Chapter 521: The Witch Trials

He looked unpleasantly at his bishop's father, a look that would normally have drawn a reprimand, but today he was in a particularly good temper, squatting down to look at him kindly and levelly, smiling lovingly: "You look very good in that dress today, and your mother was right, you dance even better than she did."

"Twelve years old ......" the Bishop sighed tersely, "what a wonderful age, just right for dancing."

The bishop asked him with a smile, "Would you like to go dancing on the Sky City? That's the best place for you to dance right now."

The Sky City was where she had gone dancing before, and he had wanted to help her dance so she wouldn't have to work so hard, so he lit up and nodded without thinking, "I'll go!"

"No go!!!" His voice came out almost simultaneously with her hysterical refusal.

She looked at the Bishop with frightened tears in her eyes, her voice trembling: "You promised me that you would never take him to the island as long as I was the card!"

"Let me see, how long have you been a card ......" The Bishop swept absently over her whole body with a sort of veiled dislike and disgust, but he was outwardly polite, as if only sorry, "and I certainly kept my appointment with your agreement."

"But you're a bit old for a business card, even if you're beautiful now."

The Bishop smiled calmly, "As you know, people don't like old business cards, and it's been hard enough for your beauty to make people tolerate you so far."

"After all, you're thirty-three."

"It is time for me to get a new card." The bishop's eyes glanced covertly at him still in his light veil, and he sighed softly with satisfaction as if he had seen a delicious fruit beyond his imagination, "Will you go up to the island and dance for me tonight for the sake of your mother?"

He agreed.

So he was taken to the island by the bishop, just like Salome in the story Salome - he played Salome, gave his nominal father a dance, and came back.

So this was dancing, no wonder her clothes were in tatters every time she came back, he thought as he was taking a bath, but he didn't see anything in dancing like this, or rather he couldn't understand what it was, but he still ran off to talk to her as quickly and happily as she had finished dancing in the first place after he had finished.

The bastard bishop's father told him that she would never have to dance again as long as he went up to the island from time to time in the evening to dance for different people.

He very readily agreed.

After all, dancing like this is still hard work, he thought with a small adult sigh - thank goodness he could dance now, he could support her by dancing later.

She wouldn't have to get hurt and work so hard.

The smile on his face grew more and more pleasant as he thought this, and he knocked on the door of her room as he had done every night before, listening to her stories.

Then he was stunned, and he saw a her in bed as haggard as ever.

She looked at him in his pyjamas, at the bruises and cuts beneath them, and took two deep, shuddering breaths. She wanted to smile at him as if nothing had happened, as she always did, but in the end she couldn't control herself and covered her face and cried.

"I'm sorry!!!" She broke down, tearing her heart out in a miserable howl as she hugged his back hard, tears dripping down her face in huge gobs, "I'm sorry!!!"

"I should never have let you come into this world!!!"

"I'm sorry!!!"

"It's all my fault!!!"

He stood stunned, still letting her tears quickly stain his shoulders.

There were many things in the world that he could not understand, like why he Buming White was doubly haggard after he had helped her to the dance than she had been before.

Every time he came down from the island, no matter how clean he was washed to meet her, she could still quickly tell from him that he had gone dancing, and then little by little, bit by bit, he withered away.

"I don't work hard." He expressed himself awkwardly, "Don't you worry about me, it's just dancing, what's the point, they all compliment me on being the best dancer on the island."

She looked at him with a very complicated look, like he was a child who didn't understand anything, and then squeezed out a smile, "Hmm."

"You're the best looking."

She smiled and wept: "You are most precious."

But no matter how much he persuaded, how much he comforted, how much he did, she pined away day by day, as if she were suffering from a serious illness for which there was no cure, and at the end of the day, when he came down from the island, he did not even dare to look at her for fear that she would look at her with those dead eyes, while still squeezing a pale smile on her face for his comfort.

Finally, when he was fourteen, no matter how much he tried, she became seriously ill to a point of no return.

In just two years, she had declined from being so bright to the point of death.

He kept at her bedside, averting his face and maintaining a cold, hard exterior with great difficulty - so that he could keep from crying out and worrying her.

She lay on the hospital bed, pale and holding his hand, and smiled with sudden relief, "I never understood what I was supposed to do."

"I don't want to stay here and be something that binds you, I feel like a liability, but I know in your heart I'm not, I'm your faith, right?"

"-as you were to me in the beginning."

"I'm afraid that my leaving will leave you completely disoriented, but I'm afraid that if I don't leave, you'll keep falling in the wrong direction."

"But now God has set me free, He made the choice for me." Her eyes were full of tears but she smiled with relief, "Get out of the City in the Sky, get out of here, you dance so well, there's a wider place to be your stage."

"There will be plenty of people who actually watch the dance who appreciate your beauty, apart from the brutes - they exist, I've seen them."

She left, and one quiet afternoon he sorted through her belongings and found among them a picture of her sitting on the bishop's knee, smiling brightly in the sun.

The photograph shows her not yet knowing what she is about to experience in her future, but smiling happily.

He didn't like the picture, but there were so few pictures of her, let alone one with such a happy smile, that he fought back his nausea and kept it - he was going to cut up the bishop on her back, but in the end couldn't bear to burn and damage the picture for fear of really damaging it, so he left it so disgustingly.

He buried her in a field of flowers, then stood alone in the daylight for a long, long time before suddenly turning away in a mad rush.

His tears flowed freely as he ran.

She said she wanted him to go further away, so he must go.

But he failed, and the bishop quickly captured him, and with the whole island surrounded by Papal ships, he had nowhere to run.

He had lived on an island in the sky above the sea since he was born, and after she left, he had nowhere to go and no one to cling to.

As he failed to escape for the sixty-seventh time and was stuffed into the island of the sky after being severely beaten and forced to receive guests, he looked at the bishop's back and felt a strong desire to pick up the fork of the candlestick next to him and stab his nominal father to death.

But he knew it was impossible, this guy was surrounded by at least three to four Papists defending him.

As he was about to be pressed onto the stage for another performance, the bishop, who had been so arrogant in his attitude towards everyone, suddenly became sincere in his attitude: "What?! That gentleman has come to the island?!"

"That gentleman doesn't like outsiders, clear the place, clear out everyone in the inner circle! Receive him alone!"

He knew who the people in the inner circle were, and any one of them would be an existence that would call the shots outside, and now for a guest whose name he didn't even know, he was actually driven out from the inner circle like a dog being chased out of the house.

Even he was left unattended and casually tossed aside with his hands and feet tied.

This treatment was the first he had seen in the more than two years he had been on the island.

The bishop bowed his head respectfully and welcomed a certain man in, who was tied and thrown aside with an effort to probe and look over.

The man was clad in a mackintosh cloak and boots, with a black whip dangling to the ground in one hand and a ghostly mask on his face - guests to the Inner Circle were required to wear masks with voice changers in them to make it easier to conceal their identities from each other and to morally hide the fact that they had come to the Island in the Sky.

But familiar customers are recognisable to everyone.

"I haven't been on this island for a long time." The man's voice was soft and laced with laughter, a sort of buzz that came out of the voice changer in his mask, not quite audible, "You seem to have turned this island into a stage?"

Faced with this man, the bishop did not even dare to raise his head, sweating coldly: "We are indebted to you for the sale of the island to us."

"No need to be nervous, I don't care about the seller, since I have sold this hover island to you, you are the owner and I am the guest." The man smiled, "I came up here today, I just came across a sad matter, so I wanted to find someone to keep me company for a while."

"I've heard you're on a membership scheme, but I don't have a business card or anyone to introduce me, so I'm offended to come up straight away like this."

The bishop shook his head frantically and looked up with glowing eyes, "Of course you don't need these!"

"What kind of person do you need to keep you company? We have everything here."

The man laughed a little: "Good at imitating others."

The bishop and the fallen man on the floor were both beaten.

-- There's no better impersonator on the whole island than him.

He has been immersed in a role-playing atmosphere for two years and has developed the skill to imitate the feeling he wants instantly if he is given a photo to imitate.

So he, who had just been severely beaten, was brought up again by the bishop to be washed and sent to the room at the request of this strange guest.

The bishop warned him fiercely that if he did not behave himself and do anything to this gentleman, he would take out her bones buried under the field of flowers and bruise them.

So he sat in the room holding back the feeling of restlessness in his body, hoping that the night [of dancing] would be over sooner.

Instead of being very anxious to ask him to do something as soon as he entered, this strange guest untied his cloak very slowly and methodically, placed the poker card he had drawn on the island on the table, and sat down in the wide sofa opposite him.

The room was very dim, hung with drapes of burgundy flannel, and only the wrist-thick red candles lit in candlesticks on either side burned with a misty light, by which he could, with some difficulty, make out the markings of the playing cards which the guest had placed on the table -

--This is a Spades card, I can't make out the exact number.

The guest's face and figure were even less visible, sitting in the shadows of the flannel and candlelight, and all that could be seen was a human silhouette sitting on its end, legs folded, and black leather gloves and a black bone whip haphazardly resting on its knee, vaguely filtered through the candlelight.

It was raining off the island and the man had water on his gloves and whip.

He was not surprised by such customers who brought their own supplies to his door and was ready to be whipped later, but this customer suddenly asked him a very strange question.

"Do you like water?" This guest asked him softly.

He paused for a moment, "More like."

So the guest smiled, "Me too."

"But the child closest to me hates water, yet he was born in the midst of it."

"I gave him life, but he was unable to produce a soul and inherit my place as I wished." The guest's voice was very soft, as if he were being told a story, "and the moment he was finally willing to produce a soul, he was leaving me."

"I watched him grow, but never got his attention."

"What a sad thing to see." This guest handed him a garment, in a gentle tone, "Tonight he is going to betray me forever for his soul to belong to."

"Can you play him and keep me company?"

He stood up hesitantly, not understanding for a moment what paly this man was trying to play, but went behind the curtain, took off his clothes and changed into the one this guest had handed him.

It was a very raggedy orphanage outfit that looked like it was worn by a teenager, complete with a bandage tied over the eye.

The more he looked, the more confused he became, and for a few minutes as he dressed and walked out he even wondered if there was something wrong with the man's xp.

"Is that how you wear it?" He asked.

The guest smiled, "Yes, you are dressed beautifully."

He pursed his lips and sat down, very naturally about to amble closer to the other man's knee, but the other man shouted to stop.

"Don't come over." The guest's tone was flat, even a little lazy, "Just sit there and don't look back at me."

Confused, he inquired, "...... So what am I looking at?"

The guest handed him a book, "Read the book."

It was a fairy-tale style book, but it was full of details of various killings, and it was still broken and put back together again, and he turned over to read the title - The Long, Thin, Ghostly Book of Murder.

So he just sat there half-sitting where he was, reading as this guest told him to, and the guest looked at him quietly for a while, and he just couldn't hold it in any longer: "I'm just going to read ......"

"Don't look at me." The guest's voice was flat, "He's not going to look back at me, you're imitating him, so don't you look back at me either."

"Just read the book."

The rain was pattering outside the island, and he was looking down at a fragmented book of bizarre stories in the dim candlelight, with a strange guest sitting opposite him, not making a sound at all, looking at him, the flannel flicking back and forth very gently between them.

It was such a quiet atmosphere that for a moment he was in a bit of a trance.

It was as if he was sitting in a chaise longue at the back of his little courtyard, and she was watching him tenderly as he read a storybook, rather than playing a character to someone else dancing in this dingy room on the island.

After an unknown amount of time, so long that he felt like he was going to fall asleep, the other man suddenly said with a smile, "You're sleepy, aren't you?"

He jolted awake and subconsciously denied it, "No!"

"Do you have any other requests, guest?" He asked, fighting back a yawn that he couldn't resist.

The guest across the room seemed to hear the yawn and laughed softly.

He broke into a blush, composed himself and sat upright again, straightening his tone and inquiring, "Do you have any other requests?"

--It's finally time to dance, isn't it.

"No, the evening is over." The guest across the table replied with a smile in his voice, "You've made it a very pleasant evening for me."

He was stunned - hadn't that line appeared a little too early.

"Why are you feeling pleasant?" He was too curious to ask anyway, "I'm just here to read."

The guest laughed a little: "Because I miss with the help of you a soul that I cannot get and have betrayed."

"He was never going to be so quiet with me." After this guest finished, he got up and picked up his whip and prepared to leave, the masked face looked back at him half-crouched on the ground, his eyes still a little confused, and smiled, "But you will."

"Thank you for your company tonight."

He almost stammered, "No, you're welcome."

--for the first time in his life, he got words like thank you on this island.

"To thank you for taking my mood from bad to good tonight." The man smiled, "Is there anything you'd like to do?"

What was this strange sentence, another one he was hearing for the first time.

He searched his heart for an answer to this guest, but in the end just asked carefully, "Is this payment guest? If it is payment you have already paid for it when you came to the island."

The bishop, that bastard, would burn the garden she left behind if he knew he dared to take tips from his guests in private.

"It's not a payment, it's a deal." The guest knelt down on one knee and crouched in front of him, the masked face slightly crooked as if looking at him and smiling, "It was a deal for you to put me in a better mood."

"My mood is a valuable thing, so you can make slightly more expensive requests."

His fingers curled and tightened slowly, "I-I don't want to dance this month."

The guest smiled up, "Yes."

He grew bold: "I want to carry a man's bones out and bury them in a real, untraceable grave."

The guest continued to just smile, "Yes."

His tone slowly trailed off again, and with a very careful look at the guest, he made one last request, "I, for one, want to leave the island."

"Just for one night today, is one night okay? I'd like to go outside."

The guest stood up, his expression cooling for a moment as he gritted his teeth in remorse - he had asked for too much! It's not easy to find such an ingrate!

Then the next second, the guest held out his hand to him, smiled and said, "Yes."

He was completely transfixed, staring blankly at the mask of this guest.

"You don't hate the water, do you?" The guest asked with a smile, "Would you like to go under the sea if you leave the island?"

He placed his hand shakily in this guest's, then swallowed a little and said, "Think."

What's up with this guy.

And what is he all about.

At the sight of the schools of fluorescent fish and whales drifting past overhead, he looked with a blank expression at his guest standing opposite him.

The guest smiled and said to him, "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"So I Buming white." The guest rested one hand against his jaw and asked him as if in contemplation, "How can anyone hate the water? It's obviously so beautiful underwater."

And his mind was empty, with only one thought -

--Did he meet God?