The prisoners quickly stopped their cursing—because they discovered that whenever they used foul language, the Executioners behind them rapidly swelled in size.
That was why only idiots ended up on death row; they had actually forgotten that hundreds of thousands of Kaimeng City residents were watching them swear.
The viewers saw this and thought: *Great! Nice cursing! Filthy and vulgar enough! Here’s a vote for you—die early and reincarnate sooner!*
Once the scene quieted down, Nagu said leisurely, "That you feel pain is not a problem with our arrangement, but a problem with yourselves. As I said, as long as you genuinely repent, you will not be affected by the Purging Flame. The Purging Flame burns sin and consumes delusion.
"Besides, not everyone feels pain. Look at Mr. Yaxiu Heath and Mr. Valkas Ur. They are entirely unaffected by the Purging Flame. Please learn from their example."
Only then did the agonized inmates notice that Yaxiu and Valkas were pressed almost flush against their Executioners. The roiling Purging Flame passed straight through their bodies, yet both remained standing straight.
"If you feel pain, all the more reason to seize this chance to be cleansed by the Purging Flame, repent your crimes, and turn over a new leaf." Nagu did not sound sarcastic; it was as if he were earnestly urging them to confess. "The Blood Moon Sovereign and the citizens of Kaimeng will see your sincerity."
"I admit my wrongs, I admi—*aaaaagh!*"
Harvey was crying and running at the nose from the sheer agony. His gaunt face twisted like warped wood grain, more than half his body hung over the edge of the platform, and his hands gripping the steel wire were sliced open down to the bone.
Yet perilous and tormenting as that was, it didn't compare to a single lick from the Purging Flame!
"You must thoroughly recognize how unforgivable your past mistakes were and make a clean break with your past, sin-ridden self before you can receive the Blood Moon's forgiveness."
The corners of Nagu's mouth curved upward. "Of course, there is also a shortcut: as long as you continually let the Purging Flame burn you, the wicked soul will be reduced to ashes, and what remains will naturally be a good soul."
Though it sounded utterly absurd, Yaxiu didn't think Nagu was lying—at least, not on a live broadcast watched by the entire populace.
Which meant the Purging Flame could effectively split personalities—using immense, unrelenting pain to fracture off a virtuous persona from the condemned inmate, and then brutally torturing the original persona to death!
Hearing this, nearly every death row inmate wished they could dangle themselves entirely from the steel wire.
Compared to death, they found the total destruction of their souls even harder to stomach!
"I get it... I get it..."
Yaxiu looked at Harvey, who was muttering beside him. Harvey gave a sob, the corner of his mouth twitching. "We're all done for this time..."
Yaxiu asked curiously, "What are you afraid of? Didn't they say only one person dies in the Blood Moon Trial? Just endure it for a bit, and it'll be over soon."
"Not every Blood Moon Trial has the same outcome, and what we're facing this time is one of the rare exceptions." Harvey's weeping sounded like laughter. "I remember now. Old man Renn mentioned that a prominent figure in the Andrem faction would die soon, and a large batch of administrative officers and councilors would be purged..."
"What does a political shift have to do with the Blood Moon Trial?"
"Between a serial killer and an administrative officer exposed for graft and corruption, which one do you think makes for better viewing in a Blood Moon Trial?"
Yaxiu understood.
The entertainment value of an execution was directly proportional to the convict's former social status.
"The political struggles in the Blood Moon Country are the cruelest of all. Which administrative officer or councilor who rises to power doesn't have blood on their hands? The winners take all, while the losers face trial to be wrung dry of every last drop of social value. It gives the populace closure and serves as a warning to other bureaucrats—warning them to handle things more discreetly, to leave no trace of evidence..."
"You know quite a bit."
"Whose corpses do you think I used to dispose of?"
"Even if we're getting new cellmates, what does that have to do with the Blood Moon Trial suddenly sharing the misery with everyone?"
Harvey looked utterly aggrieved. "There aren't enough cells."
Yaxiu was stunned, a whole field of obscenities sprouting in his mind.
It made total sense!
Since there weren't enough rooms, kill off a few people to free up space for the soon-to-be disgraced bureaucrats. A reason like that was so brutally practical it left one not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Because the prison was too crowded, they had to die.
What a ludicrous, cruel, and blunt piece of logic.
"Ugh!"
At that moment, Harvey gritted his teeth, hung his entire body from the steel wire, and began swinging forward toward the large platform.
With every swing, the steel wire wore deeper into his palms, drawing fresh blood. Before long, the flesh of his palms was ground clean away, exposing hand bones that made one shudder to look at. Yet Yaxiu saw clearly that the bones were not ordinary pale white, but gleaming with silver light!
Once the flesh was ground off, Harvey's climbing speed suddenly shot up. Even as the wire scraped against bone with a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard, he seemed incapable of feeling the slightest bit of pain, his expression looking completely relaxed!
A sorcery spirit!
A sorcery spirit used to enhance bone defense?
The other condemned inmates also grabbed the steel wire to escape. Some had formidable skin defense, and the wire could only leave a red mark; some excelled at agility and simply sprinted along the wire; the most absurd was the ogre, who was actually a Temperature-faction sorcerer—rapidly cooling the wire to coat it in a thick layer of ice, then swinging forward to slide right across.
The prison truly was filled with talents—sweet-talkers each and every one, and gifted with all sorts of acrobatics besides.
Compared to these death row inmates fleeing in panic, Yaxiu, unaffected by the Purging Flame, naturally had much more time to think.
He turned around and looked at Nagu standing on the ocean-view platform behind them.
Nagu noticed his gaze, clasped his hands behind his back, and smiled faintly. "An excellent thought. Rather than treading the wire and struggling within the Blood Moon's rules, why not break them and flee backward into the prison?"
...
"Oh, right!"
The patrons at the Red Mist Bar Café suddenly had an epiphany. "Wouldn't jumping back into the prison bypass this whole setup and get them out of the Blood Moon Trial?"
"Aren't there any other traps?"
"Just letting the death row inmates dodge the torment like that? What is Shattered Lake Prison thinking? How could such a fun trial format have such a massive oversight?"
"Bunch of sons of bitches! Refund our money!"
Lorence keenly noticed that Yaxiu Heath's odds had suddenly dropped from 1.65 down to 1.45, indicating that Boss Snake sensed Yaxiu's chances of 'hitting the jackpot' had risen substantially and promptly adjusted the odds to avoid taking a loss.
A moment's thought was all it took for the fishman to understand why Shattered Lake Prison had set it up this way.
The reason the Blood Moon Trial had swept the entire nation for decades wasn't just its spectacular entertainment value; it was also its exceptional interactivity.
An obvious little loophole like this was actually deliberately left behind by the prison as an interactive segment to give the audience a thrill—allowing them to snuff out the convicts' hopes with their own hands!
Was there any entertainment more pulse-pounding than bestowing despair?
Chapter 54