Court No. 23.

This is the first witch trial held today.

The witch number one who was brought up and tied to the central pillar was a young girl who looked to be no more than sixteen or seventeen years old. She opened her mouth and seemed to want to say something, but could only make some broken and residual sounds.

Even so, the guard next to her sternly said, "No noise is allowed in the courtroom! Shut up!"

"She can't hear." The bishop sitting above said coldly, "She is a deaf-mute. Shield her mouth first."

The guard blocked the shivering girl's lips with a piece of cotton cloth. She looked at the people around her with a confused and frightened expression on her face - she seemed not to understand what she was going through, and no one explained to her what was happening.

"Your mother defected on the day she was declared a witch, so we had to try you next. Then we found out that you were born deaf and speechless." The bishop said coldly, not caring whether she heard it or not. "There are so many children born in this world, why are you the only one born deaf and dumb?"

"God never punishes good people. You have been deprived of your hearing and speech ability. It must be that you have done something to make God angry, so he will punish you."

"——For example, you are an evil witch who was born into this world!"

Although she couldn't hear it, the bishop's obvious expression of disgust and accusation still made the girl subconsciously shake her head in fear. Her eyes were filled with tears and she kept waving her hands, trying to explain with sign language, but her hands were tied tightly.

Someone nearby couldn't help but whisper in defense of the girl: "Your Excellency the Bishop, this child is blind and deaf, and has stayed at home since she was born. She has never been out and has never done anything bad. She can't be a witch, right?"

"No noise is allowed in the church." The bishop looked at the man coldly. "You defended this witch who is waiting to be tried. Are you bewitched by this witch and want to be tried together with her?"

The man's neck shrank and he closed his mouth reluctantly.

He was a neighbor of the child's family and had watched the child grow up. After the child's mother was reported as a witch and the trial was confirmed, the child and her father were dragged to other courts for trial. Now in the court, there was no one left to speak for the child, so after he got the jury qualification, he thought about it and decided to come - at least he could say a few words for this speechless child.

But the facts prove that in front of the Vatican, it makes no difference whether you are dumb or not - no matter what your excuse is, you will be convicted.

"But God is not so cruel." The bishop changed the subject. "Originally, witches like you should be tested with holy fire, but now the war is urgent, and there are not enough women in the country who can digest eels. The Church is not so unsympathetic."

“So we changed the way we test.”

The bishop waved his hand carelessly: "To the eel box."

The guard pushed a box full of eels in front of the girl. The girl looked at the box of eels in fear. She seemed to realize what was going to happen and struggled violently.

The bishop was unmoved. "If you can digest this box of eels in court and still maintain your sanity, and not be deceived by the devil and degenerate into a witch, and swear to be loyal to the Church forever, and always clean and digest eels for all mankind, and come to the Church every month to receive the eel digestion quota - which is roughly the amount you see in front of you, we can release you without charge."

Under the Bishop's hand, the guards untied the girl from the pillar and made her kneel in front of the box of eels. They pressed her twisting head in front of the box, ripped the cloth from her mouth, and ordered arrogantly and disgustedly: "To prove that you are not a witch, start swallowing."

"Hurry up! There are still many witches to be judged today. Don't waste our time."

The girl clenched her teeth, her eyes were red, her thin shoulders were trembling, and she was unwilling to speak.

The guard cursed secretly and began to pry her mouth open, forcing her to start swallowing.

Mu Sicheng, who was hiding in the jury, felt his blood pressure rise sharply and he clenched his fists in an instant. Tang Erda's face was so gloomy that water could drip out of it, and the gun in his hand was already loaded.

"Fuck." Mu Sicheng cursed, "Are they beasts?!"

The girl reminded them of Jiayi.

"Do you want to take action?" Mu Sicheng turned and looked at Tang Erda.

Tang Erda shook his head calmly: "It's easy to hurt her if we attack now. The guards are too close to her."

"But we can't just stand there and watch her..." Tang Er paused, "Wait another thirty seconds. If that doesn't work, we'll just rush in and rescue her."

Mu Sicheng took a deep breath and made an OK gesture.

"Wait, Your Excellency the Bishop, before she starts, should I pray for purification for her?" A brisk female voice came, interrupting the guard's action of forcing the girl to swallow the eel.

Mu Sicheng and Tang Erda were shocked the moment they heard the voice, and they turned their heads abruptly to look over there.

The blue-eyed girl with long curly blond hair was wearing a pure white nun's uniform. She clenched her fists in front of her body in a gesture of prayer. She looked at the bishop with her sparkling eyes and pleaded sincerely, "Can I pray for her before the interrogation begins? This is my job as a nun. Please don't refuse me."

After seeing Phoebe's expression, the bishop's heart began to beat wildly. He almost with difficulty moved his eyes away from the small piece of white skin exposed on Phoebe's chest, made a gesture of invitation, and stammered: "Of course! If you don't mind the other party's filthiness."

Phoebe smiled sweetly and bowed slightly: "Thank you, Bishop, for granting my willful request."

The bishop was simply mesmerized by this rumored most beautiful new nun. He leaned forward and spoke to Phoebe with a dazed look in his eyes. He seemed to have forgotten the witch to be tried in the audience. "But how come you came here so soon? You should still be in the No. 1 Church. The trial of the No. 1 Church has not started yet."

"Really?" Phoebe winked playfully. "Maybe it's because of my help that today's trials ended extra quickly. All the witch trials in the court have ended, Your Excellency the Bishop."

"Believe me, your trial here will end soon today."

Phoebe raised the corners of her mouth and walked down, approaching the shivering girl. The arc of her smile was between saintly and cruel. She spoke in a soft voice: "--Soon, Your Excellency the Bishop will be able to finish your work and rest with my help like other bishops in the Tribunal."

"Forever~"

The bishop didn't hear Phoebe's words clearly and asked something in confusion, but Phoebe didn't answer. Instead, she jumped lightly twice and walked up the steps to the girl.

Phoebe raised her hand and slowly signed: "Are you a witch?"

The girl had tears in her eyes. She looked at Phoebe who walked in front of her with fear and a hint of expectation. This was the first person who was willing to communicate with her after she was caught here. When she was about to shake her head to deny it, she didn't know why, the shaking action suddenly stopped, and her fingers moved, as if she wanted to say something in sign language.

Phoebe raised her eyes and glanced at the guard next to her: "Untie her."

The guard hesitated for a moment, but finally untied the girl. The girl struggled with her hands, which had red marks on her wrists. She trembled and signed: "I don't know what a witch is."

"All I know is that my mother was convicted of being a witch."

"If she's a witch, then I should be too."

Phoebe squatted down with interest and said in sign language, "Witches will be tried by the church and will suffer a lot of torture. How dare you admit that you are a witch in front of me?"

The girl burst into tears. She anxiously and confusedly asked using sign language: "But they said my mother is a witch!"

"Mom is good, so the witch should be good too! Why do we have to judge the witch?"

"You're right." Phoebe smiled and signed, "I don't think there's any need to judge witches either."

After talking to the girl, Phoebe turned around and looked at the bishop with regret: "Your Excellency, she just admitted that she is a witch."

The bishop was stunned: "Yes, you admit it?"

"Since she admits that she is a witch, she should be burned to death with holy fire according to custom... Oh, no, is it a test for her?" Phoebe asked calmly.

"Since you've admitted it," the bishop hesitated, "then... let's go to the Holy Fire."

The torches were piled under the pillars, and the girl was carried back in confusion. The neighbors turned their heads away reluctantly, not wanting to see this cruel scene. Tang Erda and Mu Sicheng looked at each other and prepared to take action.

"She cannot speak or hear. This is the disability of her body. This is the punishment bestowed upon her by God. She was declared a witch and burned in hell. After death, her soul will suffer in burning pain and she will not be able to go to heaven." The bishop spoke righteously and recited the eulogy with a sympathetic look. At the end, he bowed his head and whispered, "May God forgive her sins."

The girl should have been very scared when people came towards her with torches, but when she looked at Phoebe standing right in front of her, she felt dazed and calm for some reason.

She looked at the blonde nun with a faint smile, who was signing to her as if she was chatting casually:

"You know what I like most about them using your physical deformity to declare you a witch?"

"You remind me of another witch."

"I haven't prayed sincerely for a long time, but today I will make an exception and pray for you."

The nun lowered her long, curly eyelashes to cover her emerald eyes and prayed innocently in a low voice: "May God bless her to heaven."

[System prompt: Player Phoebe uses skill (Prayer·Gospel)]

[This skill can confuse all NPCs and players within a certain range, making them open their hearts to the player, believe in everything the player does, feel close to the player, and involuntarily approach the player. ]

Phoebe's huge white wings spread out behind her, and the holy light filled the entire church, making people dizzy and dazed, as if they were indulging in a heavenly dream.

The moment Phoebe's wings popped out from behind her, Tang Erda, the sharp veteran player, grabbed Mu Sicheng, the novice who had not yet reacted, and quickly retreated. He quickly jumped onto the side wall of the church, climbed out from the hollow hole on the top, lay on it and looked at the scene inside, narrowly avoiding Phoebe's blessing range.

Watching the bishop in the church roll down from his seat and lie at Phoebe's feet, the guard suddenly put down his torch and knelt down to confess his sins, and the other men kneeled on the ground with dull expressions and crawled towards Phoebe, telling her their stories with reverence. Mu Sicheng patted his chest with a lingering fear: "Wow, this skill is too good, the range is so large."

Tang Erda's expression was not pretty: "She is stronger than I thought."

…She’s a control player, but she looks…very aggressive and aggressive.

Normal control and roaming players would be like Mu Ke, who would deliberately hide their presence, but Phoebe's presence was too obvious from beginning to end, which is not the characteristic of control and roaming players.

Phoebe was in control, a characteristic of a spiker and tactician.

"I suspect she is not only responsible for control and roaming." Tang Erda's tone became heavier, "She may also be the main attacker and tactician."

"Main attacker and tactician?!" Mu Sicheng was a little bit unbelievable, "Control, roaming, tactician, main attacker, this guy has taken on all of them. Is she a hexagonal warrior?!"

"She is a player of the same level as Bai Liu and Ni Shen. She will be a strong opponent when she grows up. This is only her first year participating in the league." Tang Erda's tone became increasingly low. "No wonder Jiayi assigned me to fight the Tribunal. Jiayi should have guessed that Phoebe is the main attacker and will come to sweep the Tribunal. With her offensive ability, I guess only you and I with high defense can withstand it."

“It’s a tough battle.”

In the courtroom, Phoebe walked slowly to the girl and untied the rope that bound her: "Leave now."

"Today's trial has nothing to do with you."

The girl looked at Phoebe's face in realization and signed: "Aren't you judging me? Why does it have nothing to do with me?"

"Why would I judge you?" Phoebe shrugged. She smiled, "Of course I would judge everyone except you. I don't like judging witches."

The girl looked at Phoebe in confusion, but soon, under the guidance of Gospel, she obediently left and helped her confused neighbor away. Before leaving, the girl looked back at Phoebe. Her brain was between clarity and chaos. She seemed to see Phoebe waving at her and smilingly said in sign language:

"Bye, Miss Witch."

Phoebe lowered her eyes, looked at the men crawling on the ground, and whispered, "Let me think about it. How can you end this better?"

"I've already tried burning myself to death, so why not -"

The white wings behind Phoebe fluttered lightly, flipped upward from the bottom, and turned into black bat wings. Her originally light green eyes darkened and emitted a ghostly glow. Two fangs appeared at the corners of her mouth, and two small red horns about one finger long grew on her forehead.

[System prompt: Player Phoebe is equipped with the monster book form "The Witch of Hell"]

Phoebe smiled like a little devil with her innocent face, her tone playful and vicious: "You judge people to go to hell all day long, how can you be so unlucky if you have never seen hell yourself?"

"Why don't you let me pray for you to go to hell today? This is also part of a nun's job."

[System prompt: Player Phoebe uses skill (Hell Prayer Song)]

[This skill can increase the damage of the entire team of the player by 400% (including the player himself) for 15 minutes, with a cooldown of 2 hours.]

The entire Vatican was instantly shrouded in dark shadows, and the ground seemed to have given rise to countless vengeful spirits. Cold winds blew and the chill penetrated into the bones. Countless sticky, shapeless ghostly corpses and skeletons crawled out from the ground. They grasped the hands and feet of the men who were not yet awake, and sucked their yang energy face to face, soon leaving only a skeleton of the man.

This hellish scene made Mu Sicheng completely dumbfounded: "...What is this?! Phoebe doesn't have this skill according to the information Wang Shun gave her! Isn't her ultimate skill a single-target bloodsucking attack?!"

Tang Erda frowned, "It's really a main attack, and a range attack. The King's Guild has hidden this card well enough. Phoebe didn't use this skill in the previous competition, and Wang Shun didn't get any inside information. This should be the trump card that the King's Guild prepared for the playoffs."

After the gospel ended, the bishop regained consciousness for a moment. He was grabbed by the hands and feet by 17 or 18 skeletons, who were sucking his life out of him. His face quickly became dry and shriveled. He looked at Phoebe standing in the middle of the courtroom in horror and asked in a dry and difficult voice, "Why...?!"

"Aren't you a nun?!"

"The Church has spent so much energy to train you, why do you stand on the side of the witches?!"

Phoebe sat on the high trial table, swinging her legs. She tilted her head and repeated the bishop's words in a puzzled tone: "Why?"

"It is true that you can win the game as a nun, and it is quite easy to win."

"But I can win if I stand on the witch's side. I chose to stand on the witch's side—" Phoebe spread her hands innocently with a cute smile on her face, "Of course it's because I like witches very much."

"Although they are not the same kind of witches, I like the fact that they use the same title."

Phoebe jumped down from the bench and stepped on the bishop's stupid head with a smile:

"Besides, killing cowardly and dirty men like you is really too easy. It doesn't take me much effort. It's just a matter of convenience. I am willing to do something for my hobby."

The bishop stared at Phoebe with his eyes wide open, struggled unwillingly twice, and turned into a skeleton.

"Two people who are peeking." Phoebe casually crushed the skull of the skeleton with one foot. She looked up at the empty space at the top of the courtroom and smiled harmlessly. "You don't think I used my ultimate skill just to kill these unimportant NPCs?"

Tang Erda's eyes narrowed, and he quickly grabbed Mu Sicheng's shoulders, turned around and jumped down from the top of the Vatican.

At the moment when Mu Sicheng was caught and jumped down, a huge hammer sound suddenly came from behind them. Mu Sicheng looked up at the huge hole where they had just hidden. There stood a man with a burning body, holding a huge bone half a person's height in his hand, and flames were also burning on the bone.

[System prompt: Player Liu Ji's equipment monster book identity "Burning Monster"]

[System prompt: Player Liu Ji uses skill (Flame Bone Hammer)]

[This skill burns 40 points of the player's health, increasing the original S-level damage by three times to SS level. ]

[Player Liu Ji is within the effective range of (Hell Prayer Song), and the increased damage is quadrupled again, increasing the damage to 12 times the original. One strike can penetrate the defense of the current top-level player, causing health damage between 20% and 25%. ]

The dome where they had just stood had now been completely smashed open, and there was a huge hole on the top of the church, as if it had been bombed by a missile. However, due to Phoebe's skill range, the church was still shrouded in darkness, and not a single ray of light could penetrate.

The burning Liu Ji jumped down from the hole in the dome. He smashed the bone hammer he was holding on the ground, creating a deep dent. The movement was so loud that Tang Erda and Mu Sicheng, who were standing steadily on the ground, were shocked.

It was the first time that Mu Sicheng felt such a huge attack force and pressure. He looked at the burning monster opposite him with a tingling scalp - was it his illusion? This guy's attack damage was so high that it felt like his health bar would drop by half after being attacked.

I didn’t have the same feeling when I saw Liu Ji in the Rose Factory before. What happened in between? !

Tang Erda's back muscles were completely tense. He took out his gun and stared at the witch Phoebe standing in front of him: "So the King's Guild didn't recruit a main attacker this year, not because you didn't prepare a main attacker, but because you made Liu Ji your main attacker. It's because you cooperated with him. This is your complete main attacker form, right?"

Phoebe's wings fluttered happily. She put her hands behind her back and smiled cheerfully, "No."

"But as long as I'm here, anyone in our guild can be the main attacker, so no matter how useless a person is, with my help, they can all make beautiful attacks."

Liu Ji, whose health is burning: …

Although, although it is the truth, but... it is so hurtful, Miss Phoebe QAQ.

"Now I believe you also understand the key to our confrontation." Phoebe walked towards Tang Erda and the others slowly. The smile on her face looked very friendly, but Tang Erda and Mu Sicheng retreated one after another. "We are all responsible for the main attack mission, and we are all the key main attackers in the team."

"——That means whichever side defeats the opponent first and can return to the Papal Palace to gather the majority of the troops, using the advantage in numbers to suppress the opponent, will gain the upper hand and grab the key to the ladder."

"That is to say..." Phoebe flapped her wings and disappeared. The next second, she appeared in front of Mu Sicheng almost out of thin air, grabbed Mu Sicheng's neck, and said in a cold tone, "Which side loses people first will lose."

"——Then let's get rid of the weak rookies in your main attacking team first."

Mu Sicheng's pupils constricted.