Originally, the priests' forceful words had painted each of these people as individuals seduced by devils, seeking to drag everyone into Hell God, where they would forever be denied the radiance of the gods. Quite a few people seemed to have been persuaded.
Some had even been ready to shout for these people to be burned to death!
But as voices rose from within the crowd, the situation changed noticeably. The oppressive atmosphere and the flood of flyers had already caused some people to question the church, though they had not dared show it outwardly.
But upon hearing that most of those burned alive had been people around them—the owner of a soup shop, the beggar at the entrance, an employee at a department store—some of them unable even to read, some outright blind, yet still chosen to be burned to death, they began to wonder: would they be next?
Unrest immediately spread through the crowd.
"What happened?"
"What's going on?"
"What? That man had been blind for years already?"
"He couldn't even read?! Aren't they just arresting people at random?"
"I think those papers mentioned that some churches deliberately grab a few people and burn them alive to scare everyone else. It was called... killing chickens to frighten monkeys?!"
"Damn it! We're all followers of the War God. We left our homes to come here—was it just to gamble with our lives?"
The disturbance within the crowd grew increasingly intense, and the priest standing atop the platform seemed to notice something unusual.
In the past, whenever something like this happened, the people would either cheer that the killing was well deserved or lower their heads in silence. When had anything like this ever happened?
A sense of unease rose in his heart.
He decisively abandoned the ordinary flames and