Hearing Nagu's words, the other death row inmates came to their senses as well.
*Right, why bother moving forward? Jumping back to the Sea-Viewing Platform works just as well to survive.* A distance of merely ten paces was hardly worth mentioning to death row convicts like them; even without the power of sorcerers, they had plenty of ways to cross that gap.
Yet when they looked back and saw Yaxiu's Executioner swelling once again at a speed visible to the naked eye, they immediately realized the catch. Cursing Nagu silently for his shamelessness while gloating over Yaxiu's predicament, they buried their heads and continued inching along the steel wires.
Going backward was a trap.
Nagu's words were the fuse that primed it.
Yaxiu took one glance back and knew he was in deep trouble. The moment Nagu said those words, Yaxiu saw his own vote count surging at an exponential rate.
The audience was anxious—they were panicking!
Nagu's words were entirely true. As long as Yaxiu leaped backward, he could disrupt the Blood Moon Trial's meticulous arrangement, rendering both the steel wire's grueling ordeal and the Purging Flame's searing burn completely irrelevant to him.
However, his pleasant experience would be an overt provocation to the audience. As a condemned prisoner, instead of repenting and acknowledging his sins during the Blood Moon Trial, he was escalating his defiance and attempting to break the rules?!
It was just like a student who hadn't done his homework: instead of admitting his mistake, when scolded by the teacher with, "Why did you even bother coming to school?", he had an epiphany and simply ran off school grounds to play.
For such an immature wrongdoer, the audience, acting as supervisors of society, would naturally grant him a chance to turn over a new leaf—*remember not to do this again in your next life.*
Under the rules of the Blood Moon Trial, in addition to executing the person with the most votes, if any candidate secured fifty percent of the total vote pool, the voting phase would terminate immediately and fast-forward straight to the execution.
The death row convicts had been freed from all restraints, but the price was that their lives were no longer within their own control. The hundreds of thousands of Kaimeng City citizens on the other side of the light screens each held a counterweight over their lives.
The moment anyone dared to go against this prevailing tide, the audience's weights would drop, transforming into a crushing heavenly retribution that shattered their defiant spines.
Thus, if Yaxiu leaped back, what awaited him would be the heartfelt gratitude of the other condemned inmates, alongside a horrific Executioner forged by fifty percent of the total votes.
Then again...
If Yaxiu's vote count soared ahead of everyone else's and the audience stubbornly insisted that the chance at redemption belonged to nobody but him, he would definitely jump back without hesitation.
*If I'm going to die anyway, screw entertaining you bastards.*
The only reason Yaxiu was still willing to play by the rules of the game was that the current voting situation gave him a glimmer of hope.
[Yaxiu Heath: 42,354 votes]
[Valkas Ur: 31,002 votes]
Yaxiu glanced at the Executioner behind Valkas. It was just as bulky and menacing, only a fraction smaller than his own.
As if sensing Yaxiu's gaze, Valkas shot him a sidelong glance, let out a cold snort, and actually leaped from his platform, landing lightly upon the steel wire. He strode toward the distant large platform with elegant steps.
Such a cool and flashy display instantly earned Valkas another two thousand-plus votes.
*Well, well, who would've thought? A handsome devil with thick eyebrows and big eyes like you is actually this hated, almost catching up to me. Definitely not a good elf...* Yaxiu muttered under his breath and looked at Valkas on the light screen. A prompt suddenly popped up:
[View Valkas Ur's criminal record?]
Yaxiu chose to view it, and a small window popped up on the light screen. Inside, recorded from Valkas's first-person perspective, was the entire sequence of him stealing technical data from the university and murdering a fellow scholar.
The fellow scholar slumped in the corridor, his face twisted in utter terror, tears and snot streaming down as he backed away while pleading:
"Spare me, please, Valkas, don't... Aaargh!"
With a wretched wail, the colleague's chest was run through by Valkas!
As if deciding that a perpetrator's perspective alone was not thrilling enough, the second half of the video was recorded from the first-person perspective of the victimized scholar!
Facing Valkas's steady advance, the video vividly conveyed the scholar's despair, terror, and the excruciating pain of life draining away!
These were memory fragments from Valkas and the man he had murdered!
Watching a memory fragment for the first time, Yaxiu was deeply shaken by the technology—awestruck by the sheer power and bizarre nature of the sorcery system, and stunned that the other death row inmates had dared to commit crimes at all. How was this any different from relieving oneself in the middle of a public street? No crime could remain hidden!
Any crime involving an interaction with someone else meant you had already exposed yourself to the Sin Hunting Hall. Even if you destroyed the corpse and cleared every trace, the Sin Hunting Hall could simply extract the deceased's memories!
No wonder every single death row convict possessed exceptional skills. Without some real expertise, how could they have committed capital crimes before being caught by the Sin Hunting Hall?
Any lesser criminal would have been nabbed during their petty thievery stage and shipped off to a labor camp to turn over a new leaf.
After the clip ended, an inquiry actually popped up on the screen:
[Cast your redemption vote for Valkas Ur? Every redemption vote you cast is a show of support for justice.]
Yaxiu froze, a thousand curses blooming in his mind.
Even death row convicts like them were eligible to vote?!
Had they not even been deprived of their political rights for life?
This was an outright insult. Did the prison truly believe that these condemned inmates would vote for another candidate just to slightly raise their own chances of survival?
Even as Yaxiu fumed over the prison's contempt, he cast his vote for Valkas.
Still, although Valkas's murder memory was quite brutal, was it really enough to earn him so many votes? Where had Heath fallen short compared to him?
Yaxiu looked at his own profile icon. A small video popped up there too, but it wasn't his memory; it was the law enforcement footage from the Bloodmad Hunters.
An eerie underground hall, unknown runes filled to the brim with blood, remnants strewn across an altar, twisted piles of corpses... Yaxiu fast-forwarded after just a couple of glances. He couldn't stomach it himself and even felt a twinge of guilt in his conscience.
*Damn it, it really hurts—my soul is reacting to the Purging Flame.*
Only after Yaxiu silently chanted "I am Yaxiu, not Heath" three times did the burning pain in his conscience slowly fade.
This little episode also gave Yaxiu a taste of the Purging Flame's potency. Merely by transmigrating into this body and briefly empathizing with Heath, he had been burned to the point where his scalp went numb.
The death row convicts who had truly committed those atrocities were probably suffering thousands, if not tens of thousands, of times more agony than he was.
Thinking about it that way, it was actually quite satisfying. Yaxiu's straightforward sense of good and evil made him applaud such punishment.
It would be even better if he weren't in the middle of the live broadcast, but watching the show from a cozy little home instead.
Yaxiu glanced through the other convicts' criminal records. Due to time constraints, he only read the text descriptions.
*So Harvey really did desecrate corpses...* Though Yaxiu was curious whether the "corpse" was cold or warm, male or female, such visual impact was far too much for him at the moment, so he didn't dare click the video.
*Alright, this one's a serial killer, that one's a cannibal, this one's a hitman, that one's a gang leader...*
Yaxiu skimmed through them quickly and realized Heath's crimes were indeed the most horrific of the lot. Even without the recent daily news coverage, Yaxiu suspected the audience would have picked him out with an eye for "talent."
Surprisingly, Valkas's crime was the lightest among the eight, yet his vote tally was second only to Yaxiu's.
Though puzzled, Yaxiu had no time left to ponder it.
The others were nearing the large platform, and Yaxiu had to make a move.
He couldn't just stay behind and wait for death.
But how was he supposed to get across?
He couldn't drop into the sea. It was crawling with finger sharks; if he fell in, not even his fingernails would survive.
He couldn't take to the skies. Some sort of storm sorcery spirit frenzy party was going on up there, and anything airborne would be struck by lightning.
Then again, Yaxiu didn't possess any swimming or flying sorcery spirits in the first place, so neither restriction meant much to him.
Yaxiu looked down at the steel wire.
He crouched and touched it. It was extremely thin and tensile; just a brush of his palm opened a bloody gash.
If he tried to grip the wire, his fingers would undoubtedly be sheared off as appetizers for the finger sharks.
No normal person could cross on foot; sorcery spirits were a necessity.
Yet Yaxiu possessed only a single sorcery spirit right now!
Still, at this point, he had to try whatever he had.
"Substitute!"
A duplicate identical to Yaxiu appeared beside him, making the already cramped platform even tighter. Yaxiu was nearly shoved off the edge by his own duplicate.
Though he had summoned the Substitute, Yaxiu had no idea what to do next. He looked at the Substitute, then at the steel wire, and pursed his lips, motioning for the Substitute to cross.
The Substitute raised no objection, stepping directly onto the steel wire with both feet. The wire sliced through its cloth shoes with trivial ease, and with a soft pop, the Substitute dissolved into wisps of smoke.
Subjected to even the slightest harm, the Substitute would shatter and vanish instantly.
Yet Yaxiu's eyes lit up.
Although the Substitute had been cut by the wire, it was indeed capable of walking across. Moreover, it knew no fear and kept its balance steadily, never making mistakes, just like a machine!
Yaxiu looked down at his own shoes. They were the standard cloth shoes issued by the prison, warm in winter and cool in summer, comfortable to wear, but utterly unsuited for walking a tightrope.
Yaxiu surveyed his surroundings, then turned to look back at the supervisor, Nagu.
Nagu raised an eyebrow. "Coming over?"
Ignoring his Executioner, which had begun to swell rapidly once more, Yaxiu looked toward the steel-soled boots on Nagu's feet that clanked with every step.
"Supervisor, your boots look amazing. What brand are they?"
At the mention of this, Nagu perked up. "You have good taste. These are Netherlamp brand's Night Sovereign limited edition. I had to preorder three months in advance to get them."
Yaxiu's eyes brimmed with admiration. "Just as I thought, Netherlamp's Night Overlord limited edition! That's the only pair of boots I've ever wanted to buy in my entire life!"
"It's Night Sovereign. Night Overlord is a different line."
"Doesn't matter!" Yaxiu waved a dismissive hand. "What matters is that I hope to wear those boots once before my redemption. This is the sole, humble wish of my entire life. Lord Supervisor, could you... let me wear them?"
Nagu's expression stiffened.
"That's hardly appropriate. I've already worn them..."
"Don't worry, Supervisor, I don't mind!" Yaxiu patted his chest. "Since you're gifting them to me, how could I possibly care about trivial details like that?"
Nagu's face contorted with rage at his words.
*I mind!*
*And I never said I was giving them to you!*
*Gift you boots? I'd rather gift you a kick off the edge, you goddamn scum!*
*Daring to take advantage of me—Yaxiu Heath, you are provoking the dignity of a supervisor and crossing the bottom line of Shattered Lake Prison!*
Nagu sneered coldly and declared in a booming voice:
"Fine!"
Chapter 55