**"Barefoot Pilgrimage Road"** **Sect name**: The Blazing Eye (The Blazing Eye) **Core belief**: Believers must pass physical pain and spiritual trials to cleanse the soul of filth in order to obtain the “gaze of God”-a kind of grace that heralds eternal salvation. Anyone who evades the test will be gouged out of their eyes by the “eyeless” (the judge in the sect) and exiled to the “silent wasteland”, wandering in darkness and silence forever. --- ###**Ceremony name **: The Path of Scorched Earth (The Path of Scorched Earth) **Time**: Once every ten years, it is held on the hottest “day of Red Anger” in midsummer. **Location**: The holy land of the sect “Valley of Burnt Offerings”-a wasteland full of scorching volcanic rocks and saline-alkali cracks, the ground temperature can melt leather. --- ###**Ritual process** 1. **Cleansing and branding** Believers need to fast for three days in advance and drink only salt water mixed with absinthe. On the eve of the ceremony, the blind will use a red-hot iron brazer to brand the “Eye of God” symbol on their back. The wound must not be bandaged, and they must be wrapped in a white linen shroud soaked in blood. 2. **Trek barefoot** Believers must travel barefoot through the twelve-mile-long Valley of Burnt Offerings, with sharp volcanic glass debris and hot sulfur pits scattered along the path. On the way, you need to chant the "Burning Prayer", kneel down once every 100 steps, and your knees need to hit the ground heavily until the flesh and blood are blurred. 3. **Illusion Trial** At the end of the path, believers need to drink the “true vision medicine soup” made of hallucinogenic cactus juice, and then be locked into the “cage of Repentance”-an iron cage suspended above the magma pool. High temperature and hallucinations will force believers to face the deepest fears in their hearts. If you fall while screaming or struggling, it is regarded as a “soul cowardly person” and the punishment will be carried out by the aimless person. 4. **The ultimate choice** Those who pass the trial will receive a “fragment of hitomi” made of obsidian, embedded in the orbit of the left eye (voluntary or compulsory). The doctrine claims that this fragment can give people a glimpse of the corner of the kingdom of God in this world. --- ###**Consequences of failure** -**Physical punishment**: His eyes were cut out, his ankles were cut off, and he was discarded in the silent wasteland. -**Spiritual curse**: The sect will claim that the name of the loser has been erased by the “Eye of God”, and his relatives need to publicly spit on his existence, otherwise they will be punished jointly and severally. --- ###**The crazy logic of believers** "Pain is the scale of God's grace. "Believers believe that only in the extreme pain can mortals peel off their hypocritical selves. Those losers who wailed in the silent wasteland were regarded as “living sacrifices”-their despair would nourish the soil of the Kingdom of God. (Note: This ceremony is purely fictitious, please do not imitate any self-harm or dangerous behavior. ）