Chapter 519: The Witch Trials

Quan Zhendong nods to Quan Baola on the screen and sighs with regret: "It is a very sad story that deserves to be listened to sideways by everyone who enters our kingdom."

" When Baola was first accused of being a witch by the priest, the tribunal had already ordered a trial and execution, but many people throughout the kingdom did not want to believe this fact and questioned the tribunal's decision."

"They held procession after procession for Baola, with a large number of men, women and children, all of whom had been favoured by the Baola patrols, and they wanted the tribunal to open up the trial of Baola, who they refused to believe was so wonderful that she was a witch."

"But the facts prove it." Quan Zhendong solemnly stated, "The trial court's resolutions are never wrong."

"Next let's take a look at Baola's trial in its entirety."

He pressed a button and the screen jumped to reveal a huge and solemn courtroom,

In the centre of the courtroom, Baola was bound to a stake with her hands tied behind her back, her description still not wretched, her purple eyes looking up at the judge on the stand as she firmly reiterated: "I am not a witch, I did not seduce him, I am not guilty."

The priest who had testified against Baola stood at the plaintiff's table, head shrunken, eyes averted, not daring to look at Baola.

The popular jury behind Baola was particularly fierce in its struggle, some were crying, cursing the priest viciously.

"You slander Baola!"

"Don't you dare look Baola in the eye and say again that she seduced you!"

Quan Zhendong explained carelessly, "This is the early days, when the court has not yet established its authority in everyone's mind, so people will question the court's decisions, and it is now a serious offence to make such a ruckus in the courtroom, so please bear that in mind."

The bishop sitting high above the judge in the video tapped the table and said in a deep voice, "Silence."

"The plaintiff is asked to state the process by which the witch seduced you."

"That night, in the church ......" that priest's voice grew smaller and smaller as everyone watched, "she took off her clothes, lay down before the idol, smiled demurely and beckoned to me, saying, come here, let me come. "

"Her back was so white, her waist so soft, her eyes glowed purple like a chimera in the moonlight, and two shining ram's horns grew on her head, and I was unaware for a moment ......"

The priest bowed his head in seeming shame, and a dark look crossed his eyes.

"It is my fault that I was not strong enough to hold myself steady and was bewitched by the witch, I repent to God and I am willing to suffer all the chastisement that my sin brings, even if I am publicly judged, I will denounce Baola as a witch so that no one will be deceived by her moral appearance and that more people will be bewitched by her as I was! "

"How can that be!" The emotions of the popular jury rose again with vehemence, " Baola would never do such a thing!"

"Silence!" The Bishop tapped the table again as he looked indifferently at Baola, "The accused states the circumstances."

Baola was quiet for a moment: "I did take my clothes off at the time, but I didn't know there was anyone in the place at the time, I was just there to change."

The bishop inquired very indifferently, "Did you have relations with this priest?"

Baola's fingers curled for a moment, then quickly she composed herself, "Yes, but not in the way he said ......"

"You have disqualified yourself from being a holy woman by having sex with a priest." The bishop coldly interrupted Baola's argument and then pronounced, "You are a hair's breadth away from being a witch after all the eels you have devoured, and if you cannot keep your heart and remain holy and strip and seduce others at will, then you are indeed no different from a witch."

--The understatement of the year has pronounced the fact that Baola is a witch.

As the verdict was about to be delivered, the jury burst out of the room with a pair of very emotional middle-aged men and women, both of whom looked very old, with grey hair and wrinkled faces, sobbing and crying out in pain on the fence, reaching out to touch Baola, who was tied to the trial post.

" Baola Ah! My child!" The two men were about to climb over the fence to rescue Baola, cursing as they did so, "You damned inquisitors! You're the evil ones! Let go of my Baola!"

"I told you not to be a fool to be a good person, we should never have taught you so well! We should have sent you away as soon as you were born!"

"O my good Baola!"

Baola's calm eyes twitched and she bit her lower lip as she looked over at the middle-aged men and women bawling outside the fence, her eyes slightly red, but she kept to the rules of the courtroom and did not make any noise or presume to speak in the courtroom.

This is despite the fact that the visitors are her parents.

The mass of the jury began to clamour again, when a man in priestly garb trotted up to the bishop with a tense look on his face and whispered in his ear.

"There's another march for Baola outside the court, my lord."

"We had this trial live in public and when Baola's parents came, many people vehemently demanded the trial of the priest, saying he was lying."

"Although we need to cleanse the inner circle and establish authority, looking at the current situation, it would be better not to move Baola so early, it would provoke the wrath of the people, my Lord Bishop."

The bishop looked at Baola, his eyes moving darkly for a moment, then nodded slightly, raised his hand to send the priest with the message down, and spoke solemnly.

"Despite the weighty accusations of the priest, Baola is a holy woman known to us all, and in all the time she has swallowed eels she has never had a wrong heart and has always remained holy, and to accuse her so easily cannot convince us all so easily and destroy the jewel of our church."

In two or three sentences the bishop changed his story again, his eyes looking nonchalantly at the plaintiff priest at the other end whose expression was clearly flustered: "Father, do you have any evidence that Baola is a witch apart from these allegations?"

The priest, of course, had no proof of anything; he had merely heard by chance that there was talk within the Holy See of a great purge to bring Baola down and build up the prestige of the Holy See, and therefore dared to see the saintly woman of national renown simply change her clothes, and dared to move her lustfully and force herself on her at her weakest moment.

Baola's reputation for prestige was so good that no one disliked her, the Holy See had long since looked the other way, and the priest felt he could go along with the situation and nothing could go wrong.

But I never thought that Baola, the Virgin, would have so many people supporting her even at this point, turning the situation back around.

The priest finally panicked, and he said, shivering, "No, there are no other charges Your Grace."

"Are you lying, then?" The Bishop questioned with a solemn look, "Are you slandering our greatest Virgin, Baola?"

Over.

When the priest saw the cold expression on the bishop's face, he knew that he would be sacrificed, and with his lips all white he looked to the Baola on the pillar of judgment, hoping for a moment, absurdly, that the ever merciful and great Virgin would speak for him and save him.

But Baola never looked at him from start to finish, even though this man had forced her to do what she disliked most, but she remained strong, holy, just sweeping over him without a second thought, Baola's eyes not even filled with love or hate, just that light, flat glance, and moved away.

--It was as if he was an ant, unworthy of touching her flying knight's coat no matter how much he struggled.

"He does lie." Baola said.

For a moment, a sudden and violent feeling of hatred came over the priest - since this woman would never look at him more no matter what, and he couldn't get it either way, to put Baola in her place, he might as well struggle to the end and drag Baola down to hell with him.

It was not a great loss for him to have the most beautiful Virgin in the world to be judged by God with him.

With this extreme emotion driving him, a brilliant and brilliant idea suddenly burst into his mind.

"I did not lie!" The priest looked up sharply, his chest heaving hard, his face streaked with tears, "I was indeed seduced by the witch! But I was wrong in my accusation! That witch is not Baola!"

"Oh?" The Bishop raised a little interest, "Were there any other women around that night?"

Baola retorted swiftly, looking at the priest with a rare icy directness: "It was just me and you that night, don't just bite off more than you can chew and get other girls involved."

"It is true that it was only me and you that night." The priest looked at Baola with a strange, rapturous look, an expression indeed penitent and bitter, as if he were condemning a real-life witch, "But do you know Baola, that witch hatchlings can make their mothers seduce the men they like in order to have themselves born into the world of men, making the mother the cradle in which they are conceived. "

"What an evil monster." The priest's eyes moved down to Baola's belly and he licked his quivering lips, "It is not you that tempts me, it is the child in your belly."

"You're a victim too, Baola ."

Baola's expression went blank as she slowly moved her eyes down to her stomach with a slightly confused look.

Almost simultaneously, all eyes moved to Baola's stomach.

The bishop's eyes swept meaningfully over Baola's stomach: "Now send Baola for an examination."

"No! Never!" The priest almost instantly drew his voice up in retort as he looked raggedly at Baola, "Any measure of examination would alert the witch in Baola's womb and allow her to escape, the witch is an extremely cunning creature and we can only wait until she is born and completely attached before we put her to death."

--This would have delayed it for at least ten months, by which time perhaps the Papacy would have been able to clear Baola.

The bishop pondered for a moment, then spoke, "You have a point."

"Then wait ten months. ......"

Baola's father interrupted the Holy See's sentence with a sharp voice, his eyes red with hate as he looked at the priest and the bishop: "What if Baola is not carrying a child? Does that mean that the priest lied and that he should be executed! Burn him!"

The bishop paused for a moment, "That's for sure."

"If Baola is carrying a boy." Baola's father took two deep breaths, his senile hands trembling as he looked tearfully at his young daughter, "Then she is innocent too, and this priest deserves to die!"

"We in the Holy See are always fair, and of course we will execute a lying priest." Having been contradicted twice in succession, the bishop pronounced with displeasure, "But if Baola is carrying a girl, then that girl must necessarily be put to death."

"We'll monitor Baola's movements during this time to make sure she doesn't do something to let the witch go on her own."

Baola's father tried to argue further, but the bishop rose straight away and said indifferently, "This trial is over, the meeting is adjourned."

The video pauses here and Quan Zhendong looks around at everyone and he says, "This is a trial for Baola."

"Of course what followed is well known to those of us in this country, Baola did get pregnant and by the time she gave birth to her baby for another trial in October, she became a witch on the spot and defected during this trial - that is the famous [Witch's Heart] trial. "

Quan Zhendong smiled haughtily, "That was also the famous case of the Holy See - proving that the priest was right in his accusations at the time and that Baola was the witch."

"Here's the video of the time."

Quan Zhendong presses the play button again, the video skips and the scene returns to the trial court again.

The priest waited anxiously in the plaintiff's chair, cold sweat dripping from his cheeks, like a father waiting outside the maternity ward - as indeed he was, Baola had just been admitted to the hospital maternity ward.

Only he waited not with anticipation but with fear and bitterness, not as if he were waiting for a newborn child to whom he was related by blood, but as if he were waiting for a guillotine that was about to cut down.

The priest's face was pale and he kept whispering a prayer with his hands clasped together holding the cross on his chest, "It must be a girl, it must be a girl ......"

Baola's father waited outside the delivery room, his body trembling, his mouth too shaky to say a complete word, clutching his wife tightly, shedding tears and also praying, "If there is a God, please give us Baola a boy!"

"I will always offer you in the future!"

The delivery room was pushed open and the nurse looked at Baola's father with tears in her eyes and exclaimed with undisguised excitement, "It's a boy!"

" Baola It's okay!"

Baola's father made a three-pointed prayer gesture, then his eyes went white and he collapsed to the ground in a feeble heap, with a kind of hair-raising, tearful smile on his face, and just kept muttering, "...... Good Baola, you're right, doing good, still pays off. "

"Quickly take the child and Baola over to the Holy See." The nurse eagerly pushed Baola's father to his feet, "They won't pronounce that priest until they see it for themselves!"

Baola's father stood up shakily: "Can Baola move? Is she all right?"

" Baola and the baby we will send a car from the hospital over to the Holy See, are you with us?" The nurse asked.

Baola's father said, "Together."

The priest fell to his knees in vain the moment the news came to him, his eyes vacant as he looked up at the bishop, who, without looking at him, tapped his fingers repeatedly on the table before him in some annoyance, and looked grimly at the pillar of judgment to which Baola was supposed to be tied.

Such a great opportunity to destroy Baola, a spiritual pillar, just slipped away.

The door to the courtroom was thrown open and someone held up the newly born baby and pushed in a pale, wheelchair-bound Baola, whose purple eyes were still so clear after all that had happened.

"The priest is indeed lying." Baola said, "Please execute him, Bishop."

The bishop gave Baola an obscure Buming glance, then said, "Bring up the child and show it to me and the priest."

Baola looked tensely at the child she was presented with: "Please be careful, he's only just born."

The bishop lifted the swaddling cloth to look at the infant inside, dropped it in disgust and waved a hand to the others to carry it off, "A boy indeed."

So the boy was again presented to the soulful priest, and the child, somewhat uncomfortably swaddled in the intense light of the tribunal, moved and opened his eyes for the first time - a pair of purple eyes.

This baby has a soft face and violet eyes, very much like Baola's, and at first glance it looks more like a girl than a boy.

...... is more like a girl.

The priest gave a jolt, he stood up and suddenly pointed at the infant with righteous indignation, "Bishop, this is the child, this is the eye, it is the witch who seduced me that day!"

The bishop also paused for a moment when he heard this, and he seemed to think that the priest was going mad too, emphasizing once more, "It's a boy."

"Yes, yes, it does look like a boy." The priest held the child in his arms, traced the child's face from top to bottom across the sky, and said in a compelling tone, "But look closely at its face, my lord bishop, at its eyes, and do you not think that its face is too demure and beautiful to resemble a girl?"

"Especially those purple eyes, the exact same eyes I saw the other night when I was bewitched!"

The bishop's ever tapping fingers stopped, his eyes narrowed and he seemed to understand what the priest was trying to do, "You mean?"

"This witch fresh from the mother is powerfully witchy, and we all know that witches can do many things." The priest fawned, seductively, "What if, for example, this is a witch who can conceal her gender?"

"It just looks like a boy, but what about the fact that it has a [witch's heart]?"

The bishop gave a beat as he nodded approvingly, "Still you have thought it through, there is indeed a possibility that the child is a witch."

The priest wiped the vain sweat off his forehead, took a long breath and bowed his head humbly, "I am a priest, this is what I am supposed to do."

"It's a boy." Baola stared at the child in the priest's arms with a strained face and questioned incredulously, "How can he be a witch?"

Baola's father even hissed in anger: "You animals! You even want the children ......"

"I said that no noise is allowed above the tribunal." The bishop waved his hand unpleasantly and coldly, "Cover his mouth and drag him down."

Immediately, a security guard came from the side, covered Baola's father's mouth and dragged him off.

It was then that the Bishop withdrew his gaze with satisfaction, and he looked at Baola with seeming benevolence: "The Holy See has always been fair, and it is true that male witches are a concept that is being proposed for the first time, and we do not judge lightly."

Baola stared dead at her children: "How are you going to judge?"

The bishop gave a beat, and he fell into contemplation.

The priest was impatient to suggest the way, and he said quickly and impatiently, "My Lord Bishop, there is only one way to tell if the child is a witch or not!"

The bishop looked at him, "In what way?"

A cold chill slowly creeps up Baola's back and she looks at Father God Xiang with a frozen expression as if she has thought of something.

"That's a seven-star eel! The witch must have eaten the Seven Star Eel and be able to digest it." The priest smiled wryly, "Just put the boy and the Seven Star Eel together and see if he can digest it, won't you know?"

--When eels and children are put together, you don't even have to think about it, it's the child that must die.

As soon as the child dies and the trial is over, whether the child is a witch or not, there is only one outcome in the trial book - and that is that the child must be a witch.

The bishop nodded once without hesitation, "You have a point."

"Go up to the Seven Star Eel Pond."

A whole transparent tank full of seven-starred eels was dragged up to the ecclesia, in which the eels kept tumbling about, and the priest, with a solemn face, lifted the child, whose arms and legs were slightly fidgeting, towards this pool.

"Wait a minute!" Baola tried to stand up in her wheelchair, but after several attempts, she couldn't. At one of her rare moments of distress, her tone was pleading, her eyes filled with tears, "He's still a boy! And a boy! He can't be a witch in any way!"

"Please don't, don't judge him like that!"

"Judging a witch by her gender seems to be a very superficial perception now." The priest turned, that twisted look of triumph appearing on his face as he looked condescendingly at the holy woman who had finally given in to him, who had finally begged for mercy from him, almost cool enough to make his scalp tremble, but his tone was still compassionate, "He is my child too, but it is for the sake of all that I am willing to sacrifice him."

" Baola, you are a holy woman and can understand that, right?"

With that, the priest turned, he walked towards the front of the glass jar, grasped the child with one hand, kissed the cross with the other, said a reverent Amen and looked about to let go of the child and throw it down.

Behind her, Baola's light purple eyes turned completely dark purple, her breathing became rapid, scales sprouted from her face, her body elongated in a flash, and her eyes filled with tears: "Let him go."

The priest turned around, his expression turning for a moment to one of horror as he took several steps back.

Baola looked at the priest and the bishop and said in a hoarse voice: "I confess, I confess my sins."

"I seduced the priest that night, I'm the witch, I took off my clothes to lure him to come and me ......"

"I'm the witch! I'm the one with [the witch's heart]!" Baola chirped hoarsely as she cried, "But this child is not, he is innocent, you let him go!"

The bishop almost screamed his orders, "Get this wicked witch!!!"

The video comes to an abrupt end here.

Quan Zhendong looked around at everyone: "This is a disgrace for the Saints Patrol and I hope everyone will learn from it and not follow the path of Baola."

"Baola has now defected to the polluted witches in the east, so make it a priority to kill her when you encounter her, and the Order will reward you heavily."

"Now to introduce you all to the way out."

Quan Zhendong smiled, "Of course, despite what happened to Baola, your best way out is still the Virgin Patrol, but the Virgin Patrol is also the most dangerous, the closest to the devil, the most demanding and very difficult to get into."

"But the Holy See is by far the highest place, and if you are in the Holy Virgin Patrol, you will naturally be treated in the best way possible."

"Secondly, you have two other ways out, the fixed affiliation and entry into the company witch post, which you can find out for yourselves later."

Quan Zhendong pauses for a moment: "There is a fourth way, a channel that is not public but does exist."

"That's the Island of the Holy Virgin, also known by an alias, the City in the Sky."

Speaking of the Island of the Holy Virgin, the burly security men of the Holy See below suddenly gave a vague smile without knowing it, while others squeezed their eyebrows and hemmed and hawed twice.

"The City in the Sky is an island suspended in the highest part of the kingdom, where the landscape is beautiful and pleasant, and the women who go up there don't have to do any of the work of absorbing eels, you just work and live normally, a Noah's Ark, a pure land, built by the Holy See for the purest of women."

Quan Zhendong's expression became compassionate again as he said slowly.

"Sooner or later the witch's cholera will have to end, and the [Witch's Heart] trial tells us that the offspring born to women who have swallowed eels are no longer safe either, whether male or female, they are likely to possess the [Witch's Heart], causing this horrible plague to continue."

"For the sake of the continuation of humanity and the survival of the whole world, we have used many means to create the [Sky City], an island, or airship, suspended high in the air, where no eel will ever climb up and infest it, and we send up pure women who have not been infested by any eel, so that they can reproduce on that pure land with pure men and give birth to normal humans, so that the whole world can continue to function with pleasure."

One woman asked very carefully, "Excuse me, on the City in the Sky, the pure male ones are ......"

Without thinking, Quan Zhendong replied, "The men of the Order, of course."

"All men who have pure faith and belong to the Holy See are entitled to set foot on the Isle of the Sky to find their Eve."

This woman bit her lower lip, "If, a man who is not a member of the Order, can he come to the island? If, and I say if, I have a husband who has not been a member of the Order, is he eligible to come to the island?"

Quan Zhendong's eyes went cold for a moment before quickly warming up again as he looked kindly and amiably at the woman who asked the question, "Those could be the sons of witches, very filthy."

"Break it off with him." Quan Zhendong stroked the woman's head lovingly, "Only by having intercourse with a man of the Order will you be holy and safe from being tainted by a hidden witch's heart and becoming a witch."

"And what does it take to get to the island?" The woman inquired very softly, a cross hanging from her chest.

"I'm sure everyone is curious about how to get to the island." Quan Zhendong straightened up as he looked at everyone and introduced them in a friendly manner, "The Island in the Sky is a very special place, it is indeed a Noah's Ark created by the Holy See for all humans who want to escape, but unfortunately we have limited power to create a place that big."

With that, Quan Zhendong sighed regretfully: "We do want to save the world, to get everyone out of this witch-polluted place, but it's impossible, even Noah's Ark, which God built, can't do it - there's a very limited number of people who can go up to the Sky City. "

"In order to protect this pure land from being polluted, we have made a very strict limit for the women who go up to the Sky City, and we hope you will understand, because women are more prone to be polluted by eels, and this pure land is simply too important to the Holy See for us to accept the consequences of it being polluted."

"But this is not discriminatory against women, on the contrary, we treat women very favourably - only women are allowed to be resident on this clean slate in the Sky City, men are not allowed to be resident, they can only stay for a week and then they have to come down."

Quan Zhendong looked up, "Women who go to the Sky City have to meet three conditions."

"First, under the age of 25."

"Secondly, there are no female or male relatives in the family and no history of being prosecuted as witches or sons of witches."

"Thirdly, I have never swallowed an eel."

Quan Zhendong paused for a moment, the smile on his face becoming somewhat Buming: "Of course, there is a fourth invisible condition, which doesn't matter if it is met or not, but if it is met, it is more likely to be identified as pure."

"We all know that very often the devil compels us by some kind of evil sexual relationship, so women who don't have a sexual relationship are not as easily contaminated."

"So fourth, women in non-sexual relationships have priority."

"Let's all start choosing our future intentions."

After a moment's pause, the women in the warehouse began to move slowly in all directions, Bai Liu hidden among them, as the Order's security guards chatted casually on either side of the warehouse, in a mixture of English and Chinese.

"Why isn't there a resident male on Sky Island anymore? Wasn't there one? Or the prettiest, most whorish one, heh heh heh."

"You've been whoring?"

"How dare you, he is so noble, purple eyes, the son of the Virgin, the number one ranking on the Sky City, only the top big shots, and the bishops in the Church and those who can prostitute themselves, it is not our turn to taste the minions."

"I heard that he was forced to classify him as a female by his father from his identification as the son of a witch, put him on the Sky City resident, made him start receiving guests at the age of twelve, and so far he's been lined up every night, tsk, tsk, and I don't know if he can take it."

Bai Liu's footsteps were halting as he walked over and raised his eyes to inquire, "This man, what's his name?"

The two clerical guards hadn't wanted to bother Bai Liu, but then paused ambiguously at the sight of his face, "What, you want to go to the island too?"

"I do want to." Bai Liu smiled as he repeated his question, "What is the name of this son of the Virgin, what is his name?"

"I don't know the name, no one gave it to him, right?" The two guards looked at each other and still answered Bai Liu's words, "But on Sky City, everyone doesn't show their real face, everyone who goes up there has a code name, the resident one is a fixed code name to make it easier for everyone to count people, usually this code name is a playing card."

"This son of the Virgin is known by the code name Hearts, and everyone calls him Queen Hearts."