"This! This is the power of the Witch!"
"This!! is the strength of our resistance!"
"This!!! is we get out of this rotten neighborhood! Take off the disgusting title of 9-3!"
"The power of vengeance against those who exploit us! those who crush us! the classes that despise us!"
The words were frenzied, sonorous and resolute, full of strong provocative power, the man standing on the high platform was exaggerated, like a mentally disturbed patient,
But after the miracle they had just witnessed, even that said everyone below was enthralled, raising their arms and shouting yes!
Witnessing such a scene on the steel beams, I thought it was just a group of people from the bottom of society, who happened to get something related to night battles to commit evil deeds, but heard Osfia say the name "witch" that moment,
Fangran found that things started to go beyond his expectations.
Instinctively, he thought of that dark and mysterious alluring figure in his mind, and instantly seemed to understand the source of the throbbing just now.
Then at this moment, several middle-aged men who looked like they were from the wealthy class were tied to the shelves and pushed up. Their faces were pale and trembling, and their bodies were wrapped with bloody cloth strips. As if wanting to burn it alive!
Makes people feel like they've gone crazy.
Yes, already crazy.
The malice of harming others gushed out like stagnant black mud, suppressing the urge to rush down to save people now, feeling uncomfortable with such a cult scene, Fangran frowned slightly and said:
"What are they doing here?"
"Black magic is one of the most dangerous branches of ability on the mysterious side. Ordinary people who touch related things without authorization are extremely easy to be polluted by the spirit of their owner. That person is no longer normal,"
Osphia looked at the leading 'black sheep' on the high platform, as if he was looking at a dead man with half a foot in the abyss.
"His hatred and jealousy towards the wealthy class has already combined with the residual spiritual influence of the witch on that item."
"My... spiritual influence, why did it become like this?"
Hearing this, Fangran murmured in surprise, thinking that he knew nothing about the title of 'witch', and glanced at him, Osphia spoke slowly:
"There used to be witch hunts, also called witch trials, that broke out in Europe."
Her blue eyes looked at the 'cultists' surrounded by men holding flames, as if she saw the epitome of that era, but this time the men and women were reversed.
"In that era when there was no scientific concept, witchcraft was generally believed to exist and was evil. Those in power ordered to kill for fear of threatening the rule, which formed a wave of witch hunting centuries ago,"
"Because of jealousy, persecution by the upper class, ignorant fear, and even coveting beauty and wanting to see who doesn't wear clothes, innocent women are extremely easily slandered as witches, brutally forced to confess, and pushed to the stake, ushering in a horrible end of tragic death."
"Do you know what secular courts used in those days to judge whether a woman was a witch?"
Speaking of this, Osfiya glanced at him, stopped speaking, and then slowly opened his mouth:
"It's a book called "The Witch's Hammer". It's full of words that if you throw it into the water, the one who drowns is not a witch, and the one who doesn't drown is a witch. This absurd logic."
The upper part of the underground mine was dark, Fangran listened to Osfiya's narration in disbelief, and couldn't believe that this would be a historical fact.
I can't even imagine that this is something that figure has experienced... .
"How could this happen..."
And remembering that I seem to have heard how dark the era of theocracy was, the moment I asked this question,
Fangran suddenly stopped realizing that the identity of the figure beside him came from it.
"I know what you're thinking, but first of all, I'm an arbitration knight rather than a believer in the church. Secondly, the church in history is not exactly what you think."
The black eyes hid in the darkness and looked down. The crazy people were still doing 'prayer' activities, and Fangran heard Osphia's voice calmly ringing in his ears.
"For that period, the church you knew was feudal, anti-science, outdated in thinking, manipulating the inquisition to punish any heretics who challenged the authority of the church, and it was the chief culprit that led to the darkness and witch hunting in the Middle Ages."
Osphia looked at the prayers of the people below who had lost their minds, and was ready to save people at any time, and said lightly about the religious church of that period that had been exaggerated by various arts and cultures in the eyes of the public.
"But in fact, before the birth of modern science, as the upper class, many outstanding people with advanced thinking were members of the church. Galileo was a Christian, and the Pope himself was his good friend,"
"Copernicus was a devout Catholic. He never felt that there was any conflict between his theories and beliefs, and the church did not interfere with his research. It was only because he was perfecting the theory in his later years that he was planning to run on a perfect circle. into a misunderstanding."
The black eyes froze for a moment, thinking that the darkness of the witch hunt was due to the religious persecution at that time,
Thinking back to what I knew Galileo was tried and imprisoned by the church, Copernicus dared to publish his theory because he was afraid of authority when he was dying. Fangran listened to Osphia tell completely different facts, as if revealing the whole picture of history.
"Until now, the persecution of scientists by religion in that period is still in the perception of many people, and they still think that Bruno was burned to death for defending the heliocentric theory."
I searched the entire underground mine again, but found no suspicious clues or traces of participants' activities. I already judged in my heart that the cult incident here has nothing to do with the association.
Thinking that this was really just an ordinary incident, Osphia, who was a little more relaxed, looked at Fangran.
"It's ridiculous, just like many people in China still think that Qin Shihuang was a cruel emperor by burning books and burying Confucianism."
So surprised that he didn't know what to say, Fangran heard her say words that overturned his past common sense, and then heard Osfiya lower her voice.
"And the same goes for Witch Hunt."
"The official attitude of the Catholic Church has always been that witches do not exist at all, stop these superstitious and ignorant behaviors,"
Narrating the real situation of that era that could not be summed up by a word of "church persecution", through the scene of the cult group in front of him, Osfia seemed to be able to feel the darkness of that era.
"But it doesn't mean that every local church, secular monarchy, and ignorant people in remote villages can think so."
Hearing her mention of the horror and cruelty of witch hunting just now, I was speechless and stunned, thinking of the figure that became my salvation more than once,
Fangran learned about the witch's past for the first time.
"The background left by the Black Death, the persecution of royal power and aristocrats out of interests, the private actions of some religious forces, and more lynchings of ignorant people in remote villages, all kinds of complex reasons were born in the social period,"
Looking at the heretics who have already started to kneel down and pray, they thought that by burning those people to death, they could obtain the protection of the 'witch' and thus leave the bottom of the swampy and quagmire-like society. The ignorance and superstition are astonishingly similar as history repeats itself, making Osphia Speak solemn words in a low voice.
"What really led to the witch hunt... was the dark side of humans in that era."
Hearing her say this, Fangran suddenly remembered what Fan Erlinyin had said to him in the narrow space of the battlefield in the time scene,
Then at the moment when he was about to say something!
The prayers of the cultists below came to an end, and they were hiding on the steel beams supported by the underground mine pit. Fangran and Osfiya suddenly saw the leader revealing the thing they worshiped.
—A pitch-black spherical crystal.
An incredible moment of being stunned! ! !
The black eyes suddenly widened, and all kinds of irrelevant information flooded into my mind inexplicably, including the incident of the cult, the fall of the royal court, the dark energy crystal, the association plan, and the dark side of human beings I just heard about.
In the dark, I felt as if there was a certain relationship that could connect them in series, and the moment when the pupil of my right eye lit up subconsciously!
Fangran saw a line of information appear in his field of vision,
-'A container that can accommodate the dark side energy of the real world, and is made by special means from the crystallization of the dark world'-
Then the next second,
He saw an extra drop of pitch black liquid filling the dark energy crystal out of thin air.