Witch trials

After the dance, instead of the usual requests, he chatted with the guest.

"What do you do?" He inquired carefully.

The guest paused for a moment as he chuckled softly, "I thought it was a rule on this island not to inquire about guests?"

He quickly tightened up, and was just about to explain, when he heard his guest chuckle again, and say, "I have no business being in the middle of anything, just a loafer who likes to play games."

Sensing that the other man didn't mind his question, he relaxed, and asked further tentatively, "Then why did you suddenly have to leave?"

"Uh, this?" The guest pondered for a moment and answered him, "I can't actually come to this world."

"I can only come by the prayers and summons of others, and I have been able to stay here so long this time because He has continually summoned me and wished upon me."

"But now He has stopped calling me, so I'm leaving."

"Can't I pray for You to descend?" He asked.

"No, you don't believe in me." The guest smiled, his tone calm, "I can see a stronger faith in your soul."

He was stunned, "Stronger faith ......?"

"She's beautiful too." The guest smiled, "Your faith is beautiful too."

He stalled and was quiet for a long, long time before his voice was a little hoarse and he answered with a smile, "...... Yes, I think so."

"Do you want to leave the island tonight and go somewhere?" The guest asked him as usual, "Is there anything else you want?"

He bowed his head, slowly clenching the sarong he was wearing, he looked up with reddened eyes, but his tone was unmistakably determined, "I want to leave this island forever."

"I want to kill every man on this island!"

"It's my only wish tonight, is that okay?"

The guest paused for a moment, then suddenly smiled sardonically, "What are you--"

"--wishing on God?"

"There's a price to pay for wishing on God, do you accept it?"

He was keenly aware that this was different from previous requests, and the way the other man looked at him made him fight back a shiver down his spine, but he nodded, "If you can make it happen, I'll accept any price!"

"How young, one can only say such impulsive things when one is young." The guest laughed.

"He said the same thing to me not long ago."

"But I as an evil god have no reason to refuse a sacrifice offering." The guest lifted his head, reached out and tapped his forefinger on the center of his forehead, and whispered, "As you wish, then."

He passed out in a flash of silvery-blue light.

By the time he woke up again, it was late in the evening of the next day, and he was so dizzy that when he propped himself up on the tabletop, he accidentally shook the playing cards off the table.

The falling playing card had words written on it, and his eyes settled as he realized that the Spades playing card read:

[The price of wishing is pain.]

[This pain includes yours, and that of those you wish to kill, and I can accept the pain you bring and the pain you produce.]

[A friendly suggestion, sometimes it can be more fun to keep people you hate to milk for residual value and pain than to just kill them.]

Slowly he clenched the Spades playing card, his violet eyes turned deeper in color, and his breathing became rapid, while the door behind him was kicked violently open, and his bishop's father stepped in, then suddenly reached out and grabbed him by the hair, and while dragging the struggling man out of the room, he said to him, "That one's gone."

"Come out and receive the others."

"You're hosting two tonight." This bishop's eyes narrowed as he looked at the sarong he was wearing, "Well, it's three now."

"I haven't seen you dance in a long time either."

He clutched the Spades playing card in his hand tighter and tighter, his breathing becoming ragged, and before he could do anything about it at the Bishop's father threw him into the other room, where two men dressed in the style of ecclesiastical priests were already waiting, the Bishop grasped him by the shoulders and stood up, grinning and ordering him around:

"These two priests have been waiting a long time, so you can start dancing."

He had barely made his first move when a priest □ rushed up and tried to overpower him, as he lifted a nearby candlestick he slapped it against the priest's head, screams rang through the room and he gave a quick grin but soon he was being held down by the furious bishop who had shouted in.

His right wrist was stepped on, and the Spades playing card he clutched tightly came loose as his opponent twisted hard on the bottom of his foot.

As the group of men rose up again to surround him and view the sarong that was being held down on him, he looked at the Heart Q playing card, symbolizing his mark, that was sitting on the table, pressed down by the two playing cards, and his eyes erupted with a hatred that he had never felt before.

Kill them!

I'm going to kill these men!

[...... detects violent desire ......]

Player Heart logs in to the game.

In the inner circle of Sky City, the still young-faced Quan Zhendong waited anxiously and uncomfortably on a seat in the center of the corridor, his eyes occasionally peering in curiously and salivatingly.

In the innermost room, the priest who brought him up here tonight ordered Heart Q, which is said to be the most beautiful in Sky City.

He'd just gotten the priesthood of the Church, and his predecessor above him had ambiguously said that to celebrate his induction into the Church, he'd take him up to a Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss where only men of the Church could go.

After Quan Zhendong came up, he was shocked for about thirty minutes, then quickly adapted, but he indicated out of a kind of embarrassment that he wouldn't have to order cards for a while - still a bit of a rush the first time around.

It can wait until next time.

But this polite reserve only lasted until he saw Heart Q's picture, and he looked completely dumbfounded, and the priest laughed out loud and heartily patted him on the shoulder and said that I'd saved up two months' worth of contribution points to be able to order him for an hour, and there was a queue, and I could even out the ten minutes for you if you wanted.

Quan Zhendong gave two symbolic pushes and pulls, then accepted.

But now that an hour had passed and the priest who had said he would spare him ten minutes had not yet come out, Quan Zhendong could not help but feel a little anxious; he looked into the corridor again and again, and finally glanced from side to side twice, and realizing that no one was paying any attention to him, he couldn't bear it any longer and went straight to the door and knocked on it.

With no movement at the door, Quan Zhendong called the priest's name, and from inside came the faint, "Help, help ......"

The voice didn't sound like it was immersed in something, instead it was dying, Quan Zhendong instinctively felt that something was wrong and he violently pushed open the door of the room.

The strong smell of blood hit his face, and Quan Zhendong was stunned by the sight of hell on earth before him.

The draped burgundy velvet tent was soaked through and was dripping blood down, on the ground lay three or four bodyguards who were no longer moving, their limbs were twisted and blood flowed underneath them, their pupils were completely dilated, if not for the faint breathing in front of their noses and the trembling due to the pain, Quan Zhendong would have almost thought that they were already dead.

Further inside, the two priests who had ordered Heart could be described as "disemboweled", with bones and intestines visible, burns on their faces and faces, and one priest's lower body was so bloody and flat and sunken that Quan Zhendong's scalp tingled! --The thing was definitely gone!

The bones attached to that thing aren't always there anymore!

These two priests were still moving, so grievously wounded that they were still alive!

There were still screams coming from the innermost part of the tent, Quan Zhendong's mind had gone blank, but out of a sense of curiosity to know what was going on, he was still moving in.

"Help, help ......" The faint cry was the Bishop's, the master of the island, but at the moment the Bishop, who was bossy and haughty to all, screamed as humbly as a poker labeler, "Help! ......"

"Leave me alone."

Quan Zhendong slowly lifted the curtain that was holding it all back amidst the Bishop's mournful yet faint screams of agony, and he was completely frozen in place.

There was a man sitting languidly in a wide sofa chair, his violet eyes nearly black in the faint candlelight, only a hint of violet could be seen between the flow of his eyes, and he was covered in blood, as if he had been bathed in it, and the blood dripped from the ends of his hair and the tips of his toes which were swaying, and swooned on the floor.

His hands were shuffling a deck of playing cards, and his tone was not quick to ask, almost a little playful:

"I'll ask again, what's his name?"

The bishop huffed and puffed from his throat in horror as he broke down and cried, "I really don't know!"

"All I know is that people call him King, I really don't know what his name is! That gentleman never keeps a name!"

"Yes?" He lowered his violet eyes, blood dripping from his long, curly lashes, and he spoke as if with some sort of condemnation, "How do you not know anything."

"Useless man."

The moment the words fell lightly from his lips, the playing cards he was shuffling in his hand flickered, and he threw one out by holding it between two fingers.

The Bishop's heart-rending screams rang out again, "Ah! AH!!!"

The candlelight jumped a bit, illuminating the floor.

Quan Zhendong turned his completely dumbfounded head, and it was only by the light of the candle that he was able to see the bishop's appearance on the ground.

The Bishop also looked as if he had been blood-washed from start to finish, but unlike Heart, who could tell at a glance that he had been washed in someone else's blood, the Bishop could tell at a glance that he had been washed in his own, lying on the floor in a wide-open position, with an embedded playing card sticking out of almost every joint in his body.

That look hurt, and the bishop was already in pain to the point of muscle spasms, but he was pinned to the ground by the poker and couldn't move.

The Heart Q playing card that Heart had just thrown out had been stuck right in the center of the bishop's thing, and blood had instantly exploded from it.

Quan Zhendong watches creepily as the bishop convulses - how can this not hurt!

He panicked and tried to run away, but accidentally stepped on the shredded paper the moment he stepped back, and Heart, who was sitting in a chair across the room, looked up the moment he heard the noise.

Blood dripped from Heart's hair and slid down Heart's face, which had once mesmerized Quan Zhendong, but now felt only fear.

He propped his elbows on the edge of the chair, leaning against the back of the chair as if he had no bones, and then in the candlelight, Quan Zhendong saw him slowly raise his eyes, hook the corners of his lips, and look at him with those magical purple eyes that seemed to be smiling and not laughing:

"You're my next guest, aren't you?"