lake."
"I found where the bodies are being stockpiled."
-----------------
Meanwhile, at the other end—
The members of the Killer Sequence were sitting in a rocking boat on the lake.
Amid the roar of heavy rain, thunder, and lightning, the Reverse God almost shouted, "Have you found where the corpses are stored?"
Bai Jiamu wiped the rain dripping from his chin and shook his head. "We've searched all over the land. No obvious storage locations have been triggered."
Usually, this type of scoring task is divided into two parts. The first is identifying the correct scoring object—such as a moving corpse. The second is locating the scoring point. The corpse must be placed in a designated area before the points are officially credited to the player.
"There's something wrong with the corpses. They're not ordinary corpses as we assumed."
Wearing a steel helmet, the Reverse God sat cross-legged on the rocking boat like a contractor inspecting a site, rain pouring over his head. The water streamed stubbornly down his helmet, as if a small waterfall were hanging in front of his face.
"We haven't found the correct scoring object, so there's no way to trigger the scoring location."
He wiped his face and took a deep breath. "Spades' intuition is still accurate. The scoring corpses should be produced on the enemy's side."
"We're not in the same camp as Spades, so our only option is to find another way—wait for the mainline NPCs to defect and produce scoring corpses for us."
Bai Jiamu raised his voice. "Judge, when do you think the mainline NPCs will rebel?"
The Reverse God's gaze deepened. "Soon. We already have one mainline NPC on our side. According to Bai Liu's plan—and the relationship between the two mainline NPCs—it should happen after this battle."
After speaking, the Reverse God stood up. Water slid down from the brim of his helmet and washed straight over his face.
The Reverse God: "…"
Why is this helmet so rotten that it's leaking?
Bai Jiamu couldn't help tugging at the Reverse God's sleeve. "I don't understand why we have to cooperate with Bai Liu. According to your arrangement, the mainline NPC will rebel anyway. There's no need to work with him."
The Reverse God removed his helmet and turned to look at Bai Jiamu.
The look was gentle, yet Bai Jiamu suddenly felt as though he had offended an elder's authority.
He quickly released the Reverse God's sleeve, looking nervous—like a child who had just realized he'd spoken out of turn. "…You're the tactician. Was it wrong for me to ask?"
The Reverse God shook the water from his helmet and put the battered steel helmet back on. He smiled at Bai Jiamu, not angry in the slightest.
"I activated a prophecy skill after entering this game."
This time, not only Bai Jiamu but also the other two members of the Killer Sequence were stunned.
Although the Reverse God is recognized as the best tactician in the league, it isn't because of his prophecy skills—it's because of his intelligence stat.
The Reverse God's intelligence value is 96.
In nearly every game, he manages to secure victory with minimal casualties. Ever since the Deer Hunter team recruited him, its lineup remained unchanged until the day he left. All the members followed him faithfully.
After participating in so many league matches—without ever earning a flawless, death-free gold medal—every member still survived under the Reverse God's guidance until his departure.
He is well known as a tactician who favors drawn-out battles. Compared to other extreme strategists, his methods can be considered relatively mild.
But after he left, one member of the Deer Hunter team died soon afterward.
That night, the Reverse God sat alone in the Killer Sequence office, staring at photos of his former teammates without saying a word. The Killer Sequence was full of hardened members, yet no one dared disturb him.
Even now, they were still wary of crossing him.
The Reverse God appears easygoing and rarely loses his temper, but in reality, his disposition is peculiar. Sometimes he smiles with sharp insight in his eyes, making it impossible to tell what he's thinking.
As a player, the Reverse God rarely uses his own skill. Yet his ability is a prophecy skill that can influence or push the rules of the game itself—something extraordinarily unreasonable.
Skills capable of bending game permissions are powerful weapons—like Heart's imitation playing cards or Bai Liu's old trading wallet. No player would believe they could survive long by hiding such abilities and never using them.
But the Reverse God simply doesn't use his.
There have been very few instances when he activated his prophecy skill. Bai Jiamu could recall only two.
Once, the Reverse God gave a prophecy to Spades—but no one knew its contents.
And this time, he used it for a new player they had only just met.
It was truly bizarre.