Okay, I will create a story about extreme beliefs according to your requirements. In order to make the story more complete, I will first organize some basic settings. Please see if the following meets your expectations. If you have other ideas, you can always come up with them and I will make adjustments. ### Worldview setting -**Time setting**: In the near-future society, the development of science and technology contrasts sharply with spiritual emptiness, providing soil for the breeding of extreme beliefs. -**Location setting**: The domed temple located deep in the desert is built of special optical materials that can focus sunlight into a scorching beam of light. The internal stepped structure symbolizes the level of practice. -**Basic background**: The Pale Dawn Sect advocates the attainment of divinity through physical penance. The core doctrine believes that human beings are "polluted containers" and need to use extreme fasting to purify the soul. The material surplus of modern society has spawned this kind of extreme belief system that goes in reverse. ###Synopsis -**Purification ceremony**: Believers must complete seven days and nights of fasting and meditation in the Hall of Mirrors after drinking anesthetics on the night of moon fainting. The countless selves reflected in the mirror form a cage of consciousness, and the practitioner must face the deepest fear. -**Hierarchical system**: According to the length of fasting, the nine ranks of "first awakened" to "Liuli Bone" are divided. The most advanced practitioners will be moved into the crystal coffin and permanently exposed to the sun in the dome of the temple. -**Transformation of consciousness**: Long-term fasting causes believers to have visual and auditory hallucinations, interpreting physiological responses as oracles. The sect completely disintegrates the sense of autonomy of believers by controlling diet. -**The end of the sacrifice**: When the believer's subcutaneous fat completely disappears, he will be put on the altar for a "molting ceremony". The final form is humanoid amber, which is displayed in the confession corridor for latecomers to worship. --- When the bronze doors of the dome temple opened for the fifth time on the night of the moonlit night, seventeen newly awakened people stepped on the steps of the Hall of Mirrors barefoot. Their ankles were chained with tungsten steel shackles, and the sound of the chains dragging was like some kind of metronome, forming a weird harmony with the human bone bells in the hands of the priests. The smell of frankincense mixed with rotten fruit floated in the air. I counted the blood stains on the tiles and found that the new lines this time had three more branches than last month-it seemed that three more souls had broken during the molting ceremony. My stomach bag twitched suddenly. This body still remembers the last piece of holy bread swallowed three days ago. The rough taste mixed with glass crumbs is awakening in the esophagus at this moment. "Communion time. "The white-clothed squire walked in with a silver cup. The so-called "divine tears" are nothing more than distilled water mixed with mandala juice, but the girl kneeling on my left has already whimpered. Her ribs were clearly discernible in the moonlight, like a moving anatomical model. When the cold liquid slid into the throat, some kind of warm illusion began to erode the nerve endings, and I knew that the bronze mirror in the Hall of Mirrors was about to reflect a more terrifying scene than reality. The fourth-order practitioners began to walk around the mirror wall, their sunken eye sockets beating with blue phosphorous fire. The elder said it was a sign of soul purification, but I clearly saw someone tearing his earlobes-the auditory hallucinations caused by hunger made the man believe that there were mice stealing holy food hidden in his ear canal. His blood dripped on the mirror, and he was immediately caught by the gray-robed attendant who had been waiting for a long time with a golden bowl. These "dew of repentance" will become a sacrifice for the ceremony of the holy spring tomorrow. I pinched my nails into the palm of my hand, trying to use the pain to fight the acid surging in my stomach. The figures in the mirror began to distort, and those overlapping reflections suddenly turned their heads in unison, and three hundred of me opened my dark mouth at the same time. When I was soaked in cold sweat and linen penance clothes, I heard the vibration of crystal bells from the dome-the most advanced "glazed bones" were sleeping in transparent coffins, their skin blended with amber, showing a translucent texture under the scorching beam of the eternal day. Texture. It is said that when the last trace of fat melts, the skull will reveal a holy halo like chalcedony. A sharp scream suddenly broke out in the direction of the altar. A believer who has completed a hundred-day fast is molting, his spine is arched like an air-dried lizard, and the gray stratum corneum begins to peel off from his fingertips. The white-clothed priests immediately stitched his eyelids with gold thread, because the canon stipulated that "pilgrims are not allowed to witness their own sanctification." I counted the number of times his ribs undulated under the skin until the torso was completely still and became the thousandth humanoid body in the corridor of repentance. The moment gastric acid burned my throat, I swallowed the beeswax hidden in my molars. The rock salt wrapped in the wax pill stimulated the taste buds, and this insignificant sin caused the reflection in the mirror to suddenly crack the cobweb lines. When the squire's bronze spoon scratched my ribs for the third time to collect the "holy ash", the moonlight happened to shift to the seventh bronze mirror-it was not me that was reflected there, but a weathered skeleton, its phalanges are showing an ancient and secret gesture for help. --- Hope this story can meet your requirements. If you need more details or adjust a certain paragraph, please feel free to let me know. The metaphorical elements and physical descriptions in the story can be further