Love, Gun, Cupid

"Reed Warbler, if there is no place for you in the heavens, would you like to come to my home?"

Lin Jiade said, "My home is small and doesn't have any cool features that can be customized at any time. The people you live with have a lot of troubles, and even if you communicate with us, it won't improve your personal strength... However, I welcome you. At least during my recovery period, I have a lot of free time to make up for the game time I owe you."

Wei Ying paused for a moment, then turned her head and quickly wiped her eyes with her sleeve, saying, "Liar, your left hand is practically a mummy, how are you going to play games?"

"Besides online games, humans have invented many board games for entertainment, and we have plenty of time to explore them."

Lin Jiade stretched out his hand: "Come home with me, Weiying. I think if poor people like us get together, we might not suffer anymore."

Wei Ying lowered her head and put her hand into Lin Jiade's palm, and then her small hand was enveloped by Lin Jiade.

On September 29th, in the Champions League, Paris Saint-Germain will face Manchester City. Predict the winner, loser, or draw. A bonus chapter will be added if you guess correctly.

Epilogue VII

Ice Cave had a dream. In the dream, she was running along the coast, where the black tides circulated endlessly and the air smelled salty and fishy.

The full moon was reflected on the black sea and illuminated the forest path. Fairies danced in the moonlight-lit air, reminding the ice cave of the Tyndall effect learned in middle school.

Hmm, what is the Tyndall effect, and what is a middle school classroom?

Ice Cave irritably scratched the ground beneath her feet with her hooves. At unpredictable times, these unfamiliar concepts would suddenly appear in her mind, leaving her puzzled and particularly concerned.

Fortunately, she quickly forgot these unfamiliar concepts and the strangeness they brought after a few cycles of the tide, which made her feel comfortable all over.

Once she had forgotten about the Tyndall effect and her high school classes, she felt a surge of joy and happiness. This joy made her hop on all fours and leap across the path of rocks, dead branches, and fallen leaves. A wood owl landed on a branch and watched curiously as the fawn danced in the moonlight.

The lowly insects joined the dance in the ice cave, following the gusts of wind stirred up by the ice cave. Not far away, a sacred oak tree, struck by lightning and split in two, watched this scene with loving eyes.

A white mist gradually rose in the forest, turning the plants into black silhouettes. Condensed droplets clung to them. Wolves, bears, and other carnivorous animals greedily eyed the innocent and fearless fawn in the forest. But their innate hunter's instincts made them keenly aware that the moonlight was guiding and protecting the happy fawn.

So they merely approached, crouching in the darkness, greedily gazing at the ice cave, restless, their eyes gathering a green light, until a ravenous wolf could no longer bear the loneliness, leaping out of the bushes and pouncing on the throat of the ice cave.

The ice cave was oblivious. The wolf's shadow was fixed on her back. A silver arrow pierced the hunter's throat and imprisoned her in mid-air. Then, a second and a third arrow struck, causing the wolf's body to convulse twice in mid-air. Hot blood gushed from the wound and dripped down the arrow shaft.

The fate of the first bird to stick its head out serves as a warning to the other hunters, who silently disappear into the darkness. After a while, the scavengers appear, cautiously probing into the moonlight, circling the corpse, and only after confirming there is no danger do they feast with peace of mind.

On the other side, the ice cave, now free from the crisis, continued to wander through the woodland. The outline of the woodland gave her a sense of déjà vu, as if she had walked through a similar woodland somewhere before.

Soon after, a shimmering dot in the distance of the woodland caught the Ice Cave's attention. The Ice Cave followed the golden light until she reached the tree, where she saw that it was a branch of an oak tree.

What is an oak tree? She wondered vaguely.

A chilling feeling made the ice cave turn around alertly, only to find that she had strayed from the path protected by the moonlight in her pursuit of the golden branch, and those hunters who had given up were now showing their eerie green eyes in the darkness.

Ice Cave nervously scratched at the ground with her hooves. She didn't know what she was about to face, but she could sense danger... until a swaying lantern approached, illuminating the silhouette of a woman.

Wherever she went, silver arrows materialized from the moonlight, erasing pairs of eerie green eyes. The ice cave looked up at the woman with the lantern, and saw only a full moon reflected in the woman's eyes.

"The forest is a place of opportunity. Anyone who is desperate, even a sinner, has the chance to find a golden branch, break it off, and kill the king of the forest with it, thereby severing his past and becoming a noble priest serving the gods. The laws of the outside world can no longer investigate his past."

This is a place of crisis. For a long time, those who challenged the King of the Forest and failed, those who were deposed, and those who were killed—their resentment and bitterness have accumulated in this forest, transforming into wild beasts that prey on anyone who enters this sacred grove.

The ice cave was just a deer, and it couldn't understand what the woman with the lantern was saying. It only felt a familiar and friendly aura from the woman with the lantern, so when the woman with the lantern turned and left, it followed closely behind.

After walking several dozen steps from the sacred forest, the ice cave suddenly opened up before her. She saw a temple covered in green vines. Near the temple, people dressed in ancient-style armor were patrolling around with spears. What puzzled the ice cave was how those bare white bones could support the seemingly heavy armor they wore.

"These people are my Virgins. From ancient times to the present, people have strayed into this secluded place. If they do not challenge the King of the Forest, they will eventually get lost in this forest and become skeletons in the forest. Every 18 years, I will search my woodland and awaken the female skeletons that are most compatible with the power. However, the women who are worth awakening are rare, perhaps only once in a hundred years."

They were reborn as virgins who served the moon. In the eyes of the world, they were beautiful and mysterious, each possessing a wildness that even made men willing to die for them.

But sometimes, when humans see the same thing, they don't necessarily perceive the same view as other creatures. Just as I, who are beautiful and inviolable in the eyes of others, appear completely different to you.

Looking up from the ice cave, one could see that beneath the woman's white robes, clumps of flesh and blood were intertwined, and a pale liquid flowed within translucent veins, shimmering and pulsating with controlled tension.

Although she didn't feel threatened by the woman with the lantern, the ice cave was still startled by her ferocious appearance. She quickly ran a few steps away, crouching slightly, ready to run even further at any moment.

“You were originally a human, but now you are almost entirely a deer. Generally speaking, the transformation speed of a human is not that fast.”

The woman with the lantern opened her palms, and the ice cave, its four hooves pressed against the ground, was still drawn to her feet. The woman reached out her hand, and in the eye of the ice cave, intertwined tentacles that forked at their ends burrowed into her body, pulling out the scepter-like object from within her.

"Her name is Janus, one of my powers. In the war two thousand years ago, I deliberately abandoned the relatively unimportant parts of my several powers in order to fake my own death and then reshape myself to continue my activities as the offspring of the moon goddess who inherits the name of the moon goddess."

After my time was up in 1700, I used a similar method again to disguise myself as the offspring of the Moon Goddess and inherit the Moon Goddess's title.

However, after the authority was first cast into the Holy Land, the Celestials have always doubted the authenticity of my death, and they have assigned some of the Oracles to search for my authority.

Under their intentional or unintentional surveillance, I can no longer 'reincarnate' in the same way, so I must relinquish power in another way.

In human creation myths, the origin of humankind is generally attributed to gods shaping humans from mud and water... Although this is just a myth, humans can indeed be created.

Therefore, I shaped the power I was about to relinquish into a human beforehand. To avoid any association, I transformed the power into a male form and placed it inside my body, transforming me into a human. After undergoing the same process as humans, I gave birth to the power I was about to relinquish ten months later and then placed a seal on it. In this way, from the outside, he would appear to be a human boy.

At that time, I was prepared for the discovery of the first authority I left behind in the Holy Land, so I placed the second authority I abandoned in the same way in the war site, which had been built into a city that mankind called the City of Rebirth.

In this way, even if an authority is discovered, people will usually end the search, because who would abandon an authority twice in the same place? In other words, I have a high probability of being able to retain at least one authority, and retaining an authority can delay the progress and prepare for the third reincarnation.

The plan went smoothly, and in the blink of an eye, 19 years passed, and everything was calm... until Cupid came to cause trouble.

The young woman who called herself Dujuan, like me, survived by committing crimes. The difference was that she relinquished all power from the start, sacrificing her strength for her own safety. She brazenly took over the bodies of celestial inhabitants, living as someone else.

Perhaps it was by chance, or perhaps it was the mutual attraction between those who shared similar experiences in the same era, but Du Juan descended upon Fuxing City—the place where my authority resided. She quickly discovered that something was amiss, like a thief stumbling upon a locked vault door, she was going to use all sorts of methods to unlock it.

The first one is a white dragon descendant who believes herself to be a red dragon, but her existence is merely a disguise used by Athena to impersonate Cupid, and is irrelevant to the overall situation.

The second is the ambitious Korobochka, one of the most restless individuals among the Empire's top-tier sorcerers... no, among all the extraordinary individuals with the top-tier titles.

Athena's idea was quite good. Witchcraft is a knowledge system that humans have acquired by imitating other races. Its lower limit is extremely low. There was once a witch who was proficient in witchcraft who cursed a target of the same rank for ten years. As a result, the target died of old age before the curse took effect. Later, the incident was discovered during the autopsy, and the matter became a joke.

The limits of witchcraft are extremely high; occasionally, it can even rival divine pronouncements in certain situations.

So Dujuan recruited a sorcerer, who controlled Lin Jiade, and then Lin Jiade controlled the sorcerer, thus obtaining the tools to pick the lock.

Unfortunately, her power waned to the point where she could no longer fully control humans, so although she acquired the tools, she still could not obtain the secret she craved.

However, at that time, she discovered another secret, which was the secret buried in the holy land. The perception was too weak, so she could not determine the location. As if venting her anger, she toyed with the female swordsman who had a long-standing entanglement with Lin Jiade.

Athena instigated Lin Jiade to break his contract with Kapok, but little did she know that in the virtual space where I had the opportunity to intervene, he could also break her bonds.

Lin Jiade should not be bound by her. He is mine. I am both his mother—because I gave birth to him from the birth canal in the last time—and his sister—because I am now, in name, his daughter from the last time, and also his master—because he is my authority.

After Athena finally noticed my presence through him, I revealed myself, but not wanting to expose the true relationship between us, I called him my Oracle Protector (King of the Forest).

Athena's attention was indeed focused on uncovering the relationship between me and Lin Jiade, rather than Lin Jiade's own secrets. Afterward, she focused all her efforts on reclaiming her authority from the Holy Land.

I originally thought that Athena could never lose to humans, even though the core of those humans was my authority. So, I always planned my next move based on Athena getting what she wanted. The biggest trump card was hidden when she thought she had won a great victory and wanted to save the most delicious dish, Lin Jiade, for last. At that moment, I would briefly project my power and use Lin Jiade's body to give her some suffering.

In this way, I could defeat her and reclaim my authority. However, I didn't expect Athena to fail. My previous plan was useless, while Lin Jiade defeated the Celestial Observer and was enjoying great fame. Too many eyes were on him, so she couldn't make a move immediately.

Therefore, someone needs to act on my behalf, to assist Lin Jiade, to keep an eye on him, to prevent him from being seduced by other bad women, and to keep me informed of his real-time movements. And coincidentally, you were briefly granted power by my authority, Janus, in the Holy Land. But power comes at a price; that's why you became a deer.

The ice cave tilted its head, and the woman with the lantern talked to it for a long time, but it was just a deer and now it was hungry and wanted to eat something.

She immediately followed her instincts and looked around for something to eat. The woman with the lantern sighed, "That's right, I can't expect a deer to serve me."

She extracted the reclaimed power Janus and reinjected it into the ice cave. The ice cave tried to resist, but it was unable to move because it was attached to the moonlight. In the end, her body was swallowed by the moonlight and shaped in the moonlight. When the moonlight dissipated, she became a human-headed deer.

"Huh, what's this...?"

Ice Cave looked at her hands awkwardly. She looked down and saw the brown deer's body and hooves below her waist. She panicked and backed away. When she felt the hind hooves, she became even more panicked and almost fell over.

“Don’t panic,” Diana said gently. “This is a sign of your holiness and power.”

With some difficulty, the ice cave turned around and saw a graceful female body wrapped in a white silk robe, and on her shoulder, a beautiful head that inspired reverence was placed, looking at her with a loving expression.

"You are……"

Unaware of who the other person was, the ice cave instinctively made her bend her limbs and prostrate herself before Diana, bowing her head in respect.

“Go, go and fulfill your mission,” Diana said.

The ice cave suddenly understood its mission. Without noticing anything amiss, it replied, "I will not fail in my mission."

The moment she answered, she opened her eyes and found herself in Lin Jiade's hospital room. It was already early morning, and according to Lin Jiade's schedule, he would wake up in a minute or two.

The ice cave simply watched him, unconcerned about any mission. Her heart was filled with tenderness. The moment Lin Jiade woke up, she leaned closer, bent down, and pressed her moist lips to his dry ones.

"Good morning, Lin Jiade," she said energetically.

Football prediction: Juventus vs. Chelsea. Predict the winner, loser, or draw. Bonus content for correct predictions.

Epilogue 8

From the moment Lin Jiade happily accepted the 1-day luxury hospital package, different people came to talk to him every day. Their questions varied, but their core demands all revolved around the truth of January 25th, how he defeated the god, and what he gained from defeating the god.

Lin Jiade did not drive this event forward by his own will; he was swept to the edge of the rock by the torrent of fate, seized the last chance to fight back, and survived by sheer luck at a heavy price. He defeated the immature god, but gained no benefit from it.

This answer naturally failed to satisfy the visitors. They believed that, just like in a game where players receive generous rewards after defeating the final boss, Lin Jiade must have also obtained something after defeating the god, but he selfishly kept it to himself and refused to share it for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

Lin Jiade didn't care about these messy things. He only knew that these messy people would fight each other first and decide a winner. Sure enough, a week later, only one person remained in his hospital room: a female superhuman who called herself a "pay-to-win sow".

"I suppose you're getting impatient with my questions, but from now on, you only need to answer my questions."

The gold-plated sow said, "Based on your understandable reasons, we have strengthened your protection. Officer Hannah is still protecting you. You fought side by side in the Holy Land, and she also gave testimony in your favor."

"Protect?"

"Your current situation is actually quite dangerous, because the news circulating outside is that Korobochka led a team to the Holy Land and clashed with the Celestial Observers who had ulterior motives, and ultimately defeated the Celestial Observers at a heavy cost."

Some extraordinary individuals have long resented the Celestials' unbridled interference in the Empire, so they find it quite satisfying that you can teach the Celestial Observers a lesson, and even regard you as heroes of the Empire. This group of extraordinary individuals is mainly located in the administrative departments, and they are already overwhelmed by the various troubles brought by the Celestial Observers.

Another group harbors a deep-seated hatred for you, akin to that for your father's killer. This group comprises the Imperial Oracles, whose authority derives from the Celestial Observers. Humanity's defeat of the Celestial Observers undermines their authority. This group is primarily concentrated in the legal sphere.

"Then I'll be in a terrible situation."

"In theory, they have the opportunity to retaliate against you, put you in jail or something, but on the other hand, those who support you see you as an inspiration. If you were put in jail, it would be a devastating blow to their morale, so they will try their best to protect you."

"So, I'm just using this as an excuse for two groups of people who already dislike each other to fight." Lin Jiade breathed a sigh of relief. "It's good that they're fighting; at least I won't get caught in the crossfire too badly."

After a few seconds, Lin Jiade looked at the money-grubbing Ou Zhu and asked, "Which side are you on?"

“I am a neutral party, otherwise neither side would have allowed me to contact you. In short, I can guarantee your safety and the safety of the people involved in the incident. Just focus on recovering.”

"What is the attitude of the Celestial Realm?"

"I don't know, this is information that only someone at the level of my boss's boss can access."

"Teacher Yang... no, Iphigenia?"

“Someone has to take the blame and be executed to quell public anger, and among the survivors, she is the most suitable to be pushed out as the source of all evil.”

Then, as if to comfort him, the "pay-to-win" mother pig looked ahead to what Lin Jiade could get from his supporters after the storm had passed. Lin Jiade wanted to use a portion of it to save Teacher Yang... if Teacher Yang could be saved.

The "pay-to-win" girl looked at him with disbelief, as if she were an outsider looking at players in the anime and manga community who buy expensive plastic figurines. But Lin Jiade's gaze was firm. The "pay-to-win" girl suddenly remembered that she was pouring her salary into tomorrow's gacha, which was actually gambling, a gacha game where the house was always trying to make more money.

There are always some people who will put a lot of effort into things that others may think are worthless, and some things are destined to be misunderstood, so she nodded and promised that she would take care of it.

Finally, with a sliver of hope, she tried to "exchange secrets" with Lin Jiade, but what secrets did Lin Jiade have to exchange? In the end, the pay-to-win sow left disappointed.