This heretic cannot be burned, he must be hung up and whipped!

"In the name of the Thirteenth Saint—Saint Neos!"

The whip swung in the air with a bang, and the three mutating trench pilgrims were whipped and flew to the feet of the corpse monster. In the last moment of their lives, they regained consciousness and detonated the explosives on their bodies with a smile of relief.

Amos grabbed the last bottle of holy oil from his waist and smashed it against his shield. The blazing wall of candles and oil temporarily blocked the swarm of flies. He took the opportunity to whisper in Neos' ear:

"Let's go north! In the name of the Holy Father, I will carve a bloody path for you!"

Neos gazed at the hellish scene beyond the wall of fire. Soldiers infested by flies continued to chant the Lord's holy name, their flesh and blood constantly reassembling in the tug-of-war between blue light and plague.

At a certain moment, he seemed to see countless transparent threads rising from the heads of the believers and all connected to himself.

"Father Amos!" Sergeant Valentine suddenly said, "We can't get to the rear! Take those who can still move and retreat to the abandoned church in the southeast!"

"It's too risky. It doesn't matter if we go to see the Holy Father now, but the Saints still need to carry out the will of the Holy Trinity in the mortal world—"

"You are just afraid that the saint will be dragged into the hands of the Catholic Church. It's already a certain time and you still care about this. Let's go!" Valentine shouted anxiously.

PS: Amos is an Eastern Orthodox Christian who believes in the Trinity of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the Trinity, the Father is the most important person, while Valentine and his friends are Catholics.

"Boom!" Another pilgrim detonated the martyrdom device on his body.

The moment the shockwave tore through the veil of flies, Neos, hoisted onto Amos's shoulders, ran furiously. He could feel the priest's muscles twitching beneath his black robe—the larvae that had burrowed into the cracks of his boots were gnawing at his ankles, but the giant's speed didn't slow at all.

"Left!" Valentine's voice was hoarse. The sergeant's right forearm had sprouted mantis-like bone blades. He pulled the safety pin on the grenade and blew the pursuing monster, along with the fly, into a pulp. But when the shrapnel ripped his cheek, pus and blood oozed out.

By the time the church spire came into view, Neos's eardrums were already seeping with blood. The fluttering of the plague flies was mingled with a low-pitched roar inaudible to humans: the blasphemous words of Beelzebub, Lord of Hell, emanating from the insect swarm.

He saw that the Madonna in the church's stained glass was crying - no, countless fly eggs were rolling down the window lattices and piling up on the stone steps to form a disgusting carpet of flesh.

"The church's protective power still exists! The power of the Lord of Hell cannot enter! Quick!!"

Amos used his blackened shield to smash open the oak door, and the rotten hinges groaned in their death throes. As the last wounded man was dragged into the church crypt, the setting sun, filtering through the iron-gray clouds, was tinting the stained glass image of the Virgin Mary a dark red.

"We are safe...for now."

.........

In the dim candlelight, Neos staggered and fell to the edge of the baptismal font.

"Lead... salt..." Neos trembled, pulling off the brass candlesticks from the altar. As his fingers touched the metal, a memory that didn't belong to him suddenly flooded back—a memory of a medieval alchemist's deathbed. The old man, using the same copper vessels to refine mercury, had a vision of hell when he inhaled the vapors.

Even if there weren't these monsters breathing in mercury vapor, they would have to go to heaven to dig trenches sooner or later.

With a flash of blue light, that memory came to an abrupt end, replaced by some "scientific" epidemic prevention measures.

Neos' profile flickered in the blue light as he began to prepare. His movements, as precise as clock parts, formed an eerie harmony with the mottled murals of the Last Judgment on the wall. Amos once again thought of the miracle he had just witnessed - even the historical saint Joan of Arc could not have done what he had just seen.

"Lord Saint Neos, what do you need?" Amos knelt on one knee, the filter canister of his gas mask long since corroded by the acid. He was covered in small wounds, but the fanaticism in his eyes shone brighter than ever.

"My eyes can help you observe, my ears can--"

"Quiet 3 is like a spirit, two traps and eight deaths!" Neos suddenly shouted.

"Call me Neos." Neos coiled the copper wire into a coil in the blue light. "Or Mr. Neos, I'm not a god, nor am I a god's spokesperson. I'm just an ordinary person with some special abilities."

Amos's eyelids twitched under his gas mask. This title clearly pained him. But he still lowered his head obediently:

"Follow the will of the Holy Trinity, Mr. Neos. Our church cellars usually store holy oils and ammunition, enough to hold out until reinforcements arrive..."

PS: The Orthodox Church generally calls it the Holy Trinity, and they believe that Christ is a trinity.

"I don't know if there are any reinforcements."

Neos fixed the modified coil in the baby baptism pool. "But I know of another method that can control the plague."

"Neos, the church has not yet developed a vaccine to deal with the Black Death." Valentine used a bayonet to prick the rotten wound, and the previous mutated visions on his body completely disappeared, as if everything just now was just an illusion.

"You even know about vaccines? I thought your medical technology was still at the stage of bloodletting and leeches! Really, after fighting for over 800 years, it's really unacceptable that medical technology hasn't kept up."

PS: Leech therapy can be traced back to ancient Egypt in 1500 BC, and this therapy is also recorded in Aristotle's literature.

Neos was a little surprised, then he pointed to the cellar and said, "Go to the cellar and find some lead and salt. I need some disinfectant. I don't think there's any penicillin, but disinfectant can kill the plague bacteria. I saw that the church has electric lights - finally, something modern. Connect the engine, quick!"

Neos uses the method that Germany used to produce chlorine. He electrolyzes sodium chloride solution to generate chlorine. The chlorine dissolves in water to form hydrochloric acid, hypochlorous acid, and perchloric acid (don't ask about the chemical formula, Bei Zhai has forgotten it all), which is disinfectant.

A few minutes later, he ripped open the priest's collar and poured disinfectant on his wound. (Don't do this in real life; the highly corrosive nature of disinfectant is extremely harmful to the human body.) Amos's muscles tensed, but he clenched his teeth and didn't utter a single groan.

Valentine silently handed over the salt shaker, which contained brine brewed with holy salt. "I've read about this plague in church history books. It was like this when the Lord of Flies first released the Black Grail into Europe over five hundred years ago... Nearly a third of the population of Europe died, almost all of them."

"Fortunately, Saint Joan of Arc led us to expel the Black Holy Grail from Europe. Now, we have a new saint." Amos nodded.

"Neos, why do you use the church's holy relics to do... these mechanical tricks? The holy salt itself can suppress the Black Grail Plague." Valentine was a little confused.

"This is science, not some scrap of food prayed to the gods on the altar. It's a true 'man-made product' that can be mass-produced by machines." Neos looked him straight in the eye. "This is humanity's only hope for survival in this fucked-up world. I'm saving you."

When the last believer recovered under Neos' personal treatment, the last ray of setting sun cast a blood-red spot of light through the cracks in the church glass.

"The safety we have now is only temporary." Neos wiped the dirt off his body. His cuffs were stained with blood, a mixture of gold and black. "As long as we are within Beelzebub's domain, the mutation will not stop."

"My territory has limits. I can't take everyone with me. Now we're stuck."

A pilgrim who had been resting against the wall suddenly struggled to crawl over, the cross hanging from her body colliding with the ground. “Then we will expand your territory.”

She knelt before Neos and handed him a ritual dagger. "Drain my faith! Use my soul for fuel!"

Not knowing what the future held, the pilgrims chose the path they were most familiar with - sacrifice.

Sacrifice has been the cornerstone of human survival for the past eight hundred years.

More hands reached out to Neos, carrying a new warmth. He looked at these believers. Their faces were no longer filled with fanaticism, but only with hope for the future.

He suddenly understood the meaning of the word "respectable" that Amos priest had said at the beginning.

During these eight hundred years of hell, it was by packaging madness as sacred that humans avoided completely degenerating into beasts.

There was a loud noise outside the church, as if a building had collapsed. The roar of the six-armed corpse monster shook the stained glass windows and made them fall.

"Anathema! How many souls can your 'scientific miracles' save?"

Silence spread among the crowd. Suddenly, Amos drew out a dagger, cut his palm, and smeared the blood on the cross on his chest:

"Then please allow me to be the first believer to witness the miracle." He took off his gas mask, revealing a Slavic face.

"From this day forward, my whip will only be wielded to protect your truth."

After hearing this, the pilgrims resting nearby knelt on one knee, imitated Amos's movements, looked at Neos and spoke their oaths of allegiance in unison.

He heard the repeated oaths, their voices carrying a hope he hadn't felt in eight hundred years, so heavy it nearly suffocated him. This time, he saw no fanaticism, no sadness, and no despair. He finally saw something more precious than faith in these human eyes—hope.

Outside the church, the muffled sound of plague flies hitting the glass continued. Neos looked at the believers' hopeful faces and suddenly realized that he was standing at a dangerous critical point:

These broken souls are both his sharpest sword and his most fragile shackles.

The blue light shone from his body again, and this time, everyone heard the buzzing in their heads.

PS: Thanks to @{"reader_id":"7717402","reader_name":"Griffinの神錢"} for the treasure chest. This treasure chest will be included in the extra chapter after this book is on the shelves!

PS2: Thank you to all the book friends for your support to Bei Zhai. I was very happy to read the encouragement and suggestions from everyone in the comment section, so I wrote a little more in this chapter to make everyone happy!

PS3: I already wrote "the cursed" in the last part, so I think my fellow fans should have completely understood it (laughs)

PS4: Update bill next week (details in the Miscellaneous Volume) early mobilization! 180 votes for the next update starting at 4k!

In Flames: 1914: Chapter 10: My Disbelief in God Does Not Mean I'm Going to Hell (4.5k)

“Buzz——” “Snap!”

The low buzzing sound in everyone's head suddenly disappeared after reaching a limit, followed by a crisp sound as if some boundary was broken.

Everyone looked at each other in bewilderment. The sound did not come from reality, but exploded directly deep in everyone's skull.

“Uh——” “Hiss——” “Wow!”

What followed was a pain from deep within his soul. Priest Amos suddenly covered his temples, as if countless ice spikes were piercing his brain.

He stumbled back a step, his back hitting the mottled stone wall of the church. In the flickering candlelight, he saw the expressions of the pilgrims in the trenches around him were equally distorted - some had their eyes wide open, and some clutched the cross on their chests tightly, as if to crush the metal salvation.

"Zi-ZiZi-"

Reality seemed to begin to distort, the solemn murals on the top of the church began to deform, and in a trance, there seemed to be something strange and bizarre - no, it was not something humans could understand! What exactly was that thing?! Amos tried to see it carefully - no, was it it or them? They?

"What's with all your expressions?" Neos' voice penetrated the chaos and brought Priest Amos back to reality.

Everyone looked at each other in silence, but they could see the remaining fear in each other's eyes.

"Mr. Saint Neos! Just now—hiss—eh?"

Amos rubbed his eyes and looked at Neos - he was standing beside the baptismal font, and the blue light enveloped the entire church like waves. The blood and tears of the statue of the Virgin Mary on the wall faded away in the halo, which seemed to be an illusion, revealing her original compassionate smile.

Neos followed Amos's gaze and looked at the image of the Virgin Mary on the dome:

"What's wrong? I think this painting of the Virgin Mary is quite charming and beautiful, isn't it?

Isn’t she *supposed* to look like this?

Valentine stared intently at the now perfectly normal mural and murmured, "Yes, that's exactly how she should look now. There's nothing wrong with her, Neos."

Neos saw that everyone present had a grim look on their faces. Considering the current special situation, he had to ask clearly: "What do you all have such expressions? It seems like you have seen something extraordinary. Let me explain first, I don't understand this blue light myself. If you conceal your illness and don't report it, I can't save you!"

"Saint Neos, just now, I seem to have some... some blasphemous thoughts in my head. I may need to take some holy water to heal. Hell may be trying to bewitch me!" Priest Amos hesitated for a moment and continued to say to Neos:

"These thoughts are truly terrifying! No wonder the great saints in history all possessed such strong wills and faith!"

Amos took a deep breath, the lingering smell of disinfectant tingling in his nostrils. He looked down at his calloused hands, memories flooding back like a broken dam.

.......

Twelve-year-old Amos knelt on the frozen riverbank, his eyelashes frosted. Behind him lay a village on the Ukrainian plains that had not been swallowed by hell.

"The Holy Father needs your devotion."

The obscene voice of the black-robed priest was more piercing than the cold wind. In his hand was a gilded Bible, the cover of which was inlaid with a holy cross.

"Every ten households must offer one child as a 'purification sacrifice'."

Amos's eight-year-old cousin was dragged out of the crowd, her ankles purple from the cold exposed under her tattered cotton jacket.

"No! She hasn't been baptized yet!" His second aunt screamed and rushed towards the priest, but was knocked to the ground by two knights with spears.

The frozen soil was so hard that it could be used as iron felt. Her forehead was broken and blood splattered on the snow to form a twisted cross.

"An unbaptized soul is fit to be offered to the Holy Father." The priest smiled as he opened the Bible. A ruby-encrusted dagger slipped from the pages. "The flame will cleanse her sins."

"Cut her ankles and take her away!"

Amos suddenly remembered how he had bitten his lip to stifle a roar. He remembered that when she was pressed to the ice, the reflection in her pupils was not of heaven, but of his own cowardly face.

.......

More and more memories began to emerge, from everything his companions had experienced as a child, to the faces of the priests when his village was conscripted by the church as an adult, and then after joining the army, when he could have easily prevented civilian casualties, but he still let them sacrifice in the name of the Holy Father...

Normally he never seemed to think about whether what the church did was right or not, but now he began to feel that something was wrong.

"Mr. Saint Neos..." Amos's voice was hoarse as a rusty gear. He ripped open his collar, revealing the wound just below his collarbone that Neos had treated. The wound was shaped very much like his cousin's cut ankle.

"I...I need to take holy water...right now."

"Is hell bewitching you?" Neos narrowed his eyes, and blue light condensed into electric-like lines in his palm.

"No, it's just that a lot of past events suddenly came to my mind, and I had some... somewhat blasphemous thoughts."

The church suddenly fell silent. The trench pilgrims looked at each other, some unconsciously touching the church emblem on their weapons as if it were a hot iron.

Sergeant Valentine's memories were even more gory.

During the Battle of Cordoba in 1913, he was ordered to execute twelve deserters who were “suspected of being possessed by demons.” Church inquisitors bound their limbs to a Catherine wheel, where the iron spikes crushed their bones inch by inch as the wheel turned.

"Confess your crimes!" The inquisitor held up a silver chalice filled with the blood of the tortured. "Repent to the Lord, and your souls can still be saved!"

A teenager screamed in agony: "My only sin was believing the church would protect us! You have betrayed God!"

"Spreading rumors to confuse the people!" "Bang!"

Valentine remembered how steady his hand had been as he pulled the trigger—the Inquisitor had called it a "shot of mercy." But now, in the blue light, he could clearly see the sneer on the boy's lips as he drew his last breath. It wasn't the mockery of a demon, but despair at the hypocrisy of the church.

Valentine began, "To be precise, I suddenly felt that the church was a little... a little extreme."

"Actually...me too." "Yes, Mr. Neos, I have a lot of terrible thoughts in my head!" "This must be the conspiracy of the Lord of Hell! They can't seduce our saints, so they want us to be like the traitor Judas and betray Saint Neos and the Lord!"

Everyone nodded. Decades of all-round ideological infiltration from the church had come into serious conflict with their current rational thinking, so much so that they would rather believe that they were bewitched by hell.

"Then...what do you think of hell now?" Nothing happened in Neos' mind. When he saw everyone looking worried, a hint of worry appeared between his brows.