"Fool!
"Now the whole town knows we're looking for that woman!"
The heavy wooden cane struck the middle-aged priest on the back, but he only let out a muffled groan and stood still, not daring to make the slightest other movement.
Vigilante justice is an indisputable crime under the doctrine of the Tree Worship Church, but it is commonplace in remote towns like White Wax Town, which are located on the outskirts of a province.
Long before Duolin took office, or rather, long before the arrival of the previous bishop, the bishop before that, and the bishop before that, Yiden had already established himself in the White Wax Town Parish.
With Duolin relinquishing authority, he has become the de facto ruler of the parish.
Seeing the middle-aged priest, who was even taller than himself, lower his head in shame, Yiden sighed with a hint of disappointment and said sarcastically:
"Breaking down the door, that's impressive."
"I thought it was the College of Cardinals ' High Tier- ranking guard, but it's you, you piece of trash!"
The middle-aged priest shrank back for a moment, hesitated for a second, and finally asked:
"Your Excellency, may I ask... what should I do?"
"I'm willing to do anything to fix this!"
Please give me a chance!
Although Yiden was slightly hunched over due to her age, she was now an absolute ruler in the dimly lit church.
He glanced sideways at the middle-aged priest from below:
"You're willing to do anything?"
"Yes, yes! Please give me a chance!"
"Good!"
Yiden immediately agreed, fearing that the other party might change their mind even a second later.
"I've already had them use their abilities to repair the inn's interior. As for you... just go and keep watch at the inn, as the owner."
"Huh?"
The middle-aged man subconsciously uttered a sound of doubt, but Yiden continued muttering to himself:
"Anyway, your heights are similar, and your frame sizes are about the same. It's just that your Aberration isn't as severe, so your body is in better condition."
The middle-aged priest nodded:
"Yes, Your Excellency, and..."
He looked at the man tied up like a dumpling in the corner of the small confessional:
"We don't look alike?"
"Yes, I know."
With a whooshing surge of Psionic Energy, the candlelight in the confessional flickered on, and Yiden turned around. The middle-aged man saw that the old man's right hand had transformed into a series of different-shaped knives.
"So..."
The delicate yet dense roots of the Boston Ivy spread across the middle-aged man's feet, causing him to break out in a cold sweat.
Yiden pressed closer by candlelight:
"I'll help you change your face."
"..."
"Say something."
Welcome!
"The pitch is a bit high, lower it a little."
Welcome!
"You're too emotionally charged. Be careful, try again."
Welcome.
"Yeah, it's basically the same as his. Remember this feeling, and don't ask me to redo it, or you'll be yelling even louder than before."
"Clear."
The blood-stained scalpel transformed back into fingers, Yiden casually wiped the half-dried blood between his fingers on his slightly faded priest's robe.
Behind him, the middle-aged priest had a new face, the horrible stitches hidden beneath his hair and the thick beard that ran from his ears to his chin.
They changed my face, removed some excess flesh, and smoothed down some of the bone...
For the previous two hours, Yiden had been completely immersed in her art.
A series of procedures transformed the middle-aged priest into the appearance of a hotel owner who had come to deliver a message.
"Sir, what should he do?"
"The hotel owner" asked, pointing to a man whose face was completely disfigured in the corner of the confessional.
Yiden was already walking out, glanced back and said indifferently:
"Doesn't he miss his daughter? Let's grant his wish."
The dark dungeon was damp and cold, with no distinction between day and night.
The White Wax Town Church is only a few dozen meters away from the riverbank, and the natural cave located below the church has become a place where moisture has gathered for thousands of years.
Occasionally, the extremely dense moisture condenses into a single drop of water, dripping from the top of the cave into a pit in the rock below.
Even such a faint sound was enough to make some children, who were half-asleep, catch their breath and wake up from their dazed state, fearing that they would be the next to be taken away.
Under the secret transformation by the Tree Worship Church, this natural cave has long been turned into a prison for experimental subjects, holding all the experimental subjects who are still alive in the White Wax Town Parish.
Their ages are generally between twelve and fifteen. Children who are too young cannot withstand some of the terrible experiments, while ordinary followers of the Tree Worship Church after the age of fifteen will enter a period of rapid decline.
For the Tree Worship Church and indeed the world, twelve or thirteen years old is considered adulthood in the secular sense, so they have no objection to it.
Of course, given the moral standards of these Fallen One, they wouldn't care about such things anyway.
The dungeon held more than thirty experimental subjects, both men and women, who were now randomly and roughly scattered into ten small caverns separated by logs.
In the silence that seemed to last until the end of the universe, a voice suddenly came:
Tiya, are you awake?
"Could you tell me more about the outside world? I'd also like to hear about the hotel."
"I'm awake, Number Four."
Another voice came from the nearby cave. Although it sounded gentle, it was actually the result of long-term malnutrition and lethargy.
Where did I leave off last time? I need to check if the story is repeated.
"I was talking about how your grandfather's inn hosted two guests from the Golden City, and then I fell asleep."
"Okay, then I'll continue from here..."
"Those two guests, though they looked no different from humans, were actually very rare Short-Eared Elf..."
"After they cured my great-grandfather's illness..."
"Squeak."
The most ordinary rubbing sound came through, just like the sound that any hinge in the world without lubricant would make.
But to these teenagers, such a sound was like a call from hell. The entire cave dungeon fell into dead silence immediately. Even Tiya, whose tone had been steady, trembled for a moment before quickly shutting up.
A beam of light shone down from the trapdoor above the cave; what the priests saw as a faint candlelight was the sun the boys longed for.
But such warmth is often accompanied by the misfortune of a companion; whenever the candlelight fills the cave, someone will be chosen and forcibly taken away.
He or she might return to the cave a day or three days later, or like most of their companions, they might never come back.
At its peak, this dungeon housed two to three times the number of people it has now, but most of the teenagers have died in countless experiments, and the remaining thirty-odd test subjects are mostly missing limbs.