Chapter 1: The Burning Gallows

  Thick smoke billowed, each inhalation producing a coarse, rasping sound like a broken accordion, as if scorching his throat and lungs. Xia Feng's consciousness quickly grew hazy.

  "Can't sleep, can't sleep, will die."

  "Awake, must be awake!"

  ……

  The boundless crimson color suddenly darkened, the deepest and darkest ink appeared, the summer wind was like a drowning person, struggling to grab every possible thing to help itself change this powerless drifting state, shaking off this unspeakable darkness.

  Suddenly, a bright red glow appeared in front of me, like the sunrise at dawn.

  Under its radiance, Xia Feng felt he had regained some strength and then desperately rushed towards the red light.

  When the summer breeze is assisted by the radiant light, after taking this step, the light becomes brighter and brighter, changing from crimson to pure white, shattering the dark cave and disappearing instantly.

  "Ah." Xiafeng suddenly sat up, panting heavily, and found that he had just had a terrible nightmare about a fire. Before the big flames came, his sleeping self had inhaled too much smoke and fallen into a daze, vaguely and desperately waiting for the flames to spread over, just like the few times he had sleep paralysis before. Although he knew he was dreaming, he wanted to struggle free but had no strength, unable to control himself.

  The dream was exceptionally real, leaving Xia Feng with a lingering fear, and since he hadn't felt the presence of the big fire, he sat there stupidly for a long time without coming back to his senses.

  As his rapidly beating heart slowly calmed down, Xia Feng's mind cleared up and he remembered that he was in the all-night reading room of the school library, rushing to finish his graduation thesis. He couldn't help but mock himself: "It's been like this for the past few days, living an irregular life of pulling all-nighters, no wonder I had such a realistic nightmare."

  Just as Xia Feng was about to pack up his reference books and head back to the dorm, a strange and unimaginable scene unfolded before his eyes, like a massive hammer striking his brain, leaving him stunned and blank.

  In front of me, there is no longer a beautiful wooden desk in the library, no more messy reference books, no more drafts of papers to be typed into the computer, only a black, tattered and worn-out blanket, which I am wrapped in.

  The place where I sat was not a comfortable armchair in the library, but a narrow wooden bed.

  "Where is this?!"

  Although Xia Feng was introverted and shy, and reacted slowly, at this time he still discovered all sorts of things that weren't right: even if it were true that he had been set on fire and someone had sent him to the hospital, this didn't seem like a hospital!

  He tensed up inside, hastily looked around and reflexively scrambled to get up beside him.

  As soon as he stepped on the ground, Xia Feng felt an extreme weakness and dizziness, his legs softened, and he was about to fall down.

  Xia Feng hastily stretched out his hand, propped himself up on the bed, and steadied himself. His face was deathly pale, and his mind was uneasy. Just now, that fleeting glance had already taken in everything around him.

  A dilapidated, cramped little hut. Inside the house, apart from the wooden bed beside me, there was only a wooden table that could collapse at any time, two relatively intact stools, a broken plank box, and on the other side of the rickety wooden door, there was a stove whose original color could no longer be seen, with an earthen pot hanging above it. The firewood under the stove had been extinguished for who knows how long, without any warmth emanating from it.

  Everything was so strange, Xia Feng couldn't even tell where he was, and the constant surge of weakness made his mind a complete mess.

  "What is this place?!"

  "My body feels like it's just recovered from a serious illness, similar to when I had pneumonia in high school."

  ……

  Innumerable thoughts echoed in his mind, but Xia Feng had never encountered such a strange thing before. His slightly introverted personality made him suddenly unsure of what to do next, and intense panic fermented rapidly.

  The only thing worth being grateful for was that nothing unpleasant appeared, allowing Xia Feng to habitually take a few deep breaths and slowly calm down his panic. At this time, a loud shout came from far outside the small hut:

  "Burn the witch! The Church of Adel wants to burn the witch!"

  "Everyone go quickly!"

  "Burn that damned, evil witch!"

  Two diametrically opposed emotions, fear and excitement, were clearly revealed in the strange accent. Xia Feng was interrupted by panic, became curious, and muttered to himself: "Witch? What kind of world is this?"

  As a somewhat pleasant adult, that bad premonition was faintly produced in Xia Feng's heart, but before he could think deeply about it, the creaky old wooden door was suddenly kicked open and a 12 or 13-year-old boy rushed in.

  "Lucien big brother..." The boy with brown short hair and a knee-length linen shirt looked at Xiafeng standing by the bed, surprised and delighted, "You're awake?"

  Xia Feng looked at the clothes that were different from modern style, numbly nodded, and a absurd idea emerged in his mind: "Lucien, witch, church, burned to death, could it be that I really crossed over, and even crossed over to the dark era of European medieval witch hunting?"

  Things always go in the wrong direction, Murphy's Law coldly reminds Xiafeng, the boy's hair color, and the dirty linen clothes he wears, all prove this point. As for the language spoken by the boy, Xiafeng can instinctively understand it physically, and seems to be able to use it, but he is still far from being a linguist and cannot judge what kind of language it is.

  The little boy with a few streaks of black dirt on his face didn't find it strange at all: "Mom never believes me, she still sneaks out to cry in the middle of the night, her eyes are swollen from crying, and keeps muttering about poor little Evans, just like you, Lucien big brother, have been buried in the cemetery."

  "Dad was driven to distraction, and first thing in the morning he sent that scamp Simon from next door with a message to Sir Vien's estate, telling my brother to come up with some way to get back once, since he's already an apprentice knight-attendant, and Dr. Shantou wouldn't dare insist on those outrageous, laughable prices in front of him."

  When it comes to his brother becoming a knight's apprentice, the little boy's chin slightly lifted, with a genuine sense of pride.

  "But now it's all right, they lost and I was correct, how could anything happen to Big Brother Lucien!"

  As he spoke, he pulled on Xiaofeng's arm: "Come on, Lucien big brother, let's go to the church square and watch them burn the witch, that despicable witch who got you caught by the church guards and interrogated for a whole night!"

  It happened to be a great change, and Xia Feng was thinking of quietly reflecting on his life. He didn't want to follow the young boy to join in the excitement, and directly burning a living person to death was something that Xia Feng, who considered himself to be relatively kind-hearted, couldn't accept. Since he was powerless to stop it, it would be better not to witness it. However, the young boy's last sentence made Xia Feng suddenly stunned: "This witch has a connection with me?"

  Xia Feng suddenly changed his mind, restrained his surprise, and let the little boy pull him, stumbling towards the Adrien Church.

  Along the way, Xia Feng seized the opportunity to observe the people heading towards Adrien Church.

  The weather is relatively warm, men are basically wearing short-sleeved linen shirts, same-colored long pants and flat shoes, while women wear dull and monotonous long skirts, often with a large pocket sewn on the skirt, the common feature is simplicity and shabbiness.

  Most of them have brown hair and brown eyes mixed with golden hair, red hair, black hair, green eyes, red pupils, blue eyes, etc., with deep facial features and a strong sense of three-dimensionality.

  "Is this really the Middle Ages?" Xiafeng looked at himself, wearing the same linen short shirt, the same long pants, and the same flat shoes.

  Not long after leaving the dilapidated and low-rise slum area, a not-so-large but majestic church came into view. The semi-circular vaulted roof rose high, with a huge white cross nailed on top, while the windows below were extremely narrow.

  The square was already surrounded by many people, the little boy pulled Xia Feng left and right, constantly squeezing forward, which made many people look over with anger, but they didn't dare to hit these two bastards because this is a church square.

  It wasn't long before Xiafeng's eyes suddenly opened up, and it turned out that he had squeezed all the way to the front row.

  In the center of the square stood a wooden cross, on which was bound a pale-faced and rather beautiful young woman in her early twenties wearing a black robe.

  The surrounding crowd would occasionally throw stones, wooden blocks and spit at the woman in black, with curses and shouts mingling together in a chaotic mess.

  "Smash you, this damned witch."

  "You wicked witch hiding in our Adrien district, you must be trying to kill us!"

  "My poor little Trudy died a few months ago, it must have been you, you wicked witch! Woe is me, my poor little Trudy..."

  ……

  Occasionally hit, the woman in black robe closed her thin pale lips tightly and did not make a sound of pain, but looked at the people standing on the church steps like a statue.

  At the front was a middle-aged man wearing a large white robe with gold trim, a white soft hat on his head, holding a round badge painted with a white cross, looking quietly without speaking, solemn and dignified. Behind him stood several men and women in white robes, clean and tidy, with rosy complexions, forming a sharp contrast to the poverty and squalor of the square.

  Behind them stood a row of guards wearing silver-gray cuirasses, majestic and awe-inspiring.

  A middle-aged man took out a pocket watch-like object, looked at it and saw that the time was almost up. He then took a step forward, raising one hand high with a round badge.

  At this moment, the angry, hateful and quarrelsome people on the square suddenly fell silent at the same time.

  The entire square was left with only the sound of wind blowing through clothes.

  Xia Feng was extremely surprised, even in modern times, to achieve this level of obedience and conditioned reflexes, at least several months of training would be required, yet these ordinary-looking poor people were able to do it. What kind of power enabled them to do so?

  A middle-aged man held up a sign, his voice not loud but spreading throughout the entire square: "Poor sinner, you are deceived by the devil, and you want to obtain evil power. From your body to your soul, you are filled with filth. Only holy light can purify you. This is both the Lord's punishment and the Lord's gift, it is the Lord's tolerance for a lost sheep."

  "Burn her, burn her!" The poor people around first shouted sparsely, then loudly and in unison.

  The chaotic and frenzied scene made Xiafeng's heart turn cold, if people knew that he was a crosser, then the next one to be executed on the fire altar would be Lucien, whose soul had been occupied by an evil demon.

  "Before I purify you, the merciful Lord allows me to ask you one more thing: are you willing to repent? Sincere repentance can thoroughly purify your soul and enter the heavenly kingdom where the Lord resides." The middle-aged man asked gently and sorrowfully.

  The woman in black suddenly burst into a mad, shrill laughter: "I seek the truth of magic, not the god of truth. Burn me at the stake, and I will watch from the flames as this sinful heaven is destroyed, as this magnificent cathedral collapses."

  "Madman!"

  "How evil!"

  "The bishop's mercy has earned him a curse! These sorcerers who have been deceived by the devil are doomed!"

  "Burn her!"

  The bishop said nothing, but the multitude of poor people around him fell into a frenzy of shouting.

  Xia Feng's life was for the first time in a fanatical and unreasonable atmosphere, and he couldn't help but think: "Medieval Europe is really dangerous!"

  "But there is no wood pile, how can we burn her to death?"

  Although he felt pity and couldn't bear to see the woman in black, Xiafeng didn't dare make any move, or else one person with a stone could smash him to death.

  The bishop prayed a few sentences, his voice growing louder and sonorous but devoid of any emotion: "Sinner, then may you go to hell in the purification of holy light."

  The emblem on his hand suddenly burst into brilliant light, dazzling to the eyes, and Xia Feng's vision was filled with a vast expanse of whiteness.

  The bishop held it up like a small sun, solemn, majestic and sacred. Everyone including the little boy beside Xia Feng bowed their heads in silent prayer and praise.

  The light gathered and shot towards the azure sky. When it reached the highest point, the light rebounded and fell back down, striking the execution stake.

  A red flame burst forth, several feet high, surrounding the woman in black robes.

  She laughed wildly, cursing wildly:

  "I will watch this wicked kingdom perish in flames."

  "I will watch this magnificent church collapse in flames."

  "I will watch you sink forever in the flames!"

  ……

  The shrill voice did not stop ringing in her ears, and the black-robed woman was burned to ashes along with the stake.

  But Xia Feng was already stunned when the badge burst into dazzling light:

  "This is not medieval Europe..."

  "This is a world with real divine arts and magic!"

  "My name is Lucien..."