"Has touring the prisons of every country become our regular vacation itinerary? If reality were a video game, we'd definitely unlock the achievement for 'Prison Connoisseur.'"
Yaxiu muttered in self-deprecating amusement, feeling along the wall padding.
"More than that. You could also unlock achievements like 'Instant Defeat,' 'Champion Punching Bag,' and 'If I Lose by an Inch, It Counts as a Win,'" Igola replied listlessly, lying on the padded floor.
"Exactly! I was truly just an inch away from turning the tables," Yaxiu said, biting his fingernail. "It’s just a pity I had so little time to master the Myriad Calamities Fire. Besides, she could actually combine the power of four grand laws to ambush an out-of-towner like me who barely just arrived... If not for the faulty intel from those Calamitous Fire cultists, if not for my lack of training time, and if she hadn't fooled me with that harmless, non-combatant appearance of hers, victory would definitely have been mine!"
Igola gave him a side-eye. "What I meant wasn't 'You only lost by an inch, so count it as a win.' I meant 'Even if you’re beaten down until only an inch of you is left, let's call it a win'—you were crushed so thoroughly you couldn't even strike back, yet you can still dig up this many excuses. What else can I do? I have no choice but to let you have the win."
With folded arms, Yaxiu nodded repeatedly. "I completely understand now. In your heart, I've already won. I'm truly touched!"
Igola's face twisted in exasperation. Beside him, Harvey snorted with laughter and remarked languidly, "Still, Yaxiu really isn't the one to blame this time. Even the First Gospel wouldn't have been able to reverse the situation... Could the Omniscient Weaver have anticipated this long ago and sent a defective knockoff like Yaxiu just to make do?"
"Quite possible. After all, the First Gospel is the avatar of the Omniscient Weaver," the swindler pondered. "This should have been a magnificent opportunity for the Omniscient Weaver to infiltrate this country, yet the Omniscient Weaver chose to shove Yaxiu in instead... Either the Omniscient Weaver looks down on this country entirely, or sending the First Gospel wouldn't have helped anyway, so it simply cut its losses and used Yaxiu to hoodwink the Holy Temple of Calamitous Fire."
"Could you two wait until we're out and I'm not around before roasting me? Right now, let's figure out a way to break out of this cell," Yaxiu grumbled. "Why are both of you acting as relaxed as if you're back at home?"
Harvey replied, "To be frank, seeing you so tense feels weirder to me."
"And why do you think we even have a shot at escaping?" Igola said. "Right outside is the Four Pillar Cult's headquarters. Even if we could break out of this cell, how far could we get?"
"That wasn't what you were saying earlier!" Yaxiu said. "Back at the Holy Temple of Calamitous Fire, you were practically dead set on running. How come you gave up and went horizontal the moment the Four Pillar Cult caught you? How much did the Four Pillar Cult pay you?"
"Because I knew next to nothing about the Holy Temple of Calamitous Fire," Igola said nonchalantly. "As for the Four Pillar Cult—if we count you, their cult leader—this is already our third encounter with them. Surely that qualifies us as old friends, doesn't it?"
"Furthermore," the swindler sat up and patted the padded wall, "we couldn't break through this cell even if we tried. This place is probably—"
"Your office?" Harvey chimed in.
Igola shook his head. "Though I worked part-time as a psychotherapist, I never served as a psychiatric rehabilitation specialist."
This was an enclosed space of roughly twenty-five square meters. The floor, walls, and ceiling were entirely lined with azure padding, and even the toilet looked as though it were molded from a slime-like soft substance. Warm light seeped through the seams between the pads, filling the room so thoroughly that not a single shadow could be seen.
Although the heinous trio had never set foot in such a place before, the environmental clues were all too complete—
This was a treatment room meant for confining psychiatric patients!
Once Yaxiu was beaten into submission, Igola immediately grabbed Harvey and surrendered. Interestingly, upon seeing the grand law of Myriad Calamities Fire seized, the red-robed priests completely lost their fighting spirit and gave up all resistance. The Calamitous Fire believers who had fought so stubbornly to hold the line also laid down their arms. Nor did the Four Pillar Cult unleash a slaughter; they simply destroyed the Holy Temple of Calamitous Fire, sent people to take over the territory, and escorted away all the sorcerers.
Wars in this world seemed to operate on an unwritten rule: the grand law was everything. As long as the grand law endured, all was permitted; once the grand law fell, all was naught.
Their mode of transportation had also been bizarre: a maglev train pulled by pack beasts. Indeed, carriages of a maglev train, hauled across the terrain by beasts of burden resembling half-ox, half-horse creatures, floating above the ground without need for tracks. Such a postmodern blend of designs subjected not just Igola, but even Yaxiu and Harvey, to a severe aesthetic trial.
Truth be told, the "ox-horse train" wasn't slow at all, nor was it uncomfortable; its stability even far exceeded Gospel's hovercars. The journey had originally presented their best window of escape, but Yaxiu was relentlessly questioned by that woman the entire time, while Harvey was repeatedly held back by Igola whenever he twitched to act. A few hours later, they arrived at the Four Pillar Cult's encampment.
The Four Pillar Cult's base was much like the Holy Temple of Calamitous Fire, both cities erected over ruins. Only when Yaxiu and the others were locked inside this cell did they realize the original nature of these ruins—it was a psychiatric hospital!
It was worth mentioning that the Blood Moon Country did possess psychiatric hospitals. After all, such illnesses could be congenital or acquired. Those with congenital cases were naturally "re-rolled" immediately, but nothing could be done for acquired ones; after all, physiological and psychological disorders of that sort were difficult for healers to treat.
Even though the people of Blood Moon had developed the habit of regularly visiting psychologists, the profession with the highest proportion among psychiatric patients was psychologists themselves—those who constantly pull others from the mire eventually find the ground beneath their own feet turning to mud.
Although not all infants qualified to survive in Blood Moon, every infant who did live was entitled to full welfare benefits: social child support, medical and old-age care, and unemployment relief.
Indeed, as long as you stayed away from consumerism, sugar, gambling, mud cafes, and tea cafes, you could coast through life doing nothing in Blood Moon. The state would provide room and board, keeping you fed until you became experimental material for the Blood Saint clan. Aside from having to endure multi-minute ads while watching shows and serving as entertainment fodder for others when playing games, ordinary people could live rather comfortably, enjoying modern technology to their hearts' content.
It was just that in a nation steeped in anxiety, discrimination, mania, and temptation, degeneration was inevitable. People had no place they could truly call their own.
Viewed from that angle, psychiatric patients were the only demographic capable of resisting that degeneration; after all, they had finally found a place where they belonged.
The Holy Temple of Calamitous Fire traced its orthodoxy to a bathhouse, and the Four Pillar Cult garrisoned a psychiatric hospital. As difficult as it was to accept, it made a strange kind of sense upon reflection.
However, a second problem had now presented itself: Yaxiu and the others couldn't damage this ward cell at all!
Their sorcery power wasn't suppressed, nor were their sorcery spirits banned, yet three Sanctuary Sorcerers couldn't inflict the slightest scratch on this room!
The padding here absorbed one hundred percent of kinetic energy and all sorcery damage! Yaxiu's Honeyed Words and Daggered Heart, Harvey's death-energy corrosion—Igola had even pulled a silenced handgun from his spatial card to take a shot, yet none of it could leave even a faint mark on the cushions.
No wonder the Four Pillar Cult felt so secure locking them in here; they couldn't even break the toilet!
Yaxiu and the others had even wondered if this was a custom-made ward specifically built to contain lunatic Legendary Sorcerers, but Igola recalled that he seemed to have caught sight of an azure pad concealed beneath the robes of the black-cloaked sorcerers.
In other words, the Four Pillar Cult had likely stripped the padding from the other wards of this psychiatric hospital and turned them into soft armor for their cultists!
Indeed! Material capable of nullifying every kind of damage ought to be forged into armor—why had anyone been lavish enough to use it to line psychiatric wards in the first place?!
Chapter 522